| abstract | - The Service Security (also known as SerSec) is the military police and security force for the Barrayaran Imperial Service. They are separate from both Imperial Security and the law enforcement agencies under the direction of the Ministry of Interior. The SerSec has a direct function to cope and prosecute cases of espionage that threaten state security, protection plans and military installations, as well as any other project and experiment to keep secret. The SerSec is under the direct functional control of the High Command and the operational and hierarchical control of the General Staff. The Service Security includes the Service Security Investigation Division, the investigation arm, the Service Prison and Detention Barracks and the Service Security School. The Commandant General reports to the Vice Chief of General Staff. Due to the need to counter any foreign pacifist or democratic ideology the soldiers may meet, it is and a stronghold of conservative officers. Both officers and soldiers who serve in SerSec are picked for their staunch, almost paranoid, anti-pacifism and anti-democracy: this equally includes both Barrayaran, Sergyaran and Komarran personnel, especially in recent decades: traditionally, Greek minority people are preferred. The Imperial Komarran Constabulary was a gendarmerie force established after the Komarran Conquest in order to patrol and ensure police missions during military occupation phases: it served briefly during the harshest moments of the Komarran Revolt. The Constabulary maintained public order on Komarr under the direction of the Interior Minister. Alongside the Imperial Security, the Imperial Komarran Constabulary had a special branch of its own, and through it discharged the functions of a secret police in close cooperation with the Military Intelligence Service. Nowadays the Occupation Constabulary - which served also during earliest stages of the Sergyaran colonization - is formed on ad-hoc basis, but on constant lines: each constabulary is organized as an elite force, composed of the highest calibre personnel, equipped with an efficient communications network, sufficient liaison vehicles to make it highly mobile and fully capable of counter-insurgency operations. The mission of the Occupation Constabulary is to maintain general military and civil security and to assist in the accomplishment of the objectives of the Barrayaran occupation government in occupied areas. Apart of Occupation Constabulary, during wartime the Service Security takes its reserve forces from civilian police forces: this provides a significant cadre of men who already understand the legal aspects of their duties and belong to an uniformed and paramilitary organization with high standards of training and turnout. The primary choice are personnel from the various Riot Commands, commensurate with the ranks to be assigned. Personnel drawn from civilian police forces are employed in Security Occupation Units (see below), but also in general military police services. Cutting across all categories, frontline soldiers who distinguished themselves in combat may be assigned to military police duties, in order to strengthen the Service Security moral authority. The Service Security tracks its origins to the Imperial Provosts, the first all-Barrayaran military police force: in turn, this force, established at the same time of other components of the unified Imperial militias, originates from the combined Vorbarra-Vorkosigan-Vorrutyer rear troops forces. As noted above, the Service Security saw its most important prolonged deployment on Komarr, both during the Conquest and during the Revolt; the modern deployments of the Service Security are more focused on relatively small detachments sent far away from the fatherland. Military police disciplines are interdependent areas of expertise within the Service Security. Military police operations are viewed through a policing and corrections lens that focuses efforts on order maintenance, threat mitigation, and personnel and asset protection, regardless of the operational environment. The execution of military police operations and the manner in which they are conducted are all policing in nature.
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