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Bolo Strike

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Epilogue

Bolo Strike

By William H. Keith

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Page 1

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-31835-7

Cover art by Dru Blair

First printing, September 2001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Keith, William H.

Bolo strike / by William H. Keith, Jr.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-671-31835-7

1. Space warfare—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3561.E37747 B6 2001

813'.54—dc21 2001035395

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Page 2

ALSO IN THIS SERIES:

The Compleat Bolo by Keith Laumer

Created by Keith Laumer:

The Honor of the Regiment

The Unconquerable

The Triumphant by David Weber & Linda Evans

Last Stand

Old Guard

Bolo Brigade by William H. Keith, Jr.

Bolo Rising by William H. Keith, Jr.

ALSO by WILLIAM H. KEITH, JR.

Diplomatic Act (with Peter Jurasik)

Prologue

IGC S-83,938,253. Perseus Arm, Columbian Sector.

Sallos A,B . Stellar class: both F9, radius: 1.07 Sol, radius: 1.14 Sol, luminosity: 1.9 Sol.

Estimated time remaining on the main sequence: 3.5 x 109years.

Planetary System: Seven major planetary bodies . . .

V, Dis . Mean orbital radius = 4.85 a.u.,

period = 10.004 years.

Orbital eccentricity = .0312.

Apastron = 5.00132 a.u.; periastron = 4.69868 a.u.

Equatorial diameter = 198,673 km.

Density = 1.034 g/cm3.

Surface gravity = 2.92 G.

Axial tilt = 2.03º.

Rotational period = 9h12m27.112s.

Magnetic field = 6.4 gauss.

Atmosphere: H2, 84% +/- 3%; He, 16% +/- 3%; CH4, 0.15%; NH3, 250 ppm; C2H6, 15 ppm; H2O,

2 ppm; HCN, .08 ppm; C2H2, .034 ppm; CO, .003 ppm; GeH4, .0004 ppm.

Satellites: 25 with diameters > 100 km, 3 with diameters > 5,000 km. . . .

One major satellite, Caern , is of special note. . . .

Satellites: Sallos Vf, Caern .

Page 3

Orbital semimajor axis = 1,002,354 km, rotational period = 4d8h46m6.87s,

orbital eccentricity = .0004. . . .

Equatorial diameter = 8368 km.

Density = 6.228 gm/cm3.

Surface gravity = .74 G.

Planetary mass = 1.91232 x 1027g.

Axial tilt = 0.04o.

Rotational period = tidally locked at 4d8h46m6.87s.

Magnetic field = 1.21 gauss.

Surface area = 219,985,074.4 km2.

Surface temperature: 12% of incidental thermal radiation is derived from the primary.

Temperature = locationally variable, -30oC.

(anti-Dis side) to 50o(sub-Dis point).

A habitable band exists between the hemispheric regions of permanent ice and desert.

Atmosphere: Mean surface pressure 0.8 bar.

N2, 77.08%; O2, 21.04%; Ar, 1.02%, H2O, 0.05-1.5% (mean 1%); CO2, 350 ppm; Ne, 12.2/ppm;

He, 6.34 ppm; CH4, 1.9 ppm; Kr, 1.98 ppm; CO, 1.3 ppm; SO2, 3.4 ppm; H2, 0.4 ppm; N2O, 0.33

ppm;

O3.05-1.9 ppm; Xe, 0.09 ppm; NO2, 0.03 ppm.

Notes: A habitable satellite of the gas giant Dis with its own native biosphere, Caern was colonized by

Terran-human stock late in the Concordiat age. Military depots and communications centers at Paimos

and Grendylfen gave the planet some minor strategic import in that struggle, but the system was located

far from major areas of conflict and not directly involved in the fighting. Cut off from all contact with

human space during the final phase of the Melcon Armageddon and the subsequent Dark Era, Caern was

eventually absorbed as an outpost of the then-unknown Aetryxha Reach. Recontact with Caern in cy

375 has led to a period of steadily escalating tension between the Confederation and the Reach. . . .

Space Navigator's Ephemeris

Confederation Technical Press

37th Edition, cy 378

Six Confederation naval vessels, huge, irregularly patterned in swaths and stripes of black, gray, and

blue, decelerated into Disian space, weapons charged, spiked snouts clawing at the clotted stars. Ahead,

the ringed, back-lit globe of the gas giant loomed vast within its necklace of crescent moons. Sallos A

and B, the local suns, glowed hot, white, and arc-light dazzling, made tiny by distance.

On board the battlecarriers Esan and Helias , the command cruiser Galahedron , and the three

destroyers that made up the battle group, nearly ten thousand Confederation naval personnel waited at

their stations, waited to see what shape the Aetryx response to their arrival in-system would take. At this

point, little was known of the aliens. All that could be said with certainty was that their reaction would

likely be . . . alien . In truth, little of the xenosophontological reports garnered thus far from the planetside

merchant factors and X-Corps scouts made sense. Making sense out of the situation—and ascertaining

the fate of some hundreds of millions of humans resident on Caern—was the Battlecarrier Task Force's

primary mission.

Officially, the BTF was engaged in what was euphemistically termed "diplomatic service." The military

forces of another age and place might have called it a show of force, or even "gunboat diplomacy." The

Aetryx Circle had defied the Confederation Senate. Millions of humans living on Caern languished in alien

Page 4

slavery. Admiral Cellini, commanding BTF-74, was determined that there would be a full accounting.

At the very least, they would get the Aetryx to talk. . . .

And then everything started going wrong.

Dazzling flares of silent light erupted in the darkness. Space fighters, sleekly streamlined and knife-blade

deadly, streaked through the Confederation squadron, loosing missiles, Hellbore bolts, and high-velocity

kinetic-kill projectiles. Thermonuclear horror engulfed the Helias , vaporizing her aft works and sending

the rest, accompanied by glittering fragments, pinwheeling into the night. Hellbore fire sliced through the

bridge and primary turret decks of the destroyer Calavas , until her crew modules erupted in a spray of

liquid metal and hard X-rays.

Orders snapped from the Galahedron . Firing at their attackers in barrage upon barrage of disciplined

chaos, the surviving members of the squadron accelerated. The laws of physics being what they were, to

continue deceleration until they could return the way they'd come was suicide, plain and simple. Their

only hope lay in maintaining their course, whipping past Caern and giant Dis and outrunning their

ambushers until they could again slip into the relative safety of hyper.

Another volley of incoming kinetic-kill missiles loosed shattering radiance within the infalling coterie of

warships, peeling back armor in half-molten strips, shattering the hull of the destroyer Tubek . The

battlecarrier Esan shuddered as multiple warheads vented their hellish fury scant kilometers from her hull;

battlescreens failed, and a second volley sent a storm of hard gamma radiation sleeting through her crew

modules. Every man and woman aboard was dead when the leviathan vessel detonated as a tiny sun

minutes later.

The surviving vessels were clear of the first onslaught now and racing for the minimum distance beyond

the local gravity well where they could kick over into hyper and vanish. Dis wielded an immense influence

over local space, however, and at maximum acceleration, Galahedron and the destroyer Kurbal would

need another hour at least to work their way clear.

The second flight of needle interceptors raced in from a quartet of Aetryx battlecarriers in close orbit

over Caern . . . blunt-nosed penetrators flashing in at accelerations so high they could only be robotic or

manned by suicide crews. Galahedron survived until she was sweeping in periplanetos past Dis,

skimming the hydrogen fringe of the gas giant's upper atmosphere . . . and then a barrage of missiles

hunted her down in a blaze of thermonuclear fury. The radiation storm touched the hurtling Kurbal ,

burning out secondary drives and knocking her weapons off-line, but her captain kicked in auxiliaries to

stabilize her fall and let the massive gravitational drag of Dis slingshot his hell-scorched vessel clear of the

planet. The interceptors followed but were too far astern now to have a chance of closing to complete

their kill. Ninety-eight minutes after the engagement began, Kurbal slipped into hyper, the sole survivor

of BTF-74.

Admiral Cellini had been sister-in-law to the Senate president. The firestorm that erupted within the

Confederation Senate upon Kurbal 's return to her base at Endymion far surpassed the pyrotechnics that

attended the destruction of the Galahedron .

Chapter One

Page 5

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