Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) by S J MacDonald Page A

virtuoso performance. Davie was having fun improvising percussion around her and the busker’s jamming session. Quite a crowd was gathering. The Diplomatic Corps wanted Alex’s advice as to whether they should intervene.
    Alex told them no. Shion might be happy to stay there for hours making music with her new friend, but Alex had a good understanding both of Davie North’s lack of musicality and his very low boredom threshold. They would be on their way, Alex said, within ten minutes. And he was right, too. It was just a few minutes later that Shion had sent Alex another of her enthusiastic messages, telling him that she and Davie had been performing music for people. The busker had evidently insisted on giving them some of the money people had flashed to his collecting beacon.
    Alex had burst out laughing again, at that. Davie North was one of the wealthiest people in the League – he owned, amongst many other corporations, ISiS Corps and Vetris Shipyards. Shion had also been given a Diplomatic Corps credit card with a million dollar a year spending allowance. She had never used it, preferring to live on her Sub-lt’s salary, but neither of them, for sure, stood in any need of the twenty dollars the busker had pressed upon them. Their naïve delight in using that money to buy themselves lunch on the train had made Alex laugh, but with such a look of warm affection on his face that Tina had been amazed.
    She had discovered, since, that stories about his warmth amongst friends, and his wicked sense of humour, were if anything understated. He was, indeed, an entirely different man in private. He had talked to her a lot, too, about many aspects of life in the Fourth, including his own account of how Shion had come to serve with them and what it was like having her aboard. So she felt almost as if she had already got to know Shion before they met.
    The feeling was obviously mutual. As Alex introduced them and they shook hands, they exchanged the happiest of grins. For Shion, this was real , her ultimate accolade, being given the same responsibility as any other Sub would be. For Tina, it was her first exo-encounter. And for all the differences in their genomes and cultures, the tall, elegant alien and the stocky human girl recognised a kindred spirit in each other, the spirit of adventure that had drawn both of them to this ship.
    ‘I’m your oppo,’ Shion told her, and with obvious understanding of the importance of formal and informal name usage, asked, ‘Is it Tinika, or Tina?’
    ‘Tina,’ the cadet said, with a tone that made it clear that she never used her full given name, by choice. Then she added, with a hopeful look, ‘ma’am.’
    Shion laughed.
    ‘Shion,’ she corrected. She had adopted the name ‘Shionolethe’ upon coming to the League, leaving behind her the name and titles of her life on Pirrell. It meant ‘free spirit in flight’ in her home language. Some bureaucrat had subsequently amended that to Shion Olethe in the faked ID they’d created for her, but nobody in the Fourth ever called her Sub-lt Olethe. ‘Have you found your quarters and unpacked and all that?’ she queried.
    ‘Yes, thanks.’ Alex had given her ten minutes, on coming aboard, to find her cabin, unpack, shower and change into shipboard rig. She would have to do the official orientation and safety tour, shortly, along with all the other newcomers. That was a pure formality, though, since she was already familiar with every aspect of the ship from the most detailed tech-specs to every complexity of the watch and quarter bill.
    ‘All right – we’ll catch up later,’ Shion promised, explaining, ‘I have to go do the fighter checks.’
    The Heron was the only frigate in the Fleet to carry fighters. They had three of them, swarm-class fighters docked to specially constructed bays on the ship’s belly. Shion was their flight commander. She would be itching to get back at the controls of her favourite fighter, the one