The Lion and the Unicorn

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “You have orders to join the convoy in two days,” Admiral Onarina said, dragging his attention back to her. “Can you make it?”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Mitch said. He was sure of it. His ship was ready and raring to go. “We can be on our way now, if you like.”

  “Lion should be ready to depart,” Captain Hammond said. “We’ve already started drawing up plans to continue our training and exercise schedule while under way.”

  “Good,” the admiral said. If she had any doubts about their ability to keep their promises, she kept them to herself. “I’m sorry your crew won’t have any chance for shore leave, before you depart. We’ll see what we can do when you get home.”

  “My crew will understand,” Mitch assured her. “We know what’s at stake.”

  Captain Hammond looked displeased, just for a second. Mitch felt a twinge of sympathy for the older man. His crew had been far more fragmented when he’d taken command, forcing him to wield them into a unit while coming to grips with a new and revolutionary starship. It couldn’t have been easy … Mitch smiled, relieved he hadn’t been given a larger ship. He’d seen once-promising commanders struggle with bigger ships, micromanaging their subordinates over tiny issues because they couldn’t come to grips with the bigger ones. And Captain Hammond simply hadn’t had the time for a proper shakedown cruise. The days when it could take a year for a ship to become combat-ready were a thing of the past.

  “I believe my crew will have no trouble,” Captain Hammond said, finally. “I’ll keep them busy.”

  “Just make sure you keep them too busy to grumble,” Admiral Onarina advised. “Speak to the Americans after you return from the mission. They’d probably let you have a few days on New Washington.”

  Mitch nodded. New Washington had been a colony for over a hundred years. The United States had invested billions of dollars in colony infrastructure, handing out land grants like water to ensure millions of colonists moved to the distant world. They’d done well, Mitch knew. He’d visited the system years ago, back when he’d been a lieutenant. There were parts of the planet that could almost have passed for Earth.

  “We can worry about shore leave later,” he said. “Right now, the mission comes first.”

  “Yes.” Captain Hammond nodded. “We will handle it, Admiral. I’ll review the files and then determine a plan of attack.”

  “As will I,” Mitch said. He had no intention of letting Captain Hammond devise a plan without at least some input from him. The operation would only work if they used the capabilities of both ships to the full. “We’ll be ready by the time we reach New Washington.”

  “Very good.” Admiral Onarina looked from one to the other, then nodded. It was hard to guess what she was thinking. Regret, perhaps? Or a grim understanding she had to send them out to face the enemy? “I’ll see you when you return. Dismissed.”

  Mitch took a sip of his tea as Captain Hammond’s hologram flickered and vanished. The admiral seemed older for a moment, staring down at her mug without drinking. Mitch nodded. The admiral had to be under a great deal of stress, all too aware that her concepts for technical superiority might not survive their first encounter with the enemy. It was never easy to predict how the opposing force would react, or just how well the weapons would perform. The missiles might blow the entire enemy fleet into atoms, or be effortlessly picked off by point defence.

  And we’re about to find out the hard way, he mused. He’d run simulations that suggested there’d be a string of easy victories and simulations that suggested they’d lose the very first engagement. There’s no other choice.

  “We need to buy time,” Admiral Onarina said, “but not at the cost of ultimate victory.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Mitch said. He was vaguely disappointed, even though he understood the logic. The admiral and her staff had to balance requirements he preferred not to consider. “Perhaps our next target should be the alien homeworld.”

  The admiral raised her eyebrows. “Does the virus even have a homeworld?”

  Mitch started to answer, then stopped himself. Cold logic insisted the enemy had to have a homeworld, even if it was a biological weapon that had gotten out of control rather than the product of a very strange evolutionary cycle. But … did it matter? Did the virus have a homeworld it regarded with any degree of sentiment? Or had it spread so far that it no longer remembered - or cared - where it had been born? He considered the question for a moment, before putting it out of his mind. The boffins could worry about it, if they wished. He was more interested in buying them the time and safety they’d need to ask and answer their questions.

  And we’ll cease to exist if the virus wins the war, he told himself, as Admiral Onarina rose. We have no choice but to fight to the last.

  Chapter Ten

  “All stations and departments report ready, sir,” Commander Donker said. “We are ready to power up on your command.”

  Thomas settled back in his command chair, a low thrum echoing through his ship. The last two days had been nightmarish, to the point he’d privately determined his crew would get a rest once they were through the tramline and on their way to New Washington. They’d loaded their last supplies, checked and rechecked everything and gone through an entire list of urgent things that needed to be done before a starship left the shipyard for the first time. And, somehow, he’d found time to review the data and plan his operation. The only upside was that the admiral was smart and experienced enough to understand that the operational plan was little more than a vague set of ideas. They wouldn’t be able to come up with anything solid until they actually probed the system itself.

  He took a long breath. They’d checked everything, as far as he knew, but something could still go wrong. A power distribution node might overload and explode, a datacore might glitch, a sensor head might go blind … he knew they’d gone through everything with a fine-toothed comb, yet he wasn’t reassured. His crew was exhausted. Exhausted people made mistakes. And even if they didn’t, they’d never powered the ship up completely. They might discover a problem they’d honestly had no idea was even possible before they ran into it.

  “Begin full power-up sequence,” Thomas ordered. His mouth was dry. It had been so much easier when he’d last assumed command. “And be ready to power down if there are any problems.”

  A low hum ran through the ship as her systems came online. Thomas kept a wary eye on the display, wondering what would be the first thing to go wrong. There was always something, from a misplaced sensor node that was being jammed by a drive node to something more serious. He’d served on ships where the sensor nodes were actually too sensitive, to the point they’d been triggered by the drive field and reported hundreds of enemy ships impossibly close to the hull. The sensor display lit up with icons, each one representing part of the giant shipyard. A faint lattice of sensor webbing gleamed in front of him. In theory, nothing - not even the stealthiest ship in the known universe - could slip into the shipyard without being detected and engaged. In practice, no one was sure.

  “Captain,” Donker said. “All systems are powered up.”

  Thomas nodded, allowing himself a moment of relief. He’d dreaded having to explain to the admiral that Lion couldn’t leave the shipyard. It would have been difficult, even if they hadn’t been under orders to depart as quickly as possible. The admiral might have been understanding or … she might have relieved him of command for incompetence. He’d assured her they’d depart on schedule, after all. It was never easy to predict how an admiral might react to something, particularly one who’d spent the last few years flying a desk. They didn’t think like shipboard officers.

  She came up through the ranks herself, he thought. She knows how easily things can go wrong.

  He sighed, inwardly, as his crew completed their checks. It wasn’t uncommon for something to go wrong, something the media could blow into a total disaster. He’d read horror stories about HMS Invincible springing a leak, which - the reporters had suggest
ed - had led rapidly to complete depressurisation and the death of her entire crew. It had triggered his bullshit detectors at once, if only because it was a little unlikely. Starships were designed to cope with hull breaches. The truth - the carrier had had an airlock malfunction, which had killed absolutely no one - had been a little more prosaic.

  But the truth was a lot less dramatic, he thought, wryly. And probably didn’t sell any subscriptions.

  “Communications, inform Shipyard Command that we’re moving out on our assigned vector,” Thomas ordered. Unicorn had already left, lingering outside the defences like an over-eager puppy. “Helm, prepare to take us out.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Cook said. “Shipyard Command has cleared us to depart.”

  Thomas braced himself. “Helm, take us out.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Michael Fitzgerald said. Another quiver ran through the ship. “Taking us out … now.”

  The gravity field seemed to flicker, just slightly, as the ship started to move. Thomas was fairly sure he was imagining it, although no amount of logic and reason from the physicists and psychologists had been able to convince him it was just his imagination. The compensators were working perfectly - they had to be, or the entire crew would be dead - yet he felt as if they were moving. They were moving. He watched the power curves, silently counting down the seconds as more and more drive nodes came online. Lion was over-engineered for her size, as if the designers had more faith in her external and internal armour than they should. A direct hit was likely to take out more than one drive node, even if the ship survived the impact. He had a feeling they’d added extra drive nodes because they could.

  “Captain,” Fitzgerald said, formally. “We’re on our way.”

  Thomas nodded. Lion was gliding through the defence network, passing battlestations and automated weapons platforms that wouldn’t hesitate to turn her into plasma if they thought she was a threat. The virus cheated, he reflected sourly. The days when they could safely assume an enemy power couldn’t operate a human starship, let alone copy and mimic human IFF codes, were long gone. The virus could turn a loyalist into a traitor very quickly, if it was allowed to infect its target unimpeded. No, worse than a traitor. A traitor had to make the decision to become a traitor. The virus didn’t need their consent to extract their knowledge and turn them against their former friends and allies.

  “Contact Unicorn,” he said. “Order her to hold position near us.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Cook said.

  Thomas leaned back in his chair as the display continued to fill with icons. Home Fleet held position near Earth, dozens of smaller squadrons and individual ships guarding the cloudscoops or the asteroid mining facilities. It awed him to see so many ships, from so many different nations, standing ready to defend the homeworld against the enemy; it chilled him to realise they might not be enough to save the planet if the virus gathered its power and hurled its entire fleet against Earth. He’d seen the figures and projections, both the sets that were made available to the public and the ones restricted to those who had a need to know. They didn’t make comforting reading. Thomas had a nasty feeling that more people understood the truth than the government was prepared to admit.

  He scowled as he spotted the line of giant colonist-carriers, heading away from Earth. He’d read detailed opinion pieces proclaiming the off-world colonist program a waste of time, perhaps even a lethal diversion of resources. He could see their point, even though the colonist-carriers were cheap and nasty compared to a full-fledged warship. And yet, Earth herself was threatened. The human race would need to carry on somewhere … he winced as he turned his attention back to the shipyard. There might be plans to evacuate its facilities elsewhere, to give a hidden colony a chance to rebuild. But there’d be mass panic if anyone even tried.

  “All systems remain nominal,” Donker reported. He grinned, suddenly. “We are free and clear!”

  Thomas had to smile. “Let’s hope it stays that way,” he said. “How long until we link up with the convoy and cross the tramline?”

  “Two hours to the convoy, another hour to the tramline,” Donker said. “And two weeks to reach New Washington.”

  “Good,” Thomas said. “Order the beta, delta and gamma crews to stand down and get some rest. We’ll start exercising again once we leave the system.”

  He checked the display, again. Civilians couldn’t understand the sheer immensity of interstellar space. Starships travelled at unimaginable speeds, yet it still took weeks or months to reach the edge of explored space. It was hard to believe, even for him, that Lion wouldn’t reach New Washington in a hurry. Who knew how the situation would change over the next few days? They might arrive at New Washington only to discover that it had been taken by the enemy. It was quite possible.

  His heart clenched. He was leaving Charlotte and his daughters behind. He was leaving them, all too aware he might never come back. Lion was a powerful ship, but she wasn’t indestructible. It would only take one moment of bad luck to cut his life short, to kill him so quickly that he didn’t have any time to realise he was dead. He was too old to believe himself immortal, even if he hadn’t watched too many of his friends go out and never come back. Charlotte … would she miss him, if he died? He liked to think so, even though they’d both been raised to put the family first. They might not be as close as he might have wished, but they were hardly enemies either. She would miss him. His daughters definitely would.

  The seconds ticked by, each one feeling like an hour. He’d ordered the crew to make sure they recorded their final messages and checked their wills, rewriting them if necessary, to take account of any changes in their circumstances. No one really wanted to do it, perhaps out of fear of admitting they might die, but … he scowled. It had to be done. Half the problems facing the families of dead military personnel, killed in the line of duty, stemmed from the spacer failing to fill out a proper will. The military would back a military spouse to the hilt, but it wasn’t easy if they didn’t know what the dead man had actually wanted …

  Not that I had much for myself, he thought, ruefully. Three-quarters of what I own is entailed.

  He put the thought aside, firmly. There was no point in worrying about it now. He’d written his will years ago, after his first child had been born. After that … he shook his head. He had too many other things to concern him. His fingers touched the console, bringing up the latest reports. Everything was going remarkably well, for a ship that had only left the slip a month or so ago. He’d expected something to go wrong.

  It’s probably biding its time, he thought. Every captain in the fleet knew the story of HMS Warspite, which had suffered a total power failure after she’d made her first jump through the tramline. Hopefully, whatever is going to happen will happen before we run into the enemy.

  ***

  It felt weird, Tobias decided, to sit in a gunboat while the tiny craft was effectively powered down. The gunboats were designed to serve as their own simulators - he wasn’t sure if that was a good idea - but they’d been told, in no uncertain terms, that they weren’t to power up the craft any further until Lion was well underway. Tobias was fairly sure the starship’s crew were worrying over nothing - the gunboats were designed to be stealthy, even when their drives were powered up - yet there was no point in arguing. Captain Hammond would probably have him flogged - or hurled out the nearest airlock - if Tobias disobeyed.

  He studied the display, watching the live feed from the starship’s sensors. It was hard to believe that the convoy - and the hundreds of other icons within sensor range - weren’t so close together he could practically reach out and touch them. It was hard to comprehend that there were literally hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of miles between him and the shipyard, a gulf that was growing wider with every passing second. And Earth … he felt an odd little pang as he contemplated the homeworld, falling further and further behind. He’d never really considered leaving Earth …

 
That’s not true, he told himself. You just didn’t want to leave on their terms.

  The hatch hissed as it started to open. Tobias jumped, even though he was on a starship rather than school. Old habits - the fear of being caught alone, the fear of being beaten again and again - died hard. The naval personnel he’d met had all been decent, more or less. The worst of them had grumbled about the gunboat pilots being fast-tracked, which was unarguably true. The downside was that their odds of survival weren’t high. Tobias had flown through simulations that had insisted the entire squadron would be wiped out in seconds. They’d been very depressing.

  Marigold stepped through the airlock. “I thought I’d find you here.”

  “There aren’t many places to go,” Tobias said. He’d once poured scorn on the idea of house arrest. Now, after being effectively confined to Gunboat Country for a month, he was starting to understand. Being trapped in a big house - as if he’d ever owned a big house - would start to grate, sooner rather than later. “Where else would I be?”

  “A couple of the others have been sneaking up to the observation blister,” Marigold said. She pushed the hatch shut behind her, then took her seat. “I figured you might have gone exploring, too.”

  “I wish.” Tobias felt a surge of sudden resentment. There’d been a lot of places he would have wanted to explore, if he hadn’t known it would mean a beating - or worse - if he were caught. It wasn’t a danger on the ship, he supposed, but - again - old habits died hard. He’d tried to tell himself he didn’t want it. He wasn’t sure it had worked. “I was just trying to be alone for a bit.”

  “It’s not easy,” Marigold agreed. “You do know there are privacy tubes?”

  Tobias felt himself redden. “I don’t want to think about them,” he mumbled. “Really.”

  Marigold blushed, too. “Yeah …”

  She changed the subject, quickly enough to tell him she was also embarrassed. “Did you call your mother?”

  “I spoke to my sister,” Tobias said. It had been a very quick call. His mother hadn’t been at home, which meant … what? She’d been offered extra hours at the laundry, but she hadn’t been keen on taking them. Too much harassment, she’d said. The manager hadn’t given much of a damn. “My mother … I didn’t have a chance to speak to her.”