"William H. Keith Jr. - Warstrider 03 - Jackers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keith jr William H)

Court at Tenno Kyuden, the synchorbital Palace of Heaven
perched atop the Singapore Sky-el, Shiginori had been
raised from childhood in the understanding that
government was Imperial Nihon's duty and burden in the
great tapestry of the cosmos.
When the West had abandoned space travel five
centuries earlier, a Nihon barely recovered from the
ravages of war had stepped in, picked up the standard of
Man's ascent to space, and carried it on. Within fifty years,
the economic strength rising from orbital factories and
Lunar mines, not to mention the strategic advantages
bestowed by orbital battle stations and laser platforms,
had made Nihon the dominant power on the planet, a
superpower easily able to assert control over Earth's
impoverished, warring nations.
The result had been the Terran Hegemony, fifty-seven
nations joined together within the benevolent embrace of
the Teikokuno Heiwa, the Imperial Peace. And when the
K-T drive opened the worlds of other stars to terraforming
and exploitation, the colonies of dozens of those
nation-states had of course been added to the Hegemony.
The Shichiju - the name meant "the Seventy" and was a
little out of date for that reason - now embraced
seventy-eight inhabited worlds in seventy-two star
systems, these motes drifting now just beyond the silken
hem of Shiginori's haori.
If the rule of Nihon over the Hegemony seemed only
right and natural to Shiginori, so, too, did the Hegemony's
acceptance of that rule. It was for that reason that the
Emperor of Man had been so surprised at the sharp and
sudden flame of rebellion.
It was beyond understanding, really. Rising tensions,
the appearance of agitators and rioting mobs on worlds as
far removed as New America and Rainbow, had preceded
the creation of something called the Network, a rebel
underground dedicated, it seemed, to tearing the
Hegemony asunder. The latest reports suggested that at
least five worlds of the Shichiju, and possibly many more,
were about to join together in a confederacy, with Network
organizers forming the new government. At the same time,
riots and protests had exploded at last into open conflict;
the first battle of civil war had already been fought, at a
world called Eridu some twenty-five light-years from Earth.
Nairan - civil war. The very concept was unthinkable in a
regime that had ruled in peace for centuries.
The problem, the Emperor thought, lay in the
differences between the Nihonjin, the Japanese people,
and the gaijin, the foreigners they governed. Raised with
the twin concepts of Kodo, the Imperial Way, and on, their
moral obligation to emperor and parents, the Japanese