A Spaceship for the King Author:Jerry Pournelle They had struggled upwards for a thousand years to reach the point Earh had reached in the early 20th Century - and then the rivived Glactic Empire took them over as a colony. — There was one condition under which the planet's people could achieve freedom - they had to prove they could build themselves a spaceship on their own know-how. The plan... more »s for such a starship existed on an even more backwared world - heavily gurarded as taboo documents.
So the puppet king called on his former foeman, Nathan MacKinnie, to go and bring back the "sacred" blueprints - without bringing a world-destroying Imperial fleet on his heels.« less