The Lion and the Unicorn Read online

  “I had to write a will,” Marigold said. She shook her head. “Can you imagine? I had to write a will!”

  Tobias nodded. “I don’t have much of anything,” he said. His computer terminal, his clothes, a handful of other crap … most of it would probably be sold to a second-hand shop, if they agreed to take it. The clothes weren’t fashionable, but anyone buying clothes from a second-hand shop probably wasn’t in any position to complain. “My sister gets what little I have, if she wants it. God alone knows what’ll happen to my pension.”

  He winced. He’d been given a bunch of documents to read about the Military Convent, about how the navy would make provision for his dependents if he died in the line of duty … but he hadn’t been able to follow the legalese. The cynic in him suspected the navy wanted to make sure it could grant or revoke provision as it saw fit. Did he even have any dependents? He had no wife, no children … his sister was hardly dependent on him. He had no one who had a solid legal right to a pension, if he died.

  “I looked it up,” Marigold said. “Your family might be able to claim it.”

  “Might,” Tobias said. He shook his head. “We’ll see.”

  He winced. He wasn’t so sure. The navy bureaucracy was just like school … and the benefits office. His mother had grumbled about it often enough. The people who were kind and reasonable and wanted to help were not the ones in charge, not the ones who could actually make decisions. The people who were in charge were the kind of people who resented handing out food bank vouchers, let alone actual money. They thought ill people were malingering, disabled people were fit to work … a person who had a perfect legal right to some benefits might be denied it on a technicality. The system had been breaking down even before the war had started and rationing had been introduced.

  Marigold reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure it’ll all work out,” she said. “But you know what? We’re not going to die.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Tobias said. If the gunboat was hit, they’d both be killed instantly. A starfighter pilot might be able to survive, if he ejected in time to escape the explosion, but it was rare. Only a handful of pilots had survived ejection in the last two decades. The odds for gunboat pilots were even worse. “The simulations …”

  “They do keep piling them on,” Marigold said. She struck a mock contemplative pose. “I’m fairly sure they keep ramping up the speed and missile fire too.”

  Tobias had to laugh. “Yeah, but we have to take it seriously. Every time.”

  “It could be worse,” Marigold said. She tapped the console. “We’ll be jumping into the next system in an hour. And then we’ll be going back to work.”

  “And everyone bad in my life will be on the other side of the tramline,” Tobias agreed. He’d miss his mother and sister, but it didn’t matter. The navy didn’t care what he thought. They’d be millions of miles away even if he never left the Sol System. “Wonderful, don’t you think?”

  “Quite,” Marigold agreed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Whoever designed our personal protective gear, Colin thought as the fire team carefully opened an airlock and hurled an antiviral grenade into the next compartment, was a sadistic bastard.

  Sweat trickled down his back as the flare of blue-white light dimmed. The suit was supposed to be comfortable, without hampering his movement in any way. Colin had long since decided the designer was either an idiot or simply ignorant. The suit was fine, if one walked slowly and calmly. Anyone who actually tried to run overheated very quickly. He wasn’t entirely sure the suit was completely airtight either. The boffins claimed the virus couldn’t get through the filters, but they’d been wrong before. It would only take one accident for an entire platoon to be turned into zombies.

  He plunged into the next compartment, rifle sweeping the section for targets. It was empty, seemingly unmarked by the antiviral grenade. The boffins claimed the flashes of light would stun the virus, weakening the biological network that united the zombies into a single hive. Colin wasn’t sure of that either. The old sweats reported some pretty mixed results. Colin shivered, reminding himself that he should be grateful for the suit. They couldn’t take the risk of being infected. There were enough horror stories of zombies remaining undetected long enough to do real damage to ensure he’d keep the suit on, at least for the duration of the exercise. They really couldn’t take the risk.

  Colin tongued his throatmike as the remainder of the fire team flowed into the chamber. “Section 77-G is clear, sir; I say again, Section 77-G is clear.”

  “Noted,” Major Craig said. “Advance to Section 77-H.”

  “Aye, sir,” Colin said. His team moved to the airlock. “We’re going in … now.”

  He tensed as they tested the airlock. It was locked. Colin swore under his breath, bracing himself as his team started to manually open the airlock. It was possible the system had been locked down, to the point the automated systems were no longer active; it was also possible the enemy was on the far side, waiting for them. The biosensors should have sounded the alert … he cursed under his breath, wishing the exercise planners hadn’t done such a good job. It was all very well and good to insist that hard training meant for easier missions, but he was fairly sure most of the network would remain intact. They should have been able to track any boarding party as it made its way into the hull.

  At least they try to board our ships, instead of simply taking a nuke into the hull and detonating, Colin thought. The Royal Marines were trained for such missions, but rarely ordered into them. They were effectively suicide, only to be considered as a very last resort. It gives us a chance to drive them back into space.

  The airlock opened, revealing a misty atmosphere. The bioscanner started screaming a warning. Colin hurled a grenade into the mist, hoping and praying it was the virus. Some cunning wanker had filled the air with faux-explosive gas during a training mission, then gleefully pointed out that the marines had managed to blow themselves to hell. The virus might do the same, although it struck him as unlikely. Both extreme heat and vacuum would be more dangerous to its biological network than guns, at least in the short term. He swallowed as another pulse of blue-white light flashed in front of him. The virus simply didn’t play fair. He’d watched recordings of zombies taking shots to the head, then continuing their advance until their bodies were blown to bloody chunks. It was all too easy to believe the virus was unstoppable.

  He plunged forward, keeping low as he looked around. They’d plunged into a storage compartment, crammed with heavy boxes … he ducked down as flickering laser light shot over his head. A marine swore behind him as he was hit, his suit locking down automatically. It might not be fatal, in a real fight, but exercise rules were absolute. Anyone who got hit was out of the fight, at least until the exercise was over. Colin knew better than to bend the rules. Devising a brilliant new tactic was one thing; flagrantly breaking the rules was quite another.

  “We have contact,” he reported, as he unhooked another grenade from his belt. “Two - possibly three - enemy combatants …”

  He tossed the grenade. There was yet another flare of blue-white light. The zombies kept firing, popping up long enough to fire a burst of laser light before ducking back down again. Colin cursed under his breath, then signalled for the remainder of the fire team to keep the enemy pinned down while he crawled forward. There was no point in trying the antiviral grenades again, not now. The virus was safely inside the infected bodies, untouchable by UV light. Instead, he hurled a HE grenade over the boxes and ducked down. Colin thought he heard a scream as a flash of red light cast an eerie shade over the entire compartment. He snorted as he crawled around the boxes. The virus never screamed, even when the host bodies had taken enough punishment to kill a normal man. It was one of its traits he detested most.

  Two men lay on the ground, pretending to be dead. Colin rolled his eyes as he checked their weapons, then walked past. They hadn’t done badly, for matelots. They’
d picked a good defensive position, then held their own instead of charging forward into the teeth of enemy fire. It was a shame they couldn’t run a perfect simulation, with trained and experienced soldiers on the other side, but … he shook his head as he surveyed the compartment. The rest of the fire team was advancing …

  Something slammed into his back. For a horrible moment, as the force of the impact bowled him over, he thought he’d been shot by one of his team. That would be embarrassing, perhaps costing him his stripe if the sergeant thought it was his fault. A weight landed on top of him, two fists beating at his helmet. He’d been ambushed … he gritted his teeth, cursing the enemy under his breath. The bastard’s hands were already scrabbling at his fastenings, trying to expose him to the poisoned air. It would cost him the exercise, probably cost him his chance to make his promotion permanent. He reached back, drew a shockrod from his belt and shoved it into the figure’s leg. The man convulsed, just enough to let Colin throw him off and rolled over, drawing his pistol and shooting the figure repeatedly. Under normal circumstances, it would be overkill. Against the virus, it might not be enough kill.

  “I think you got him,” Private Scott Davies said, as he came around the crate. “Really.”

  “I think you should have got here quicker,” Colin groused. He and Davies had trained together, before Colin had earned his first stripe. It was hard to treat him as a subordinate when they’d been equals … and might be equals again, if one of them was promoted or demoted. “He nearly got me.”

  Major Craig’s voice echoed over the communications net. “ENDEX,” he said. “I say again, ENDEX. This exercise is now terminated.”

  Colin breathed a sigh of relief as he undid his helmet and pulled it free. The air smelled of fear and sweat, but it was cool. Blessedly cool. He helped the crewman he’d zapped to his feet, trying not to show his irritation. The cunning bastard must have hidden in one of the crates, sheltered from the grenades. Colin wondered why he hadn’t simply been shot in the back. It really would have taken him out of the exercise. The sergeant would have been very sarcastic. Running past a potential hiding place for a potential ambush had been careless, to say the least. Good men had died that way.

  “Sorry for shocking you,” he said, rubbing sweat from his eyes. His hair felt uncomfortably wet. Perhaps it was time to shave it completely, like some of the more experienced marines. “You caught me by surprise.”

  “My job, son,” the spacer said. “See you next time.”

  Colin nodded as he surveyed the remainder of the compartment. There hadn’t been any real damage, this time. It wasn’t entirely realistic - it couldn’t be - but they couldn’t shoot live weapons onboard ship. He turned and strode back to the airlock. Private Henry Willis lay on the deck, pretending to be dead. Colin rolled his eyes. The man wasn’t lazy - no one could get through commando training by being lazy - but Willis looked as if he were taking a nap.

  “Get up,” Colin ordered. “The exercise is over.”

  “I’m dead, sir,” Willis insisted. “You have to carry me back to barracks. It’s realistic.”

  “Realistic would be putting your body out the nearest airlock, as you know perfectly well,” Davies pointed out, snidely. “Or sticking an incendiary grenade up your arse to make sure you’re actually dead.”

  Willis sat up. “When I’m dead, I’m donating my body for medical research,” he said. “I want them to confirm I’m actually dead before they take me apart for science.”

  “I think we have discovered the limits of what anal probing can teach us,” Davies said. “Unless we want to know what crawled up your arse and died.”

  “I think it was a ration bar,” Willis said. “I thought I’d save time and …”

  Colin snorted rudely as they headed back to barracks, passing a handful of crewmen on the way. The marines had been told, in no uncertain terms, that they weren’t to try to tidy up after the exercise. It didn’t sit well with him - they’d been taught to clean up after themselves, if only to keep the enemy from learning useful things from their rubbish - but there was no point in arguing. He understood logistics well enough to know it was important that everything went back where it belonged. The navy wouldn’t thank the marines if they lost something in the supplies. Or in the files. It was where inconvenient facts went to die.

  He glanced at the timer as they entered Marine Country, wondering if he had time for a shower before the briefing. He stunk. They all stunk. The suit felt increasingly uncomfortable. He tried to tell himself he’d been in worse places, but it wasn’t particularly convincing. Even the worst of the worst felt like nothing more than a vague memory.

  “Be seated,” Sergeant Ron Bowman said, as he took the podium. There was no sign of Major Craig. “We did well, all things considered.”

  “It wasn’t real, sergeant,” Lieutenant Francis Coxcomb said. “We weren’t firing real weapons.”

  Bowman shrugged. “I’m sure that would make for an interesting court-martial,” he said, sardonically. “Do you want to explain how we blew away a bunch of spacer volunteers … and how they blew us away?”

  Colin kept his thoughts to himself. It was true the combination of fake grenades and laser guns, instead of real weapons, lent the exercise an air of unreality. The fakes just didn’t have the impact, literally, of their real counterparts. The marines trained with live weapons where possible. And yet … he snorted. There was nothing to be gained by using live weapons onboard ship, unless the shit really hit the fan. The captain would certainly not grant permission …

  “We cleared the infected compartments very quickly,” Bowman said. “We also stepped down the effects of the grenades, giving the enemy a potential advantage. Don’t get complacent. We assume they’re working on ways to overcome the grenades too.”

  Colin nodded as the sergeant talked them through a holographic recreation of the exercise. It was hard to believe the fire team had been one of many, even though he knew it to be true. They’d felt alone, isolated in a sea of troubles. Their back-up had been too far back to be anything but helpless witnesses, if things spiralled out of control. He frowned as he realised one fire team had been wiped out, just before the exercise had been terminated. The corporal had made a mistake, and his team had paid for it.

  “We need to speed up our passage through the ship,” Bowman finished. “We’re just not getting to the beachheads quickly enough.”

  “I don’t see how we can move any faster, sergeant,” Lieutenant Dalton said. “We might have to rely on the navy pukes slowing them down for us.”

  “They can’t slow them down for long, even if they survive the hull breach,” Bowman pointed out, dryly. “We need to move faster.”

  Colin winced, inwardly. He knew, without false modesty, that he was a champion runner. He’d been quick on his feet even before he’d gone to commando training. In theory, they should be able to get from bow to stern very quickly. In practice, just getting through the airlocks - which automatically sealed if the ship came under heavy attack - took time, time they didn’t have. The enemy boarders could make use of the time to start burning their way towards the bridge.

  Or even taking a nuke as far into the hull as possible, he thought, as the discussion grew more heated. It’s only a matter of time before they do.

  ***

  “Enemy missiles at twelve o’clock,” Marigold said.

  “Roger,” Tobias said. “What should I do until then?”

  He ignored Marigold’s snort as his hands danced over the console. The joke dated all the way back to the very first days of aerial combat, when magnificent men in magnificent flying machines had duelled like knights of old, with honour and glory and no ill feelings. Tobias doubted it had ever been like that - he found it hard to believe that knights in shining armour had been paragons of anything, except lust and cruelty - but it didn’t matter. He’d be in real trouble if they failed to stop the missiles. The virus was already fond of hurling impossible salvos towards their targets. It w
ould only take one or two hits to really ruin Lion’s day.

  The enemy missiles lanced closer, somehow accelerating even as they evaded his sensor locks. They were moving at impossible speeds, travelling faster than any missile known to exist … Tobias shivered, silently grateful for the gunboat’s tactical sensors as the missiles entered their engagement envelope. They couldn’t hope to take them out manually. They might as well start firing at random. Tobias cursed under his breath as a dozen missiles flashed past the gunboat, already heading out of engagement range. They’d shot forty missiles out of space, but it hadn’t been enough.

  “How long will it be,” he asked, “before we face missiles that really do move so quickly?”

  Marigold didn’t look up from her console. “Hopefully, never,” she said. “There are limits to how fast missiles can go, right?”

  Tobias shrugged. “A hundred years ago, there was no such thing as artificial gravity,” he said. He’d seen the first purpose-built space warships. They’d been weird gangly designs, compared to modern-day ships. “Weapons and computers and tactical sensors were useless. Now … we have better weapons and sensors and … everything else. We might wind up facing missiles that travel just below the speed of light.”

  “And defences will probably improve too,” Marigold countered. She paused as the console bleeped. “The exercise is terminated. We lost.”

  “Fuck.” Tobias sat back, his eyes drifting over the preliminary report without quite seeing it. “They just overwhelmed us.”

  “Yeah,” Marigold agreed. She altered course, taking the gunboat back to the mothership. “But the real enemy won’t be that bad.”