The general director came in with his people behind him. Without preamble, he gave a three-inch laser disc to Marshal Levchenko. “Marshal, this is the reply we received from the Vechnyy Buran an hour ago. He added afterward that this isn’t a private message, and that he hopes you’ll play it in front of all relevant personnel.”

Everyone in the war room heard the voice from a hundred million kilometers distant. “I’ve learned from the war news updates that if the electromagnetic jamming fails to last for another three to four days, we may lose the war. If this is true, Papa, I can give you that time.

“Before, you always thought that the stars I studied had nothing to do with the ways of the world, and I thought so too. But it looks like we were both wrong.

“I remember telling you that, although a star generates enormous power, it’s fundamentally a relatively elegant and simple system. Take our sun, for example. It’s composed of just the two simplest elements: hydrogen and helium; its behavior is the balance of just the two mechanisms of nuclear fission and gravity. As a result, it’s easier to model its activity mathematically than our Earth. Research on the sun has given us an extremely accurate mathematical model by this time, work to which I’ve contributed. Using this model, we can accurately predict the sun’s behavior. This would allow us to take advantage of a tiny disturbance to rapidly disrupt the equilibrium conditions inside the sun. The method is simple: use the Vechnyy Buran to make a precision strike on the surface of the sun.

“Perhaps you think it no more than tossing a pebble into the sea. But that’s not the case, Papa. This is dropping a grain of sand into an eye.

“From the mathematical model, we know that the sun is in an extremely fine-tuned and sensitive state of energy equilibrium. If correctly placed, a small disturbance will create a chain reaction from the surface to a considerable distance down, spreading to disrupt the local equilibrium. There are recorded precedents: the latest incident was in early August of 1972, when a powerful but highly localized eruption created a massive EMP that heavily affected Earth. Compasses in planes and boats jumped wildly, long-distance wireless communications failed, the sky shone with dazzling red lights in high northern latitudes, electric lights flickered in villages as if they were in the center of a thunderstorm. The reactions continued for more than a week. A well-accepted theory nowadays is that a celestial body even smaller than the Vechnyy Buran collided with the surface of the sun at that time.

“These disruptions on the sun’s surface certainly occurred many times, but most would have happened before humanity invented wireless equipment, and therefore went undetected. In addition, since these collisions were placed by random chance, the disturbances in equilibrium wouldn’t have been optimal in strength and area.