Every species in the officer program looked at each other as they let the announcement settle in…. Well all except the Vanid of course, who were waiting for the speech to end so they could get started fighting each other for the position of CEO. Adam was internally panicking, though as other species didn't understand human body language, it could only be seen in his eyes. Adam had no idea how they were looking at him, but that didn't stop the stress.
Gramu had more things to say but almost everyone ignored the rest of her speech as they all made plans. Some would plan to subordinate themselves to the Vanid, others who had more ambition would try to prove themselves so the Vanid in charge would respect them and give them a good position after their training.
"So to begin, we will test your physical abilities so you can decide whether you want your pay to be deducted for security," Gramu ended her little speech with an announcement of the beginning of their training which did catch the attention of everyone. Adam finally escaped his panicked wondering how he would survive, the stress reduced as he had something to work towards.
The training grounds the future officers walked into were quickly being drained of the other soldiers, almost all kinds of species were exercising before they were told to leave. The vast array of exercise equipment wowed everyone other than the Vanid. Being from lower social stations, many of them hadn't had access to the true berth of the conquered species in the Empire, and how many ways exercise equipment could be made.
"So, as you can see we have sections of this training facility of every species onboard. A personal trainer will arrive for each species to test out your race-specific capabilities after we test your general statistics."
Gramu gave a short wave over to the race-track, the first test.
Adam lined up at the starting line, stress still building inside him. He could feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins as the race began, it was probably the only reason he beat a few of the other species in the race despite being an intellectual who spent little time on his fitness.
He could tell that some of the larger species were surprised a creature like him, purported to be the weakest, could be so fast; especially since one could barely see muscle on him.
As the courses went on though, there was one individual who drew the eyes of the rest of the applicants. It was one of those 16 armed brutes who used his many arms to outpace most of the others physically, barely losing to the Vanid in their advantageous fields. This all came to a head in the difficult terrain run,where Adam also showed his best results in a test. As many of the species were predator races due to their domineering nature, they were not designed for maneuverability. Even the agile Vanid had the issue of their size and were not able to squeeze through small gaps.
Adam and the arm-ape; he decided to call it until he found out its real name; moved through the terrain very well, the ape swinging using its arms to fit through the higher up holes and Adam vaulting over, rolling under and generally getting through any medium to small-sized holes. Adam came in second, the arm-ape obviously getting first, where he found out it was called Aarun.
The rest of the tests went by without much to say, Adam had good accuracy but couldn't line the sights up on a gun to save his life, and when he got his verdict…
"Completely subpar, if you got onto a boarding fight you'd be little better than cannon fodder."
That hit hard, especially since his fleeing capability was his best skill when he looked at the report.
"I would suggest forgetting the option of any personal weapon and outfit a combat slave to protect you during combat."
The female sent the recommended course of action over to his personal pad. It was connected to the intranet and he had received the officer-recruit clearance allowing him to access a few of the facilities on the capital ship, including its alternate pay program.
He did as he was suggested too, there was no way he could learn to fight well enough with the rest of the training he would receive, and so took out a pay cut for the protection.
What he didn't expect was that it was basically a slave purchase loan from the fleet itself. He also requested a high-level translator, as having to deal with the cultural and biological differences of as many species as he'd be dealing with, it was almost necessary to have.
With that though, he sat on the bed in his private quarters to think about his next move. He was subpar when it came to any sort of on the ground leadership role, and if he tried, would probably die with little chance of retribution. He would definitely need to seek a job on the capital ship.
Picking up his pad again, Adam began to scroll through all the legal requirements of Steel Soul fleet to know what conduct he and his troops had to undertake in order to be respectable in the fleet. He had already been briefed that he would be getting a small group to lead during his training period and he would have it expand as he improved.
When he was done, Adam walked over to the room that his recruits shared to see an interesting sight.
"Could you stop staring at us like that?" Was the first thing Adam heard as he approached the bunk room for all of his subordinates, and that outburst alone told him all he needed to know about the situation. A predator and a group of prey was a dysfunctional group.
"I'm hungry okay! I'm not the one who decided to skip breakfast just to meet our new commanding officer, blame the officers for this situ-" Adam tried to enter the room casually but as the door opened everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at him.
"And we got the human, just great," the person complaining about being hungry spoke, a Shu woman in standard uniform who threw her arms up in the air at the complete bad luck she had gotten.
"Why does it have to be him, I would've preferred anyone but him!"
"Now don't talk like that to an officer!" A Hron called out to the Shu, her voice itself made it seem like she was far older. Her large build and massive arms easily held her body up as she saluted Adam.
"Welcome Sir, my name is Knud. The Hron beside me is Jin, the-"
"I'll introduce myself, thank you very much," the Shu cut off the motherly sounding Hron.Adam e really appreciated the amount of context the advanced translator gave him.
"My name is Rutemia and I won't let you throw us in the trash just because you thought it would be a nice idea to go beyond your station," the strong-willed Shu said, already showing her prejudice against humans he still hadn't saluted him yet. Rutemia would be a very rebellious one in this group, though to everyone's surprise Adam met her gaze head-on. They knew that he was an omnivore, so he should've been intimidated.
"Well, although I dislike your attitude Rutemia, I will make sure you not only succeed in your training under me, but that we will be the best group out there. But I thought I was getting four subordinates? Where is the last one?"
"Hiding in the top bunk. After he saw the look in Rutemia's eyes he hid as far away as he could get from her," the male Hron stated, his large hands pointing to the bed above the group.
Adam followed his hand to see a small fly-like creature crawl up to the edge to meet his commander, flinching at the look he received.
"H-hi, My name is Azadin. I'll do my best as a pilot, so please help me stay away from the predators," the little being said. Adam could tell that he wasn't timid, just extremely afraid at the predatorial looks he got.
"He lived on a core world where his family constantly sold members to the Vanid, so he doesn't deal very well with creatures that would want to eat him," the seeming mother of the group clarified to their officer as the small creature retreated to the corner of the bed.
"Now that the useless introductions are out of the way," the Shu spoke up once again , getting dirty looks from the others as well as muttered complaints, "how are you going to make us anything with your race's pathetic record in the Empire?"
If only this girl's hard-headed determination could be directed towards her work. Adam could at least try.
"Easy," Adam answered as he closed the door and looked at all of them, "I will be specializing you all for your job as fighter pilots."
This caused a collective groan from everyone. They hadn't known which part of the fleet they had been assigned to till now, and half of this group were hardly fit for it.
"Without looking anything up, I know that you," he pointed to the Shu, "are very agile and have great reaction times, so I'll be training you to be able to pilot a tier 2 striker. You will be the head of the group, going in and disrupting enemy formations."
He finished the first soldiers' position and quickly moved onto the next.
"You two," he pointed to the Hron who had a poor affinity for finicky things like piloting, "I don't have much on your capabilities yet, but I'm setting you as harassers, you'll be in slower ships that are more armored and have They're outfitted with specialised weapon ports, not designed to dedicatedly destroy ships but to slow them down, disable their weaponry, things to mess up their plans after they've been scrambled by Rutemia."
"And last but not least, Azadin," he called out.
"Your race's sight and multitasking abilities are amazing, so you'll be serving two functions. As support for the others, you'll be helping them prioritize targets and such, and as heavy ordnance. You will be in one of the most armed fighters and it'll be your job to target any ship that is getting dangerously close to destroying any of your allies. You'll have to push your accurate multitasking to get the most out of the ship, but if you do you will be devastating to any enemy you come across."
As Adam ended his little speech about the roles of each of his subordinates, they all looked at him with skepticism.
"Of course you'd attempt to get us on tier 2 ships," the shu complained already, "some soldiers spend 5 years trying to get a tier 2 license and you want us to get them in two months? How do you even expect to do that?"
"Well it may be changed due to the training research I'll be conducting. I will be changing your training regimen to more suit our goals, and the reason I'm focusing so heavily on getting you guys tier 2 licenses is so that at the end of our testing period you four will do well in the practical examination, and whoever takes over will serve you guys well… That and I am practically executed if I don't become CEO so I am trying everything I can to avoid that fate."
His statements definitely caught the group off guard. His initial focus was to make his recruits stand out and gain the praise for their achievements and not his own. After admitting his fate, Adam knew he walked into the potential jaws of every Vanid officer on the ship.
Rutemia tried to keep up her tough act and scoff… it was rare to see someone so unafraid of death, to face it head-on with a look of determination; even if the three prey species took it as hunger; caused the boy to be more confident in her eyes.
"Fine then, I'll let you try. But if you try to mess around because of your sense of superiority I will make you regret it," she walked up to him and gave a soft punch to the male's stomach, but the way her impaler (he forgot what they were called) touched his ribs was more than a little threatening, so he stood to the side and let the woman walk away.
"Don't worry about her. All predator species just need a display of strength to show them who should be in charge. Just exercise your rights as an officer and she should fall into line," the male Hron interjected when she left, wanting her to actually be afraid for once.
"If I want to be a tyrant," Adam replied, his disgust, and the meaning of the word ironically got translated as close to vanid for the two creatures, which confused them.
"Well nice to meet you Gnud, Jin, Azadin. I'll speak to you when your training begins."