The Lion and the Unicorn

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  And we shot the command structure to hell when we launched our mutiny. Her lips twitched in bitter amusement. Who would back me if I tried to impose my authority by force?

  Sarah gazed around the bridge. There were only four officers on duty, three men and a woman she’d known for the last two years . . . but how far could she trust them? Really? She hadn’t been the only officer to want to climb the ranks, no matter how hard the authorities tried to keep her down. She was only the nominal commanding officer, even though she’d planned and executed the mutiny. She’d set more than enough precedent for her mutineers to mutiny against her . . .

  Lieutenant Olaf, the communications officer, glanced back at her. “Captain, we’re picking up a push message from the local StarCom.”

  Sarah felt her expression harden. “Another one?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Olaf said. “It’s being pushed out everywhere.”

  “Show me.” Sarah let out a breath. It had been a push message that had started the whole goddamned affair in the first place. “We may as well hear the bad news directly.”

  King Hadrian’s face appeared on the display. Sarah watched, feeling a multitude of emotions. The king had been the strongest supporter of the Commonwealth, before and during the war; he’d been the only one fighting for the Commonwealth on Tyre while the dukes and duchesses had been trying to draw back as much as possible. Sarah knew—it had been on all the newscasts—that the king had been pushing for more integration, for more investment . . . for everything that would make the Commonwealth work. And yet, he’d lost more than he’d won. The House of Lords had been steadily cutting the Commonwealth’s budget. The cornucopia of resources and investment that had been offered to the colonials during the war had dried up almost as soon as the war had come to an end. Sarah had heard the news from home. Jobs had been lost, businesses were failing, banks were collapsing . . . They’d thought the good times would never end.

  But they did, Sarah thought. We really should have known better.

  She listened to the king’s message with a growing sense of disbelief. The king had been forced to flee his homeworld? The king had been declared an outlaw? The king had led his loyalists to Caledonia, where they had established a government-in-exile . . . a government that claimed to be the legitimate government? And hundreds of ships, hundreds of thousands of loyalists, were rushing to join him, to fight for their rights against the cabal that had captured Tyre? It was madness . . .

  But she’d heard the rumors. She’d seen the signs that all was not well. Perhaps, just perhaps, the outbreak of civil war was a matter of time.

  Had been a matter of time, she corrected herself. The message ended with an appeal to loyalists, inviting them to join him. The civil war is already here.

  She supposed that explained the message, the one that had sparked the mutiny. The king’s loyalists must have been seizing ships, if they hadn’t been in command already. His enemies would have moved to stop him . . . She had a vision, suddenly, of superdreadnought bridges being torn apart by gunfire as loyalists battled for control of their vessels. Merlin wouldn’t be the only ship that had been taken by mutineers. There would be others. She hoped there would be others.

  “We have to go,” Lieutenant Vaclav said. “Where else can we go?”

  Sarah contemplated her options carefully. They were painfully few. She couldn’t surrender, not now. She couldn’t take her ship to her homeworld, not without risking a mutiny or being arrested as soon as she arrived. She couldn’t abandon the ship without risking being caught the moment she passed through a bioscanner. She couldn’t become a pirate or mercenary or anything else without . . . She looked down at the uniform she wore. She liked to think it still meant something, even though it was splattered with blood. The king wasn’t just their best option. He was their only realistic option.

  There was nowhere else to go.

  “Nowhere,” she said. She straightened up in the command chair. “Set course for Caledonia.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Vaclav said.

  And hope to hell we don’t get intercepted along the way, Sarah thought as she felt her ship thrumming to life. They could have set up a blockade by now if they had time to get organized.

  She kept her face impassive, keeping her doubts to herself. The StarCom network wasn’t known as the net of a trillion lies for nothing. Even with the latest advancements in interstellar FTL communications, with messages relayed through a dozen nodes rather than simply radiating out of Tyre, it was still possible for someone to take control of the network . . . or simply use it to spread lies. There was no way to tell the difference between truth and lies, not from a distance. They were possibly flying straight into a trap.

  But we have nowhere else to go, she thought. We’ll just have to do our best to avoid contact until we reach Caledonia.

  Chapter One

  Caledonia

  “Transit complete, Admiral,” Lieutenant Kitty Patterson said. “We have reached Caledonia.”

  “Transmit our IFF codes,” Admiral Lady Katherine Falcone ordered. She felt numb, too tired and worn to be relieved that they’d finally reached their destination. “And keep the vortex generator in readiness.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Kitty said.

  Kat sat back in her chair, one hand brushing blonde hair out of her face. It had been a nightmarish voyage, even though the task force had avoided enemy contact . . . enemy contact, damn it. Thinking of her comrades as enemies hurt deeply. She knew there would be ships and crews that had remained loyal to the House of Lords, commanding officers who owed their positions to patronage or crews that simply didn’t understand what was at stake . . . She knew it was only a matter of time before fighting broke out in earnest. The brief exchange of missiles at Tyre had made it clear, brutally, that the time for talking was over. The dispute could be settled only by war.

  She forced herself to watch the display as more and more icons flashed to life, heedless of her churning thoughts. Everything had happened so quickly. She’d known trouble was brewing, everyone had known trouble was brewing, but she hadn’t expected a descent into violence and civil war. She hadn’t expected to have to make a choice between supporting her king or her family. She hadn’t expected . . .

  None of us expected this, she thought. And perhaps, if we’d taken the possibility of war more seriously, this would never have happened.

  She gritted her teeth as her sensors picked out massive orbital fortresses, each one packing enough firepower to give a superdreadnought a very bad day. The king had been confident that Caledonia would side with him—he’d been pouring resources and investment into the colony world for years—but Kat didn’t dare take it for granted. If Caledonia sided with the House of Lords instead . . . She shook her head. She wasn’t blind to just how badly the colonials had been treated, even during the war. It was unlikely that anyone on Caledonia would feel any real allegiance to the House of Lords, whatever they felt for the king. She knew many of them would want to sit on the sidelines and do as little as possible for either side.

  “They’re hailing us,” Kitty said. “They’re requesting permission to speak to the king.”

  “Relay the message to him,” Kat ordered curtly. “And order the fleet to hold position here.”

  “Aye, Admiral.”

  This would never have happened if my father had survived, Kat thought glumly. Lucas Falcone had been a stiff-necked old bastard, but he’d been a man. He’d understood the importance of winning the peace as well as the war, the dangers of constantly slashing budgets and cutting spending when people were desperate. He’d understood that desperation could lead to war. And he would never have pulled ships out of the occupied zone until peace was firmly established.

  She let out a breath, feeling sweat prickling down her back. If there was one thing that had angered her, just one thing, it was how the House of Lords had played politics while the occupied zone had burned. She’d watched helplessly as chaos had swept across the region, pl
anets collapsing into civil war or being raided by pirates or simply being hit with genocidal attacks by the remnants of the Theocracy. The war had been won—she’d emerged triumphant from the deciding battle—but the peace had been constantly on the verge of being lost without a trace. Every starship that had been pulled from her command, every marine regiment that had been sent back home . . . Everything she’d lost had meant more dead people, more destroyed lives, more hopelessness and desperation and . . .

  We promised those people that we’d protect them, she told herself again and again. And then we abandoned them.

  She felt a surge of bitter anger. She’d never got on with her oldest brother, but she’d thought better of him. He’d been an adult when she’d been born, a young man who had acted more like a third parent when he’d had time for her at all. She’d never realized that he would abandon the people the Commonwealth had promised to help. He’d sat in his chair, in their father’s chair, and pronounced a death sentence for hundreds of thousands of people he’d never met and never would. And he’d done it because of politics. He hadn’t had any personal hatred for the dead. They’d simply been collateral damage.

  Her console chimed. The king’s face appeared in front of her. “Admiral?”

  “Your Majesty,” Kat said stiffly.

  “We’re welcome here,” he said. His handsome face betrayed no trace of the concern he must have felt. “Take the fleet into orbit, then join us for a planning session.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Kat said.

  The king smiled, warmly. He didn’t look that put out, for someone who’d been forced to flee his homeworld at very short notice. He looked every inch a monarch, from his handsome face to a perfectly tailored naval uniform. But then, Kat supposed he found the outbreak of civil war to be something of a relief. The endless circle of politics, the endless debates over the same issue, time and time again with no resolution in sight . . . over. He didn’t have to argue for hours over the slightest concession, over something that could be withdrawn at a moment’s notice. He could finally command his own ship.

  “You’ve done well, Kat,” he said. “Thanks to you, we will thrive.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Kat said. “I have a small matter to attend to first.”

  She couldn’t help feeling conflicted as the king’s image vanished from the display. The war wouldn’t just be waged against the House of Lords. It would be waged against her family, against men and women she’d known since she was a little girl . . . She wouldn’t be the only one, she was sure, torn in two. How many people would be asking themselves which side they should take? And how many would try to steer a course between the two until neutrality was no longer an option?

  And how many will be laying contingency plans for defeat as well as victory? The thought mocked her. She knew her fellows too well to have doubts. The loudest among them, baying for the king’s blood, will be planning how best to surrender if he wins the war.

  She stood. “Order the fleet to enter orbit, as planned,” she said. “And then . . . order all off-duty personnel to assemble in the shuttlebay.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Kitty said.

  Kat took one last look at the display—the orbital fortresses were sweeping space with powerful active sensors, but weren’t charging their weapons or launching missiles—and strode through the hatch into her ready room. Her private space, perhaps the only truly private space on the ship. Everyone else was sharing quarters, doubling or tripling up as the king’s staffers and allies crowded onto the ship. Even the king himself was sharing quarters with his fiancée, Princess Drusilla. Kat felt her lips twitch sourly. She didn’t like the princess—her instincts told her Drusilla was trouble, but the king evidently disagreed.

  She put the thought aside as she splashed water on her face, changed into a clean uniform, and studied herself in the mirror. The uniform was pristine, her face was clear . . . but her hair was unkempt, her eyes tired. She ran her fingers through her hair. She’d allowed it to grow out over the last few months, when she’d been stationed in the occupied zone, but she’d get a cut close to her scalp as soon as possible. She couldn’t allow herself to grow lax. She’d done too much of that over the last six months.

  And we were the most well-drilled unit in the postwar navy, she thought. The rest of the fleet must be much worse.

  She scowled, feeling a pang of loss. It was terrifying how quickly standards had fallen once the war had been won. She’d seen too many officers neglect their duties, forsaking drills that taught their crews vital skills; too many experienced officers and crewmen had been pushed out of the service while inexperienced officers with the right connections had been allowed to keep their ranks. Kat had done what she could to arrest that trend during her last deployment. She dreaded to think how badly the other peacetime deployments had neglected the fundamentals. They’d been more concerned with saving money than saving lives.

  Maybe William was right to get out when he did, she thought. Leave on a high note.

  She wondered, as she walked through the hatch and down the corridor, just what had happened to her former XO. She’d taken him back to Tyre, but . . . He hadn’t rejoined the fleet in time to leave the system. Where was he? Had he been sent back to Asher Dales? Or was he under arrest? William was, technically, her family’s client. What would Duke Peter Falcone, Kat’s oldest brother, have made of him? A hero? A traitor? Or someone who had merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Kat wished, in hindsight, that she’d kept William on her ship. It would have been good to have his support over the last two weeks.

  A handful of crewmen were hurrying into the giant shuttlebay as she approached, their faces pale. There had been all sorts of rumors flying through the ship, even though there hadn’t been any official announcement of . . . well, anything. A couple of the king’s staffers had complained about the rumors; they’d even demanded she shut the rumormongers down, but Kat had merely shrugged. One could no more stop rumors than one could stop the tide by shouting at it. Sure, she could put a handful of loudmouths in the brig . . . but what then? That would simply suggest—to anyone who cared to look—that the worst of the rumors were true.

  “Admiral.” Captain Akbar Rosslyn was standing by the hatch, looking grim. “They’re ready for you.”

  Kat nodded her thanks and stepped past him, into the shuttlebay. The giant deck had been cleared, the shuttles and landing craft pushed against the far bulkhead so the crew could gather as a body. Chatter hummed through the air as Kat took the makeshift stand and looked down at the gathered crew. There were hundreds of warm bodies in the shuttlebay, only a fraction of the superdreadnought’s entire crew. The remainder would be on duty or listening in from the other shuttlebays. It took more than three thousand officers and crewmen to operate a superdreadnought.

  Although we could do the job with fewer people if we didn’t mind losing efficiency, she reminded herself. A marine sergeant bellowed for silence. A small crew couldn’t fight the ship once she started taking damage.

  She waited for quiet, studying the crew. It was strange to realize that the chain of command had been badly weakened over the last two weeks, even though there hadn’t been any serious incidents. She’d studied history. Civil wars weakened the bonds between people, fragmenting society into smaller groups . . . She frowned inwardly. The only thing linking the various colonies together was the Commonwealth itself. If the Commonwealth fell, the colonials would fragment. A chilling thought. The association of worlds she’d sworn to serve was, in many ways, a victim of its own success.

  “Two weeks ago, civil war broke out.” Kat kept her voice calm, even though she knew she was giving voice to the worst of the rumors. “The dispute between the House of Lords and King Hadrian turned violent. It is unlikely that the crisis can now be settled by anything but force of arms. I, and this ship, have joined the king.”

  She paused, choosing her next words carefully. Some of her crew would fight for her. Others, colonials all, wou
ld fight for the man they saw as their ally and protector. Still others would do their jobs without thinking about the wider implications. And others . . . They wouldn’t fight for the king, not against their own people. Or they wouldn’t share the grievances that had kick-started the civil war.

  “If you want to join us, to fight for the king, you are welcome. I won’t attempt to influence your choice. You should choose your side for whatever reason makes sense to you. If you don’t want to fight for the king, you can either go into an internment camp on the planet’s surface or travel straight back to Tyre. We will make transport arrangements as soon as possible. You have my word that no one will be hindered if they want to return to Tyre.”

  A low rustle ran through the gathered crowd. She didn’t give it time to build.

  “Make your choice, whichever one you want to make,” she said. “But whatever choice you make, stick with it. I won’t fault anyone who wants to leave now. Afterwards . . . I need the crew to be united. There will be no chance to switch sides later, once the fighting begins in earnest.”

  And anyone who tries to switch sides later will be seen as a traitor, she mused as she surveyed the crowd. And he’ll be lucky if he only spends the rest of his life in the brig.