My new series will take place about forty years in the future on Mars. Good author that I am, I intend to have lots of conflict. And that, at least in part, requires weapons to carryout those aggressive human impulses.
     In a confined pressure vessel like Ep City on Mars, use of ballistic armaments is ill-advised. The shock wave of a .45 caliber round discharge risks damaging the pressurized habitat, as does any stray bullet. The shooter is as likely to die as his or her intended target.
     Most current Sci Fi recognizes this inherent risk and uses other munitions that don’t rely on the explosive chemical reaction of gunpowder to shoot a ballistic mass. Instead, they use plasma, directed energy such as lasers, or rail guns that fling a projectile without an explosion.
     Though I’m well into my first draft, I’m feeling uneasy about my choice of weapons used a mere forty years into the future. So, over the course of the next three months, I’m going to examine each of these above options to determine the most feasible rifles to use within the city. If my current selection is off the mark, I’ll revise what I include in the book during my upcoming editing process.
     What exactly is plasma, and why would it be considered for a weapon? It's a state of matter, much like the three we’re familiar with: solid, liquid and gas. All elements exist in distinct phases, depending on their temperature.
     While each element has its own specific temperature ranges for these states, we can generalize to say the coldest state is a solid. As we warm this material, it will melt and enter the liquid phase. If we continue to apply heat to our liquid sample, it will become a gas. If we further heat our gas, the electrons of the individual atoms jump to ever higher energy orbitals.
     Eventually, when there are no higher energy levels to occupy, the electrons will fly away—dissociate—and exist independent of their parent atom. The atom will now have a net electrical charge of +1. And the free electron, a charge of -1. With the continued addition of energy, most or all of our atom’s electrons will strip away, leaving the highly positively charged nucleus adrift amid a sea of electrons.
     While this state of matter is relatively exotic here on Earth, It’s quite common throughout the cosmos. Stars make prodigious amounts of plasma. Our own sun certainly does. The solar wind and occasional coronal mass ejections that strike our planet are that state of matter. The charged particles can be influenced by magnetic fields. Auroras are solar-generated plasma attracted to and following the Earth’s magnetic field lines. Their glow comes from the particles’ interactions with atmospheric gasses.
     To generate controlled nuclear fusion scientists and engineers create streams of tritium and deuterium plasma to fuse into helium, releasing neutrons and energy. Carefully crafted magnetic fields “contain” this material in tokamak and stellarator chambers, squeezing it with the intent of generating power from these reactor designs.
     How is plasma used in science fiction for weapons? Soldiers in almost any space opera use plasma rifles. Their spacecraft often have plasma cannons among their armaments. Damage inflicted is a combination of electrical disruption, physical burns and kinetic impact.
     Is there any optimism plasma rifles could be deployed within the next forty years? An internet search produced very little regarding weapons research. But I did run across a now-classified Space Defense Initiative called MARAUDER.
     Located in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the purpose of the 1990s project “sought to convert stored electrostatic energy into plasma kinetic energy.” The plasma was generated by Shiva, a massive array of capacitors first developed in the 1970s. Siva’s electrical discharge created a torus of charged particles (like a smoke ring only a lot hotter).
     The MAURADER part was a magnetic rail gun that accelerated the two-milligram torus up to 10,000 kilometers per second. The force of the projectile resulted in a theoretical yield of 5 pounds of TNT, plus the disruption of any of the target’s electronics.
     The prospects for miniaturization are not good. Imagine squeezing the power source used by Lawrence Livermore into a five-pound battery housed in a gun stock, capable of being released in a coordinated way to create the plasma, then accelerate it to three percent of the speed of light down the length of a two-foot magnetic accelerator. It would take a battleship to carry MAURADER. But I doubt the ship could generate enough energy to fire a meaningful shot.

Below: Lawrence Livermore’s Shiva. Photo courtesy of the US Air Force.

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SERIES PREQUEL: SCARLET ODYSSEY
Betrayed by his brother, sold to slave in a Venezuelan gold mine, JustinKing escapes to pursue a new name and revenge—and finally—redemption.

BOOK 1: CRIMSON LUCRE
Dallas Gordon and his crew race to Mars to stake EPSILON’s claim to theRed Planet’s unlimited mineral wealth. But they are not alone.

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How do you fight a hidden adversary on Mars?

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Dallas Gordon stands alone between Emperor Zhang’s lunar military and theloss of America’s lunar base. Can he rally the resistance before EPSILON andthe Americans are swept off the moon?

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How far will you go to save a friend?

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