"Keith Laumer - Bolos 9 - Bolo Strike" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

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 situationтАФand ascertaining the fate of some
hundreds of millions of humans resident on CaernтАФwas 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 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