This is the second of three novels by Robert A. Frezza set in a post-apocalyptic future where the Japanese Empire effectively rules the world and the human colonies that have been established in other star systems. One of these colonies, Suid-Afrika, is mainly populated by Boers exiled from the Republic of South Africa, but also contains a large number of colonists from the former United States; as the novel opens, peace on Suid-Afrika has been restored after a nearly-successful rebellion by the Boers has been broken largely due to the political and military genius of Lieutenant-Colonel Anton Vereshchagin, commander of the 1st Battalion/35th Imperial Rifle Regiment. The regiment is mostly made up of Finns and Russians, but some Boers have been recruited as well.
Unfortunately for Vereschchagin and his men (to say nothing of the Boers and their neighbors) the Imperial Government is unhappy with the results he has obtained, and has sent a task force to remake Suid-Afrika in the way that the planet's original owners, United Steel-Standard, would prefer. This force significantly outnumbers and outguns Vereshchagin's battalion, and its commander, Admiral Horii, is a careful man who knows exactly what kind of man he is about to force into rebellion.
While the novel is mainly an excellent little combat SF novel, it also has some unpleasant things to say about the Japanese government, which is portrayed as a supremely corrupt extrapolation of the contemporary system. It also contains a number of heartbreaking scenes, mostly relating to the doomed marriage of Major Raul Sanmartin (battalion XO, intelligence officer, and sometime professor of environmental science) and Hanna Bruwer, his former translator and Assembly speaker, which winds up being a classic Japanese romance. It is one of my favorite SF novels, and is the best of Frezza's three novels about Suid-Afrika.