The Lion and the Unicorn

by Christopher G. Nuttall

Tobias let out a breath as the last of the exercise vanished from the display. The horde of enemy warships blinked out of existence, replaced by a handful of asteroid miners and freighters moving from tramline to tramline. The Terra Nova system had been calming down, before the Third Interstellar War began. Or so he’d been told. The reports had claimed that most of the interplanetary population had either left the system or gone underground, trying to hide from both the planet’s new rulers and the virus. He wondered, idly, if they had any hope of remaining hidden indefinitely. A single transmission would be enough to betray them, if someone cared enough to listen.

  “I hope so,” he said. He grinned at her. “Next time, I fly the ship.”

  “I’m not the one who rammed an asteroid,” Marigold teased. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was desperate,” Tobias said. He’d been quite disappointed to discover that one could fly an entire navy through an asteroid field without any serious risk of hitting an asteroid. Real-life asteroid fields were nowhere near as exciting as the movies made them seem. And yet, their training had included a bunch of faked asteroid fields that really were dangerously dense. He wasn’t sure if it was a real test or someone’s idea of a joke. “And you need practice with the guns.”

  “You mean, practice with programming the computers that control the guns,” Marigold corrected. “We’ll discuss it later.”

  Tobias laughed. They were meant to rotate slots, if only to ensure they could serve in either role. Their instructors had claimed it was to give them a chance to reshuffle the squadrons, if necessary, but Tobias didn’t believe it. Anything that killed Marigold in interplanetary combat was likely to kill him as well. There was no point in arguing. The navy was still feeling its way towards viable gunboat tactics. It would probably be several years before doctrine was finalised and set in stone.

  “We could have done worse,” Marigold pointed out. “Statistically, the odds of them hitting Lion are quite low.”

  “It only takes one hit,” Tobias countered. “And then we’ll be stuck out here to die.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Mitch allowed himself a tight smile as he lay on his bunk, holding the terminal up so he could see the screen. It wasn’t the most professional of appearances, and he supposed it would be slightly off-putting to a superior officer who put more credence in appearances than reality, but he found it hard to care. Unicorn simply didn’t have a proper office for her commanding officer. He supposed he should be grateful she also produced less paperwork than a capital ship. He’d never liked paperwork, even though he understood the importance of keeping everything in line. He couldn’t order replacement supplies if he didn’t know what needed to be replaced.

  “I must say, we’re as close to combat-ready as we’re likely to become,” he said. “We won’t know for sure until we face real danger, of course.”

  “Of course,” Captain Hammond echoed. He looked displeased, somewhat to Mitch’s irritation. His ship was probably having problems adjusting to the new reality. “Can your crew handle it?”

  “Yes, sir.” Mitch smiled. “Most of my officers and crew are experienced, even if they haven’t served under me. The remainder are surrounded by experienced officers. They can handle anything.”

  And if they can’t, he added silently, we can remove them before it’s too late.

  He scowled at the thought. It was never easy to tell how someone would react to real combat. Simulations were all very well and good, but they weren’t real. It was difficult to trick someone into believing a simulation was real, isolating them so completely from reality that they honestly wouldn’t know the difference. A person who performed well - brilliantly, even - in the simulators might freeze up when faced with actual combat. Mitch understood, but he had no time for sympathy. A person who froze might get himself and others killed before he recovered himself. Better to have that person sent to the rear, where he might make himself useful without putting the rest of the crew in danger.

  “My crew is learning the ropes, now we’re under way,” Captain Hammond said. “We’re working the kinks out, one by one.”

  Mitch nodded. “Are you ready for bigger and better things?”

  “We’re about to find out,” Captain Hammond said. “And you?”

  “Yes.” Mitch leaned forward. “I have some ideas about how we should proceed.”

  He sat up, tapping his terminal to bring up the starchart and share his view with his superior. “There’s very little on Farnham worth considering,” he said. “Our only real concern is the enemy fleet. Right?”

  “Right,” Captain Hammond said. “And, at last report, it consisted of over seventy ships.”

  “Of which the brainships are the important targets,” Mitch agreed. “There are four brainships, all of which need to be taken out quickly. I propose that we enter the system on a least-time course to Farnham itself, with Unicorn taking up position here” - he tapped a point on the display - “and Lion holding station here, just outside enemy detection range. You then fire missiles on ballistic trajectories, which go live here” - he tapped another point - “giving the enemy a very limited chance to detect them before they slam home.”

  “But too great a chance of running down Lion before she can escape,” Captain Hammond pointed out. “Brainships or no brainships, they won’t fail to react to an obvious threat.”

  “Unless they’ve massively improved their drives in the last few months, their capital ships won’t be able to catch Lion,” Mitch said. “And the smaller ships will be vulnerable to your fire.”

  He shook his head. It was the age-old equation, older than the space navies themselves. Lion could outrun anything powerful enough to blow her to atoms. The cold equations of naval combat admitted of little ambiguity. Given a head start, the battlecruiser might be able to reach the tramline and jump out before her enemies caught up or overwhelmed her defences with long-range missile fire. Hell, the combination of gunboats, ECM drones and point defence might be enough to render Lion invulnerable until the enemy closed the range. They couldn’t hope to hit her with ballistic missiles.

  “It’s still too risky,” Captain Hammond said. “We have to be more careful.”

  Mitch kept his face under tight control. He understood the risks - he’d been injured, nearly killed, on active service - but they were losing the war. They had to take risks. Taking out two or three of the brainships wouldn’t be enough, certainly not enough to give the Americans a decent chance to take out the remainder of the fleet. They had to kill the brainships before it was too late. And that meant taking risks. Mitch hated to admit it, but Lion and Unicorn were expendable. The Royal Navy would happily sacrifice both ships if it meant buying time to build up the fleet and mount a massive counterattack.

  “We need to hit them hard, catch them by surprise,” he said. “If we give them a chance to see what we can do, if they have a moment to send a message further up the chain, we might run into a much heavier ambush next time.”

  Or worse, he thought, sourly. No one really understood how the virus thought - it was just too alien - but they did have a fairly good model of how it communicated. If a single brainship survived long enough to analyse what happened, the rest of the enemy fleet would know in short order. Next time, they’ll know what to expect.

  “We also don’t know how well our ships will perform in combat,” Captain Hammond said, coldly. “The risk is too great.”

  “That’s what we’re here to find out,” Mitch insisted. “We have to push the limits as far as they will go.”

  “The risk is too great,” Captain Hammond repeated. “We’ll engage from a distance.”

  Mitch leaned forward. “What do you have in mind?”

  “We engage from a middling point,” Captain Hammond said. “Unicorn goes ahead to survey the system, so we have both a decent headcount of enemy ships and a shot at locating the flicker station. Assuming, of course, they have one.”

  “They should certainly have set one up,�
� Mitch agreed. “Even if they didn’t have flicker technology before the war, they’ll have learnt about it from us.”

  He made a face. The navy took endless precautions to prevent intact datacores from falling into enemy hands, but most of those precautions could be circumvented with a zombie’s willing help. It was impossible to determine what the virus did and didn’t know, particularly since it had started infecting and overwhelming humanity’s colony worlds. He’d read a dozen books that mentioned the flicker network, in greater or lesser detail. And knowing something was possible was half the battle.

  “If we take out the station, they’ll know for sure we’re there,” he warned. “And if we don’t find the station … we won’t know for sure it doesn’t exist.”

  “We can but try.” Captain Hammond shrugged. “I take it you have no objection to going in first, alone?”

  “No, sir.” Mitch had to smile. As if he would! “We’ll just have to set up the details and plan the offensive.”

  “Quite.” Captain Hammond looked distracted, just for a moment. “I’d like to keep running drills until we reach New Washington, then we can finalise our plans. My crew are still not at their best.”

  “There’s nothing like battle for smoothing out the rough edges,” Mitch assured him. “I’ll keep working on operational plans too.”

  “Good.” Captain Hammond nodded, curtly. “We’ll speak again before too long.”

  Mitch nodded, stiffly, as his superior’s face vanished. He’d expected better, somehow. He understood Captain Hammond’s concerns - they were flying untested ships, with largely untested crews - but he didn’t share them. The admiral had made it clear, time and time again, that humanity was losing the war. They had to buy time, whatever the cost. It might have been better, he reflected sourly, to assign a more experienced captain and command crew to Lion. Her captain had spent the last six months at the academy, not on a command deck. Mitch understood the importance of having experienced officers assigned to the academy - too many instructors were too inexperienced to know they were teaching the wrong lessons - but … he shook his head. There was no point in worrying about something he couldn’t change. Instead, he keyed his console, bringing up the latest reports. The simulated engagements had gone better than he’d expected.

  Which means we’re either smoothing off the rough edges faster than I thought possible, he mused, or we’re setting ourselves up for a fall.

  He dismissed the thought as he brought up the latest reports from the survey missions. Farnham had never been considered very important, even by the Americans who’d laid claim the system. The colonists were considered harmless cranks, not the nucleus of a new civilisation. Reading between the lines, Mitch had the impression the United States thought it was just a matter of time before they took formal control of the surface. Or had, once upon a time. There was nothing left of the colony now but zombies.

  Unless they did manage to go underground, he thought, as he checked the remainder of the system. Slipping in and out without being detected shouldn’t be a problem. They might be still in hiding, afraid to come out.

  He shuddered. Who could blame them? A small colony - only a couple of thousand settlers, if the records were accurate - couldn’t hope to do more than slow the virus down for a few minutes. There’d been no orbital defences, nothing capable of so much as spitting at the enemy ships. He hoped the colonists had managed to hide. And that they had a way to signal the USN when it retook the system.

  And they might suspect a ruse, if the navy tries to raise them, he thought. The virus can duplicate our signals, damn it.

  The intercom bleeped. “Captain,” Staci said. “We’ve just completed the gunnery cycle drills and passed all the markers. We’re ready for action.”

  “Good,” Mitch said. He had no illusions. Unicorn was not going to win the war single-handedly. Ark Royal was the only ship that had come close to winning alone and she’d had help. But he knew they could hold their own. “We’ll just have to hope Hammond lets us off the leash.”

  “Yes, sir,” Staci said.

  “And meet me in my quarters at 1700,” Mitch added. “We have an operation to plan.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  ***

  Thomas kept his face carefully impassive as he broke the connection, then scowled as he sat back in his chair. He understood the urge to fight, to march to the sound of the guns and open fire on the enemy ships and positions, but he also understood that his ship was nowhere near ready for combat. The design was untested, the crew were untried … sure, the various departments had been showing a marked degree of improvement since they’d left Sol, but they still had a long way to go. Thomas rubbed his eyes, wishing he had time for a proper rest. He doubted he’d feel any better until they’d faced their first real engagement.

  He allowed his frown to deepen as he studied Captain Campbell’s plan of attack. It was straightforward, almost brutally so. Get into position, hit the enemy and run. There was little more to it, suggesting that Campbell understood the importance of the KISS principle. And yet, Thomas had his doubts. The plan relied on everything going right. If it didn’t, if Lion was overhauled by the enemy ships, they’d be shot to pieces. He couldn’t take the risk.

  Particularly when we don’t have to, he mused. They could launch the missiles - on ballistic trajectories - from a safe distance. The virus would have no trouble tracking the missiles back to their point of origin, but Lion would have plenty of time to put entire light-years between itself and the enemy fleet. They’ll have no time to track us down if we retreat at once.

  He shook his head. The hell of it was that they really didn’t know how well their missiles would perform in combat. He’d watched simulations that suggested they’d smash the enemy fleet effortlessly and simulations that insisted the entire salvo would be wiped out by enemy point defence before it entered attack range. They’d been over it again and again, before finally conceding they simply didn’t know. The gunboats might make the difference between success and failure, but even they hadn’t been tested in a real engagement. Their lone skirmish with the enemy had been marked by surprise on both sides. Neither had known what they were facing.

  “And we still don’t know if they’re watching us or not,” he muttered. Basic military doctrine insisted that intelligence was the second most deadly weapon in the known universe - the first being surprise - but it was impossible to determine if the virus had spy ships lurking at the edge of the Sol System. As long as they kept their drives and active sensors shut down, they might as well be invisible. “They might know we’re coming.”

  The buzzer rang. Thomas looked up. “Come.”

  Commander Donker stepped through the hatch. “Captain,” he said. “I have the latest set of reports from the gunboat simulations.”

  Thomas smiled, although it wasn’t really amusing. “Should I be worried Colonel Bagehot hasn’t come in person?”

  “He’s still working with his crews,” Donker said. He held out a datachip. “The simulations, as always, were based on vastly more capable enemy starships and missiles. They still took out half of the incoming missiles, despite superior drives and ECM. We can reasonably assume the gunboats will provide a shield for us, particularly if they keep pace with the enemy missiles.”

  “Which they can’t, in anything other than a very short engagement,” Thomas pointed out, coldly. “Can we rely on their drive fields remaining stable?”

  “No, sir,” Donker said. His expression twisted. “We’ve gone through simulations, dozens of simulations. The worst case, sir, is that we lose a third of the gunboats to drive failure.”

  Thomas nodded. Gunboats sat oddly between missiles, starfighters and capital ships. Their drives were powerful enough to accelerate them at a clip only missiles could match, without the torrent of radiation and guaranteed compensator failure that would doom any starfighter that tried. And yet, the odds of catastrophic drive failure skyrocketed every time the drives were ramped up to full pow
er. The gunboats might be able to keep pace with incoming missiles long enough to take them all out, at the risk of losing power and being overwhelmed by the enemy fleet. Thomas had no confidence they could mount a SAR operation before it was too late.

  They’re expendable, the cold part of his mind pointed out. We’re all expendable.

  He cursed himself for the thought. He’d met the gunboat pilots, once. They didn’t have the polish of real naval personnel - it was hard to believe they were naval personnel - yet they were ready to put their lives at risk for their country. They’d been like starfighter pilots, but without the arrogance and complete lack of concern for rules that came with the grim knowledge they might die at any moment. Even in peacetime, the death toll amongst starfighter pilots was uncomfortably high. And it was only a matter of time until the gunboats went the same way.

  We’ll probably start training proper pilots, once we have the doctrine worked out, Thomas thought. He’d read the proposals Colonel Bagehot and his team had drawn out, five months ago. It remained to be seen how well the doctrine would fare in the real world. And then the gunboat pilots will turn into starfighter pilots.

  He put the thought out of his mind. “We’ll do everything in our power to avoid losing them,” he said, although he knew it was a promise they’d be unable to keep. A single enemy missile would be enough to wipe a gunboat out of the skies. The virus might start turning shipkillers into anti-gunboat weapons, clearing the way for the remainder of the missiles to reach the fleet. “And to rescue them, if they lose power.”

  “If it can be done,” Donker pointed out. He didn’t sound convinced. “The virus may fire on our shuttles.”

  Thomas nodded. Humanity’s first two alien enemies - the Tadpoles and the Foxes, both now allies - hadn’t gone out of their way to commit atrocities, even though it had taken a while to establish communications. The Anglo-Indian War had been remarkably civilised, with both powers doing their level best to play by the rules. Accidents happened, everyone knew, but they could be minimised. The virus, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care. It wasn’t, he admitted sourly, that it shot up SAR shuttles for the sheer hell of it. It was that it didn’t know the difference between a SAR shuttle and something more hostile.