The Pride of Parahumans Read Online Free PDF Page A

spent the next three hours going over the
map of the surrounding asteroids and looking up the local wiki's
entries on the inhabited planetoids within our ship's range of
Ceres at this time. Juno was ruled out, they had an extradition
treaty with the Directorate and a history of complying with their
demands. Iris didn't but they operated under a government that
seemed the closest to the human system known as “fascism” known to
the Belt. Hygiea, with one of the largest direct democracies since
ancient Greece, initially looked promising, but then we saw that
the majority of the population were strident pacifists and not even
point-defense guns were allowed, I couldn't imagine that they would
like us very much.
    "What about this one?" I pointed at a large
spherical planetoid, similar in size to Ceres. It was near the edge
of our range.
    Cole looked where I was pointing. "That
would be Vesta, either the second or the third largest asteroid in
the entire belt, depending on who you ask." He ruffled his feathers
a bit and looked away. "I don't think so."
    "Why, what is wrong with it?" Curious I
started to call up the wiki's information on Vesta.
    Cole turned back towards me and stared. "I
went there once, about six years ago. It was anarchy, I was almost
assaulted a couple times, some guys tried to pounce on me and when
I flew out of the way one pulled out some sort of jury-rigged gauss
gun and told me to toss over my possessions. Fortunately for me it
short-circuited when he tried to fire a warning shot."
    Seriously? I hadn't known there were places
where the crime rate was so bad. What kind of government would
allow such a thing. I read the information I'd pulled up on Vesta.
Gravity: .025 g, orbit: 3.63 earth years, population: ~50,000,
government:…
    "There's no government?" I asked, confused.
How could a society even function without any sort of government.
Apparently not well judging from Cole's testimonial. But then I
thought I saw something right below the tab that read "Government:
N/A", it stated: "danger level: low to moderate." I was
confused.
    I opened a more detailed description and
jumped to "crime and other hazards", I read on.
    … The ration exchanges created by the
Repairman's in 2090 led to individual shortages of calories and
needed nutrients. In desperation many residents turned to preying
on their fellow parahumans, both figuratively in the form of
stealing rations or other belongings to be traded for rations, or
in rare cases literally in the form of cannibalism. The
introduction of the Vestan qcoin later that year helped alleviate
the starvation as the Guild began to accept them instead of food,
but crime remained high until the formal establishment of the
Protector's Guild in 2092. The Protectors would, in exchange for a
modest monthly fee, do everything in their power to defend the
person and possessions of their customers, and if their defenses
and any personal ones carried by a customer were defeated they
hunted down the aggressor and enacted restitution from them. In
2094 the Protector's Guild fractured into several competing
organizations that still work to keep the peace in Vesta. Many of
the most prominent Guilds offer "Guest plans" for visitors…
    I looked away from the article and back to
Cole. "Judging from this article you got there just a year too
early. They've got something called "Protector's Guilds" now that
provide security and got their danger level downgraded to
moderate-low."
    "And what's stopping these "Guilds" from
turning us over to the Directorate?" Denal inquired of me.
    "Who says they can even do that? They're not
a government or anything." Aniya interjected. "If they're like a
business that just offers protection plans the worst they should be
able to do is cancel our coverage. And the article mentions
"personal defense" which seems to imply that they don't mind people
defending themselves, which is all we did wasn't it?"
    "All right, fine. We'll put it to a vote."
Cole