The Lion and the Unicorn

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “Admiral Onarina requests your presence,” the midshipwoman said. “I’ve been sent to escort you.”

  Mitch raised his eyebrows, even as his heart leapt for joy. The admiral wanted to see him? It had to be good news. If he was in trouble … he frowned inwardly as he grabbed his jacket, silently relieved he’d dressed after his morning shower. He’d hoped a show of personal grooming would convince the headshrinkers there was nothing particularly wrong with his mind. Pelican might have been shot up so badly she’d been sent to the breaker’s yard, but her commander was alive and well. And so were most of her crew.

  “You’ll probably have to sneak me past the guards outside,” he joked, at least partly to see how she’d respond. He’d paced up and down outside the room before the nurses had told him to get back inside and stay there. “Did you bring a disguise?”

  The midshipwoman looked unamused. “The doctors have cleared you to leave.”

  Mitch nodded. The midshipwoman was definitely young, then. Too young and inexperienced to know when someone was teasing. The doctors wouldn’t have let her take him out unless he’d been cleared first. He checked his appearance in the mirror, put a hand through his brown hair to smooth it as much as possible, then followed the midshipwoman through the hatch. A pair of nurses at their workstation nodded as they walked past. Mitch smiled cheerfully. They might have been his wardens as much as his caretakers, but they could hardly be blamed for following orders. The doctors had seemed convinced the damage had been worse than he’d thought.

  He put the thought out of his mind as they walked through a series of airlocks that separated the hospital wing from the rest of the orbiting structure. Ultraviolet light beamed down on them, making his skin prickle uncomfortably; tiny sensors checked their blood for the slightest hint of the virus. He was tempted to point out that he’d been in a facility designed to prevent infection from spreading, but there was no point. The guards had strict orders. They couldn’t let anyone through unless they submitted to the bioscreening. The odds of infection might be low, but the virus had managed to slip zombies through the defences before. Better to be paranoid now, he told himself, than sorry later.

  The midshipwoman stopped in front of a large hatch and keyed it open. Mitch stepped forward, coming to attention as he entered Admiral Onarina’s office. He couldn’t help a thrill of fellow-feeling. She was a commoner, just like he was, but she’d reached the very highest levels through guts, determination and an unflinching refusal to be deterred from doing the right thing. The Order of the Garter, clearly delineated on her uniform, was proof of just how far she’d come. She had the right to take a salute from just about everyone.

  Mitch saluted, perfectly. “Commander Mitch Campbell, reporting as ordered.”

  “Welcome.” Admiral Onarina’s accent suggested she’d been born and raised in London. “Please, take a seat. Tea or coffee?”

  Mitch nodded. “Tea, please.”

  He sat, studying the admiral with interest. She was a striking woman - he acknowledged that, in the privacy of his own mind - but it wasn’t her looks that caught his attention. It was her air of calm competence, of grim certainty she knew what she was doing … he understood, now, why so many of her former subordinates spoke so highly of her. He would have followed her anywhere too. She had the indefinable air of command that called to him. He hoped he’d be as impressive when he reached flag rank.

  And the fact she reached flag rank is proof I can do it too, he thought, as he accepted a mug of tea. She’s even more of a commoner than I am.

  The admiral studied him for a long moment. Mitch wondered, silently, what she saw in him. A brave and bold commanding officer who’d saved an entire convoy from certain destruction? Or a fool who’d made a terrible mistake and lost his ship? A nervy man, a reckless idiot, or both? Mitch had read the after-action reports. Some had praised him, some had cursed him … he kept his face under tight control. It was easy for an armchair admiral to carp and criticize the men on the front lines, secure in their hindsight … and the knowledge they’d never have to make life or death decisions themselves. Admiral Onarina had been on the front lines herself. She’d know how hard it could be to determine the right thing to do.

  If you can keep your head when everyone else is panicking, he reminded himself dryly, you’re halfway there already.

  “I read the reports from your last engagement,” Admiral Onarina said, finally. “But I’d like you to tell me, in your own words, what actually happened.”

  You probably read my report as well as all the others, Mitch thought, feeling a flicker of resentment. He’d been trapped in a bed long enough to write a detailed report. And there’s nothing I can add to it.

  He put the feeling out of his mind as he leaned forward. “Pelly - ah, Pelican - was assigned to escort an evacuation convoy from Manticore to Erie,” he said. “Admiral Yu believed it was only a matter of time before Manticore came under heavy attack, so he wanted to evacuate the trained workers before it was too late to do it in an orderly fashion. I agreed with his logic, particularly as my crew were overdue for shore leave anyway. We’d been on deployment for nearly a year.

  “We left with seven other escorts and nineteen freighters, doing our level best to remain stealthy as we jumped from system to system. Everything went well until we ran into an enemy patrol in Dorcas. They altered course to engage us. It was only a matter of time, I thought, until they ran us down. The freighters couldn’t hope to outrun the enemy warships.”

  The admiral nodded, curtly. Mitch felt relieved. It was hard to explain to civilians, somehow, that starships that could travel at unimaginable speeds sometimes couldn’t travel fast enough. A freighter might move like greased lightning, compared to a hypersonic transport or maglev train, but she might as well be crawling compared to an enemy warship bent on chasing her down. The freighters couldn’t even scatter if there was more than one enemy warship in the vicinity. They simply didn’t have the legs to break contact long enough to go doggo and hide.

  “I deployed ECM drones and altered course,” Mitch recalled. “Pelican went at the enemy ships, all guns blazing. We tore through their formation, firing like madmen. The enemy ships were distracted long enough for the convoy to slip away into interplanetary space, the freighters pretending to be black holes while the warships pretended they were running for their lives. It worked. We bought the convoy enough time to save thousands of lives.”

  “At the cost of losing Pelican,” Admiral Onarina pointed out. “And you getting severely wounded.”

  “It was an exploding console,” Mitch said. He snorted. He was going to be a laughingstock when that became public knowledge. Exploding consoles were common in movies and viewscreen programs, but rare - almost unknown - in real life. “Pelican was hit so badly there were power surges throughout the command datanet. Ironically, it’s probably what saved us. We were so badly hit they thought we were dead.”

  He took a breath. “One of the freighters risked everything to send shuttles to take us off the wreck,” he said. “I remained in command until my surviving crew was evacuated, then handed command over to the freighter’s captain.”

  Admiral Onarina smiled. “An interesting take on nearly fainting as soon as you were brought onboard.”

  “Fainting is perhaps too strong a word,” Mitch countered. He’d been in terrible pain. His memories were broken and scattered. “But I was in no state to assume command.”

  He winced, inwardly. Technically, any warship commander outranked a freighter commander. Technically, Mitch should have taken command of the freighter as soon as he stepped onboard. Technically … he shook his head. He really hadn’t been in any state to assume command. And he knew what he’d have said to any jumped-up officer who thought superior rank was enough to take command of his ship. He wouldn’t have blamed the freighter’s CO for finding a way to ignore regulations.

  “Quite.” Admiral Onarina studied him for a long moment. “Did you do the right thing?”


  “If I hadn’t charged the enemy fleet,” Mitch pointed out, “they would have blown the convoy to atoms. There were over a hundred thousand civilians on those ships, Admiral, ranging from experienced workers to their wives and children. Losing Pelican was painful” - in more ways than one, his thoughts added - “but losing the rest of the squadron would have been worse.”

  He kept his face under tight control, unsure what the admiral would say. She was experienced enough to know he was right, but she might have come under heavy pressure from her superiors. The Royal Navy had held an inquest into the loss of HMS Pelican, but the board hadn’t bothered to contact him after demanding and receiving his report. He wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. They hadn’t so much as asked him for clarification, let alone put him in the hot seat and shouted questions at him. He would almost have preferred to face a hostile audience than stay in the hospital room.

  “I agree,” Admiral Onarina said. “The board agreed as well. In an ideal world” - her lips twisted - “we would not have to worry about losing ships and crew. In the real world, we can only ensure our ships and crews are not risked and lost for nothing. The board found you personally blameless. Indeed, it agreed you were to be promoted to captain - effective immediately - and assigned to a new command.”

  Mitch sucked in his breath. He’d wanted to be a starship captain for as long as he could remember. He’d grown up on stories of Francis Drake, Horatio Nelson and Theodore Smith … although only Smith, he recalled dryly, had commanded an actual starship. If they promoted him to captain … they could never take it from him. He’d have the right to call himself captain for the rest of his life, even if he never commanded another starship. He tried not to grin like an idiot. He’d made it! He’d never be stricken from the rolls and forgotten …

  “You’ll be taking command of HMS Unicorn, a specialised corvette,” Admiral Onarina informed him. “We believe you have the right combination of skills and experiences to handle her … semi-unique role. Ideally, she and her partner will be the first of a new breed of warships. We think she’ll give us the edge in future engagements with the virus. I shouldn’t have to tell you, Captain, just how important it is that we maintain and widen that edge as much as possible.”

  Mitch nodded, grimly. He’d seen the virus at work. It was unpredictable. There were times when it would attack like a madman - like him - and times when it would ignore the most flagrant provocations. He had the feeling the intelligence directing its combat operations was prepared to soak up a certain level of casualties, rather than change the plan and risk matters getting out of control. It made no sense, from his point of view, but if one regarded one’s ships and crews as expendable assets, of no more importance than a fingernail, he supposed it made a certain kind of sense. Perhaps the virus had enough ships to allow it to spend them carelessly.

  We still don’t know how much space it really controls, he reminded himself. A handful of infected worlds had been nuked, weapons of mass destruction unleashed for the first time since the Age of Unrest, but the virus didn’t seem to have been slowed down. For all we know, we’re battling a tiny fraction of its overall fleet.

  “I understand,” he said. “What about my crew?”

  “Fifteen of your surviving crew from Pelican have accepted transfer to Unicorn,” Admiral Onarina informed him. “The remaining ten have been reassigned.”

  And fifteen are dead, Mitch thought. He’d had forty personnel under his command. Fifteen had died … he’d known them all, personally. They hadn’t been names and faces in a file, they hadn’t been statistics … they’d been real people. I couldn’t even visit their families.

  He felt his heart twist. He had no fear of death - he couldn’t have done all the madcap stunts he’d done in his career if he’d been worried about dying - but he hated the thought of others dying for him. They’d known the risks, he kept telling himself, yet … he shook his head. It didn’t make things any better. He hadn’t wanted them - any of them - to die.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said, truthfully. “I assume there’ll be new crew too?”

  “Yes.” Admiral Onarina frowned. “There’s another concern. You’ll be serving under Captain Hammond. He’ll be breveted commodore for the duration.”

  Mitch said nothing for a long moment. Captain Hammond? The name was unfamiliar … Hammond was hardly an unusual surname. Certainly, nothing had happened to bring the name to his attention. That could be good or bad. Captain Hammond might be a competent commanding officer, well aware of the importance of being good as opposed to looking good, or he might be a reactionary stick in the mud. The war had killed a number of officers who’d been promoted for reasons other than competence, but Mitch was painfully aware they hadn’t all been killed. He shook his head. He’d find out soon enough. A breveted commodore would hopefully know the difference between good leadership and bad.

  “I understand,” he said. “When do I take up my post?”

  “Now, if you’re ready.” Admiral Onarina smiled. “Technically, you’re entitled to a few days of shore leave, but …”

  “I spent too long in a hospital bed,” Mitch assured her. He wouldn’t have minded a day or two spent visiting Sin City, or haunting a spaceport strip down on Earth, but he knew the right answer. Besides, he wanted to take command of his new ship before the Admiralty had a change of heart. “I don’t need any shore leave.”

  “Very good,” Admiral Onarina said. She picked a datachip off her desk and held it out to him. “Your orders, Captain, and details on your new command. And good luck.”

  “Thank you, Admiral,” Mitch said. “I won’t let you down.”

  Chapter Three

  “Captain?”

  Thomas looked up. The shuttle was so cramped - he wasn’t the only person travelling to the Hamilton Yards - that he’d been invited to sit at the back of the cockpit, even though he had a feeling the pilot would have preferred him in the rear compartment. He’d spent most of the trip studying the files on the datachip, trying to get the measure of his new command and her crew. It hadn’t been easy. Too many details were left out of the files, either because they were unimportant or simply unknown. It was worse, he reflected, when dealing with a new design. The weaknesses might not become apparent until the ship was taken into combat.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re approaching Lion now,” the pilot said. “Would you like to come forward?”

  Thomas stood and peered into space as a cluster of lights slowly came into view. The Hamilton Yards were immense, hundreds of slips, industrial nodes, defence stations and personal hubs floating near the asteroid belt. His eyes dropped to the console, picking out the IFF beacons that marked the location of dozens of starships preparing for their first deployments. HMS Lion floated near the edge of the facility, half-hidden behind a haze of ECM generators. Thomas suspected it was pointless - the naked eye and passive sensors could pick out quite a few details - but there was no point in questioning it. The security precautions might make it harder for a spy drone to get close to the ship without revealing its presence, or convince its controller that it had spotted something useful. The real secrets were inside the hull.

  And I could give someone a tour without ever revealing anything important, he thought, dryly. They’d never know they were being snowballed.

  He put the thought to one side as Lion took on shape and form. She was longer than he’d realised, her flattened hull suggesting she was designed to fire missiles rather than plasma bolts. It took him a moment to mentally link what he was seeing with the starship plans he’d studied to realise that Lion was bigger than he’d thought. The missiles were huge, by human standards, but still tiny compared to the battlecruiser. Her drive section was heavily armoured … he frowned, unsure he liked the look of it. Lion would definitely be in serious trouble if she took a hit to the drives. Two or three would probably be enough to leave her dead in space.

  We’ll just have to stay out of point-blank range, he to
ld himself. We don’t want an enemy battleship blowing us to atoms.

  He frowned as the shuttle glided closer. He’d read the reports - he’d studied them carefully - but training and experience told him missiles were largely useless in combat. A ballistic missile was easy to avoid, a powered missile was easy to destroy. It was possible to overwhelm a starship’s defences, but anyone who wanted to try would have to fire so many missiles that the whole exercise would rapidly become cost prohibitive. A chill ran down his spine as he remembered the virus deploying thousands of missiles in single engagements. The virus didn’t have to care about economics, or living wages, or anything else that might detract from producing as many missiles as possible. It just didn’t seem fair.

  “Captain, we’ll be docking at the forward hatch,” the pilot said. “Do you want to surprise your crew?”

  “No, thank you,” Thomas said. It was unlikely he could surprise his crew, unless his XO was incredibly careless. Nelson Base would have sent Lion a copy of the shuttle’s troop manifest. A smart officer would at least glance at the list, before forwarding it to whoever was in charge of personnel assignments. “There’s no point in trying.”

  He smiled as the battlecruiser grew larger and larger until she was practically dominating the cockpit. Up close, he could pick out point defence weapons and sensor nodes, constantly sweeping the surrounding area for threats. Men in suits and worker bees hummed around the giant ship, carrying out the final tasks before clearing Lion for deployment. Thomas felt a thrill of anticipation as the shuttle altered course, heading straight for the forward hatch. A low thump echoed through the hull as she locked on, the gravity field flickering slightly as it meshed with the battlecruiser’s field. Thomas let out a breath as he turned and headed for the hatch. Hopefully, his new XO - Commander Shane Donker - hadn’t arranged a meet-and-greet. Thomas knew he’d have to meet his new officers, sooner rather than later, but he’d prefer not to do it in the middle of a crowded airlock.