"John G. Hemry - Stark's War 3 - Stark's Crusade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hemry John G)

“It’s on the surface? Almost unprotected? Geez. Thanks, Corporal.” Stark pulled back,
glaring around the command center. “Have I got a combat engineer in here anywhere?”

Sergeant Tran, responsible for running the command center since the death of his
predecessor, Sergeant Tanaka, pivoted and pointed to where one watchstander was raising her
hand. Solid and squarish in her build, she almost resembled a bulldozer herself. “Right here,
sir.”

“We got a big pile of munitions on the surface. You heard that?”

“Yessir.”

“Is that as stupid as I think it is? Won’t the stuff blow if one of those micrometeorites hits
the pile?”

“Not likely, sir. The explosives they use these days are really stable. They’ll only blow if the
detonator goes off. So maybe if the little rock hit a detonator dead on, maybe then something
would blow. That reinforced tarp they’re using would stop the small stuff, or at least slow it
enough to reduce the chance of an explosion. I wouldn’t do it, but you could get away with
storing stuff on the surface for a while like that if you didn’t have enough covered storage on
hand.”

Vic leaned forward. “How do we blow it if the explosives are stable?”

“Oh, that’s easy. Just plant the explosive charges. They’ll make the right kind of bang to set
off the detonators and then everything else.” The combat engineer paused. “I wouldn’t want to
be anywhere near that spot when the charges go off. That’s gonna be a helluva blast.”

“I bet,” Stark acknowledged. “Thanks, Corporal. Milheim, tell your people to plant their
charges anywhere on that pile and get the hell out of there. Lamont!”

“Yo.” The tanker sounded like he was having the time of his life.

“We got munitions lying around in the area I’m highlighting. Got it? Anything big might
set them off, so make sure your people don’t throw any heavy stuff in there. We don’t need
anybody blowing the place halfway back to Earth before we leave.”

“That stuff’s all ammo? Roger. I got an interdict for that area on all my tanks’ fire control
systems now. If anybody tries to override it, I’ll fire them out of my main cannon.”

Stark looked over at Reynolds. “They left tons of ammo just lying on the surface? Are they
nuts?”

“More likely they filled the local magazines with other munitions and haven’t found a place
for this stuff, yet, like the corporal said.”

“So what if a big rock fell on it?”

“I assume they were planning on hitting any big rocks with the landing field defenses. That
would deflect them, anyway.”