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

stay between me and them.”

“Couldn’t the warships defend the convoy better by coming at your shuttles and hitting
them hard? You couldn’t hold your ground against that. They’d drive you away for sure.”

“Hey, Commander, leave the Navy stuff to experts. That’s why I’m in charge of your fleet,
right? Listen close, mud crawler. Those warships aren’t charging after me because of
something called physics. You ever study naval tactics?”

“I saw a lot of old vids when I was a kid. You know, slave galleys and sailing ships and stuff.
I wouldn’t expect that to have anything to do with what you’re doing.”

“Wrong. We’re playing by the same rules up here as those oar-powered galleys did. It’s all
about limited propulsion resources and momentum. These ships, even my shuttles, are big.
Lots of mass. We accelerate slow, relative to things like our weapons, and once we get going in
one direction we can’t shift to a new course by turning on a dime. Mass don’t like changing
direction, and unlike ships back on the World, we don’t even have water to turn against.”

Wiseman tapped some controls, bringing up a small 3-D panel in one corner of the comm
screen. “See? Here’s the convoy, coming out of one of the Earth’s orbital facilities, making a
standard approach to the Moon. Standard because it requires the best combination of least fuel
and least time.” A broad arrow extended outward from the World, curving as it intercepted the
Moon’s own orbit. “Physics tells those shuttles they need to follow this path to get to their
objective on the Moon. We know physics, too, so we know the path they’re gonna take.”

A short red arrow arced up from the Moon, aiming to intercept the shuttles. “We’ve got
what you’d call a window up here, an area above the Moon guarded by our antiorbital
defenses. We pop out that window and make a move at the convoy. The warships try to keep
us from getting close enough to nail any of the convoy shuttles, but the shuttles are scattering
anyway because they’re a bunch of civs hired to haul loads and none of them want to get shot
at. Meanwhile, everybody and their friend throws out various junk designed to keep enemies
from tracking a target, like the little doppelgänger decoys that pick up emissions from other
ships in the area and mimic them. It’ll all disperse or deactivate eventually, but for now we’ve
confused the traffic control situation up here something awful. Anybody monitoring this
location will be seeing some stuff that ain’t there, and not be able to see some stuff that is
there.”

Stark confirmed Wiseman’s statement by checking the confused tangle of symbols on the
headquarters display, then studied the 3-D panel again. “Great. But that still doesn’t explain
why those warships don’t just charge at you. You’d have to run, then.”

Wiseman grinned. “There’s more than one direction to run. We could accelerate straight
past them. Risky, but getting hits on us during a high-speed pass would be real hard. So, sure,
those warships could come after us, but if even one of my shuttles gets past them, those
warships will have the devil’s own time turning and accelerating back in the other direction to
try to catch it. We’d be in among the convoy’s supply shuttles for sure before the warships got
back.”
 Vic Reynolds, standing near Stark, nodded. “So you’re saying the warships have some
probability of winning, but prefer the certainty of not losing.”