It had been the largest Russian war game of the century. Misha showed little interest in the torrent of steel-armored vehicles rumbling past them on the highway that night before it started; the moment he was off the helicopter, he ducked into the tent to assemble the newly arrived battle maps with clear tape in his father’s stead. The next day, Misha didn’t show the slightest interest through all the exercises. Marshal Levchenko had expected that. But one incident gave him all the reassurance he could ever want.
The exercise scheduled for the morning was a tank division assaulting high ground; Misha sat with some local officials on the north side of the observation station. The station was safely out of range, but in order to satisfy the curiosity of the local officials, it had been placed much closer to the action than before.
Tu-22 bombers soared in formation above, heavy aerial bombs fell like rain, and the hilltop exploded into an erupting volcano. Only then did the officials understand the difference between movies and a real battlefield. As the ground quaked and the hill shook, they pressed themselves flat against the table and covered their heads with their arms, some even crawling under the table with shrieks. But the marshal saw that Misha alone sat with his back straight, the same cool expression on his face, calmly watching the terrible volcano as the light of the explosions flashed across his sunglasses. Warmth flooded into Levchenko’s heart then. In the end, son, you have a soldier’s blood in your veins!
That night, father and son walked along the practice field. In the distance, the headlamps of armored vehicles densely sprinkled the valleys and plains with stars. The faint smell of gunpowder smoke still lingered in the air.
“How much did it cost?” Misha asked.
“The direct cost was about three hundred million rubles.”
Misha sighed. “Our task group wanted a third-generation evolving star model to work with. We couldn’t get a grant of three hundred fifty thousand for expenses.”
Marshal Levchenko at last said what he’d long wanted to tell his son. “Our two worlds are too far apart. Your stars are all four light-years away at the least, yes? They don’t have any bearing on the armies and wars on Earth. I can’t claim to know much about what you do, though I’m very proud of you all the same. But as an army man, I just want my son to appreciate my own profession. What father wouldn’t feel the greatest happiness telling his son about his campaigns? But you’ve never cared for my work, when really, it’s the foundation and safeguard for your own. Without an army strong enough and big enough to keep the country safe, fundamental science research like yours would be impossible.”
“You’ve got it backward, Papa. If everyone were like us and spent all their life on exploring the universe, they’d understand its beauty, the beauty that lies behind its vastness and depth. And someone who truly understood the innate beauty of space and nature would never go to war.”
“That thinking’s as childish as you can get. If appreciation of beauty could prevent war, we’d never be short of peace!”
“Do you think it’s easy for humanity to understand this kind of beauty?” Misha pointed at the night sky, a sea of shining stars. “Look at these stars. Everyone knows they’re beautiful, but how many grasp the deepest nuances of their beauty? All these countless celestial bodies are so glorious in their metamorphosis from nebula to black hole, so vast and terrible in their explosive power. But do you know that a few elegant equations can accurately describe all of it? Mathematical models created from the equations can near perfectly predict everything a star does. Even mathematical models of our own planet’s atmosphere are orders of magnitude less precise.”
Marshal Levchenko nodded. “I can believe that. They say humanity knows more about the moon than the bottom of Earth’s oceans. But the deeper beauty in space and nature you talk about still can’t stop wars. No one could have understood that beauty more than Einstein, and didn’t he advise the creation of the atomic bomb?”
“Einstein made little progress in his later research, largely because he became too involved in politics. I won’t go down the same path as him. But, Papa, when it’s necessary, I’ll do my duty too.”
Misha observed the exercise for five days. The marshal didn’t know when his son first met Kalina; the first time he saw them together, they were already conversing on familiar terms. They were talking about stars, about which Kalina knew a considerable amount. Seeing an untried youngster like Kalina already wearing a major’s star for her Ph.D. left the marshal feeling a little offended, but other than that, she’d made a fine first impression.
The second time Marshal Levchenko saw Misha and Kalina together, he discovered there was already a deep sense of closeness between them. Their topic of conversation surprised him: electronic warfare. They were standing by a tank parked not far from the marshal’s jeep. Due to their topic of conversation, they didn’t seem concerned with privacy.
The marshal heard Misha say: “Right now, your department has been focusing on only high-level pure software like the C3I, virus programs, the digital battlefield, and so on. But have you considered that this might leave you holding a wooden sword?” Seeing Kalina’s surprise, Misha continued, “Have you put thought into the foundation they’re built upon? The physical layer at the bottom of the seven layers of protocol defined by the Open Systems Interconnection model? Civilian networks can use fiber optics, fixed lasers, and the like for media and communication. But the terminals in a military-use C3I network are fast-moving and unpredictably located, so only EM waves can keep them in communication. And you know how EM waves are as fragile as thin ice under jamming….”
The marshal was quite shocked. He’d never talked about these things with Misha, and his son would never have snuck a look at his classified documents, but here Misha had neatly and clearly laid out the same considerations that he’d come up with over the years!
Misha’s words had an even greater impact on Kalina. She even shifted the direction of her own research to create an electromagnetic jamming unit code-named “Flood.” It fit into an armored vehicle, and could simultaneously emit strong EM jamming waves ranging from three kilohertz to thirty gigahertz, drowning out all EM communication signals outside the millimeter radio range.
The first weapons test at one of the Siberian bases had sent a whole swarm of officials running over to protest. Flood had cut off all EM wave-based communication in the nearby city: cell phones found no reception, pagers fell silent, televisions and radios lost all signal. The impact on finance and stocks was disastrous; the local officials claimed astronomical losses.
Flood was inspired by a type of EMP bomb that utilized high explosives to create a powerful electromagnetic pulse within a one-use wire coil. As a result, Flood created shock waves like a rocket engine, shattering nearby windows in its trial. This meant that it could only be remotely operated, and its crew had to wear anti-microwave-radiation protective gear even though they were two or three kilometers away.
Flood had raised fierce debate in the armaments department and the electronic-warfare command. Many thought that it had no practical value; using it in a limited-scope battlefield would be like using a nuclear bomb in a street-to-street battle, devastating friend and foe alike. But under the marshal’s insistence, two hundred Flood units had been mass-produced. Now, in the central command’s new electronic-warfare strategy, it would take center stage.
That his son had fallen for a woman in the army had deeply surprised Marshal Levchenko. He assumed at the time that Misha’s feelings for Kalina overlooked her occupation. But Misha later brought Kalina home on a few occasions. The first time, Kalina wore a pretty dress; when Marshal Levchenko walked close, he overheard Misha tell her, “You don’t have to dress up for us. Wear your uniform next time, I know you feel more comfortable in it.” That disproved the marshal’s original theory. Now he understood that Misha fell for Kalina to some extent because she was a major in the army. He felt again what he felt that first morning of war training. The major’s star on Kalina’s shoulder now seemed incomparably beautiful.