The Lion and the Unicorn Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Lion and the Unicorn

  HMS Lion and HMS Unicorn Will Return In: | Fighting For The Crown | Coming Soon. | (If You Enjoyed This Book, Please Leave a Review. It Helps.)

  Prologue

  Chapter One | Caledonia

  Chapter Two | Caledonia

  Chapter Three | Caledonia

  The Lion and the Unicorn

  (Ark Royal, Book XV)

  Christopher G. Nuttall

  Book One: Ark Royal

  Book Two: The Nelson Touch

  Book Three: The Trafalgar Gambit

  Book Four: Warspite

  Book Five: A Savage War of Peace

  Book Six: A Small Colonial War

  Book Seven: Vanguard

  Book Eight: Fear God And Dread Naught

  Book Nine: We Lead

  Book Ten: The Longest Day

  Book Eleven: The Cruel Stars

  Book Twelve: Invincible

  Book Thirteen: Para Bellum

  Book Fourteen: The Right of the Line

  Book Fifteen: The Lion and the Unicorn

  http://www.chrishanger.net

  http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/

  http://www.facebook.com/ChristopherGNuttall

  Cover by Justin Adams

  http://www.variastudios.com/

  All Comments Welcome!

  Cover Blurb

  The war isn’t going well.

  In five years of heavy fighting, humanity and its alien allies have steadily been pushed back towards Earth, towards the very heart of humanity itself. The virus is steadily wearing the defences down, mounting campaign after campaign to infect and enslave every other alien race. The only hope rests with newer and better weapons, with technology that may turn the tide, but can the weapons and starships be deployed in time?

  HMS Lion and HMS Unicorn are two new ships, designed to take the war to the enemy and tip the balance of power in humanity’s favour. But with untested technology, clashes between their commanding officers and trouble below decks, they may find themselves facing more than they can handle …

  … And the odds of coming home are very low.

  Author’s Note

  As always, I have done my best to make this book - the start of a new Ark Royal trilogy - as stand-alone as possible. However, the war depicted within this pages started in the Invincible books (available from online sellers now) and the character Richard Tobias Gurnard was first introduced in Life During Wartime, a semi-novella within The Dogs of God: Science Fiction According to Chris anthology. You don’t have to read it to know what’s going on, but it helps.

  CGN, 2020

  Prologue

  Admiral Susan Onarina knew, without false modesty, that she’d been in some pretty uncomfortable - even hellish - places in her long career, from middy country to jail and even boarding school. And yet, the Alpha Black facility - located on the very edge of the solar system, within an asteroid that wasn’t listed on any charts - was the worst place she’d ever been. She tried to avoid it, as did all sensible officers. The asteroid’s inhabitants were either servicemen on short-term deployments, medical scientists too intent on their work to notice their surroundings, or infected humans who were no longer in command of themselves. The asteroid was far worse than jail.

  She squeezed her eyes shut as she stumbled through the chemical shower, the acidic liquid stinging her skin. Rays of ultraviolet light poured down on her from high above, followed by lasers that were designed to sweep her body clear of the slightest trace of bacteria. She forced herself to keep moving as robotic arms pressed against her to collect skin and blood samples. The lights seemed to get brighter as she passed through another series of airlocks, wondering - not for the first time - if the precautions were more than a little excessive. Blood samples, urine samples, stool samples … she shuddered as she kept going, trying to ignore her awareness that she was being probed on a molecular level. She’d seen the alien virus - the virus - at work. If anything, the facility director wasn’t being paranoid enough.

  And I suppose it makes sure I don’t come out here more than once or twice a year, she mused, as she stepped through the final airlock. Warm water - clean water - cascaded down, washing away the traces of chemicals that had survived the earlier showers. The director doesn’t want anyone looking over his shoulder.

  Susan breathed a sigh of relief as she dried herself with a disposable towel, then walked into the locker room. Her clothes were waiting. They felt like paper against her skin. She found it hard to feel like a serious person in the outfit, even though she knew her dignity was not the important issue on the asteroid. The garments were designed to be torn away, if the medics needed to tend to a patient. She understood the logic. She just didn’t like it.

  She took a long breath, then opened the door to the antechamber. Admiral Paul Mason, Director of Alpha Black, jumped to his feet and snapped a salute as she entered, then held out a mug of tea. Susan took the mug and sipped it, gratefully. It was navy tea, strong and sour, but it washed the taste away perfectly well.

  “You’d think we could spring for better tea,” she said, as she poured herself another mug. “Or even proper milk.”

  “You know what it’s like,” Mason said, dryly. “Billions for untested research equipment that never does what it says on the tin, not one penny for better food and drink for the workers.”

  Susan nodded, brushing her dark hair back over her shoulder. “It’s good to see you again,” she said. They’d been lovers, once upon a time. “I take it you haven’t gone mad yet, trapped out here.”

  “Not yet, but I’m still trying.” Mason winked, then sobered. “We may have had a breakthrough.”

  “The beancounters will be pleased,” Susan said. “They’re still talking about defunding this facility and spending more on warship production instead.”

  “That would be a mistake,” Mason said, urgently. “We’re not going to out-produce the virus.”

  Susan nodded, curtly. “I agree,” she said. “The key to victory - or even simple survival - lies in pushing technological and biological research as far as possible.”

  She stared into her empty mug, remembering hours after hours of endless arguments with the bureaucrats and politicians. They felt the money would be better spent on tried and tested technology, on warships and starfighters rather than potential war-winning weapons. Susan understood their concerns - she’d read Superiority, they’d all read Superiority - but she also understood the virus didn’t need to concern itself with economic issues. Its society, insofar as it even existed, was communistic to a degree no human society could match. It didn’t have to worry about keeping the population alive and reasonably contented. It could simply churn out an endless series of warships and point them at its foes. And there was no way the Alliance could match the virus ship for ship.

  And we have to worry about zombies within the ranks, she reminded herself. One moment, someone is perfectly loyal and trustworthy; the next, they’re agents of an alien power.

  “Like I said, we’ve made something of a breakthrough.” Mason took her mug and put it in the sink. “If you’ll come with me.”

  Susan nodded and followed him through a maze of corridors. The facility was almost completely barren, save for a handful of childish paintings pinned to the wall that somehow made the corridors look worse. One of the researchers had kids, she supposed. The poor children were probably back on Earth, perhaps in a naval boarding school. She winced in sympathy. It was never easy to be separated from one’s parents, even if there was no actual danger. The parents hated being apart from their children too.

  She frowned as they stepped into a large compartment. The rear bul
khead was transparent, allowing the guests to peer into the environmental compartment. A handful of naked people - men and women - wandered aimlessly around the chamber, their bare skin marred with unsightly growths and protrusions. Susan had seen horror - she’d seen people injured or killed in active service - but there was something about the scene in front of her that chilled her to the bone. The infected were no longer wholly human. Their will was no longer their own. The virus had them in its thrall. An alien intelligence seemed to hang in the air, pressing against her thoughts … she told herself, savagely, that she was imagining it. And then the infected turned to face her.

  Susan glanced at Mason. “Can they see us?”

  “They shouldn’t be able to.” Mason sounded worried, a far cry from the cocky midshipman she’d known years ago. “The bulkhead is opaque, on their side. But they seem to know when someone is looking at them. We don’t understand it.”

  “I see.” Susan calmed herself with an effort. She’d faced all sorts of challenges in the past, from incompetent commanding officers to naked racism and sexism. She’d face this one too. “Are they secure?”

  “We think so,” Mason said. He ignored the sharp look she sent him with the ease of long practice. “That said, they’ve been quite good at testing our defences. A couple of bioresearchers got infected; we’re not sure how. Thankfully, we caught it in time to flush the virus from their systems. Others … the Russians had a breakout at their facility, one that forced them to trigger the nuke and vaporise everyone. Apparently, one of the guards got seduced. We don’t know how that happened either.”

  Susan shuddered. Bioweapons research was the big taboo. The tailored biological weapons that had gotten loose during the Age of Unrest had killed hundreds of thousands before they’d been stopped. No one, even the really weird independent asteroid colonies, cared to push the limits any further. And yet, governments had continued research into bioweapons on the grounds it was the only way to develop defences against biological warfare. They were right, she acknowledged sourly, but it didn’t sit well with her. It was only a short step from defence to attack.

  She turned her gaze back to the infected prisoners. “Is there nothing that can be done for them?”

  “The infection’s too far advanced,” Mason said. “Their brains have been literally riddled with the virus’s command and control structures. One of the zombies” - he indicated a middle-aged man - “actually has a bullet hole through his brain. It hasn’t slowed him down any. Sure, we could purge the infection, but we’d kill them in the process. Once the infection reaches a certain point, it’s unstoppable and euthanasia is the only solution.”

  He stepped forward until he was almost touching the bulkhead. “We’ve had some success in slowing the infection, or even purging it, but not after the tipping point is reached. It seems to laugh at our genetically-engineered immune systems. We’re working on nanotech solutions, but so far we haven’t come up with anything practical.”

  Susan turned as an older woman bustled into the room. “Admiral? I’m sorry I wasn’t at the airlock to meet you.”

  “It’s quite all right,” Susan assured her. “Doctor Velda Womack, I presume?”

  “Just call me Velda,” Velda said. “I’m the director of research in this facility.”

  Susan smiled at Mason, who shrugged expressively. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said, deciding not to point out that Mason was in formal command of the facility. Velda wasn’t the first civilian she’d met with an inflated idea of her own importance. “I understand you have a briefing for me?”

  “Yes, Admiral.” Velda walked over to the wall and tapped a console. The bulkhead turned opaque. A holographic image appeared in front of them. “The face of the enemy.”

  “Living cells,” Susan said. She still found it hard to wrap her head around the idea of a sentient virus. The previous alien enemies she’d faced had been humanoid, for a given value of humanoid. “It’s almost beautiful.”

  “It’s also almost certainly artificial,” Velda said. “There’s remarkably little junk DNA, if you’ll pardon an outdated and imprecise term, in its structure. Even the most enhanced human has a lot of junk in his genetic code. The virus was created by someone, we’re sure, and got out of control.”

  “And they might be still out there,” Susan said.

  “It’s possible,” Velda agreed. “It’s also possible they were simply the first victims. We may never know.”

  She indicated the display with a single finger. “We’ve been looking for ways to fight the virus on its own level. It isn’t easy. It’s capable of overwhelming most immune systems fairly quickly, unless the victim receives medical attention within the first few hours. We think it’s actually adapted to face humans, as the time between infection and mental collapse has grown shorter. It may not be intelligent as we understand the term, but it’s clearly very resourceful. Once the air is infected with viral base cells, total infection is just a matter of time.”

  “I am aware of this,” Susan said, stiffly. “We lost a handful of colonies to biological attack.”

  Velda adjusted the display. “We’ve been experimenting with manipulating the base cells ourselves. They’re really quite remarkable, in so many ways. We came up with a way to use modified base cells to break down the viral … biological computer network, for want of a better term. It would be a terminal blow to their cohesion. We think it would shatter the infected hive mind into a collection of individuals.”

  “We think,” Mason put in. “We don’t know for sure.”

  “No one ever does,” Susan said. She looked at Velda. “Are you sure they can’t adapt?”

  “We believe they wouldn’t have time to react before the base cells die,” Velda said. “The virus requires a high concentration of base cells within the atmosphere to maintain the hive mind. We’d be smashing it like … like building blocks, in a manner that should make it impossible for the network to be rebuilt. The rate of infection would be reduced sharply, if not curtailed completely. Or so we believe.”

  “It can’t be that simple,” Susan said. “What’s the catch?”

  “We can hit a planet, easily enough,” Mason said. “Taking out a ship would be a great deal harder.”

  Susan’s lips twitched. “And they can deploy counter-infection protocols of their own,” she said. “They may slow the spread of our infection …”

  “Our BioBomb,” Velda said. “We’d be fighting fire with fire.”

  “Clever.” Susan studied the hologram for a long moment. “How do you know the … the BioBomb won’t turn into a worse threat?”

  “It relies upon viral base cells,” Velda said. “If we released it here” - she waved a hand - “it would die swiftly. It isn’t capable of infecting us or adapting to its surroundings. One might as well transport a human to the bottom of the sea and expect him to survive long enough to learn how to breathe water. In a sense, we’ve actually created a predator. It’s designed to prey on the virus.”

  “I hope you’re not going to suggest we infect ourselves with a downgraded virus,” Susan said, dryly.

  “That is how the first vaccines were created.” Velda shrugged. “No, we’re still working on medical defences. It might be possible to turn our blood into viral poison, but doing that and keeping the infected person alive has so far proven beyond us.”

  Susan nodded, curtly. “I read the reports,” she said. “They didn’t make comforting reading.”

  “No,” Velda agreed.

  “In theory, we should be able to disrupt their networks if we unleash the BioBombs,” Mason said. “At the very least, we should be able to give them a nasty fright.”

  “I’m not convinced the virus has emotions, as we understand the term,” Velda said. “All of our attempts to communicate have failed.”

  “This is a war of extermination,” Susan agreed. She glanced at Mason. “I’ll discuss it with the First Space Lord and COBRA, then take it to GATO if they agree. Until then
… start producing the BioBombs. I want them ready for deployment as soon as possible.”

  Mason looked disturbed. “What has this war done to us?”

  Susan nodded to the opaque bulkhead. “We either fight, using every weapon at our disposal, or wind up like them,” she said. She understood his fears, but … she knew she couldn’t afford to let sentiment blind her. “There’s no other way.”

  Chapter One

  “Welcome to Nelson Base,” Midshipwoman Nancy Ryland said. “Admiral Onarina is waiting for you.”

  Captain the Honourable Lord Thomas Hammond nodded as he stepped through the airlock. The summons to Nelson Base had caught him by surprise, forcing him to make his excuses to his wife and board a shuttle on very short notice. His wife hadn’t been pleased - she’d been hosting a garden party - but she’d understood. Duty came first, even if her husband had only just returned from Luna for a month of shore leave. Thomas felt a twinge of bemusement as the midshipwoman turned and led him down the corridor. He’d spent the last year at the academy, helping to impart lessons from previous engagements to officer cadets. He would have preferred another ship, but the navy hadn’t bothered to take his preferences into account before assigning him.

  “Please take me to a washroom first,” he said. “I need to freshen up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nancy said. “There’s one just outside the admiral’s office.”

  Thomas sighed inwardly as he followed her, feeling old. Nancy looked to be the same age as his daughters, give or take a few years. He wondered, idly, if she viewed the assignment to the admiral’s office as a reward or a punishment. There was something to be said for endearing oneself to one’s superiors by serving as their aides, but it wasn’t active duty. The navy wouldn’t promote someone past a certain point unless they’d served at least a year on active duty. Nancy would probably be assigned to a ship in a year or two, unless she had no ambitions to rise higher. Thomas found that incomprehensible, although he supposed it was possible she was biding her time until a good match came along. Or that she just wanted to do her bit for her country.