The Lion and the Unicorn

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  He scowled as he opened the hatch and stepped into his cabin. He’d spent his entire adult life in the navy, and he was proud to say his career was unblemished, but he wasn’t part of the Old Boys Network and never would be. He’d had to fight for every last promotion, while watching helplessly as classmates with strong family connections were promoted over his head. It wasn’t easy, sometimes, to watch … he knew it would have been a great deal harder, for him, if he’d stayed with the bigger ships. He shook his head, telling himself - again - that he loved corvettes. It was true, and he wouldn’t trade Unicorn for Lion, but it was still frustrating. Too many talented officers were left behind, languishing in the ranks, because they lacked patrons in high places.

  This isn’t the time, he reminded himself as he sat at his desk. It was strikingly small, so tiny it felt as if it had been designed for a child. Mitch wasn’t that big, but he was very definitely an adult. There are more important things to worry about.

  He keyed his terminal, pressing his hand against the scanner to bring up his inbox. A hundred messages waited for him, ranging from follow-up medical appointments to missives from his last girlfriends. Mitch shook his head impatiently as he deleted them. He just wasn’t ready to settle down, even though - as a naval officer - he was supposed to set a good example for the men. There might be strong social pressure to marry and have kids, but … he snorted, rudely. His career came first. Besides, he’d never met anyone he actually wanted to marry. He couldn’t imagine spending the rest of his life with any of the girls he knew.

  Putting the thought aside - and mentally noting a couple of messages that were actually important - he tapped a command into the console, opening a secure link to Lion. Captain Hammond would be notified at once, of course, but it might take some time for him to return to his ready room. Mitch would have been more concerned, he admitted privately, if Captain Hammond had answered immediately. A captain who spent all his time in his ready room was a man who wasn’t on top of things. Or so he’d been told. A battleship was just too large for her commander to know everything.

  Which is probably why battleships have the worst disciplinary issues in the fleet, he thought, with a hint of amusement. He knew everything about his ship … his former ship, at least. He’d been able to keep his finger on the crew’s collective pulse, he’d been able to have a few words with officers and crew who were starting to slide off the straight and narrow … no battleship commander could hope to do it himself. Their crews are divided into small tribes and …

  The terminal cleared. Mitch found himself looking at Captain Hammond. He looked older than Mitch had expected, his hair starting to grey. His face was all natural, without any hints of genetic engineering or cosmetic surgery. Mitch silently gave Hammond points for being comfortable in his own skin. He’d met too many aristos who had themselves shaped into living gods and goddesses, their bodies carved so perfectly they were almost parodies of themselves. Mitch had always figured it was a sign of deep-seated insecurity. It wasn’t as if the aristos needed to be inhumanly beautiful.

  “Captain Campbell,” Captain Hammond said. His voice was classically aristocratic, with a hint of Sussex rather than London. “Congratulations on your promotion.”

  “And on your new command,” Mitch said. He wondered, idly, what Captain Hammond made of him. A competent naval officer with a decent combat record or a jumped-up commoner with delusions of grandeur? Or something else? “I look forward to seeing what our ships can really do.”

  “As do I,” Captain Hammond said. He sounded stilted, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of Mitch and his ship. Mitch rather suspected Hammond looked down on smaller ships. Corvettes couldn’t stand in the line of battle, but that didn’t mean they were useless. “We’ll start running drills as soon as our crews are up to speed.”

  Mitch nodded, feeling a flash of amusement mingled with pity. Captain Hammond had only just taken command of his ship. His record indicated he’d spent the last six months at the academy, trying to ensure the officer cadets learnt from his experiences. The poor man didn’t know his ship or his crew, the chances were good he didn’t know any of his subordinates personally. And he had to whip his ship into shape before the Admiralty started breathing down his neck and demanding results. It wasn’t going to be easy.

  He leaned forward. “I understand that you’re in command of our joint squadron,” he said, calmly. It was hard not to show a little resentment at the thought. “We’re going to have to work hard to figure out how to operate as a team, depending on how things go.”

  “We’ll be running simulations once Lion is ready to depart,” Captain Hammond said. “I trust you can handle your own ship?”

  “I know most of my crew,” Mitch assured him. He was careful not to show his relief on his face. Some senior officers were so insecure they had no qualms about undermining the captain’s authority on his own ship. It was never easy for a captain to handle an overbearing admiral. He had the legal authority to tell an admiral to mind his own business, but doing so would probably mean the end of his career. “The ones I don’t know will fit in or be reassigned in the next couple of weeks.”

  Captain Hammond looked irked. “We have rough orders to be ready to depart in a month,” he said. “But nothing too specific.”

  “Naturally,” Mitch said. It was never easy to coordinate schedules, particularly when dealing with ships that had barely started their shakedown cruises. It was quite possible that something would go badly wrong, sending one or both of the ships back to the yard. “They don’t know when we’ll be truly ready to leave.”

  He leaned forward again. “With your permission, I’ll get my ship ready for operational deployment as quickly as possible,” he said. “I’d like to make sure I know what she can do before I take her into combat.”

  “We may not have the time,” Captain Hammond warned. “I read a report suggesting the enemy will be making another thrust towards Earth in the next few months.”

  Mitch grimaced. Civilians talked of blocking the tramlines, of preventing enemy ships from jumping from one system to the next, but naval officers knew it was impossible. Mining the tramlines or establishing battlestations to monitor transits was a pipe dream. There was no reason the virus couldn’t launch a major assault on Earth tomorrow, sneaking through the tramlines and remaining in stealth until they were within firing range. He felt his heart sink at the thought. The virus didn’t seem quite so concerned about its rear areas, save for a handful of production nodes. It was quite possible the analysts were correct.

  “Then we’d better be ready to meet them,” he said. Earth was ringed by layer upon layer of orbital firepower - and the planet’s surface was studded with ground-based defence systems - but he was all too aware it would be easy to sneak a handful of kinetic projectiles through the defences. “Or to give them a kick in the pants.”

  “Let us hope we can.” Captain Hammond shrugged. “I’d appreciate it if you joined me for dinner in the next few days, once we know what we have to do to get our ships ready for combat.”

  “Of course,” Mitch said. He kept his frustration off his face. “It would be my pleasure.”

  Captain Hammond smiled. “We’ll arrange it nearer the time,” he said. There was a bland note to his voice that suggested he didn’t really mean it. “We both have a lot of work to do.”

  And you probably don’t want to host the dinner, any more than I want to attend, Mitch thought. He needed to develop a working relationship with his superior, but - in his experience - formal dinner parties were never a good place to actually get to know someone properly. They tended to be tedious, with everyone pretending to be polite. We should do something else if we want to get to know each other.

  “Until then,” he said. “I’ll keep you appraised.”

  “Likewise,” Captain Hammond said. He raised a hand in dismissal. “Goodbye.”

  His image vanished. Mitch stared at the blank terminal for a long moment, trying to gather his
thoughts. Captain Hammond didn’t sound so bad, compared to some of the officers who’d developed dangerous habits in peacetime, but … it would take time for them to build a rapport. They were very different people, from very different backgrounds … it didn’t help that they were on separate ships. Mitch considered it for a moment, then shook his head thoughtfully. It could have been worse. He’d met too many officers who didn’t understand where the lines were drawn.

  He stood, closing the terminal and heading for the hatch. There was no time to worry about it, not now. Reading between the lines, it sounded as if Lion had a long way to go before she was ready for deployment, but he knew better than to take that for granted. He wanted - he needed - Unicorn to be ready to go first. It would look good on his record, particularly if he had a head start. He’d look worse if he didn’t have his ship ready to go when time finally ran out. The Admiralty would not be amused.

  Hopefully, this will all work out, he thought, as he walked down the corridor. A pair of engineering techs stepped to one side to let him pass. One of them was an old hand, someone who’d transferred from Pelican; the other was a stranger. And if it doesn’t, it won’t be through my lack of effort.

  Chapter Six

  “So,” Gunboat Pilot Marigold Harkness said. “How was your vacation?”

  “I think it’s called shore leave,” Tobias said, tiredly. He hadn’t slept well. The barracks had been uncomfortable and the shuttle flight to Pitt Base had been worse. “We’re in the navy now.”

  Marigold snorted. She’d been mildly chubby when they’d first met, back when they’d been recruited to fly gunboats, but six months of naval food and exercise had slimmed her and the other pilots down. Tobias felt a little ashamed of himself for noticing. He wasn’t the sort of person who stared at girls; he wasn’t the sort of person who hoped for a flash of bare skin or … he wasn’t! And they’d spent the last six months in a place where privacy was a word no one seemed to understand. It hadn’t been easy. He’d had issues about getting undressed in front of men, let alone women. It had to have been harder for her.

  “My parents are still in denial,” Marigold said. “How about yours?”

  She’s trying to be friendly, Tobias told himself, sharply. The gunboats were bigger than starfighters - they could hardly be smaller - but they weren’t anything like big enough for him not to feel cramped. Their cabin was so small he felt as if he was in a large car, rather than a naval shuttle. And you should be friendly too.

  “It felt as if I didn’t belong there any longer,” Tobias told her. “As if … it just wasn’t my home.”

  “You’ve outgrown it,” Marigold said. “I’ve been told it happens.”

  Tobias shrugged and peered out of the viewport. They were flying in convoy, the gunboats escorting the marine shuttles, but all he could see with the naked eye were unblinking stars burning in the darkness of space. He smiled at the thought, remembering ultra-dramatic movies and programs he’d watched as a young man. They’d had as little to do with reality as possible. The shuttles were out there - he could see them on his sensor display - but he couldn’t see them with the naked eye. And the stars were barely moving, if indeed they were moving at all. The gunboat was rocketing through space at unimaginable speed, but by interplanetary standards she was barely crawling.

  “It just felt weird,” he admitted. “How about you?”

  “My parents didn’t have any real ambitions for me,” Marigold said. “Or so they told me, right up until I joined the navy. And then they started saying I should get married and have kids like a good little girl.”

  “Ouch,” Tobias said. He knew a little about what society expected - and how cruel society could be, to those who wanted to do something else with their lives. It was hard to believe Marigold had had it worse than him, but … he shook his head. It was cruel … it was always cruel, no matter who it happened to. “I’m sure you’d make some kid an excellent mother, but …”

  Marigold gave him the finger. “Remove that foot from your mouth before we get to the ship,” she said. She cleared her throat, loudly. “Did you read the mission briefing?”

  “… Maybe.” Tobias shrugged. “We’re going on deployment …”

  His heart clenched. He knew himself to be a coward. He’d been beaten up so often that it was hard to believe he could defend himself, that he could fight back, that … he swallowed, hard, as he looked at the weapons console. He’d fought, he’d killed … and yet, there was a strange disassociation between the icons on the display, the icons that vanished when he fired at them, and living people. It was hard to believe that the icons represented people with lives of their own. He’d killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of infected people and yet he didn’t believe it. Not really. It was hard to believe that he’d killed.

  And yet, the prospect of his own death hurt. He stared down at the console without actually seeing it. He’d never done more than basic exercises, the kind of training his superiors had forced on him … he’d never so much as touched a pistol. The thought of slogging through the mud, of matching himself against the very best the enemy could provide, was alien. He’d done everything in his power to get out of PE. The idea of willingly exposing himself to more suffering … he shook his head. It wouldn’t happen, not to him. Not to them. They were a good team. They wouldn’t die.

  “We’ll be fine,” he said, although he didn’t believe it. “And we’ll come back heroes.”

  “It could be worse,” Marigold said. “We could be starfighter pilots.”

  “Yeah.” Tobias had met a handful of starfighter pilots, back during basic training. He’d hated the cocky bastards with a passion until he’d looked at the statistics and realised that half the pilots he knew would probably die on their first engagement. Starfighter pilots knew, at a very basic level, that their lives could be cut short in an instant. “At least we have don’t have any blind spots …”

  He let his voice trail off. The gunboats could and did shoot in all directions. Their automated targeting systems could acquire a target and blow it to atoms quicker than any human could hope to react. And yet, it could not be denied that a gunboat was a bigger target than any starfighter, or that - when weighed against a capital ship - the gunboat was expendable. He’d spent weeks in the simulators. He knew the score. And yet, it was so much easier to sacrifice himself - to calmly accept he might be sacrificed - when there was nothing truly at risk. He wondered how Marigold took it so calmly. She had to know she might die at any second too.

  “We’ll be fine,” Marigold said. “We go out there, we serve our term, then we go back to the academy and try to teach someone who looks just like us how not to get killed.”

  “I suppose,” Tobias said. The console bleeped, warningly. They were approaching the outer edge of the yards. “You got the IFF code?”

  “We’d be in deep shit if I didn’t,” Marigold pointed out. “Step down the sensors on my command.”

  Tobias nodded, feeling uncomfortably naked. The briefing officers had pointed out that the virus didn’t play fair. It was quite possible for the virus to gain control of a ship and turn it against her former masters, using IFF codes - perfectly legitimate IFF codes - to get past the defences before opening fire. The ship would be targeted at once, of course, but she’d have a chance to do a great deal of damage before she was blown away. There’d be no hesitation, the officers had warned, if the gunboats so much as looked suspicious. The shipyard defences would blow them away before they had a chance to explain themselves.

  “Ready,” he said. He peered into the inky darkness. Was there something moving out there? A light that wasn’t a star? It was hard to be sure. “I’m ready.”

  He felt his heart clench, again, as the console lit up with red icons. They were being scanned - and targeted. There were all sorts of horror stories about blue-on-blue incidents, where someone was hurt or killed by friendly fire … there was no such thing, the instructors had said, as friendly fire. A plasma bolt had no IFF, t
hey’d warned, so watch where you fired it. Only the sheer immensity of space, even in a relatively small engagement zone, limited the risks of friendly fire.

  And plasma bolts are never that accurate, he reminded himself. Someone might not mean to fire on us, but that won’t keep them from hitting us.

  The display turned green. “We’re clear,” he said. “Set course for Lion.”

  He leaned forward, watching intently as the battlecruiser finally came into view. He’d never really wanted to join the military. Survey Command had been the only section that had really interested him and Survey had been folded into the regular military for the duration. And besides … what could he have done? In hindsight, there were a lot of things he could have done to prepare for a career, but he hadn’t known what he needed at the time. He’d pinned his hopes on going to university and it hadn’t really materialised.

  Adventure is someone else in deep shit far away, he recalled. One of his tutors had said as much, when he’d been asked about his military service. All the books and films and whatever completely fail to convey the truth of the military life.

  “Impressive,” Marigold breathed. “Isn’t she?”

  Tobias nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Lion was … striking, definitely. The console bleeped as the shuttles peeled off, heading for the lower hatches while the gunboats flew towards the gunboat ring. Tobias had his doubts about the design - the simulations had suggested the gunboat ring could be easily crippled, if the enemy realised what it was - but there was no helping it. The gunboats couldn’t use a standard flight deck. Besides, they could dock the gunboats with the regular airlocks if necessary. He keyed the console, bracing himself as they glided closer. The instructors had been very patient with simulated mistakes, but he doubted Captain Hammond or Colonel Richard Bagehot - the Gunboat CAG - would be anything like so tolerant. Banging a gunboat into a starship’s hull was probably not going to please her commander.