The Lion and the Unicorn

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  The outer airlock opened in front of him. Thomas felt his ears twinge as the pressure equalised, the inner airlock flowing open to allow him to board his ship. The atmosphere smelt new, as if the ship was too new to have a scent of her own. It wouldn’t be long, he told himself, as he looked around. The remainder of the crew were already on their way, along with the marines and assessment officers. The ship would start to smell normal soon enough.

  Commander Shane Donker stepped forward and saluted. “Captain. Welcome onboard.”

  Thomas returned the salute. “Thank you, Commander,” he said. Donker’s file had made it clear he was an engineering officer who’d switched to the command track, rather than someone who’d spent his entire career climbing up the latter to the captain’s chair. A good choice, he thought, for XO of an experimental design. “It’s good to be here.”

  “Good to have you too,” Donker said. He sounded as though he actually meant it. “We’ve been looking forward to taking her out and seeing what she can really do.”

  “I’ve read a lot of good things in the reports,” Thomas said. “How well does she handle in the real world?”

  Donker turned and led Thomas towards the bridge. “We’ve powered up her drives and taken her for a spin around the shipyard,” he said. “There were no major problems. A couple of components had to be replaced, when they failed upon being powered up. There was a minor hiccup in Fusion Three that turned out to be caused by a component being inserted wrongly, but the monitoring software caught the glitch before it could cause any major problems. And we’ve fired dummy missiles through each of the tubes.”

  He paused. “Naturally, we haven’t taken her into real combat. We don’t know how well she’ll handle an unstructured engagement.”

  “We’ll find out,” Thomas said. He’d be discomforted to discover that Lion could only handle a specific form of engagement, although he’d prefer to know about it before he took his ship into combat. “And the crew? How are they?”

  “Around ninety percent of our assigned manpower is onboard,” Donker assured him. “The remainder - the gunboat pilots and the marines - will be joining us shortly. We’ve been running endless drills, trying to figure out what we can and cannot do before we face a real crisis. The reports are on your desk, but overall I’m pleased with progress.”

  Thomas nodded, feeling uncomfortably unsure of himself. The crew wouldn’t know him. It shouldn’t matter, but he knew from experience that it would. He promised himself he’d spend the next few days touring his ship, getting to know his officers and men before leading them into battle. He’d have to spend time in the simulators himself too, practicing everything from simple engagements to complex multi-sided battles where the line between enemy and ally was thinner than one might suppose. There was no choice.

  Easy training, hard mission, he reminded himself. Hard training, slightly easier mission.

  He dismissed the thought as the bridge hatch hissed open, revealing the nerve centre of the entire vessel. The chamber had been designed more for looks than practicality, he thought, although he had to admit it probably didn’t matter. If Lion was hit so badly her bridge was exposed, he reflected, she and her crew were dead. He made a mental note to check the damage control simulations, to try and determine how close they were to reality. The navy believed in hard training, but there were limits. They wouldn’t fire a laser warhead or heavy plasma cannon at a starship just to test the armour.

  His eyes wandered the compartment. A dozen consoles - half manned - surrounded a set of command chairs and holoprojectors. Lion was too small to have a secondary bridge, he noted; Donker would be sitting beside him when Lion went into battle. Experience insisted that was a bad idea. The bridge was heavily armoured, but a lucky shot or an unexpected enemy weapon might be enough to render it non-functional. It might be better to put the XO in Engineering, when they finally engaged the enemy. The ship could be controlled from there if the bridge was taken out.

  Assuming we survive whatever takes out the bridge, Thomas thought. And that doesn’t seem likely.

  He smiled as he sat on the command chair. It felt new, as new as the rest of the ship. He wondered, idly, if Donker had been using it. The officer of the watch had every right to sit in the command chair, although not all of them did. Thomas himself had felt a little odd about sitting in the chair, when he’d been a junior officer. He’d lost the feeling when he’d taken command of his first ship.

  “Mr XO, I assume command,” he said, formally. “Make a note in the log.”

  “Aye, sir,” Donker said, with equal formality.

  Thomas keyed the console, bringing up the near-space display. The yards were buzzing with activity, a grim reminder that the country was at war. There’d been rumours of slowdowns and strikes for years, ever since the pace of construction had been upped and upped again. He grimaced at the thought. He understood, all too well, just what happened if men were pushed to breaking point … but he also understood the threat. The virus would destroy everything, if it won the war. Freedom, independence, individuality … everything that made human what they were would be erased so completely no one would ever remember what they’d been. The virus wasn’t a normal foe. It would crush the human race so completely humanity would cease to exist.

  “You’d better give me a tour of the ship,” he said, standing. “And then we can start some real work.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Donker said. “If you don’t mind, we’ll start with the living quarters.”

  Thomas nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself. Donker’s voice showed no hint of irritation at being displaced, even though it had to be annoying. Donker had been the de facto captain for the last three months, once Lion had been moved out of the slip. He would have been more than human if he hadn’t hoped, against all logic and reason, that he would be offered the command chair. Lion was a new ship of a new design. Donker would have less to unlearn than a man who’d commanded destroyers and carriers. He might even have been more willing to push the limits as far as they’d go.

  He listened carefully, asking questions from time to time, as they made their way through the ship. Lion felt undermanned, even though the reports had claimed she was so heavily automated she could be commanded and operated by a tiny handful of crew. Thomas had his doubts about that. The automated systems might work in theory, but - in his experience - they’d start to fail the moment enemy fire started pounding the hull. It might be better to bring additional damage control crewmen onto the ship, even if they had no other use. He made a mental note to see if he could convince the Admiralty to assign more. The manpower shortage was apparently permanent, no matter how many people were conscripted into the military.

  Or we should see who we can hire from the asteroids, he mused. It isn’t as if we’re not facing a common foe.

  “The original design called for the gunboats to be treated as starfighters,” Donker explained, as they reached the gunboat hatches. “They’d be held internally and launched from a flight deck. Simulated versions of the design, however, suggested that it would render the entire ship useless. A jack of all trades and master of none, as they say. It would have been worse, in fact, because the flight deck would have drawn fire, allowing the enemy to shoot into the ship.”

  Thomas nodded. He’d studied some of the early designs for ships that were both fleet carriers and battleships. Ark Royal had served in both roles, but every successive design had proven to be unable to duplicate the feat. Lion would have it even worse, he thought; a direct hit to the flight deck, a nuke detonating inside the tube, would have broken the battlecruiser’s back even if it hadn’t blown her to atoms. The gunboats would be hellishly vulnerable, if a missile hit their berths, but it would be better to lose all the gunboats than the entire battlecruiser.

  Which probably won’t endear us to the pilots, he thought, as they peered into empty berths and briefing compartments. No one likes to be reminded they’re expendable.

  He glanced at Donker. �
�Do the gunboats live up to the hype?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Donker said. There was something in his voice that suggested he had opinions on the subject. “The simulations suggest the concept is workable. Their one actual engagement, against an enemy raiding party, was a great success. We don’t know, of course, if the virus had anyone watching the engagement from a distance. They may be in blissful ignorance of what’s coming their way, sir, or they may be working desperately to devise countermeasures. We simply don’t know.”

  He paused. “I’ve met a couple of gunboat crews,” he added. “They come across as lacking polish - most of them were recruited in a non-standard manner, from what I heard - and they didn’t act like naval officers, but … they were fairly sure they could do their jobs. I think time will tell if this is a good idea or not.”

  Thomas nodded. It wasn’t a ringing endorsement, but … it would have to do. They were charged with striking a balance between naval conservatives and progressives, between officers who saw new weapons as worse than useless and officers who were so entranced with the promise of newer and better weapons that they overlooked the downsides. They’d have to test the concepts thoroughly, before they were put into mass production. He remembered the admiral’s words and shuddered. The human race was thoroughly outnumbered. It couldn’t hope to win a war of attrition. Their only hope was designing weapons that might give them an edge.

  Or even a vaccine that might let us co-exist with the virus, he thought. Most anti-viral research was highly classified, but the rumours he’d heard suggested the researchers were no closer to a breakthrough than they’d been in the last five years. We’d settle for something that poisoned the host, if we had no other choice.

  “We’ll find out,” he said. “And if it doesn’t work, we’ll just have to come up with something new.”

  “Coming up with something new isn’t the problem, sir,” Donker said. “There are more ideas for silver bullets than there are stars in the sky. Turning a concept into workable hardware … that’s the problem. There’s a whole bunch of ideas that are close enough to tantalise us …”

  He shook his head. “And none of them are remotely practical, not yet.”

  “I know,” Thomas said. “I’ve read the reports.”

  He frowned, inwardly, as the tour continued. The designers had done good work. They’d practically overdesigned the ship. Lion had enough drive nodes to give it the acceleration curve of a destroyer, something that would give the enemy a nasty fright the first time they saw her in action. They’d probably start building their own, as soon as they realised it was possible. And then … Thomas gritted his teeth. Lion might be able to outrun anything big enough to kill her, but she couldn’t outrun missiles. The enemy would probably try to overwhelm her defences, simply by hurling hundreds of missiles at her. Lion’s point defence might not be enough to stop them.

  But the gunboats will add to our point defence fire, he told himself. They’ll provide mobile firing platforms as well as targeting data.

  Or so the simulations tell us, his thoughts countered. We won’t know how well it’ll really work until we actually face the enemy.

  “I’m going to have to spend the next week getting to know the ship,” he said, as they headed back to the ready room. “And meeting the crew.”

  He took a breath. “Please inform the senior officers that they’re invited to a brief gathering this evening, at 2000,” he added. “I’ll meet them formally then.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Donker said. It was rare, almost unknown, for an officer to decline an invitation from the captain. It was effectively compulsory, whatever the captain might say. “I’ll let them know at once.”

  Thomas nodded. His terminal was blinking yellow, warning him there was a small pile of messages in his inbox demanding his attention. The XO was supposed to handle most of the paperwork and suchlike, but there were matters that could only be handled by the captain, even though the captain had only been assigned to the ship a few short hours ago. He’d have to review Donker’s decisions too, he reminded himself. The XO had been the man on the spot, but it was the captain who’d pay the price if they went wrong …

  “Hopefully, we’ll meet our planned departure date,” he said, as he took his chair. “I’ll speak to you later.”

  “Yes, sir,” Donker said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  Chapter Four

  “You don’t have to escort me to school,” Elizabeth Gurnard whined. “You really don’t.”

  Tobias Gurnard - he’d stopped using his first name as soon as he legally could - smirked at his younger sister. He’d sworn, six months ago, that it would be a cold day in hell before he went anywhere near his former school. It had been ten years of absolute hell, from sadistic PE teachers and a headmaster who was almost brutally incompetent to louts whose only entertainment was beating him up on a regular basis. And, despite his hard work, he’d failed to make it into university and leave the assholes behind. If the navy hadn’t recruited him, he thought, he’d still be with the assholes. As it was, he couldn’t help feeling a flicker of the old terror as he approached the school.

  And yet … he smiled, despite himself, as they passed groups of boys only a year or two younger than he was. His uniform felt uncomfortable, but it was safety. Anyone who attacked a serviceman on the streets faced a life sentence in an arctic work camp, if they weren’t simply put in front of a wall and shot. That lesson had been learnt the hard way, during the Troubles. Tobias didn’t want to be beaten up in front of his sister - again - but he’d take the beating gratefully if it meant one of his former tormentors being taken off the streets. He’d never liked the idea of a military career - and he’d never expected to be recruited into the navy - yet it had its advantages. People who’d shunned him now had to salute him.

  He shuddered, again, as the school came into view. It was a soulless mass of brick and concrete, more like a prison than a fitting home for young minds. A pair of teachers, both very familiar, stood outside the doors, counting heads as their students headed into school. Tobias waved goodbye as his sister hurried to the female entrance, becoming one with the crowd as she passed through the door and vanished from sight. He caught the eye of one of the teachers and winked, enjoying the surprise on the man’s face. The wanker had often told Tobias he was useless, just because he couldn’t kick a football. Tobias wondered, idly, which of them was laughing now.

  The fates, he thought, as he turned and walked away. They’re laughing to see me in uniform.

  He felt his heart clench. It was harder to be frightened of the bullying louts after spending the last six months in the navy. They’d been trained endlessly, then flung into battle against a very real threat. The medal he wore was real. He could still be beaten up - he’d met men so strong and fit they made the louts look like …. well, him - but he was no longer so scared. The risk of being blown to atoms by enemy fire rather put the louts in perspective.

  The streets emptied slowly as he made his way through the centre of town. Liverpool had been a dull, gray city even when he’d been a child. The houses might have been repaired or rebuilt, after the city had been flooded during the war, but there was little individuality to the buildings. He shuddered as he passed a half-empty cafe, the handful of patrons too absorbed in their coffees to pay any attention to him. Liverpool might have been where he’d lived, but it had never been home. He wasn’t sure he’d ever find a place to call home. The navy was infinitely superior to the city, but it wasn’t really home either. He would sooner have gone to university - and he’d been promised a chance to go, when he served his term - yet … would he find a home there? He’d be two years older, with a naval term under his belt. Would it be home, or would he be rejected?

  Perhaps both, he thought, sourly.

  He kicked a stone as he walked past the library, one of his favourite haunts when he’d been a child. He’d always held the military in contempt. Too many of the jerks and bullies he’d known had bragged openl
y about how they were going to join the military, get a licence to kill, and then kill him. It had taken him too long to realise they were bullshitting, to realise that many of the assholes he’d known would never make it in the military. They’d do their National Service and get out, perhaps taking a ticket to Britannia or another colony world where they could build a better life for themselves. It was the exodus, more than anything else, that was draining Liverpool. The young left and never came back.

  The thought mocked him. He’d come back, but only for a week. His orders had made it clear he wasn’t to go too far from the spaceport. His mother and sister had been pleased to see him, but no one else had given much of a shit. He’d never had any real friends until he’d joined the navy. Of course not. Anyone who might have befriended him had been scared off by the louts, damn them. There were times when he fantasised about taking a gunboat, flying over Liverpool and laying waste to the town. He wasn’t fool enough to say that out loud. There were horror stories about what happened to boys who did.

  It’s hard to feel any empathy if no one shows you any, he thought, morbidly. He knew, intellectually, that the vast majority of the city’s population didn’t hate him. They simply didn’t know he existed. But it was hard to believe, sometimes. They’d done nothing to help him and … and that hurt. Why should I care about them?

  His heart sank as he heard music and happy laughter coming from a pub. It was barely half past nine and … and they were already drinking and laughing. He felt a pang of envy, even though he’d been warned - in no uncertain terms - not to even think about drinking, first by his mother and then by the navy. He would have liked to be popular, he would have liked to have a circle of friends who sought his company and went on wacky adventures … he would have settled for a trip to the beach or the highlands or somewhere, anywhere, other than the drab city. He could go into the pub, wearing his uniform, and someone would buy him a drink … he shook his head. He couldn’t face the thought of being rejected, once again. The whole idea of just going into a pub was impossible. It was no place for him.