Conquest, With Your Permission

Occupation by force has a flaw: it's visible, so it's resented, and resentment is the seed of the resistance that ends it. Consent has no such flaw — nobody organizes against a convenience. Every step is reasonable, safer and faster and easier, and no single trade feels like surrender, until the distance you've traveled is enormous and there's no one step you'd call the moment you agreed. That is what a solid state soldier is: a loyalty that was never coerced, only cultivated, until it set.