The Lion and the Unicorn

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  He put the thought out of his mind as they passed a giant viewport. Earth floated in front of him, a blue and green marble in an endless sea of stars. It took his breath away, even though he knew the planet was far from peaceful. The virus had infected large swathes of the planet’s population, unleashing a nightmare that might never end. The BBC maintained a positive outlook, as did most of the other national and international news channels, but he’d read the reports from more pessimistic analysts. The virus was steadily grinding the human race down. It was only a matter of time, some feared, before it broke through the defences and infected the remainder of the planet. There were even people talking about a mass evacuation of Earth.

  Which is logistically impossible, he thought, as they stopped outside a washroom. We’ve been shipping people off-world for the last century, and we’ve barely made a dent in the global population.

  Thomas took a breath and stepped into the washroom. The summons really had caught him by surprise. Admiral Onarina wasn’t known for being a martinet - she didn’t have a reputation for reprimanding officers who didn’t wear dress uniforms - but he simply hadn’t had time to find anything more than his academy tunic. He splashed water on his face, then stared at himself in the mirror. He’d had a lifetime of genetic tweaks - it was one advantage of being born into the aristocracy, then going into naval service - but he still looked old. His brown hair was starting to gray, his skin looked a bit wrinkled. He was almost tempted to visit a cosmetic surgeon and have everything tightened up, but he wasn’t that vain. He’d certainly never thought well of men - and women - who made themselves look like teenagers, even though they were parents and grandparents. They’d always seemed like people who’d never really grown up.

  He dismissed the thought with an irritated shrug as he brushed down his uniform, then headed for the hatch. Nancy looked as if she’d been waiting patiently, when he stepped into the corridor. Thomas was mildly impressed. It was unlikely she’d been remotely patient - he certainly hadn’t been, when he’d been at the beck and call of everyone who outranked him - but she hadn’t had a choice. He wondered, idly, if she had orders not to leave him alone for very long. It was unlikely - Nelson Base wasn’t a top-secret facility - but he had to admit it was possible. These days, friend could turn to foe very quickly. Who knew who might have been infected without even knowing it?

  “This way, sir,” Nancy said. “Admiral Onarina is waiting.”

  Thomas felt a little fresher as Nancy pressed her fingers against a keypad, then opened the hatch. Admiral Onarina’s office was surprisingly small, although still much larger than the ready room on his last command. A simple desk, a set of chairs, a comfortable sofa, a small cluster of pictures on one of the bulkheads … Admiral Onarina, it seemed, didn’t believe in luxury. Thomas approved. He’d met too many officers who seemed intent on turning their quarters into apartments that wouldn’t have shamed the Ritz.

  Admiral Onarina rose as he entered. “Thank you, Nancy,” she said. “Please bring us tea, then leave us.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Nancy said.

  “Please, take a seat,” Admiral Onarina said, as Nancy left. “We have much to discuss.”

  Thomas sat, studying Admiral Onarina with interest. She was taller than he was, with dark brown skin, long dark hair and darker eyes. The Order of the Garter was clearly emblazoned on her chest, a vote of confidence from the highest in the land. It was unlikely she’d reach First Space Lord - she didn’t have the family connections to climb to the very top - but no one doubted her competence. He wondered, idly, what she’d been doing since she’d reached flag rank. He’d heard rumours, but none had been substantiated.

  Nancy returned with a tray of tea and biscuits. Thomas allowed himself a flicker of relief as the midshipwoman placed the tray on the desk, then retreated. He wasn’t in trouble. The admiral wouldn’t have offered him a drink if she intended to rake him over the coals. He’d been fairly sure of it - he’d have known if he’d done something worth a bollocking from an admiral - but it was nice to have confirmation. And yet, why had he been summoned? He couldn’t think of a good reason. A promotion? It was unlikely Admiral Onarina had called to promote him personally.

  “I’m sorry for cutting your leave short,” Admiral Onarina said. She actually managed to sound regretful. “You’re being reassigned.”

  Thomas raised his eyebrows. He’d assumed he’d be spending at least another six months at the academy, if not remaining there for the rest of his career. It was quite possible, he’d thought, that the navy had seen the academy as the last stage of his career. He’d probably missed the chance to jump up to commodore, if not admiral. Family connections or not, there were limits. A stalled career might never be restarted.

  Admiral Onarina leaned forward. “The war is going poorly,” she said. “The blunt truth is that the enemy outnumbers us. In the last two major engagements, they brought enough ships to outnumber the defenders two-to-one. Intelligence believes they’re planning to continue thrusting towards us through at least two tramline chains, simultaneously. If they do, we will be unable to stop one thrust without giving the other thrust a chance to break through and wreak havoc.”

  Thomas sucked in his breath. He’d seen the reports - and he was a past master at reading between the lines, particularly when the news broadcasts were so vague it was brutally obvious they were concealing something - but he hadn’t realised it was so bad. The naval reports hadn’t been anything like so grim. And yet … he took a sip of his tea, trying to remain calm. Admiral Onarina wouldn’t have summoned him, a lowly captain, to discuss the war. She had something else in mind.

  “We cannot hope to out-produce the virus,” Admiral Onarina continued. “We’re pushing our industrial nodes to the limit, despite the risk of a general collapse, but it isn’t enough to keep the virus from crushing us through sheer numbers. Our only edge is that our technology is slightly - slightly - more advanced. We at Special Projects have been working hard to develop newer and better weapons systems that will give us a chance to turn the tide. We’ve had some successes, but - so far - we haven’t developed a silver bullet.”

  “I see,” Thomas said. “We may come up with something revolutionary …”

  “We may,” Admiral Onarina agreed, grimly. “There are problems, of course. The naval commanders don’t want to risk betting everything on an untried weapons system. They’re concerned about discovering, the hard way, that a brand-new invention works perfectly in the lab, but fails spectacularly in the real world. Quite a few of the concepts that have come out of Special Projects - and the Next Generation Weapons program - have proven unworkable, at least until the kinks are worked out. However, we have made a number of advances and improvements to weapons tech.”

  She tapped her terminal. A holographic starship materialised above the deck. Thomas leaned forward, drinking in the details. She was oddly designed, a cross between a giant battleship and a light cruiser. Thomas frowned as his eyes traced the flattened cylinder, bristling with weapons pods and missile tubes. The drive section looked unusually large for a ship of her size. He didn’t like the look of it. The section struck him as a huge target. There’d be drive nodes embedded into the hull itself, but if the drive section were shot off, the ship would be effectively dead in space. His eyes narrowed as he spotted the tiny gunboats clinging to the hull. Had the designers tried to combine a carrier with a battleship and a cruiser?

  “HMS Lion,” Admiral Onarina said, when he looked at her. “Our first battlecruiser.”

  Thomas blinked. The Americans had experimented with a battlecruiser design, if he recalled correctly, but their prototype hadn’t worked out. She hadn’t had the acceleration of a cruiser, nor the armour to fight beside the battleships. Most navies preferred to deploy destroyers, cruisers, carriers and battleships. Hybrid designs tended to have all the weaknesses and few of the strengths. And …

  “She carries missiles,” he said, bemused. It made no sense. “They’d be blown
out of space before they reach their target.”

  “We’ve been improving missile design and technology ever since we realised they might still have a use in modern war,” Admiral Onarina explained. “These missiles are designed for long-range engagements, their seeker heads crammed with ECM generators and suchlike to make targeting them difficult … although, sadly, not impossible. They carry improved warheads too, far more deadly than starfighter torpedoes or kinetic projectiles. A battleship that took a direct hit would be seriously damaged. A cruiser would be blown to atoms.”

  Thomas sucked in his breath. “But enemy point defence would still pick them off …?”

  “Perhaps,” the admiral said. “The missiles are designed for multiple roles, as you can imagine. They are capable of going ballistic for a time, relying on the gunboats to provide guidance, or simply travelling at speeds that make them difficult to hit. They’re even capable of travelling in evasive patterns, just like starfighters … expensive as hell, I have to admit, but right now expense isn’t an issue. We’re gearing up to churn out hundreds of the missiles.”

  She altered the display. A smaller ship appeared beside the battlecruiser. “HMS Unicorn. Officially, she’s a corvette, although she’s actually bigger than a standard design. She’s a combination of recon ship, sniper spotter and a few other roles. Ideally, she’ll be providing targeting data to Lion’s missiles, allowing Lion a chance to open fire from a distance and then vanish back into stealth before the enemy can react. She’s also capable of operating independently, if necessary. She has shorter legs than the average destroyer, and she’s not designed to stand in the line of battle, but she does have enough point defence to provide cover for her mothership.”

  Thomas nodded, slowly. “The concept sounds good.”

  “On paper,” Admiral Onarina agreed. “Practically, we want - we need - to make sure the prototypes are tested to the limit before we commit to building more. It took months of arguing to convince the Admiralty to assign funding and resources to construct even one, then the project was delayed twice as shipyard workers had to be assigned to other projects and then reassigned back to Lion. Ideally, she would have left her slip six months ago.”

  She met his eyes, evenly. “I would like you to take command of HMS Lion.”

  Thomas felt a thrill of excitement. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, like starship command. He wasn’t blind to the politics - or to the danger of being made the scapegoat for the project’s failure, if it failed - but he couldn’t resist. If he declined the command, the navy would never offer him another. And besides … he lifted his eyes to the hologram. He was a conservative when it came to naval technology - most serving officers were all too aware of the risks of taking untested weapons into combat - but he had to admit the concept sounded good. It remained to be seen just how well it would work in the real world.

  “It will be my pleasure,” he said. An untested ship, fresh off the slips … there’d be challenges galore. It wasn’t uncommon for ships to develop problems as they were put through their paces - it was why the navy insisted on shakedown cruises before putting a ship in the line of battle - but many of those problems could be anticipated and corrected. Lion was a new design. It remained to be seen what would go wrong when she powered up her drives for the first time. “Do we have a mission?”

  “Not yet.” Admiral Onarina grimaced. “There are a handful of possibilities, and I want you ready for deployment as quickly as possible, but nothing is set in stone. There’s some … disagreement … amongst various senior officers about just how Lion should be employed in combat. Some of us believe she should be held in reserve until we have enough additional units to prove decisive, others feel she and her classmates will not be enough to turn the tide on their own. Your first priority is to get Lion ready for combat. We’ll have orders for you then, never fear.”

  “Yes, Admiral.” Thomas found himself smiling. “It will be one hell of a challenge.”

  “Quite.” The admiral’s lips thinned, just slightly. “You’ll be partnered with Captain Mitch Campbell, who’ll have command of Unicorn. You may have seen him in the news reports. He’s going to be promoted when I meet him, but you’ll have command of the two-ship flotilla and you’ll be breveted commodore for official correspondence. I’m afraid this doesn’t come with a pay raise.”

  Thomas had to laugh. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Captain Campbell is a hard-charging young man,” Admiral Onarina said. “He’s very good with small ships, but - so far - hasn’t served on anything larger than a destroyer. He was also injured during the last set of engagements and spent several weeks in hospital. I expect you to keep him under control.”

  “Admiral?”

  “He’s very hard-charging,” she said, again. “Aggressiveness is a useful trait, as you are aware, but there’s more at stake here than a lone corvette. No one doubts his bravery, and his crew loves him, but - frankly - I’d be concerned about giving him anything bigger than Unicorn. He really needs more seasoning before taking command of a cruiser, let alone a battleship or carrier.”

  “And the media might make that difficult,” Thomas said. He vaguely recalled watching broadcasts about Commander Campbell. “They’ve been promoting him as a major hero.”

  “He is a hero,” the admiral said, bluntly. “He deserves the medal and promotion. But he also needs more time to mature. The media may have made that impossible.”

  Thomas nodded, curtly. He’d studied history. Naval heroes were heroes, a tradition that stretched all the way back to Lord Nelson and Francis Drake. The time when movie stars and football players had been regarded as heroes and role models was long gone, so far removed from the modern world that it was impossible to understand why anyone had ever taken it seriously. Who cared what someone whose only skill was kicking a football around a field had to say about anything? Naval heroes - and army heroes - were far more significant. And yet, it was easy to start turning them into icons … icons who inevitably had feet of clay. Everyone knew Theodore Smith had been a drunkard. It hadn’t kept him from saving the entire human race.

  And it’s also very easy to get a swelled head, he thought. This might not end well.

  “I’ll keep him pointed in the right direction,” he promised. “And we’ll be a long way from the media.”

  “Always a good idea,” Admiral Onarina agreed. She stood, signalling the interview was over. “Nancy will escort you to your shuttle.”

  “I’ll have to call my wife first,” Thomas said. He stood, brushing down his uniform. “She needs to know I’m going back on active duty.”

  “Nancy can arrange a private call,” the admiral said. “You can leave immediately afterwards.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Thomas said. It was inconvenient, to say the least, and his wife would not be pleased. But he’d signed away his freedom when he’d joined the navy. “And thank you.”

  “Thank me when you come back,” the admiral said. Her expression was hard. “A great deal is riding on this project, Captain.”

  “I understand,” Thomas said. “I won’t let you down.”

  Chapter Two

  The hospital room felt like a prison.

  Commander Mitch Campbell sat in the armchair, trying to read the latest reports. The medics seemed determined to keep him in the ward, even though he knew himself fit for duty. He’d only been slightly injured in the engagement. There’d been others who’d been far less lucky when HMS Pelican had come under enemy fire. Mitch knew, without false modesty, that he’d done well. Even the BBC said so. He’d been brave and lucky enough to emerge a hero, at a time when the country desperately needed heroes. But it wasn’t enough to get him back into space.

  He glowered at the datapad. He’d fired off requests for reassignment to everyone he’d thought would listen, trying to call in favours from old friends and commanding officers in a desperate bid to escape the hospital. He would have been happy to serve as an XO, even if it meant taking a techni
cal demotion; he would have been happy to be assigned to an orbital patrol vessel or solar guardship, if it meant getting out. And yet, no one had seemed inclined to help. The datapad was crammed with everything from military reports to email spam offering him services he neither wanted nor needed, but nothing that so much as hinted he might be getting a new assignment.

  The war isn’t over yet, he thought, as he stood and paced the room. He was self-aware enough to know he wouldn’t be welcome, or advanced, in a peacetime navy, but there was a war on. They’ll reassign me soon enough.

  The hatch bleeped, then hissed open. Mitch rolled his eyes without bothering to turn and look at the intruder. The nurses were nice - he’d flirted with them outrageously - but they couldn’t give him what he wanted. They couldn’t give him a ship. He was tempted to cut the monitor from his wrist and leave the sickbay, even though it would have landed him in real trouble. The doctors and nurses would probably be glad to be rid of him. Mitch had read his own medical reports. He knew he was no longer in any real danger. The best thing he could do, both for himself and the country he served, was go back on the front lines.

  “Commander Campbell?”

  Mitch turned, raising his eyebrows as he saw the newcomer for the first time. She was young and attractive, wearing a midshipwoman’s uniform that suggested she was permanently assigned to Nelson Base. He felt a flicker of sympathy, mingled with contempt. People who wanted to be uniformed bureaucrats tended to lack vision, in his experience; they rarely grasped the potentials and limitations of the personnel under his command. He hoped, for the midshipwoman’s sake, she didn’t stay on the base. In wartime, her career would stall and promotion would become a thing of the past.

  “That’s me,” Mitch said. He outranked her and technically she should have saluted, but he was on medical leave. He didn’t really care. One advantage of serving on corvettes like Pelican was a degree of informality that could never be permitted on a fleet carrier. It was astonishing how many people blossomed when they felt free to speak their minds. “What can I do for you?”