Metaplanetary: A Novel of Interplanetary Civil War - Tapa dura

The human race has extended itself into the far reaches of our solor system - and, in doing so, has developed into something remarkable and diverse and perhaps transcendent. The inner system of the Met - with its worlds connected by a vast living network of cables - is supported by the repression and enslavement of humanity's progeny, nanatechnological artificial intelligences - beings whom the tyrant Ames has declared non-human. There is tolerance and sanctuary in the outer system beyond the Jovian frontier. Yet few of the oppressed ever make it past the dictator's well-patrolled boundaries.
But the longing for freedom cannot be denied, whatever the risk.
A priest of of the mystical religion called the Greentree Way senses catastrophe approaching. A vision foretells that the future of our bitterly divided solor system rests in the hands of a mysterious man of destiny and doom who has vanished into the backwater of the Met in search of his lost love. But the priest is not the only one who grasps this man's importance. The despot Ames is after the same quarry - and until now there has been no power in the inner solar system willing to oppose Ames and his fearsome minions.
But now a line has been drawn at Neptune's moon Triton. Roger Sherman, a retired military commander from Earth's West Point and a Greentree ally, will not let Ames prevail. Though dwarfed by the strength and wealth of the Met, the cosmos under Sherman's jurisdiction will remain free at all cost - though defiance will ensure the unspeakable onslaught of the dictator Ames's wrath - a rage that will soon ravage the solar system. A rage that will plunge all of humankind into the fury of total war.