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

curls,not only unglossed but unbrushed. His stylists would not be able to put it back into ringlets now even if he gave them the chance. He was wearing off the peg clothes, too. They were notably quieter than the kind of thing he’d worn before; as Alex had suspected all along, his insistence on wearing bizarre combinations, clashing colour and style, had been rebellion against the team of valets who kept trying to dress him in silk suits as Papa preferred. Now he really was free to choose for himself, he’d opted for a grey sweatshirt, lightweight sports pants and soft-soled deck shoes. He would, Alex knew, soon change into the shipboard rig he was allowed to wear without insignia, blending in with the crew as much as he could.
    As he spoke, Davie glanced at an array of screens showing footage from around the ship. Shion could be seen working there with a couple of techs, stripping out one of the fighters’ telemetry systems. ‘I don’t suppose...’ he looked at Alex, saw the answer on his face, and sighed.
    ‘Sorry,’ Alex said. He understood how Davie felt. He was, after all, a more than competent pilot and engineer, skipper of a yacht that was actually bigger and faster than the frigate, and rather better informed, even, than some of their own officers. The newcomers were having to be shown some of the Heron’s hot tech, systems they were testing as part of their R&D remit, whereas Davie already knew it inside out.
    Alex, however, remained immovable. He did not doubt Davie’s knowledge or ability. It wasn’t even that he was a civilian – suitably qualified civilians with the necessary security clearance could help out with tech on a working passage basis. The sticking point for Alex was that Davie was just fifteen years old. He understood entirely how maddening that had to be for someone of Davie’s intellect and abilities. He owned and ran major corporations and had been an accredited goodwill ambassador for the Diplomatic Corps since he turned fourteen. It was just downright ridiculous, as he pointed out, that Alex would not so much as allow him to change a pin chip on the Heron.
    But there it was, and in this, at least, Alex was not prepared to bend the rules at all. Davie might have become an adult, legally, at fourteen, but he would not become eligible for military service till he turned sixteen. The same rule applied to civilians working aboard – Kate Naos, a maths prodigy working with the Second, had been obliged to wait several months till she was old enough to come aboard and carry out her research. Alex, therefore, would only allow Davie to travel with them as a juvenile. He was stretching a point, in that, as far as he was prepared to go, by not following pre-sixteen rules in appointing an officer to be Davie’s official guardian.
    ‘Tuh!’ said Davie, but obviously knew there was no point arguing about it. Both of them knew, after all, that he had no official right to be aboard the ship, and that Alex might well reconsider that situation if Davie was becoming a nuisance.
    Davie was aboard, in fact, at the suggestion of the First Lord. Dix Harangay had told Alex that he might take Mr North along with them, at his own discretion, if Mr North was willing to continue his role as an exo-ambassador with Shion. The Stepeasy would be accompanying them, too, with Davie’s ship to hand as a fall-back just in case Shion should decide at any time that she had had enough of being with the Fourth and wanted to do something else. Alex, Davie and Shion were all happy with that, as were the Diplomatic Corps. The only people not happy with it were Cerdan Jennar and others who felt that allowing a fifteen year old any kind of involvement in diplomatic affairs was beyond even the outrage they’d come to expect from the Fourth.
    They were not the least appeased in that to be informed, under nine ack alpha clearance, that Davie North was uniquely qualified to support Shion, since they had similar physical and