"Commander, can you tell us about your first trip into space?" One of the parents asked eagerly.
Nico chuckled, and Max smiled at the memory.
"After they have all landed and started to work, it's a good story, and I don't want to distract from current events," he agreed.
The shuttles were down into the lower atmosphere already, and headed straight for their chosen landing spots. They would set up right away, then do a quick scan before breakfast and make a plan for where they would work first, based on the initial readings that they had taken.
Compared to the professionals, it would be much slower and more methodical, as they needed to write reports for their class work as they went, but that would also help keep their parents entertained for the next few days while they were here.
Unless something amazing was found, they would only be here a week, and then they would move on to the next identified planet. There was a lot of ground to cover, and their time was sure to be limited by whatever the Great Enemy was planning, as well as the schedules of the parents.
They might be fantastically wealthy, but even a month away from their responsibilities was a long time to be working remotely.
The crowd was fairly quiet for the next hour, watching as the students left the shuttles in pairs and began to make notes about the scans they were taking of the area. There might not be much to find, but that just made the discovery stage that much more important. If they were excavating known ruins, they would just need to search for the relics that might be left among the rubble and fill.
But in a scenario like this, they couldn't just dig down until they got to the old city, there might be nothing at all here to find except a few bits of shipwreck.
When the discovery portion of the day was done and the students went to eat and make their plans, the parents turned back to Max to get his story.
"Alright, we have to hear it. We heard that you used to be a soldier, is that true?" One of the mothers asked.
"Indeed it is, and that even relates to the story of my first time in space in a way.
You see, I was still a student at the Academy when I was called up to active duty. Like many of your children, I excelled at my studies, and I had finished my qualifying earlier than usual. So, when this story begins, I had just finished my training for the initial stage of our Corvette Class Mecha pilot qualifications.
Where I come from, that was enough to qualify me as a junior officer, but without experience, I was scheduled to be deployed as an assistant to my mentor, who was a noted General among my people, along with another prodigy from my class and the Academy's Special Forces trainees.
As is the way of the military, we weren't given warning, we were simply roused from our sleep in the middle of the night, and given ten minutes to pack our bags and make our way to the landing craft that was about to arrive at the Academy.
The landing craft that was sent for us was very nearly a relic itself, a fuel burning, thruster driven metal box designed for simplicity of construction and efficiency of material usage, not comfort or aerodynamics.
The power of the craft as it launched back into orbit pressed me back into the seat so strongly that I couldn't even lean forward, and the gravity plating in the landing craft was a well known bad joke among Mecha Pilots. In orbit, it was often better if it failed entirely so that you could float to your cockpit instead of climbing.
The Mecha have magnetic locks that hold them to the metal floor, you see. So, they're not going anywhere, but with the ones we were using during that mission being between five and ten metres tall, it was a long climb to the top hatches.
As soon as we made it out of the atmosphere, the landing craft went straight to one of our military transporters, a venerable war relic known as the Abraham Kepler.
Us students were shown to a common room with security restraints for the crew, and the ship went to Warp.
Now, let me tell you, that was an experience that I would prefer never to experience again.
The Warp Drive system that the Abraham Kepler used was millennia old, and repurposed for the ship from an older model of vessel. Because it wasn't even designed for the ship that it was in, there was a distinct lurch when the ship activated the Warp Drive, and you had to be seated and strapped in, or you would be thrown on the floor.
It was common for passengers to get violently sick from the experience, and getting used to the sensation was a sign of experience among veteran soldiers."
The crowd was listening in rapt attention, and Nico compiled a small montage to go with it, of the box shaped landers, the Abraham Kepler, and the old pattern Corvette Class Mecha.
"That is incredible. How brutalistic and raw." One of the wealthy guests gushed.
"Don't they value their soldiers' comfort? I mean, if they're off to a hostile engagement, they should be mentally focusing on a catered, stress-free environment to prevent mental fatigue, right?" One of the others asked.
Nico burst into laughter and shook her head.
"That's not at all how the human armies work. They live in a constant state of stress and focus. The wars we held against hostile alien species, and invasive forces like the Klem often led to hundreds of thousands of casualties per planet. Soldiering isn't an extended career path in a galaxy at war." She explained.
"Oh? How long does the average soldier serve in combat for? Fifteen years, maybe twenty, before lingering injuries become too numerous?" The guest asked.
"For the Mecha Pilots, who are the elite of our force, roughly half of them are still serving at the end of a ten-year term." Nico agreed.
"What about the rank and file soldiers? If the elite have such a high dropout rate, how do the rank and file fare?" The short man asked, with his third eye blinking rapidly as he tried to assimilate the information.
"Infantry soldiers have an average life expectancy of thirty-four days in combat."
The parents all stared at her in shock.
"How do you even sustain a conflict like that?" Someone finally asked.
"By adding more troops from a thousand different worlds, of course. The fate of an infantry soldier is a rough one, but they spend most of their time peacekeeping or in transit between conflicts, and not actively fighting hostile species. If the unit loses too many people, they will be removed from combat duty and retired early." Nico explained.
"Well, that's a bit horrific. Are there files on the topic in the ship's records?" One of the Innu mothers asked.
"Of course. We have historical documentaries, technical documents on technological progression, dramas and action films that portray the cruel side of combat from a soldier's perspective." Nico informed her, before sending over her list of recommendations.
