Invisible Sun (Empire Games #3)

by Charles Stross

Unfortunately the United States is structurally an imperial project, it’s in our political DNA. We’re always looking for a frontier to expand into, we can’t back down, anyone who admits we’re overmatched gets sidelined and booted out of office by an upstart who insists that we can never be defeated, only betrayed. So we can’t work around obstacles, only power on through the fire.

Republics governed by the rule of law—like this version of Germany, or the United States, or the Commonwealth—try to pretend that everything is determined by legality and individual merit. They like to believe it has nothing to do with heredity, or accident of birth, or who went to school with who. Everything is supposed to be orderly, like planets orbiting the sun, each in their predictable track. But the conflict between ideals and personal loyalties warps the entire structure, like an invisible sun passing through the solar system, its gravity dragging orbits out of alignment and causing havoc. A sufficiently powerful extended family—like Rita’s, like the world-walkers—can bring worlds into collision and smash civilizations they can’t even see, all by unwittingly exerting their hidden influence.”

“How many hours is a life worth?” Schenk glared at her: “last year, German police officers fired only eleven bullets in anger. All police officers combined. In the same year your police shot and killed more than three thousand civilians, half of them innocent bystanders. No innocents will be shot in my city because of your impatience.”