Si Vis Pacem by Robin Banks

Author:Robin Banks [Banks, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2017-12-28T05:00:00+00:00

2.

It takes us a handful of days to relax into our new schedule. School here is just like school back on Alecto, only more so. We have to jump through the hoops placed in front of us, and some of the hoops here are good fun.

The combat classes are the best. I love them, even though I suck at them. Dee hates them, even though she’s very good. I always wanted to learn to hurt people more effectively and she doesn’t like hurting people at all, but Reggie fixed that for her. If he engineers a scenario in which someone is hurting someone defenseless, the other side of Dee’s caring nature comes out: she will do whatever it takes to protect the helpless, and if that requires the dismemberment of a bad person, that’s too bad. My goals are far less lofty: I want to stop being helpless. As I’m half the size of most people here, that isn’t so easy to achieve.

That stops being as much of an issue when Reggie introduces us to weapons. A lot of the guys keep forgetting that they can use them, or feel bad about bringing them into play, while I never, ever do. I have no qualms whatsoever about cutting or blasting the shit out of someone who outmasses me or is trying to hurt me. Some of the guys act really shocked at my tactical decisions, but Reggie approves. He is awfully fond of reminding us that Patrolmen do not carry out routine law-enforcement duties: that’s what the local Guards are for. Patrolmen who find themselves in a hand-to-hand combat situation have already messed up. Carrying on that combat hand-to-hand would just be messing up more.

He is also fond of reminding us that the punishment for assaulting a Fed Officer in the course of their duties is immediate, permanent removal from Fed property. That doesn’t sound so bad, except that the Fed own virtually all the bubbles, most of the stations, and the vast majority of the ships. Most people don’t even own a suit, let alone enough air to get them to one of the few non-Fed-owned places. Being removed from Fed property at short notice is, in essence, a sentence of death by spacing. The reframing makes it sound a bit cuddlier, I guess.

It also makes it sound as if the Fed care about their Officers. I should find that reassuring. Instead I wonder how many incidents ended up in an Officer’s murder purely because it’s easier to hide a body than to silence a living person. I also wonder whether the Fed officials who put this rule in place didn’t consider this issue, perhaps because they weren’t sickos like me, or they considered it and were OK with it. All those speculations are pointless, anyway: the moral of the story is that if anyone lays hands on us during the performance of our duties, someone is going to die. We get no say in that, but we can help to make sure it’s not us.

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