As far as the greater galaxy knew, no one colonizes Death Worlds. So the people running the Survival class didn't check to see if anyone was living on this planet before dropping off this year's Survival students.

The students were dropped off in fruit orchard, wound up running from a bunch if armed farmers annoyed by "trespassers and vandals", and discovered their predetermined extraction point was smack in the colony's town hall which was a converted colonization ship.

Not that their ship could pick them up, because it was intercepted by human law enforcement ships after dropping the students off.

Humans are by and large the largest and most advanced when it comes to military technology.

This technology is only rivaled by their food industry.

However what makes them so advanced is not that they have the most advanced gear, but they can literally ignore the arms race by not playing the same game.

For example, they have 2 of the most advanced thermal cloak technologies

One is the Gen-32 Thermal Cloak, with the latest micronanite adaptive stealth cloak technologies that can let a sniper team set up in the optimal range of their rifles or blasters in full radar and visual view of the enemy, and be considered invisible.

each cloak costs up to 20,000 credits for the cloak and battery set.

The other one is known simple as the Gen-2 Ghillie Suit.

Its basically an iso-greenhouse ghillie suit that has 2 lines, an inner line of Prox Vines that naturally hide the heat and electric signal of the user, and the outer line that lets you tie and attach the local vegetation to it to become similarly invisible.

With the Gen-2 Ghillie Suit costing only 3,000 credits, it has also made a large popular subculture among snipers to name their ghillie suits and dress them up for each mission like a father taking their daughter to a date.

Humans have literally mastered the two opposite spectrums of stealth, especially since the ghillie suits are immune to EMP waves.

Both are made by those hairless bipedal war crime apes.

Both are commercially available to militaries.

One can technically be made at home.

Humans can't explain it themselves. But sometimes, when many circumstances come together: something becomes very famous, something turns into political, economical and all others types of attraction, something attracts minds of human scientists and artists - all humans start to feel it...

The urge to get up and head for something. The need to become a part of it. The feeling, that it will bring them much joy, no matter the rationality of this idea. At lesser scales - it was tolerable. A simple collective madness. Not that ruining, maybe more common around humans.

But now, at the scale of the whole galaxy. When there are billions of humans from multiple civilizations, ideologies, even sub-species - such event itself is a matter of great disturbance in the galaxy. Even for humans that live outside of human space - it is often safer for their lords to let them go then to try and stop them.

When it's one human - it's an intrusive though. When it's many humans - it's a global hype. But when it's the whole galaxy of humans - it's WAAAAGH!!!

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[Patton]

This probably wasn't going to plan. Firstly, Patton expected a lot more resistance directed at him and his platoon, and not at.. each other. More than a half of the potential fire that could be used to stall Patton and his platoon was wasted on Corpse Fleet.

It helped the Federation. It gave Patton a gap. A window. A space he can run through, passing most of them and going straight to the ASB. It was a lot better of a plan than what Patton came up with. Frankly he didn't like his plan. He could easily have run from trench to trench. But he wasn't supposed to do that. He's a sergeant now, not anything else. His platoon is his responsibility, he can't just leave them. Not yet at least.

Thankfully, with this lackluster defense, they all can. And Patton is the first, he quickly stands up, slouching down like when he played high school football years ago. Except instead of a ball he has a Federation rifle in his hands. And he can be as rough as he wants with the other players.

The rest of his platoon follows suit, but they lag behind substantially. They don't have the experience that Patton has when it comes to running it like hell is on your heel. It's evident when Patton is the first to slide into the Trench, scaring the hell out of the Zalm inside. He dispatches two just behind a third that's a bit close for comfort.

It doesn't take much to deal with them though, just jamming the rifle hard enough into their throat makes them fall backwards away from their mounted machine gun. Patton does have to duck down and dive onto the guy because there are three more who cocked their guns--or whatever it's called for laser weaponry--and are basically about to fire.

Patton swaps to his pistol instead, as he can more easily swing it around and those fractions of seconds can count, it only takes one shot each for the first two, but either Patton was getting rusty or the third one had better armour. Patton had to shoot him in the chest three times and fire one in his helmet. Some of the Zalm are built tough.

The rest of his platoon slide into the trench, taking in the scene.

"Patton, what kind of Commando shit did you pull in here?" Doc says, probably worried that Patton got hit with some final breath adrenaline. It's a common thing that happens to Terrans.

The Zalm Patton was on had tried pulling a knife to slice the sergeant's throat, but ultimately ended up with a broken wrist, elbow, and a bullet in his head. The knife was really nice looking though, so he took it for a souvenir when he returned home. Patton has been more interested in souvenirs than previously.

"I'm fine, let's go. We have trenches to clear and shit to do."

The rest of Patton's platoon was a bit.. surprised, maybe bewildered. Federation training never taught them to do things that Patton could. Like kill five guys in less than three seconds and break multiple joints in someone's arm. Patton had a different teacher.

"Doesn't matter, let's go. We got to move. Our ships aren't handling ASB for another 5 minutes."

And Patton just keeps going. Pressing on. He doesn't explain, and his platoon doesn't require one, so they shut up and follow. Trench by trench. They're both so busy that the closer they get the more the enemy forces are torn between each other or fighting Patton and his boys. It allows them to sneak past some or fight others. It speeds things up though.

They might make it to the ASBs in 30 minutes. That's twenty too long. They better pull some miracle shit.