I left the warehouse in high spirits. We'd found the armor, inspected it, and—with the help of a certain curses and a few droids—managed to fix it up. We did have to replace almost half of the internals, but as I already mentioned, the warehouse was enormous. We managed. With the help of the same crafty Toydarian, I put the armor on. In principle, it didn't weigh that much—about fifteen kilograms. It felt a little unusual, but that was fine. Train hard, fight easy.
The armor didn't restrict my movements at all and was only slightly too big, which wasn't a real problem. Its systems were controlled through commands from the helmet, plus a holographic deck built into the gauntlets. And for Jedi, there was the option of controlling it with the Force—well, pressing a couple of buttons with telekinesis—even a youngling could manage that. As for the weak generator, I'd survive it somehow. After all, I wasn't going to pretend to be a droid, was I?
Throwing everything else into my backpack, I headed toward the holy of holies: the Archives.
***
Yeah, the great Archives… You couldn't sift through this mass of information in a thousand years! It's bigger than Mount Everest!
My one query, "Battles," returned such a jumble that I could have howled like a wolf. Why in the galaxy would I need a description of a war between two tribes of some aborigines on a forgotten planet thousands of years ago?
Somehow managing to concentrate, I began to extract more or less familiar information about the major conflicts of past eras—and it all started almost from the dawn of time. No, I'm lying; there were records even older than that. My plan was not only to review what I'd gathered but also to copy it onto holodiscs for more thoughtful consideration later.
After a quick review, I got the impression that either I was missing something or the commanders of ancient times were impossibly brilliant.
According to the articles, ninety percent of major galactic conflicts were resolved by some cunning maneuver that always resulted in the complete and unconditional defeat of the forces of "Evil." Or "Good," depending on which way the cards fell. There were practically no cases of peace agreements, border revisions, or continued coexistence. The Republic, for example, always had enough strength not only to defeat its enemy but also to suppress it completely, seize its territories, and scour them clean, destroying all resistance. Sometimes it looked absurd. Seriously, how can you occupy a space comparable to your own when you've got only a fifth of your pre-war army and navy left? You'd have to be either a genius or…
Or have a cheat code—in the form of a loyal Order of the Gifted, ready to tear themselves apart just to "eradicate Evil once and for all."
Some semblance of common sense was seen only in the Mandalorian Wars and the New Sith Wars. Even then, the Archives focused almost entirely on the actions of Force-users, while ordinary soldiers seemed to have no role in anything—except for very elite professionals like Shae Vizla, who later became Mandalore the Avenger. But again, the emphasis was on individual skill and tradition rather than unity and tactics.
Ordinary soldiers were treated as cannon fodder. For the Republic, they died under loud slogans; for the Sith, they were militias cobbled together from every walk of life, armed with junk weapons, or worse—artificially bred creatures or droids. Those didn't count at all.
So the Mandalorians had the Republic at their mercy—until the Jedi (led by Revan) intervened. After that, the war turned into a wild mess, and in the end, the Mandalorians were crushed.
And Revan himself? He lost dozens of ships at Malachor V. Yes, the Republic won, but only after unleashing another so-called wonder weapon, the Mass Shadow Generator. The result: Malachor turned into a graveyard. The Sith never have much luck with their superweapons.
Or take Ruusan and everything that followed—utter chaos on an epic scale. In my view, the Sith made the greatest strategic blunder of the war by allowing their forces to be drawn into the battle there. Before that, they had the Jedi cornered again, but…
From the very first salvos on Ruusan, the initiative shifted completely to the gifted Republican commander, Jedi Lord Hoth. The Republic suffered terrible losses, but in this case, the end justified the means. It was beyond doubt that the actions of Hoth and his generals saved Coruscant—and with it, the Republic.
Although Ruusan itself had no real strategic value, both sides fought like madmen for that chunk of rock. A long positional war began there—well, long by local standards. The Republic army was better organized, but still clearly inferior to the Sith forces.
Meanwhile, in orbit around Ruusan and throughout the system, warships repeatedly clashed in line battles. The skies burned, starships exploded, instantly claiming the lives of thousands of beings, and their wreckage rained down on the soldiers fighting below. Landing craft and supply ships from both sides often failed to reach their targets. It was pure chaos. Hundreds of Jedi, Sith, and soldiers died before even disembarking, perishing in low orbit or in the planet's atmosphere.
In the end, the Supreme Sith Lord Kaan went completely mad and triggered a total game over. Who creates a Thought Bomb that annihilates not only your enemies but also your own followers? In the end, only two Sith survived. Two!
Naturally, the Republic and the Jedi declared victory. In their joy, they disbanded the army and navy, claiming the Sith had been destroyed once and for all. Fools. At that time, all power lay with the Jedi—even the Chancellor could only be a Jedi—but after Ruusan, everything changed.
The Jedi rejected the warrior-knight tradition and became guardians of peace. Power in the Republic passed to the Senate and an elected Chancellor. The army and navy were dissolved. All that remained was a pitiful remnant in the form of the Judicial Department. And so it remained for almost a thousand years.
Other conflicts were hardly worth the attention—except perhaps Stark's Hyperspace War, and only because of the maneuvers of its fleets and the unusual cause of the conflict.
After that, technology advanced significantly—but tactics did not. Perhaps if the Republic military had not been disbanded, some kind of officer academy would have studied these battles, analyzed them, and produced doctrines. There might have been at least some guidance, some rules. But no. And I couldn't find any manuals even from before the Ruusan Reformation.
When I typed "Regulations of the armed forces of Republic" into the search engine, what I got looked painfully similar to one of those microwave manuals, the ones where half the text consists of warnings like "Do not dry your cat in the microwave." The only difference is that instead of microwave there were names of different models of equipment, as it is not difficult to guess, long and firmly outdated.
Still, I browsed document after document—reports, accounts, fragments of books. Many were in languages I didn't know, but the built-in translator gave me the gist.
Damn. Even thousands of years ago, the Hutts—those one-ton slugs—had their own armies in armor! And they fought well, too. Not like now, when they rely entirely on mercenaries. Well… no, apparently there's still one Hutt Jedi alive somewhere.
The droid uprisings were mildly interesting, but they all ended the same way: the Jedi intervened, struck down the leaders with surgical precision, and—done. No strategy, no tactics.
Well, I decided, I'd come here to gain knowledge… The great Archives. I thought I'd leave with secret wisdom, transformed into a brilliant commander. Yeah, right. Kenobi's phrase comes to mind: "Perhaps the Archives are incomplete?" Apparently, I'd have to figure it out myself. No, you could still fish out some grains of truth, but only with long, persistent thought.
That was why I'd brought the holodiscs—to study and analyze them during breaks. And I'd need breaks anyway. I couldn't run around twenty-four-seven.
***
My head was spinning from the jumble of dates, names, and worlds. I kept searching in vain for any clear descriptions of tactics in those dry, factual lines: They came. They fought. They won. Finally, I decided to take a break and look up Force techniques and the development of lightsaber combat.
After sifting through countless manuals and treatises, I concluded that the best option for me was Form III—Soresu. It was designed for defense against blaster fire and for fighting against multiple weaker opponents. Just what the doctor ordered.
And the fact that it was purely defensive didn't bother me at all. No more reckless charges with a saber at full speed. No, thanks—once was enough.
I copied that material onto my holodiscs as well. Hopefully, I'd have time to study it all. Immersed in the lengthy treatise of some ancient Jedi, I drifted out of reality…
***
Exhausted, I pulled away from the projector, stretched my stiff arms and legs, and only then glanced at the chrono on the wall. Wow, I've been here for seventeen hours. Well, that was Jedi courtesy for you—if they saw you weren't bothering anyone, they left you alone.
After leaving the Archives, I went to the wing that housed the dormitories used by the Jedi for meditation and solitude. My head was buzzing with information, and I needed rest. Tomorrow I'd pick up the training droids from Rolf, then arrange a sparring session in my armor just to test my limits. After that, there were still a few things to take care of with the local administration, ugh…
Dragging myself to my bunk with the last of my strength, I collapsed onto the mat—armor and all—and blacked out. Tomorrow would be another hard day.