Ball Lightning

After dark, Dawnlight went to a shooting range where a peculiar simulated fleet was set up. Dozens of ship profiles had been cut out from large cardboard sheets, each set on two small rollers so they could move slowly across the range if pushed by a soldier. Each shooter trained a light machine gun, a laser pointer affixed to the barrel, on their designated target to indicate the point of impact, and then strove to move the red dot along the prescribed sweep path. The exercise continued late into the night, until everyone was entirely familiar with the shooting process for their own target. The ship silhouettes moving slowly in the dark and the red dots moving equally slowly along them formed a mysterious, abstract painting, hypnotic enough to make everyone drowsy by the end.

The rest of the night they spent asleep in naval barracks. It was said that the night before the Normandy invasion, a psychologist observed the sleeping conditions of the soldiers, imagining that they would have difficulty falling asleep on the eve of a bloody battle. To the contrary, all of them slept soundly, a fact he attributed to an instinctive response of the group to the huge energy expenditure they were about to experience. Dawnlight also fell asleep quickly. It was a night without dreams.

* * *

As morning broke, Dawnlight arrived at the dock. The sun was still at the horizon, and the fifty fishing boats in the harbor rocked gently in the morning mist.

Before they boarded, Lin Yun drove up in an open-top jeep carrying several camouflage bags, which she took out of the vehicle and opened up. They were stuffed with uniforms. Dawnlight had left them behind at camp after they changed into a fishing company’s work clothes that stank of the sea.

“What are you doing, Lin Yun?” Lieutenant Colonel Kang Ming asked.

“Have the soldiers put their uniforms on under the work clothes. When the operation is finished, they can strip out of the work clothes.”

Kang Ming was silent for a while, then slowly shook his head. “I appreciate your good intentions, but Dawnlight has its own rules. We won’t be captured. Let the naval soldiers wear uniforms.”{Only combatants wearing the uniform of their country enjoy the rights of captured soldiers under the Geneva Convention.}

“Those rules may apply to lieutenant colonels and higher ranking officers, but the soldiers executing this mission are just thunderball gunners. They don’t know much. I’ve made inquiries, and the higher-ups have given their tacit permission. I’m telling the truth. Please believe me.”

Lin Yun was correct. In the early stages of Dawnlight’s training, Kang Ming had wanted to conduct all-round training in both operation and repair of the thunderball gun, but she had staunchly opposed the idea, and had pushed successfully for the strict separation of personnel for weapons operations and engineering services. The thunderball gunners were not permitted to dismantle the weapons, nor did they have any opportunity to come into contact with the principles of the weapon or other technical information. Their only concern was its use. Up until they boarded the fishing boats, none of the gunners knew that what they were firing was ball lightning. They believed, as the commander had told them, that they were firing EM radiation bombs. Looking back, Lin Yun’s decision was made not merely for confidentiality purposes, but also out of kindness.

“This kind of mission is seldom seen in modern warfare. If the attack fails, we require nothing from these soldiers other than the immediate destruction of their weapons,” she said urgently.

Lieutenant Colonel Kang hesitated for a few seconds, then waved a hand at the unit. “Very well. Put these uniforms on at once. Be quick about it!” Then he turned toward Lin Yun and extended a hand. “Thank you, Major Lin.”

* * *

Ding Yi interrupted his story to remark, “You can see where she had become fragile.”

* * *

The following account Ding Yi pieced together after the fact.

Ten minutes later, the fifty fishing boats filed out of the harbor, a classic scene of fishermen heading out to sea at dawn. No one would have imagined that the humble craft were en route to attack the most powerful fleet on the planet.

After leaving the harbor, Kang Ming and the naval commanding officers—a lieutenant commander, a lieutenant, and two junior lieutenants—held a meeting on a larger fishing boat that served as a command craft for the hundred-odd helmsmen and engineers piloting the fishing boats.

The lieutenant commander said to Kang Ming, “Colonel, I suggest your people stay hidden belowdecks. You clearly don’t look like fishermen.”

“We can’t stand the fishy stench down there,” Kang Ming said with a grimace.