Shadow Space Chronicles 1: The Fallen Race by Kal Spriggs Page A

be isolated to a few of the lower enlisted, but Ensign Tascon had proved him wrong.  Lucius had felt more than a little satisfaction to slam the Ensign, especially after the initial counseling had failed to yield the desired results.
    The Faraday recruits had issues of their own.  Right off he had to release seven well-trained but inadequate officers.  The three men and four women had shown potential, but they treated the Ghornath with disgust, and handled the other non-human recruits with contempt. They all had prior service with other militaries, five from the Colonial Republic and two from the Centauri Confederation.  Two non-human Wrethe received discharges as well, because of their inability to follow orders from their officers.
    Then again, perhaps trying to integrate Wrethe went a little too far , Lucius acknowledged.  The two meter tall, bipedal aliens were known to be both territorial and violently individualistic.  Still, from what he had heard, they functioned well in hand-to-hand combat and Major Proscia had been optimistic about their use in boarding operations.
    Faraday had a large refugee population, which hadn’t found it easy to integrate into their new home.  With Faraday’s unfair policies towards immigrants, Lucius’s recruiting went well.  Many recruits signed on for several years, and some signed on ‘for the duration.’
    Lucius looked over at his new Chief Petty Officer.  Chief Winslow’s colorful military background in the Nova Roma Imperial Fleet lasted thirty years, right up to the day he shot and killed his last Captain on his homeworld of Gio Toro.  A wanted file remained on the ship’s computer for his capture and return to face a court martial.
    The War Shrike hadn’t had a real Chief Petty Officer since the death of Chief Lagrano.  Lucius, reading Chief Winslow’s records, had had initial doubts.  On meeting the proper, polished, and professional Chief, he no longer had any.
    Whatever pushed the man to murder his Captain, three decades ago, lay in the past.
    Other military refugees, some of them deserters, others less so, also bolstered his new recruits.  Major, now Colonel, Proscia, had even ventured to smile when a platoon of Centauri Marines showed up, en masse, to volunteer.  Lucius didn’t doubt they’d done mercenary work to keep themselves fed since the dissolution of the Centauri Confederation.  They had a hungry look about them, however, that suggested they’d refused more than one unfair or illegal offer... and suffered for it.
    Lucius shook off his thoughts, and turned back to the simulation monitor.  The recruits had finished their basic training and they'd begun their training at their ratings.  The newly commissioned officers had also received enough training that they notionally knew their duties.  Lucius had felt it time for an evaluation of their progress.  Throughout the ship, he'd integrated the trainees with his more experienced crew.
    He'd split them into several smaller crews, in the simulator, though, so that the inexperienced officers would have less to manage and so that the crews would have more individual responsibility.
    He winced internally at the statistics.  The gunnery stations had taken severe losses in the the War Shrike' s previous engagements and that was where he had the least amount of experienced personnel to train the recruits.  Lucius plugged into the communications of both crews, watching the simulated battle on his console’s holovisual unit.
    “ Port broadside on third quadrant target A.  Lock…. Fire!” the acting Commanding Officer shouted.  A third of the shots actually struck the computer-generated target.  One well-aimed shot actually slipped through the defense screens.  “She’s altering course, maintain gun lock, we’ll match.  Prepare to roll ship, rolling.”  The barrel roll that the acting CO threw the destroyer into kept the enemy ship in effective firing range, but it also left his rear harder