Keith Laumer - Bolos 6 - Cold Steel

Bolos: Cold Steel

Created by Keith Laumer

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.

in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-3549-4

Cover art by David Mattingly

First printing, July 2002

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Typeset by Brilliant Press

Printed in the United States of America

The Bolo 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

Cold Steel

Bolo Brigade by William H. Keith, Jr.

Bolo Rising by William H. Keith, Jr.

Also by Keith Laumer:

Retief!

Odyssey

Keith Laumer: The Lighter Side

Prologue

It wasn't anywhere you went for a vacation. Thule's eccentric orbit hinted the planet was not

native to its sun, but had been captured from a passing star. That same orbit made for an

agonizingly hot, wet, and short summer followed by a winter where a good day was merely

unbearable. Both seasons shared only one thing: storms featuring winds over 100 KPH. To which

was added the joy of a thin crust and constant volcanic activity.

The star system was crowded with debris; Thule itself had seventeen moons and the

beginnings of at least one ring. It was generally a good place to avoid when there were so many

more hospitable worlds to colonize. But that wasn't an option. Thule was unique for more than

being the virtual poster world for being barely habitable. Wherever the planet originated, it had

gathered into itself the largest concentration of the rare earth element saganium ever found by

humans among the over 40,000 explored worlds—saganium was the vital trace ingredient in a

newly developed and amazingly resistant duralloy armor. With the Deng Incursion reaching its

destructive climax, mining colonies were en route before the survey team's preliminary report

was even finished printing out. There were just a few details they had missed.

The Greater Machine

J. Steven York &

Dean Wesley Smith

Chapter One

For the moment it wasn't pouring rain. Jennifer Harom dropped off the last rung of the ladder

onto the damp sand and stretched, glad to be out of the massive pulverizer that towered fifty

meters into the air above her. Her overalls were damp from the sweat and the light breeze felt

good against her skin, cooling her and clearing her head. The jungle greenery pulped by the big

machine had a chlorophyll and vinegar smell, like a Caesar salad.

The ground under her feet shook as the grinder tore into the earth, ultrasonic cannon aimed

downward, tearing sand and gravel apart at a molecular level, turning it into the uniform, black

ore-sand that crunched under her boots. Despite the violence and power of the pulverizer, active

noise dampeners shielded the machine from its own power, reducing the sound to a low rumble,

and incidentally keeping the crew from going deaf. She could have even heard the noises from

the jungle around her, if the machine hadn't frightened away every animal within five kilometers.

Confident that she was safe from the local predators, she scrambled up a nearby bank and

looked back at the big machine, floating on its contra-gravs a few meters above the ground, a

duralloy thundercloud lost down from heaven and pretty damned pissed about it. Behind it a two-

hundred-meter swath of freshly created ore-sand stretched back up the valley, waiting for the

processing machines that followed a kilometer behind. Keeping the beast running, keeping it

from ripping itself apart, was a big job, but her three co-workers were more than capable of

covering for her while she got a little fresh air. Getting out of the control cabin in the middle of a

shift was against the rules, especially while the grinder was in operation, but they all did it.

Staying cramped into that small control cabin for ten hours straight would drive anyone nuts.

Besides, who cared as long as the pulverizer kept tearing up the ground on this godforsaken

planet.

She stepped toward the edge of the jungle. The wide-leafed plants and tall trees towered over

her like a wall. At the moment the grinder was tearing a wide path up a sandbar beside a small

river. When they reached the end of the valley they would turn around and come back down,

cutting another swath beside the one they were working on now, passing the processing machines

somewhere along the way. The pulverizer's downward-pointing sound cannon dug the ground to

a depth of twenty meters and could chew up rocks as if they were cotton candy.

Eventually all the jungle would be gone from this valley as they mined the saganium, but that

would take at least a year and she planned on being gone, headed back into civilized space, long

before then. Ten years from now this valley would be twice as deep and wide as it was now, a

scar big enough to see from orbit. There were ten colonies and more than double that number of

mining sites spread around the planet. This planet, with its smells and heat was barely worth

inhabiting now. She had no doubt that in ten years the place would be nothing more than a large

pile of rock orbiting a weak sun.

She dropped down onto the ground and rested her back against a boulder. As the machine

slowly moved away from her, the Caesar salad smell was already fading, replaced by a stench

like mildew, old socks and rotting garbage. Now, after two weeks, she was starting to get used to

the smells of this ugly planet. Not all the way yet, but enough that they didn't make her choke

anymore. It was ironic that the only way to get a good smell out of the jungle was to blast it to

hell, and even that didn't last.

She took a deep breath and let the solidness of the ground ease the tension of a long morning

inside the pulverizer. She would take a few minutes, then get back to work. They were pushing

the grinder as fast as it would go, and she had every intention of getting the bonus promised them

if they made the cliff at the head of the valley in two weeks. The more money she made, the

quicker she could head out of here, get back to school, finish the degree in architecture. Then all

this labor would just become a bad memory, laughed at over drinks and a good meal.

Suddenly the smell of rot engulfed her even more strongly, and a branch cracked just behind

her.

"What—?"

She sprang to her feet and spun around.

For a moment her mind didn't register what she was seeing. Along the edge of the jungle were

at least twenty massive alien creatures. For a moment she thought that they were predators of

some kind, that she'd been wrong about the sound scaring them away. The things were vaguely

humanoid, small heads mounted on massive, fur-covered bodies. The fur was black and scattered

with bold, irregular white spots. The things hunched slightly as they spotted her, their heads

shifting nervously as they looked at her, first with one side-mounted eye, then the other, like

massive birds. The lips on their wide mouths looked hard, beaklike, adding to the impression that

these things were somehow in the bird family.

At first, she didn't realize they wore clothes, their black loincloths and harnesses blended so

well with their fur. It was only when she saw the primitive hand weapons, curved knives, long

blades mounted on shafts to create something like a cross between a spear and a broadsword, that

she was sure she was dealing with intelligent creatures. The biggest of them also carried a long,

heavy-looking, leather bag over his shoulder, though he lacked the spear/sword that the others

carried.

Natives? The damned survey hadn't said anything about natives. She tried to remember

something, anything that she'd been taught about first contact in school, but it was all gone,

vanished down the same mental sinkhole as hyperspatial geometry and most of her Earth history.

She held up her hands, trying to indicate she was unarmed. "Where did you come from?" she

asked, managing to choke down the fear. That was stupid. Like they could understand her. Why

had she left her side arm back in the pulverizer? It was regulation that she always carry it, just as

it was regulation that they stay inside their machine for the entire shift. But there weren't

supposed to be any aliens on this planet, especially aliens as big as these beasts.

The creature closest to her just turned its head from side to side, its birdlike black eyes staring

down at her with great intensity, even if she couldn't read the emotion behind it. The creature

showed no sign that it understood her. Of course, it wouldn't.

She eased a step back, trying not to move too suddenly. The smallest of the creatures, still a

good three heads taller than she was, stepped forward, lowered his spear-weapon, and casually

jabbed it at her. She cursed and jumped back, feeling the dull impact of the weapon against her

side, just below the rib cage.

She cursed again, more angry than afraid. Her side hurt, and without thinking she touched

herself, feeling something hot and wet on her fingers. She looked at her bloody fingers in shock.

"You cut me, you bastards!"

The alien watched her intently, still utterly unreadable to her. Then it made a noise, a hissy,

rasping noise, punctuated by clicks of those hard lips. It was talking.

The others joined in, all chattering at once.

She knew without a doubt she was going to have to make a break for it, and while they were

talking seemed as good a time as any. She just hoped the others up in the grinder control cabin

could see what was happening out here and have the door open when she came up the ladder.

She bolted, skittering back down the slope toward the waiting ladder. After twenty steps, she

dared to glance back, and was surprised to see that the aliens weren't following. Instead, the big

one had lowered his bag to the ground, and the others gathered around as he opened it and pulled

out a large, cylindrical object made of metal. She had no idea what the object was, only that it

clearly hadn't been made by a bunch of savages in loincloths. She stopped and clutched her

injured side, trying to figure out what they were doing.

The big creature hoisted the cylinder up onto his shoulder, one eye pressing awkwardly

against a rearward-facing eyepiece that seemed totally out of position for its anatomy. Then he

turned toward the pulverizer. The other natives chattered excitedly.

If she didn't know any better, she'd think it was some kind of energy weapon. But that

couldn't be. The rest of these creatures looked primitive, and none of them were carrying

anything but swords and knives. Maybe they'd just found the weapon somehow, didn't even know

what it did. Maybe they just wanted to see the pretty colors in the sighting system.

"Hey!" she shouted, stepping back slowly. "Don't be aiming that thing at my machine!"

The small alien barked something. From the tone, it might have been an expletive, then

started moving towards her, stafflike sword raised. The big one snapped something else at the

little one, but was ignored.

The large alien again lifted the energy weapon. For a moment she hesitated between running

and trying to watch. Then it was decided for her. The flash nearly blinded her.

She felt the shock wave in her rib cage and staggered back. It was a plasma cannon.

The small alien paused, looking, as she was, at the pulverizer.

The cannon had been powerful, but the big mining machine was built to take punishment—

Then she saw the smoke coming from the emitters over the sonic cannon. They'd taken out the

active noise cancellation. She felt it first through her feet, like a pipe organ hitting a low note,

building in intensity. Instinctively she covered her ears, knowing how little good it would do. The

pulverizer was shaking now, ripples running through its metal sides. Shut down, shut down! What

was wrong with her crew?

Then she saw someone on one of the catwalks near the control room. She squinted against the

sky. Not one of her people. Another alien, and it carried something in one hand. It tossed the

object down to the others. It was round. It bounced in the sand and rolled to a stop at the big one's

taloned feet.

It was a head. She caught a glimpse of Vanderhaven's blonde hair, and felt her last meal

fighting to come back up.

Then the sound came, full blown, like needles in her eardrums, distracting her even from the

horror of what she had just seen. She fell to her knees in pain.

The pulverizer was tearing itself apart from the inside, shedding hull plating and external

fittings in a gentle rain as it continued its blind way down the valley. The aliens watched,

seemingly unbothered by the sound. The big one raised the weapon again, aiming at the

midsection where the power core now stood revealed by peeling hull. She couldn't believe they

knew what they were doing, but they clearly did.

He fired again. The power core exploded, not in a single blast, but like a string of huge

firecrackers angling down through the hull toward the sonic cannon. She watched the machine,

her friends, and every hope she had of earning her way off this rock, plow into the riverbank,

sending up a shower of sand, smaller explosions sending shudders through its flame-engulfed

hull.

Her friends were dead, and if she didn't run, she was going to be as well. While the aliens

were still occupied watching the machine burn, she bolted, staggering as she slipped in the loose

sand.

She never saw how the small one noticed her, never heard him as he made pursuit. She didn't

even know the alien was there until the talons closed around the back of her neck, smashing her

face down into the ore-sand.

She struggled weakly, called out, barely able to hear her own voice. The creature rolled her

over effortlessly, the point of the alien's blade centimeters from her face.

She fought, but the talons on the creature's feet held her while it reached down to grab her

hair and yank it back hard.

Her hearing started to come back, just in time as the alien screamed and flashed toward her

neck. And this time—this time she understood the alien's meaning completely.

Victory.

* * *

Tyrus Ogden stood on a catwalk that crossed the roof of the vast vehicle hangar. On the floor

below, a space big enough to park a Concordiat cruiser of the line with room to spare, a half

dozen huge mining machines were being assembled or repaired. Voices echoed through the vast

space, sometimes shouted instructions, sometimes, eerily, a whisper relayed, as though by some

acoustic wormhole, from a hundred meters away. Power tools chattered, buzzed, and roared.

Brilliant flashes from a dozen different exotic welding methods cast colorful shadows on the

walls. The place smelled of ozone, hot metal, machine lubricant, and just a little of sweat.

For Tyrus it should have been just another job. It could have been any world, literally. Big as

the building was, it was a standard prefab that he'd seen on a dozen planets. But he hadn't asked

to come here, hadn't planned to drag his family to this jungle hellhole of a mining colony. And

most of all, he hadn't planned on the machine whose superstructure towered up from the floor,

ending only a few meters below the catwalk. It was the machine beneath his feet that made the

job different. He looked down at the gleaming durachrome hull, the ranks of two-meter-wide

treads, the main turrets, each bigger than any house he'd ever lived in.

"Mr. Ogden," a man's voice, high and nasal, called from behind him.

Tyrus turned at the sound of dress shoes clattering on metal grate. The man walking towards

him was thin, dark, average height, dressed in an executive suit wholly inappropriate to the

environment. Tyrus recognized him from previous holo conversations. "Dyson, isn't it?"

Dyson shoved out his hand, and Tyrus shook it without enthusiasm. Company man.

"I see you're settling right in." He made a sweeping gesture to the machine below. "Like our

new mining machine?"

"It's a Bolo, Dyson." He looked down, but not at the machine. "You shouldn't be wearing

shoes like that up here. You slip, it's a long way down."

Dyson looked nervously down at his own feet. "I didn't know."

"I'm sure."

Dyson stepped cautiously up to the railing and looked over. "I do know about that, though. I

signed the purchase order. It's a Prescott 4800 surface excavator, the first of its kind."

"It's a Bolo, Dyson."

Dyson looked uncomfortable. "Well—it's that too. A converted Bolo actually, an old Mark

XX . . . I think, maybe a XXI. I don't know about those things. I hear Prescott found a whole

regiment of them rusting in a scrap yard on some moon somewhere."

Tyrus looked at the shining sweep of the hull and felt his mind slipping back to another place

and time, a place of fire, a time of war. "Bolos don't rust. After a few centuries on a planet like

this, they might develop a surface patina. But they don't rust, and they don't bleed, and they don't

ever, ever die."

"Excuse me?"

He looked at Dyson. "That's why they diverted me here, isn't it? Why they dragged me and

my family into what amounts to a combat zone. I've had combat experience."

Dyson nodded. "This situation has developed very quickly and unexpectedly. The 4800's

were already ordered as part of a trial program. You were already in the sector. You have the

skills we needed. And you—know about Bolos."

"I've fought on the same side as Bolos, Dyson. That's a whole different thing. Maybe Bolo

commanders are comfortable with those things, but I was infantry, and I never served with a man

who wasn't rattled by them, who didn't spend as much time looking over his shoulder at his own

Bolos as he did looking at the enemy line. What in heaven's name made you want to convert one

into a blasted tractor?"

Dyson was starting to look annoyed. "I told you, we bought it, we didn't think it up. You've

heard the losses we've experienced here. Three machines just last month. Out away from the

colonies and the fixed defenses, they're essentially vulnerable against even light weapons. We've

taken to issuing pulse rifles to all our crews, welded some makeshift armor to the control cabs,

but the losses continue. These aliens—natives—whatever they are, somehow didn't show up on

our surveys, so we never imagined it would be an issue. But this," he waved at the Bolo again,

"was marketed as a solution for mining on 'hostile worlds.' They simply don't get much more

hostile than this. The rest of our machines are vulnerable, but the Prescott 4800—"

"The Bolo."

"Whatever . . . It can take the kind of attacks we've been experiencing. We can send it into the

most isolated and dangerous areas with impunity. They won't be able to hurt it, and maybe we

can learn something. Learn how to protect the rest of our equipment."

Tyrus cursed under his breath. "You have no idea of the trouble you've caused me personally,

bringing me here. I suppose you want me to work this beast into the maintenance rotation here?"

Dyson looked away. "Actually, we already have a pretty good maintenance chief at the

colony. We were hoping that you'd run the 4800 for us."

Tyrus blinked his eyes in disbelief. "You want me to command a Bolo?"

* * *

Whitestar shifted the hand-forged blade in his hand, feeling the comfortable way his clawlike

fingers held the grip, the natural way that the handle cradled against the long bones of his hand. It

was a good blade, good balance, a weapon he understood, one that became an extension of his

arm. The knife pleased him, made him glad to be alive. The weapons provided by the Ones

Above were powerful, but clumsy and unnatural. Only with a blade in his hand did he feel like a

fresh-hatched warrior again.

The afternoon breeze ruffled his fur and carried the smell of wood smoke from a nearby

burrow. He was dimly aware of his fellow clansmen gathering around the circle, clicking their

jaws in rhythm, the ancient ceremony of challenge. Some part of his mind dimly registered all

this, cataloged it, filtered it for any undetected threat, but his focus, his combat-eye, was entirely

on the smaller Tersae across the circle. His name was Warrior Twostone, and he was trying with

all his might to kill Whitestar, his clan-lord.

Twostone lunged, his long, curved blade flashing in the dappled sunlight that filtered through

the trees.

Agile for his greater size, Whitestar turned away from the thrust, hooked Twostone's blade

with his own and pulled, throwing the warrior off balance. He brought his foot around and kicked

Twostone in the back, his talons drawing blood.

Twostone staggered for a moment, but quickly caught himself, turning, knife held high in a

gesture of defiance. He turned his head at right angles to Whitestar, focusing one eye on the lord,

and a sound came from his throat, a low chattering that in the Tersae was an expression of

amusement. In context it was a sign of continued calm and reason, despite his wounds. The

Tersae blood ran hot. A warrior could too easily lose themselves in that heat, forget the mission,

forget their clan-brothers, and waste their lives on the battlefield. A good warrior knew how to

maintain the balance, even when their own blood painted the enemy's blade.

You are truly a fine warrior, Twostone. It will be a shame to lose you.

The two circled, each looking for some weakness in their opponent. Finally, Whitestar simply

grew tired of looking. He feinted an attack causing Twostone to step backwards, then again, and

again, never letting the warrior find balance, focusing his attention on Whitestar's blade. Then

Whitestar struck, not with his blade, but with a flying kick, his talons digging into Twostone's

blade-arm, pushing it aside. He squeezed, feeling skin tear beneath his claws, until the blade

Keith Laumer - Bolos 6 - Cold Steel

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