“I want you to understand this, and understand this well. This is not making a deal under duress. This is extortion.”
“By which, to make our positions absolutely clear, I mean that some people would use the “you took the agreement to exchange goods for exval, even if there was an assault destroyer in low orbit at the time” to spread a fig-leaf of legality and compliance over their actions. I neither need nor want such a thing. I am robbing you. You aren’t receiving a crate of exval in exchange; you’re receiving one to rebuild so that I can rob you again in the future. That is all. Shake Downwell, clear.”
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And what prevents Our Hapless Victim from rebuilding, and buying/renting/hiring sufficient arms to defend herself in the future?
Nothing at all. (Unless our dear Renegade protagonist here has calculated things a lot more finely that I expect he has.) But then, he’s acting out of principle, not practicality.
(Or maybe they’re citizens of one of those fine polities that doesn’t allow weapons in civilian hands. Which might be in character for some Renegades, reasoning that selling your right to self-defense to people who can’t even be bothered to turn up when you actually need some is pretty much begging to be made an instructive example of.)