Hey Hunpecked it's always great to hear from you
I really learn a lot from your critique of my story and it helps me find what i need to correct or go into more depth on.
Yeah I figure that since the "Ships of the Line" of the Icaran Royal navy only engaged in full on battles since you obviously wouldn't dispatch a squadron of your most powerful battleships to capture a few smugglers. There had to be someone to do the "scut work" that had no glory, or "honor" to it, they simply do the ugly job no one wants like stopping smugglers or pirates.
As far as the young crew, Icaran society is not quite like ours in the regards to children in the work force, they are considered adult at 13 and are usually pretty well educated by then (remember the advanced schooling techniques I mentioned way back)additional schooling from that age on is pretty much what we would consider "college" level and higher. They also perform less "tech related" jobs aboard ship while they undergo training, for example they are mess cooks, gun crews, "janitors" that sort of thing. It also depends greatly one which Icaran world they come from.
For example on a world like Sparta it's actually SAFER aboard a navy warship then it is back at home (which is also oddly enough why the bulk of the Spartan soldiers are women) so the naval recruitment age on Sparta is 14. Many worlds are like this as well as it is on some worlds seen as merely a further education, or even a right of passage.
On many core worlds like Icara, Brandenburg and the like the minimum recruitment age would often vary, usually to around 16-17 years old.
As far as "jailbait" goes, well that's hard because as far as being attracted to a 14 year old "child" goes, well I think any adult whether aboard a warship or not would know better then to do something with her/him, remember there are fully adult crewmembers aboard ship it's not like they'd go months with nothing to look at but pre-teen girls/boys.