They Asked the Human's Kill Count as a Joke — He Answered | HFY Sci-Fi

"What's the Kill Count for One Earth Soldier?" The Cadets Laughed Until They Saw the Footage The question was designed to embarrass him. Cadet Zeth — fourth-year, top of the rankings, Rel'kari — asked it with perfect timing in front of the entire seminar class. "What would the kill count be for a typical Earth soldier at this stage of service? For context." Several cadets smiled. Kael Dross looked at the questioner with calm steady eyes and said: "Do you want the frontier service number or the total?" He said the total. The smiles stopped. "That's not possible," Zeth said. "The verification is in my admissions file," Kael said. "Most of the engagements have footage." Instructor Tharen had been waiting for this moment since the second week. He had already pulled the files. He pressed the display control. What followed was forty minutes of documentary footage from four years of frontier service — field-recording grain, real environments, actual engagements. Case study after case study in asymmetric doctrine applied under conditions the class had only ever studied theoretically. By the fourth case study the classroom was silent. By the eighth, Cadet Zeth was not smiling. He was doing a calculation. When the footage ended, Zeth stopped at the door. "The frontier service number and the total are different," he said. Kael said: "By about sixty." Tharen wrote three words in the performance record that evening. Already teaching it. This is an original HFY Sci-Fi story about a question asked to embarrass — and what happens when the answer is forty minutes of verified footage. 🔔 Subscribe for weekly HFY Sci-Fi stories 👍 Like if "By about sixty" was the perfect answer 💬 Comment: Did you expect Tharen to have the footage ready? #HFY #HFYSciFi #HumanityFightingBack #MilitaryAcademy #HFYBestStories