Sten and the Pirate Queen by Allan Cole

Author:Allan Cole [Cole, Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction;sci-fi;adventure;space opera;war
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2019-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

LITTLE MIKE

It was all Mahoney’s fault.

At any other time in her long and distinguished career, Commander Michele Thema would have been walking on air and singing praises to the gods.

Her years of effort were finally paying off. She’d worked her way up the long ladder of succession, going from the rust buckets of her youth to commanding fighting ships. And now she’d landed the plum assignment as the handpicked leader of a special, top secret Imperial mission.

So why was her mood so far down she’d forgotten which was up?

That drakh head Mahoney had assured her that she was the personal choice of the Eternal Emperor himself to take charge of the convoy escorting a multi-trillion credit agworld named Demeter to its new home in the pirate-riddled frontier zone.

She was a small woman, not much over one and a half meters high and maybe 50 kilos in her bare feet. But she had more nerve than most beings twice her size and was so fierce in battle that she was known far and wide as Little Mike.

She was instinctively suspicious of Mahoney’s offer and tried to pass on the job, saying that others were surely more qualified than she was for such a task.

“Don’t be so humble,” Ian said over dinner at a posh Prime World restaurant.

“There are only two or three people who could come even close to taking charge of this mission and bringing it to a successful conclusion.”

“That’s very flattering, general,” she’d replied, “but I’m happy where I am now.”

“Please, lass,” Mahoney said. “Call me Ian.”

Then he’d raised a hand summoning a waiter for another bottle of that Old World wine that must’ve cost a king’s ransom.

Commander Thema groaned at the memory of that boozy wooing session. The scene played in her mind now so clearly it was if she’d boarded one of those time machines of fiction and was transported back to that night of soft lights, obsequious servers, exotic dishes, and heady wines.

* * * *

“Look, Ian. I’ve got a new ship—a top of the line battlecruiser—and a dream crew. I personally picked every swinging scrote on board from the lowest engineroom swamper to my first mate, someone I’ve been grooming for five years.”

“That’s exactly the kind of expertise we need, so it is,” Ian said, filling her glass to the brim. “I can’t stress the importance of this mission enough. There isn’t a thing on my platter—or the Emperor’s platter for that matter—that matches this in importance.

“We’ve already committed so many bloody resources that if it goes wrong and blows up in our gobs we’ll be the laughing stock of the Empire, so we will. Our enemies will dine out for centuries bragging about the fast one they pulled on our boss.”

Thema frowned. “But from what you’ve told me it’s just a convoy assignment,” she said. “A newly minted skipper could handle the job.”

“It’s not any old convoy job, lass,” Ian pressed. He glanced around, as if checking for snoops, and leaned forward.

In a lowered voice he said, “This is the clotting Project Demeter we’re talking about, here.

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