The Koleska adapted quickly to the human version of dancing, instead of their preference to hum the harmony along with the band. They did consider it a bit wild and overly physical, but once they saw that the new arrivals were having so much fun, they slowly began to join in and give it a try.
The tables were set for the formal part of the dinner according to rank and position, an attempt by the Koleska to get the groups to mingle. Before the party started, they weren't sure how it was going to go, but by the time the food was served, Commander Yuri was already planning to put the medical bay on speed dial just for the Pilots who were too enthusiastic in their acceptance of human culture and would be suffering from hangovers and exhaustion tomorrow during training.
"Do humans recover that much faster than we do? I know many species have incredible healing powers." Yuri asked Nico, who was seated at the second seat on his left, next to his own Subcommander.
"Not at all. They will be suffering through their entire training program tomorrow. But they view the chance for socialization to be worth the tradeoff, and we have some medicines that help keep them going well enough to finish their duties for the day." Nico chuckled.
The Station Subcommander laughed and nudged Yuri in the side. "See, maybe the old stories were the true way."
The other humans at the table looked a bit confused, while the Koleska dignitaries looked a bit embarrassed at his words. Max scanned his thoughts and found the reference that he was talking about. The Koleska used to be both much more physically intimate and sexually open in their distant past, but it had led to overpopulation, and so changes were made at the social level.
"They're referring to the species Hippie Era," Max informed the other human leaders, who all turned to smirk at the Subcommander.
"Don't worry about it, son. Our species didn't just have an era like that. Some of our people liked it so much that they splintered off from society to keep living that way. They're generally harmless and certainly friendly, so we never saw a good reason to make them stop." The Battalion Commander for the new forces joked.
He didn't understand the Koleska need to know things before he spoke, but once the barrage of questions about how that worked and how the groups functioned side by side began, Max could tell that he regretted sympathizing with the Subcommander.
It wasn't for creative purposes. They just felt an intense need to understand how a society could function like that so that they could fit it within their understanding of society as a whole. Nico thought that it was a bit like meeting Giants with the personality of the Innu. They wanted to know everything about everything, but not for some creative purpose, just so that they could record it in their notes.
After the meal, everyone lingered around the tables, and some of the larger groups pulled them together to create a larger group with similar interests while the Command group and the Dignitaries retired to a second room.
"Just like at home, the troops are more relaxed when the boss isn't there breathing over their shoulder. Now that we're gone, they can really begin to relax. It's Koleska tradition that the Commanders don't go back into the main party after this point unless there is a complaint or call to duty." Max explained to the other human leaders.
"I like it. We always did it so that we could get into the good liquor without the rank and file getting jealous." The Battalion Commander laughed.
The Ministers hummed in approval, and glass decanters were brought out by the staff, along with naturally grown crystal glasses.
"Some things our species feel very similarly about." The Defence Minister laughed as the first round of drinks was poured.
The rest of the night was spent on basic niceties as the new Battalion's leaders got to know the Koleska dignitaries and the way that things had been going here. For the most part, it was all mundane, but there was some good news tucked in there as well.
Since there had been fewer attacks on the station's crew and the planet after the Arisen decided that Nico and Max should be barred from combat, they had managed to send almost an entire planet's graduating class for the month to other battlefronts, getting more highly trained troops into combat, and improving the situation everywhere.
If they could keep that up, the Koleska Government had hope that they could fight the Arisen to a stalemate and force them to retreat and find another target.
That might suck for whoever got the brunt of the Arisen Army's wrath after they decided to leave the Koleska alone, but so far, nobody had managed to stand against the mysterious fleet of seemingly immortal beings.
Without any way to tell them apart, and with all of their forces vanishing after the battle, the persistent rumour that they were actually an energy-based species made temporarily corporeal persisted all throughout the region, along with the fearful suggestion that they might not ever actually die and that you might be fighting the same force the entire war.
The thought was terrifying to many species in the region, and that terror had made into an urban legend of sorts.
Once they got past the disturbing parts of the situation, the human leadership had a great idea that they thought the Koleska would like.
They had a lot of avid gamers on their ships, so if they linked the systems between them and the Academy, they could hold live tournaments and PVP battles to help train the students. The VR simulation was good but predictable to some degree because of the set difficulty. But facing random live opponents could cause huge swings in difficulty and tactics, which would help the students once they got to the real world.
Plus, the VR and training systems were made by Nico, so they were directly compatible with the systems on the Cygnus ships.
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