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

“Yeah, right. Probably onto the heads of some poor foot soldiers. Where the hell have our
former bosses been keeping all this ordnance? We always ran into shortages before.” Before,
when they’d been obeying their officers’ orders through the apparently endless lunar war.
Before they’d mutinied and cut themselves off from a system that never seemed to have
enough money for bullets or spare parts, but could always afford to send them somewhere
where they needed every bullet and part they could get and then some.

Vic shrugged. “Some of it’s probably from the strategic reserve stockpiles. It’s been long
enough since we mutinied for the powers that be to have ramped up ammunition production,
though.”

“I guess. But they always claimed they couldn’t afford lots of ammo. So how’re those
powers that be paying for the stuff?”

“Ethan? What’s the rule about questions?”

Stark smiled despite his tension. “ ‘Never ask a question you don’t wanna know the answer
to,’ ” he quoted. “You’d think I was a new recruit.” He focused back on the battle scene.
“Okay. See anything else to worry about?”

She shook her head. “You’ve been doing a good job of spotting problems so far.”
 “Uh-huh. But you’re still a better tactical thinker than me.” Stark nodded at the display and
the scattered symbology on it. “What do you think?”

“I think that if we get hit right now we’d be toast. Our forces are too spread out.”

“They gotta be spread out to reach all the targets we want to destroy.”

“I know, but—Ethan.” Vic pointed a single finger toward her display, the digit jumping
across several threat readings. “We’re starting to take more fire from the warehouse area.
Aimed fire.”

“Aimed.” Somebody who wasn’t panicking, somebody who was keeping under cover.
“Some more of that reaction force?”

“No. Reinforcements.”

“How can you be sure of that? If we bug out early we might not destroy every target we
want to nail.”

Reynolds eyed him narrowly, her finger stabbing at the display once more. “The way that
reaction force came out, you could tell they were risking everything on a quick hit. And
nobody provided covering fire for them when we hit back. These are new. And there could be
a company, or a battalion, right behind these guys. Those ridges over that way screen the
approach from our sensors so we can’t view this area to be sure.”

“We knew that. But—”

“But nothing, Ethan. If you were going to hit our forces on that field, how would plan your