Literature
> Watchers on the Walls, Part II
'Watchers
on the Walls of Paradise'
Part
II
Well-established
military wisdom suggests that if you know your enemy as
you know yourself, you will always be victorious. But the
good commander understands that he must first know himself
- and admit to all of the good and ill that knowledge implies.
And by this I do not refer merely to the commander as a
singular, sentient being. I refer to the commander as the
embodiment of a ship, a crew, a mission. And in this context,
I refer to myself first - for if I cannot submit to my own
introspection, I cannot expect the officers under my command
and the officers who follow them to do the same.
There is much that is good about the High Guard and much
that must be preserved. We have the best people, the best
equipment and the best training. We are the finest military
force ever assembled and by far the most powerful. The thought
of our might in the hands of malcontents or a potential
enemy should induce a shudder, at the very least. The power
of any military must be viewed in the context of the values
it upholds - and in the case of the High Guard, we are good,
kind, gentle people. And we are good, kind and gentle in
everything we do, even on those rare occasions when we must
unsheathe our swords, climb down from the walls and do battle
in the name of Paradise.
That said, there is also much about the High Guard that
is broken and must be repaired. We have the best people,
but fewer of them enter the Home Guard forces every year.
We have the best equipment, but our development process
has become ossified by centuries of slavish devotion to
a small coterie of resource providers. We have the best
training, but shrinking budgets have forced more students
into smaller classrooms, straining our instructional staff
and jeopardizing the effectiveness of our people in the
field. In short, we have the best and worst of all possible
worlds, and we walk the razor's edge of readiness. It is
a source of widespread frustration within the ranks, but
today's frustration can easily become tomorrow's catastrophe.
Those who oppose the very existence of the High Guard would
rebut my warnings by claiming that there is no threat to
justify our existence. We are the victims of our own myopia,
expending valuable blood and treasure in order to preserve
a way of life that has lost its foundation. The universe
has changed, they tell us, and the day when mighty fleets
of High Guard ships brought peace and order to the local
cluster are long since over.
And they are absolutely right.
The universe has changed, and we must change with it. The
High Guard must become leaner and meaner, taking advantage
of technology to fill in the gaps left by our diminished
numbers. We must embrace new, non-traditional missions that
are ideally suited to our superior organization and resources.
We must apply our knowledge, our capabilities, our traditions
of service and sacrifice to operations other than war. And
while we must maintain our readiness to fight when the need
arises, we should pour equal energy into offering a hand
to those in need and those who seek to push the frontiers
of science and technology for the betterment of sentient
species everywhere. We must become more than what we are
- not just soldiers, but diplomats. Not just engineers,
but scientists. We must do more than patrol the wastes between
the stars; we must explore them and share what we learn
so that we may grow wiser and more humble in the face of
Creation.
But I caution you, the classic mistake of every hegemon
has been to rest on an assumption of invulnerability. We
must resist with all our strength and reason any supposition
that we have pacified the universe, that we are so large,
so smart or so inevitable that no force of nature can topple
us from our seat at the mountaintop. Rome will always have
her Visigoths and the Vedran Empire her Kaldera. And though
we cannot yet give a name to its cause, even the Systems
Commonwealth may pass from history - another dimly remembered
empire who grew too fat, too lazy, too secure in its assumptions.
And so, we must remain in our battlements, ever vigilant
for the nameless shadow over the next hill. We must remain
the watchers on the wall, at peace with the knowledge that
we may be asked to let our sweat, our blood, our tears rain
down on Paradise in a torrent of war. We must remain strong
- physically, mentally, spiritually. We must remain the
High Guard, the foundation upon which our precious freedoms
are built and maintained.
Gentlebeings, I bid you welcome. Welcome to the sweat, to
the blood, to the tears. Welcome to your places on the wall.
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