Ball Lightning

“Ignore it,” the lieutenant commander said, a slight smile on his face, as if he was absorbed in conversation with Kang Ming.

Just before he turned away, Kang Ming clearly saw the glint of light reflecting off the glass spherical object at the top of the rod. Then the lieutenant and the two junior lieutenants emerged from the cabin carrying a netting shuttle, and sat right on the tarp covering the weapon’s launch rail to mend nets under the moonlight. Kang Ming watched the captain’s skilled hands and followed his movements, but his mind concentrated on the strange eye behind him that was staring at them from the ocean, stabbing into his back.

The lieutenant said, “I’ll throw this one over, and with any luck it’ll get tangled in their damn propeller.” He wore an expression of lazy fatigue, as if complaining about having to work so late at night.

“Then toss over those two depth charges,” a junior lieutenant said, chuckling. Then he turned to Kang Ming. “Say something.” But Kang Ming couldn’t come up with anything.

The lieutenant pointed at the net and asked him, “How’s my mending look?”

Kang Ming held the mended section up against the light coming from the cabin, inspected it, and said to him, “Let’s give them a look at your handiwork.”

The lieutenant commander said, “It’s moving again.”

The lieutenant warned Kang Ming, “Don’t look back.”

After a while, they heard the whooshing sound again, and when they looked behind them, the rod was heading away from them at increasing speed, lowering as it went, until it was entirely underwater.

The lieutenant threw down the net, stood up, and said to Kang Ming, “Colonel, if I were commanding that sub I’d have seen through us. You held the net all wrong!”

Then the radio received a short message from headquarters telling them that the enemy fleet had reached the ambush area, and to prepare for attack.

Before long, they heard a faint rumbling sound that quickly grew loud. They looked off to the northern sky and saw a line of black dots appear—five of them, one smack in the middle of the moon’s disc, so its whirling rotors were visible. The five helicopters came in fast and rumbled overhead, red beacons flashing on their bellies. One dropped a long object that hit the water not far from them in a plume of white; a short distance later, another helicopter dropped another long object. Kang Ming asked what they were, and the lieutenant commander’s voice answered from the cabin: “Sonar buoys for submarine detection. The enemy takes great care with its antisubmarine measures.”

The helicopters soon vanished into the southern night sky, and stillness returned once more. Now Kang Ming’s micro-earpiece, tied in to the radio in the cabin, chirped with a voice from headquarters.

“The target is approaching. All vessels to shooting state. Over.”

The moon was now blocked by clouds, darkening the ocean surface, but a glow had appeared in the northern sky, the same glow that was visible from the base each evening in the direction of the city. Kang Ming raised his binoculars, and for a moment had the impression he was looking at a glittering shoreline.

“We’re too far forward!” the lieutenant commander shouted, putting down his binoculars and dashing into the cabin. The fishing boat’s turbines rumbled to life and it reversed course.

The glow in the north grew brighter, and when they turned back to look at it, the “shore lights” on the horizon were visible even without binoculars. With them, they could make out individual ships. The voice in Kang Ming’s earpiece said, “Attention all vessels. The target formation is basically unchanged. Proceed according to original plan. Over.”

Battlefield command, Kang Ming knew, had now been transferred to their vessel. If everything had developed as expected, they had only to wait for the cruisers at the head of the enemy fleet to advance directly in front of their small craft, then give the order to fire, since they knew from their intel of the enemy’s fleet formation that the fleet would be entirely encircled at that point. Now they made their final preparations before firing: putting on life jackets.

The fleet approached quickly. When individual ships became visible to the naked eye, Kang Ming looked for targets he could identify only to hear the lieutenant shout, “That’s Stennis!”—perhaps because the ship’s shape had been imprinted in his brain at the naval academy. As he shouted, he looked at Kang Ming with a challenge: Let’s see what you do now. Kang Ming stood at the bow, silently watching the swiftly approaching fleet.