A Small Colonial War

In the 22d century, when the Japanese ruled an interstellar empire from the Earth, an imperial task group was dispatched to put down with minimum bloodshed the three-way colonial revolt on a factory world the rebels called Suid Afrika. Interstellar warfare is expensive, so the task group was considerably undergunned, a mix of orbiting ground-attack craft, light infantry, and logistics units. And its quality varied, from the supersharp troops of Lieutenant Colonel Anton Vereshchagin's 1st Battalion, 35th Imperial Infantry (Rifle), to the inept senior officers of the task group staff. At first, and as usual, the fighting all went the Impis' way. Then the crafty Boers found a way to take advantage of an admiral's stupidity. All too soon, the war came down to a single battalion against a world. . .