The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) by Edmond Barrett Page A

had a chance to do as much exercise as she would have liked.
    Most of the Dauntless ’s flight crews were in the gym along with a few other members of the crew. But aside from heavy breathing, the room was silent. The cause was in one corner of the gym, exercising on one of the rowing machines. Even as he worked the machine, Commander Dati’s eyes swept the room and stopped on Alanna. Aware of his gaze, she wiped the back of her neck and took a very slow drink of water.
    “Are you done, Miss Shermer?” Dati boomed in a sarcastic tone.
    Alanna glanced around the silent room.
    “Yes, sir, I am,” she replied, before getting up and walking out. She could have done with more time, but equally she could see several of her own flight crew were pushing themselves too hard. If exercise was necessary, over-exercise was dangerous. But once one person left the gym, others would quickly follow. Dati’s displeasure, however, would focus on the first one out. But she could take that.
    Pausing briefly to pull on her flight suit, she climbed up and out of the centrifuge, then made her way to Dubious ’s hangar. Schurenhofer was sat in the pilot seat working her way down through the checklist. The deck crew signed off on a fighter when any maintenance work was done, but Alanna hadn’t lasted this long by relying on a signature. When you were out there on your own if something broke, it was your problem. Alanna worked her way round Dubious , checking control surfaces and thruster assemblies. Satisfied she pulled herself aboard.
    “Hello, Skipper,” Schurenhofer said as Alanna sat in. “Nearly done.”
    “Everything okay?”
    “So far: perhaps the age of miracles has not yet passed,” Schurenhofer replied. “How are things upstairs?”
    “Tense,” Alanna replied.
    “So everything’s normal then,” Schurenhofer grunted.
    “I have to say it, but this was not what I was expecting,” Alanna said as she stretched out. “I expected to find things tough here, but not like this. I have a bunch of newbie pilots that I have to shield from their own C.O.”
    “Yeah.”
    There had been numerous drills since Dauntless ’s hurried commissioning, some in the simulators but most in live flight. Considering the majority of the pilots were just out of training and strangers to each other, they weren’t doing badly. In fact, they’d started out pretty well. If a hanging focused the mind, then preparing for combat tempered that focus into something that could cut steel. But that wasn’t good enough for Dati. Each debriefing turned into an hour-long torrent of abuse as every tiny imperfection was put under a microscope and scorn heaped upon some unfortunate crewmember. Not yet into combat and Alanna could see morale dropping. She’d started speaking up, countering Dati and pointing out that many of the flaws he’d highlighted were irrelevant in the context of combat operations. She’d even dropped the odd clanger in simulations just to draw Dati’s wrath away from other members of her flight. Much as he might rage, there was one factor Dati couldn’t either ignore or dismiss. Alanna had over a year in frontline service. The fact she was still alive proved she knew her job.
    Dati wasn’t subjecting Udaltsov’s flight to the same treatment though. It wasn’t his fault really. With a couple of extra years of service on her, he seemed to have military obedience more thoroughly rooted in him and hadn’t yet managed to get his head round the idea that a superior officer was someone you had to work around.
    “Heard something interesting about the good Commander,” Schurenhofer said as she ticked the last box on the checklist.
    “Oh?”
    “He was stationed on the Yorktown when the war started.”
    “Well that’s bullshit,” Alanna said dismissively.
    When the Nameless started their war on humanity it had been with a surprise attack on the Fleet base at Baden. In a day of disasters, the Yorktown was one that stood out. Caught at