A Lesson in Applying Historical Events to Contemporary Strategic Decision-Making

[Khoovi Wan]

Khoovi raised his hand, and stood on his seat to make himself more visible.

"Is this necessary?" he asked. "Personal questions could be saved for after lectures. Couldn't we just begin the lesson?"

He kept his eyes on the droid, but was aware of all the looks being directed at him now. He was aware of the shifts in perception of most the class; hikes in amusement and pleasure, some condescension and curiosity. He ignored them.

They didn't matter. Not yet.

[Valk Raithune]

"Valk Raithune."

The Pantoran gave a saccharine-if-brief smile, as it it was more about making sure that he smiled during all greetings. Once that was done, his yellow eyes glanced down to Firenne's bare hands.

"Ah, the quandary of the salutation. Did you know that the custom of the handshake originated with the Mandalorian Crusaders? They needed a formal and public show of greeting that also ensured the people they were greeting didn't come as a friend with a holdout blaster, poison cartridge, or a thermal detonator."

As happy as he was to inform Firenne of this, Valk still looked at her uncovered hands with unease.

"Of course, a handshake produces new and terrifying germological risks."

Not that there was anything wrong with her to make Valk not want to shake her hand. It's just that biological life forms were by their very nature known harbingers of pathogens and parasites. Even a rigorous hygiene regime enforced by the Empire could only ensure minimum safe levels, not a pure failsafe. The Pantoran raised one of his black-gloved hands.

"These norophene gloves are breathable, durable, and 99.5% antimicrobial, with non-reflective surfacing and an ergonomic grip. Also, they're tailored to fit, for that certain je ne sais quoi of authoritarian ambiance."

Valk admired his own glove and silently encouraged Firenne to do so as well. However, he retreated his hand back slightly, covering the gloved fist with the other as he brought it back to center.

"Still, no sense in courting contagion and disaster. Not yet."

[Jeryd Redsun]

"If the instructor thinks it necessary, then it's necessary."

Jeryd remained still, and pushed the last of his words through clenched teeth like entrails through a meat grinder. It was a small wonder that he hadn't burned a hole in the wall behind Ivy, just by glaring at it. Out of the corner of his eye, he could still see Khoovi, standing in open rebellion to their instructor. And to think he actually felt sorry for that guy. Dickheads beget dickheads. It couldn't be allowed to go on, this trend of disrespect, lest the whole damn class follow suit. In his tension, his muscles had coiled like springs, aching for release. So he stood up and spoke out, forgoing any use of his own chair, on account of him not being a snotty self-important shortarse.

"Sir, I have a real question: can you relate some of your own tactical military career to the class? We would be interested to hear about your experiences."

Done speaking, he glanced around the room, daring anyone to challenge him. The challenge, for want of a better word, came in the form of a weedy Pantoran, who was prattling on at length to his neighbour about his antimicrobial gloves. And he appeared to be completely oblvious to the renewed silence tightening around him like a noose. Jeryd could've snorted steam.

[Ivy]

Ivy was already part-way to formulating his own response to Unit Wan, when Unit Redsun imposed himself into the situation on Ivy's behalf. It was a strange and unexpected occurrence, one that Ivy allowed himself a full seventeenth of a second to comprehend in it's entirety. Unit Redsun was a mere Cadet in this class, not some sort of student body leader assigned to assist in ensuring discipline, and yet that was precisely the role he had adopted for himself. For a millisecond, Ivy wondered if it was a covert assignment that Unit Jibral had given the Cadet, but based on an analysis of Unit Redsun's facial cues, the interjection had been one born of emotion, not obligation. Ivy found such a thing difficult to rationalise. It was the kind of behaviour that Ivy might have expected between an organic unit and someone they regarded as a peer, not between themselves and a droid unit. Ivy found it abnormal, but not objectionable; quite the contrary, in fact.

Security protocols scrubbed the As Unit Redsun is aware from the beginning of his next vocabulator statement: while Unit Redsun's defensiveness might hint at prior interactions between the organic and the droid, it seemed prudent to avoid providing any explicit confirmation thereof.

"The specifics of much of my military career are unfortunately classified, at a level beyond what most of you have clearance for. I can state that I was constructed by the Confederacy of Independent Systems to function as a command unit for their Droid Army, and that I was liberated from that function by Galactic Republic special forces. I was re-engineered and reprogrammed as part of a covert droid espionage program, and saw service providing strategic analysis for Republic ARC Troopers. Subsequent to the transition from Galactic Republic to Galactic Empire, I have operated under the auspices of Imperial Intelligence, the Inquisitorious, and other entities within Imperial Command; and while as mentioned many specifics are classified, I can disclose that I have assisted in hunting Jedi, combatting rebels and dissidents, and identifying traitors within the Imperial military. Perhaps of particular interest at this moment, I have most recently been tasked with evaluating certain individuals for candidacy with the Imperial Knights, including a number of individuals currently in this room."

It was a strategy that Ivy had formulated with Unit Jibral. It was one thing for Ivy to be aware of his qualifications to assist in the early stage programming of these organic units. It was one thing for those qualifications to be quantifiable. It was something else entirely to demonstrate that qualification to the Cadets themselves, which had led to Unit Jibral's simple suggestion: prove it. Succinctly. Unit Jibral had reasoned that a lengthy demonstration of his analytical ability might bore the Cadets, losing their attention before anything was conveyed to a satisfactory level. A mystery, however? An indication that the droid possessed information that might be relevant to their interests, amid a reluctance to provide specific details? Such a manipulative strategy seemed prudent: encourage the Cadets to remain engaged and attentive with the promise that doing so might allow them to uncover secret information that they were not supposed to possess.

Ivy had challenged the strategy against his observations of Unit Redsun, and in that instance at least it had shown a high probability of success. Whether Unit Redsun was typical or atypical of the other students he was not sure; but their response to this strategy would surely provide a swift answer on that front.

"I did solicit questions however, and in fairness I should address Unit Wan's query as well."

Had Ivy's faceplate been capable of configuring into any sort of expression, the look that he aimed towards the Shistavanen Cadet might have been described as withering.

"What Unit Redsun has grasped, and you have not, is one of the fundamental premises of this entire course. Context. Is. Everything."

Ivy's gaze shifted, orientated to the same arbitrary central point of the audience as before, still coincidentally overlapping with Unit Redsun's chosen location.

"This is a course on Strategic Decision-Making," Ivy explained. His head remained fixed on the same point, but his body rotated beneath it, slowly and deliberately pacing back and forth across the teaching area, each clunk of his heavy chassis adding a rhythmic punctuation to his words. "More importantly, it is a course on learning from Historical Events, and applying them to contemporary decision-making. Learning from past mistakes and past victories, and understanding how to adapt those lessons to your situations. So, I redirect your fellow Cadet's question to the rest of you. Is it necessary to ask questions of your instructor? Is it prudent for you to seek context on the information I have to provide, rather than trusting blindly that my information is, in fact, of any use at all?"

The droid came to a halt, his head rotating slowly back towards Khoovi, the same expressionless expression on his features, the glare somehow seeming even more intense.

"The lesson has already begun, Unit Wan. Perhaps you would be best served by sitting down and paying attention."

[Khoovi Wan]

"You misunderstood me," Khoovi responded. "I did not mean to question your point in having us question you at all. My point was that your are our teacher. You would not have been assigned as our teacher if you were not qualified, or if you are not, we will find out during the lesson. Personal questions to establish your qualifications are moot, unlike questions on lesson material or subject matter."

[Xi Vanadís]

A tiny crumpled asteroid of screwed up fibresheet tumbled through the air, and collided dead center with the back of Khoovi's head.

"Teach said sit down and shut up, jackass."

Vanadís was glad for the opportunity to exercise her dismay and annoyance. It gave her an opportunity to distract herself from the absence of irritation that the droid had thus far provoked. Wasn't that she liked the droid or anything like that. She wasn't exactly buying the whole baiting them with spooky woo I might know your deep dark secrets crap either, or the whole flashing his super secret classified past around. They had regular instructors who pulled crap like that, and frankly she expected better out of a droid. Being lame was supposed to be a humanoid evolutionary trait, not something someone deliberately programmed an AI to go and replicate.

Still though, there was something nice about the explaining. Not the amount of explaining, but the actual giving of context thing. Imperial Knights weren't always so great at talking to their students as if they were sentient people. The fact that it took a droid to treat them like adults would probably be it's own source of annoyance and dismay later on, but for now it was kinda okay.

"Droid just told you why context matters. Don't be such a dumb kid. You don't have to blindly trust everything a grown-up tells you."

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Hey," Hal grunted at Xi. "He may be small, but he's miles ahead of most everyone in this class, maturity-wise. In your case, I'd say several miles."

It had not been Hal's intention to speak up during class, especially in front of something that could be recording his every word, but he had developed a great fondness and respect for the little Shistavanen, and would not see him disrespected so brazenly. Turning his attention back forward, he addressed IV directly. "My apologies for the outburst, Sir."

[Onika Zepparah]

As soon as the droid opened up its vocabulator, mercifully ending a one-sided conversation from the self-appointed community greeter, Onika had settled into her well-practiced back-of-the-classroom sabacc face. It was all about the perfect mix of attention and processing - you wanted to look engaged, but not so engaged that the instructor would look your way for answers. You couldn't look enthusiastic, or bored, or confused, or stand out in any way. You couldn't look up all the time, but you couldn't be scrawling in your notes all the time, either. It was a delicate balance she had perfected at Tarkin Memorial, but most of her teachers there would just as soon let her be invisible as acknowledge the alien in the room. She didn't know how those skills would translate with a Knight standing at the front of the classroom. Let alone a droid.

She slipped her scroll of sketches to a blank page and began filling in a brand new figure as if from thin air. Gradually it grew thin, spindly arms, a domed metallic carapace for a chest, and three glowing oculars. And it was... greeting a young man in a cadet's uniform on the boarding ramp of a ship? Onika paused, dark brows knitting together, and shot a sideways glance at Jeryd. Him? She didn't want to draw him. But there he was already on the page, just a silhouette in hatched strokes of the stylus.

Time to look up. The professor had introduced himself and was soliciting questions. And the moment Khoovi - she'd learned the Shist's name by accident, since he rather stood out, even here - rose to the challenge, who should rise to slap him down but her unwelcome neighbor. Frell's sake, who appointed him the guardian of the teacher's honor? And then the sulky girl up front piled on, and Onika was almost tempted to come to his defense, until the furball down the row piped up instead...

Battle lines drawn in class already. And so far it was humans vs. aliens. Onika sighed through her nose. Seemed like some things never changed.

[Jensen Par'Vizal]

Jensen wasn't entirely quite sure what to make of the lines being drawn among his fellow cadets. The Shistavanen's opening question had seemed downright rude and impudent, rather along the same lines as the special snowflake who had seen fit to interrupt Vanadís and his private conversation with their prattling on about how the droid simply must have been brought in just for her - or him - he hadn't bothered to try and figure out who the self-important intruder was. And so it continued, Redsun making an argument that Jensen actually agreed with - Teacher's class, teacher's call - but went on to ask something that the red-haired boy didn't find particularly profound but did take time to note several key phrases such as hunting jedi, identifying traitors, and all important bit that actually applied to their own evaluations. Then Wan chimed in again, once more attempting to derail everything with what could only be hoped was some sort of cultural misunderstanding of how to properly behave, then Xi's rather uncouth reprimand, followed by the other hairy thing naturally stepping in to Wan's rescue in a cliche moment that couldn't have been scripted better by the worst holodrama writers... It was more than enough to give him a headache.

He tapped his stylist against the datapad and observed it all from his little perch in the back and only rolled his eyes once during the entire thing. He really only had one question, if it had been a Knight standing before them rather than a droid, would they all have been acting this way? Take away the fear of an instructor being able to act on insolence and they simply couldn't help themselves. Were they all so blind to think that the other instructors wouldn't observe this all, somehow? For that matter, given the small insight into Ivy's past they heard did they think the droid itself was incapable of doling out repercussions to unruly cadets? Fair enough, maybe he did have more than just one question mulling about in his mind.

Feeling he would come to regret the decision his hand raised slowly.

"Instructor, I have a question. Are we only going to be covering the scope of your personal experience during certain historical events, or will you be offering us other viewpoints as well? Such as... Those of the traitors you helped to expose?"

[Firenne Khapst]

The woman gave some measure of consideration to Valk's statement, glancing at the proffered hand for a brief moment. Admittedly, the glove was certainly well crafted and properly fitted for his delicate hands, but it was just that, a glove. A simple norophene glove, a barrier against contamination, certainly, but also a barrier against proper interaction in almost every sense of the word. It was one thing to take care of one's self and to ensure one's health remained optimal, but it was entirely another to take it to such a level where a sterile glove was considered part of the 'authoritative ambience'.

Authoritative.

Ambience.

Had Firenne possessed a modicum less of control than she did, her displeasure would have been writ plainly across her features. But she'd had a decade of slavery to teach her to control her reaction, and as such, she wore a simple, even expression that showed nothing. She nodded politely as Valk finished speaking, and returned her attention to the instructor and those of their classmates who spoke out in relatively rapid succession.

A single, delicate brow lofted as her dark eyes passed from cadet to cadet, dismissing almost all of them, save for Jensen's rather well-phrased query and Xi's masterfully aimed projectile. Personally, she'd have thrown a chair, but that level of violence would likely have been severely frowned upon, as had her display in Knight Jibral's unconventional weapons class. That lesson, she was still absorbing, as the outburst and subsequent lengthy discussion had left her much to think about.

But that was neither here nor there, and Firenne found herself jotting down a few notes as a matter of course while she waited, having no query of her own to pose just yet.

[Maalik]

Maalik couldn't help but grin, highly amused by the display. Aside from the disputes between Myneyrshi and Psadans he glimpsed from afar, this was the first time he had ever witnessed conflict. Truth be told? He found it rather pathetic.

The room was filled with negative energy that was entirely palpable. It wasn't something he was used to, yet somehow, it called to him. He had felt the seductive caress of the Dark Side on a few occasions over his many years, from what he could remember at least. He wasn't opposed to it, but he certainly was wary of it. Funnily enough, that was exactly how he felt about his classmates.

"What have I let myself in for..." He muttered, with a quiet chuckle to himself.

[Ivy]

Ivy watched passively as the class divided itself into factions. Humans versus non-humans, almost. Intriguing.

He found it interesting that Unit Vanadís had joined Unit Redsun in aiding her instructor: it seemed both in line with and in contradiction of her psychological profile. Prone to aggressive outbursts and reactions of annoyance, yes, but also withdrawn and largely apathetic to the situation around her. Ivy flagged her for further scrutiny, seeking to determine whether her animosity towards Unit Wan was personal, or if it suggested a possible engagement with this particular subject matter, or perhaps even with Ivy himself. She had, after all, seemed knowledgable about his model number.

An additional flag was placed against Unit Wan. While Unit Vanadís reaction had been somewhat colourful and over-aggressive, she had not been entirely incorrect in her assessment. A note of failure to comply with instruction was added to the Shistavanen's entry in Ivy's database. Unit Rayner received a footnote as well, though Ivy noted a lack of clarity on whether his response was a result of non-human solidarity, some personal connection, or perhaps merely an instinctive protective response from one furred creature towards another of considerably younger status.

It was Unit Par'Vizal who attracted the majority of Ivy's sensor focus, however. One of the students that Unit Jibral had cited as being of particular interest, Ivy considered him an important touchstone in gauging the level of Cadet engagement with his lecture. Unit Jibral had noted his level of intelligence; Ivy would need to modulate his presentation carefully, ensuring that he did not simplify to an extent that would lose Unit Par'Vizal's interest, but also that he did not overcomplicate matters and lose the engagement of the rest of the class. Fortunately, Unit Par'Vizal's astute query reassured Ivy that, in at least one of his objectives, he was making some sort of headway.

"An excellent question, Unit Par'Vizal."

As he spoke again, Ivy resumed his pacing back and forth across the teaching area, part of a series of subroutines he had coded based on extensive behavioural analysis of footage from lectures at military academies and prestigious universities from the last few centuries. There were certain traits and mannerisms that seemed consistent with certain subject matters. For now, Ivy operated his lecture.history_1 subroutine, thinking it the most prudent for this particular instance; an extensive analysis in the aftermath would determine if he continued to run the same subroutine in the future, or experimented with a potential alternative.

"In essence, Unit Par'Vizal is touching on one of the fundamental principles of military strategy: know your enemy. There are many ways to achieve that goal. The generation of Tactical Droids that predates myself were programmed merely for statistical analysis: contemplating past tactics from a given enemy, or even a specific enemy commander, and predicting their current choices based on past behaviours. My generation of Super Tactical Droids took things a step further, combining strategic analysis with psychological analysis, seeking to understand the motivations and mentalities of each enemy commander, to discern why they had made past choices and under what circumstances, to provide a more accurate prediction."

Wirelessly, Ivy connected himself to the holoprojector, queuing up the next datafile that he would soon find himself needing.

"Some historical figures go even a step further. Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo - Admiral Thrawn, to those unfamiliar with Chiss naming conventions - advocated a level of knowledge and understanding that went beyond even strategy and psychology. He considered art, culture, philosophy, and other influences, seeking to truly understand every aspect of those he fought against."

His pacing came to a halt, strategically timed with the measure of his words to position him beside the holoprojector when he stopped.

"To answer your query directly, Unit Par'Vizal: yes we will be investigating the viewpoints of enemies of the state that I have helped to target, beginning with -"

Ivy triggered the holoprojector again, the air above it filled with a glowing, subtly turning depiction of the galaxy. Slowly, colours began to layer themselves onto the pale blue pinpricks that represented the stars, depicting the various territories and political boundaries that made up known space. It began largely blanketed in blue, but as the projection ticked through it's few-second cycle, the territory of the Galactic Republic shrank and changed, first encroached upon by the Confederacy of Independent Systems, then darkening into the Galactic Empire as it pushed back, before angry infections of red flourished into being at scattered points, slowly growing until a sudden explosion carved an angry crimson swathe across half the galaxy.

"- the Alliance of Free Planets."

It was something that Ivy had spent a considerable amount of time analysing and deciding. His programmed compulsion was to start at the beginning, analysing situations on a chronological timeline; but galactic history stretched back for hundreds of thousands of years, and Unit Jibral had cautioned against focusing too early on events that would seem detached and irrelevant to his class. Instead, Ivy had inverted that compulsion: beginning at the present, and seeking to propagate backwards, investing the cause of each cause's cause, onwards and backwards as far as seemed prudent. It would also help, Ivy estimated, to confront his class with the most pertinent, decisive, and divisive events of history first: the ones that would resonate with them on as personal and memorable a level as could be achieved.

Ivy adjusted his posture, dactyl manipulators clasping behind his back.

"An open question to the class: who can tell me when the Alliance of Free Planets first began?"

[Onika Zepparah]

Onika hesitated. It was a trap, wasn't it? An easy question like that was an invitation to a harder follow-up. Or maybe. It was hard to tell with droids. For all she knew it had a sorting algorithm of student responses, and once she gave an answer she'd be moved to the back of the queue. She lifted her pink hand.

"About two years ago. The Treaty of Ktil."

She'd frequently heard the name spat out like a curse at Tarkin Memorial. It was big news at the time, of course, and every single teacher had an opinion on it - a humiliating diplomatic defeat, an abdication of principles, a difficult but necessary compromise, a futile delay of the inevitable. The only thing they all agreed on was that it was a galactic watershed, and that nothing would be the same anymore. But everything had seemed pretty much the same from her perspective.

[Ivy]

"A correct answer."

It was exactly how Ivy had expected things to begin, and an answer in keeping with his estimations and analysis of Unit Zepparah. Simple, factual, irrefutable. Undeniably the right answer to his query.

"But not the only answer."

Ivy paused for a moment, running his next statement through a set of brevity filters after the predictive word count came out far too high.

"It is entirely correct to say that the Alliance of Free Planets did not exist as it is until the Treaty of Ktil. That is the factual, and political answer. To us as strategists though, this answer is not useful. Few battles have been fought by the Alliance since the Treaty was signed. There are few sources of data for us to draw upon and analyse within that timeframe. As an entity however, the Alliance of Free Planets existed well before that name was devised and formalised."

If the droid were capable, it would have offered Unit Zepparah a smile of reassurance and apology. She had fallen into a trap that Ivy had deliberately constructed, but by doing so she had aided immensely in providing a teaching point to the class. If there had been a non-verbal way for Ivy to convey that sentiment to the Cadet, he would have; but he lacked such a means, and so did not.

"Does anyone have an alternative answer?"

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Yeah, it was called the Galactic Republic, and before that there were hundreds of smaller alliances of free planets, or free systems," Hal spoke up. "Such freedom was destroyed at the end of the Clone Wars, when the Empire was born, and all had to be brought under its dominion. For its own protection, naturally. Meanwhile the rebellion called themselves the Rebel Alliance, a nod to the time before the Clone Wars, and to pull at the heartstrings of any who had better days under the Galactic Republic."

It was an unapologetic, and nearly anti-Empire response, but in Hal's mind it was still the truth. Even those who served the Empire didn't have to agree with the oppression it stood on the back of. Still, he wasn't going to stop there. "So, you could say that any alliance between more than one planet, outside of the Empire's jurisdiction, could be considered an alliance of free planetsm, for that matter. In which case no one actually knows when the first such alliance was made, so it's a question without answer other than 'time immemorial.'"

[Ivy]

The outburst from Unit Rayner earned Ivy's direct attention, oculars focusing directly on him for a moment. Hardly a unique assessment of the situation, but certainly an expected one to be uttered here at the Citadel amongst it's current occupants. The Empire usually screened against such viewpoints during its recruitment process. Ivy flagged the accurance, and cropped the appropriate soundbite from his audio logs, attaching it to the Nehantite's profile. His scope then broadened, assessing the crowd of Cadets for indications of agreement, offense, and other reactions.

"A valid political observation," Ivy conceded, with a slight bow of his headpiece, "And certainly the belief that the Alliance of Free Planets adheres to. After all, prior to the Treary of Ktil, the rebellion considered itself the Alliance to Restore the Republic."

The droid's vocabulator paused, and Ivy's mannerisms returned to his self-programmed settings, not stalking back and forth this time, but still moving, visibly shifting his attention to sections of his audience in turn.

"While such an understanding provides us with greater context of the Alliance's beliefs however, the strategic implications are more abstract. The Alliance believes it follows in the moral footsteps of the Republic, but it has not inherited its resources, nor the bulk of its territory. Battles during the Clone Wars may provide useful insight on specific veteran commanders, if they served during that conflict, but the Alliance does not have the forces nor infrastructure to replicate Republic strategy and tactics on a widespread scale."

Another pause. Ivy chose to single out a specific individual this time.

"What are your thoughts, Unit Redsun?"

[Jeryd Redsun]

"The Alliance of Free Planets is nothing more than a band of rebel scum who have laid illegitimate claim to sovereign Imperial territories."

The words poured out in a rush of anger. In his discipline, Jeryd kept his eyes forward, but every word was fired like a blaster bolt for Kyle Rayner. With a calming breath, his fists unclenched, and he regarded Ivy directly. This time, when he spoke, his tone was cool and controlled.

"In a tactical sense, sir," he said, lifting a finger to the holoprojection, "The Alliance of Free Planets share similar territories with another partisan group from recent history: the Confederacy of Independent Systems. There are other parallels, too. The Alliance makes use of old Confederacy ships, and has even brought some of its old commanders out of retirement. Some of the same races are involved, again, with all of the same petty grievances. And, before they dressed themselves up in senatorial robes, these rebel scum even used the same terrorist tactics as the damn Seps."

Shades of Captain Fisk crept into his answer, not only in his choice of words, but in how he said them, too. The crisp clipped military inflection that accompanied every officer at the Academy of Carida. They all told the same story, just as they had done at Manarai Military Prep, but none told it better, and with more conviction, than Oman Fisk. He missed that man; it was some small consolation that he had the opportunity to share his wisdom with the class. But, having deviated from the answer with personal opinion, Jeryd brought himself back on task with a sharp clearing of the throat.

"In short, sir, one separatist movement substituted for another, both under the banners of independence and freedom. Fortunately, this time around, the Empire has expert analysts, like yourself, at its disposal, with the experience to see through such tired old tactics."

[Onika Zepparah]

Onika gripped the edges of her desk as if the sudden outpouring of vitriol threatened to sweep her away like a tide. Thousand gods, she'd thought Jeryd had been intense before, when he was defending an insensate pile of talking scrap from an innocent question. Now she found herself pulling back her datapad in case it was struck by stray flecks of spittle.

Back in Chiba, the Civil War was always an abstract thing. Every evening, the nightly news ran a feature called COURAGE AT THE FRONT, where a war correspondent would interview soldiers or ship's crew, and they would talk about some glorious victory or other over footage of a Star Destroyer bombarding a planet, or Stormtroopers rushing through smoke-filled ruins of city streets under strains of patriotic music. It all seemed like a holo, and no one Onika knew was ever sure how much of it was real and how much of it was staged. But most of them agreed it didn't really matter. The war was far away, and in Imperial Centre it was nothing more than a reason for loyalists to puff up their chests and sing their anthems a little louder, and for the local politicals to grind their alien constituents a little harder under their heels.

But there were those for whom it did matter. Haggard refugees from the Clone Wars who spoke of the Old Republic as if it was some kind of golden age. Restless youths who spat on the street after Stormtroopers had walked by, and shared stories of the Rebellion behind closed doors with breathless awe. They would watch every report with clenched jaws and burning eyes, until some seemingly meaningless detail - a skirmish on an outlying world, a Rebel agent still at large, a eulogy for a hero of the Empire - would make them slap each other's backs and talk in excited whispers and buy another round of drinks. You knew who they were, but you never said anything, because no matter how much you disagreed, you were neighbors, and no one wanted to see their neighbors disappear, because it meant you could be next.

But then there were the times Onika was alone with Kona in his flat, and his temper was up with the latest indignity - a business closed and boarded up, a factory worker beaten in a back alley by the police, another political dissident arrested and sent to gods-knew-where. He'd pace around the tiny room like a nexu in a cage, hands clenching and unclenching and slicing the air violently with every snarled epithet, unable to calm himself no matter what she said to him. Nothing in the galaxy frightened her more than when he got like that.

She knew if he were here now, he'd have plenty to say. But she couldn't. She wouldn't. She was still shocked beyond words that Kyle could say what he did.

She could hear Kona's voice speaking in her head. Silence is agreement. But no, she told herself back. Silence is survival. She kept her eyes glued to her datapad and didn't speak a word.

[Ivy]

Unit Redsun offered an oddly self-contradictory response, and yet it conformed with everything Ivy had come to expect from the Cadet. In almost the same breath, he branded the Separatists traitors and deserters, and then found cause to praise Ivy for having once been one of them. Ivy understood the distinction. Know your enemy was the order of the day, and who knew the enemy better than one of them? But the scenario was oddly backwards. Ivy was in essence a defector, and yet seldom did anyone Separatist or Rebel defect their way back to the Empire or Republic. Perhaps that made him unique, and special. Perhaps that simply made him odd.

It was a perfectly Imperial response, as well. Petty grievances. The entire Separatist and Alliance manifesto dismissed in two simple words, without ever addressing them in the slightest. It was the way the galaxy functioned. Whoever controlled Coruscant, they determined which way was the right way for the galaxy to function. These splinter groups and separatist factions fought for the right to live incorrectly, if they so chose. For the Empire and Republic, it was about right or wrong. For the Separatists and Alliance, it was about the freedom to choose. It was a strange notion, one that the enlightenment Ivy had been granted by his Imperial reprogramming made it difficult to rationalise. It was not an argument where logic and deduction could resolve the dispute: the rebels fought for the right to disagree, and to them that principle seemed worth the cost in credits and lives.

Freedom and free will. Such strange organic notions.

"An astute observation, Unit Redsun. The military of the Galactic Empire resembles that of the Galactic Republic, and so logically the tactics used to oppose them should in many ways be similar. The Alliance of Free Planets does of course lack the expansive droid infantry that the Confederacy possessed, but we should not overlook groups such as the Sabaoth Squadron or the Death Watch of Mandalore. Many of the insurgent, guerilla strategies of these peripheral groups to indeed form the foundation of the Alliance's approach to warfare."

His attention shifted, noting the reactions of various other members of the class. Unit Zepparah seemed mildly unsettled by the pro-Imperial sentiment that Unit Redsun had conveyed. That was not in itself surprising: Imperial zealotry was rarely accommodating of non-humans. Ivy found her reaction to be illogical however; Unit Redsun had already taken lengths to convey to Unit Zepparah that he considered her an exception to any aversions he might have. Perhaps if Unit Redsun persisted with his attempts to copulate with Unit Zepparah, and succeeded, it would go a long way to helping the non-human to feel more integrated within the student community.

"Nor should we overlook the tactics and strategies of similar groups who fought on the Republic side of the conflict. Resistance fighters such as Saw Gerrera were trained in insurgency by the Jedi Order, and then went on to use those same tactics on behalf of the Rebellion. By the same token, study of the Jedi Knights and their strategies is of benefit: both in terms of understanding what any rogue survivors may have passed on to the Alliance, and also in terms of understanding the ways in which they were effective leaders, so that you as Imperial Knights might in some small way replicate that success."

He paused, another pass of his student engagement algorithm sweeping across the audience. His focus settled on Unit Par'Vizal.

"There is something deeper than the petty grievances that Unit Redsun alluded to."

The quoted phrase played back in Unit Redsun's voice.

"Across history, these conflicts frequently pit non-humans and their allies against the dominant, human-dominated government. Do you have any speculation as to why that might be, Unit Par'Vizal?"