"Richard Allen Stotts - Empire 1 - Midshipman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stotts Richard Allen)

Two-thousand nine-hundred and seventy-three years
after man first stepped upon the EarthтАЩs moon.
A very long time.


Total collapse of classical civilization had begun with
the Sino-American war of 2017, about the time that Los
Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle rose to meet the sky,
along with all of China. Capitalism, socialism, communism,
whateverism, they ceased to have any meaning when the
electricity went off, when the supermarket was only a
memory, when the darkness was upon the land.
Governments ceased to exist in any form other than small
gangs and petty war lords. Two hundred years of death
and chaos passed, then mankind finally remembered what
had once worked, mankind remembered the libraries, the
knowledge stored in long forgotten vaults. Mankind
remembered that well-intentioned democracies had always
finally degenerated into socialism and decadence.
Mankind remembered empires that had lasted for a




4
thousand years and more.
Easy choice.


The New Empire began in what used to be the state
of Oregon, in what had once been called the United States.
Like all beginnings it was modest, a valley, then two, a
territory, a continent, a planet. Laws were what worked,
laws that could be depended upon to be harsh but impartial.
Absolute power in the hands of one person could be a
terrible thing, it could also lift a population out of despair
and suffering. Absolute power could move a people out to
the stars.
And after a long while it did.


The New Empire was a roughly disc-shaped area
eight thousand light years across and growing. Faster than
light speed travel is not possible according to the known
laws of physics. Any lawyer (few had survived the dark
times) could tell you to always to look for a loophole in any
law. A loophole was found. DonтАЩt ask me to explain the
warped notions of space and time involved, suffice it to say