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. We’ve already sunk a couple of trillion credits into the sucker, so we have.”
The name definitely stirred Commander Thema’s interest. She’d heard it whispered in the hallowed halls of the Naval Institute. And each time there’d been hissed warnings and nasty looks at the underling who had made so bold.
“What the clot is Project Demeter?” she asked. “Some kind of super weapon?”
Again, Ian made with the quick looks for snoops.
“You’ve hit the nail square, so you have, lass,” he said. “It’s the ultimate weapon. And that’s why we need the likes of you, Little Mike.”
Then he leaned close and whispered, “It’s the stuff that armies march on, he said. “It’s food, we’re talking about, lass. Food.”
* * * *
Now, as the HMS Salamis approached Punta Royal, Commander Thema was grinding her teeth in frustration.
How could she been such a fool to fall into the sweet-talking Irishman’s trap? She should have said no. Capital N. Capital O. NO! Clot you, mate, and the Emerald Isle pony you rode in on. Over my dead body. No—over YOUR dead body.
“I hate this,” Commander Thema said to no one in particular. “Hate it, hate it, hate it.”
Jumbe, her first mate, gave her a pitying look. Glowing red eyes gleaming in his dark face.
“Maybe not so bad, bosi,” he said. “We go quick like. Samu. Samu. You give order. We get out of here and go the clot home. Tomorrow have a nice drinki and forget about it. What you say, bossi?”
Thema sighed. “I know, I know,” she said. “But it’s just not my nature, Jumbe. This is going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my professional life.
“Come now, bossi,” Jumbe said. “What about that time on Zeta 6? The Watki had us big time surrounded. No way out, the skipper said. He wanted to run, such a coward he. You only first lieutenant then. Me, a warrant nobody. But you busted his face. Took command and then we busted the Watki. Big time, we busted them, bossi. Big time.”
Thema couldn’t help but laugh. She thought she’d end up in the brig over that little escapade. Instead they gave her a medal and a promotion.
But memory’s joy was short lived as the reality of her present circumstances piled back on.
“Yeah, but now I’ve gotta eat drakh and bark at the moon, Jumbe. Gotta do what that skipper wanted to do. What the clot was that drakh head’s name?”
“Rogan, he name, bossi. Captain Rogan.”
“Rogan! That’s it. Rogan.”
She glared up at the monitor as the pirate formation came into view. She snorted at the unprofessional pincer they’d set up. Sure, there were a lot of them. She was outnumbered big time.
So what?
Any other time and place she’d have blown them all out of existence. Turned those motley group of ships into comet dust so fast it’d be like bacon through a starved Xypaca.
Instead she had to do a Rogan.
And turn tail and run.
And as Little Mike—veteran of many a bloody battle—ordered retreat she thought: “Clottin’ Mahoney!”