integrity is a disease, and you can only catch it from someone who has it. - Lois McMaster Bujold

Any community’s arm of force—military, police, security—needs people in it who can do the necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.

“How come they promoted you before me? Who the hell have you been sleeping with?” boiled off of Miles’s lips before he could bite it back down. He hadn’t meant his tone of voice to come out quite that harsh.
Ivan shrugged, smirking. “I do my job. And I do it without going around bending all the rules into artistic little origami, shapes, either.”

It’s so damned useless! The dead hand of the past goes on jerking the strings by galvanic reflex, and we poor puppets dance—nothing is served, not us, not him, not Komarr…