The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge

Arienrhod watched them,
expressionless now.
    Punishment enough. Jerusha glanced away from his face,
lifted her head. “He is a citizen of Kharemough, Your Majesty; he’s nobody’s
man but his own.” She looked pointedly at Starbuck still standing at her side.
    The Queen
smiled, and this time there was a trace of appreciation in it. “Maybe Commander
LiouxSked sends you to me as more than just a token female, after all.”
    That proves you’re not omniscient . Jerusha’s mouth pulled into a
tight half-smile of her own. “If I may ask your indulgence, then, I would like
to make the point that—” she moved suddenly, and with a hidden nerve-blocking
pinch, took Starbuck’s gun away from him, “these weapons are not toys.” The
blunt metal grip settled in her hand, the tube pointed like a cautionary finger
as he started toward her; she heard the excited twitter of the onlookers. “An
energy weapon should never be aimed at anything unless you’re willing to see it
blown apart.” Starbuck froze in mid-motion, she saw his startled muscles tense
and twitch. She lowered the gun. “A repeller field will fail under a direct hit
one time in five. Your nobles should keep that in mind.” The Queen made an
amused noise, and Starbuck’s head twisted toward the throne, light dancing
through the spines of his helmet.
    “Thank you,
Inspector.” Arienrhod nodded, making a curious motion with her fingers. “But
we’re well aware of the limits and liabilities attached to your off world
equipment.”
    Jerusha
blinked her disbelief, held the gun out again silently, butt first, to
Starbuck.
    “You’ll
regret this, bitch,” for her ears only. He twisted the gun out of her hand,
bruising her palm, and strode back to the dais.
    She
grimaced involuntarily. “Then ... with your permission, Your Majesty, I’ll
present the Commander’s monthly report on the status of crime in the city.”
    Arienrhod
nodded, leaning out to lay a possessive hand on Star buck’s arm, as one might
soothe a hackled dog. The nobles began to drift away, backing out of the
Queen’s presence. Jerusha suppressed a smile of pained empathy. The report was
no more significant than a hundred others before it, or any that would follow;
she would sooner be elsewhere herself. She reached down and switched on the
recorder at her belt, heard her commanding officer’s voice reciting the
statistics on the number of assaults and robberies, arrests and convictions,
off world or domestic crimes and victims. The words ran together into a
meaningless singsong in her mind, raising all her familiar frustrations and
regrets. Meaningless ... it was all meaningless.
    The
Hegemonic Police were a paramilitary force stationed on all Hegemony worlds, to
protect its interests and its citizens ... which usually involved protecting
the interests of the local on world power structures. Here on Tiamat, with its
low technology and sparse population (half of which barely even entered into
the Hegemony’s consideration) the police force was only a single regiment,
confined to the star port and Carbuncle for the most part.
    And its
activities were confined, hamstrung, restricted: the breaking up of drunken
fights, the arresting of petty thieves, an endless cycle of nose wiping and
futile prosecutions, when right under their own noses some of the most blatant
vice in the civilized galaxy went unchallenged, and some of the Hedge’s most
vicious abusers of humanity met openly in the pleasure hells where they were so
much at home.
    The Prime
Minister might symbolize the Hegemony, but he no longer controlled it, if he
ever had. Economics controlled it; the merchants and traders had always been
its real roots, and their only real lord was Profit. But there were many kinds
of trade, and many kinds of traders ... Jerusha looked up at Starbuck,
slouching arrogantly at the Queen’s right: the living symbol of Arienrhod’s peculiar
covenant with the powers of darkness and light, and her