Warrl wrote:
Frankly, assuming basitin age exactly like humans, I'd be surprised if she's under 18.
Of course, that does leave the interesting genetics question of how the largest basitin we've seen is the mother of one of the smallest adult basitin we've seen. But then, we haven't seen the father.
We also know the the Basitian military recruits from an early age, as young as 5 years if not earlier. We also don't have a lot of information on the separation of enlisted and officers, if there is any, nor how many ranks they use.
It also seems the familiarity of the terms used to name the ranks we have seen have caused several assumptions to be made in regrades to the structure of the hierarchy.
What's my point? I wouldn't be surprised if "Lieutenant" was the average rank of early to mid teens in the Basitian army. A "Junior Officer", emphases on Junior. Plus, Intelligence tends to be (by head count) a smaller part of any army than Combat Troups, so there's less competition for promotion.