The Lion and the Unicorn Read online

  He turned and walked away. A pair of youths ran past him, heading to school. They’d be for the high jump when the Beast - his old headmaster - caught them. It wasn’t easy to evade the network of surveillance systems around the school. And the Beast … Tobias snickered, even though there was little funny about the wretched man. The headmaster had bragged endlessly of his days in the military, but Tobias hadn’t been able to find a single record of him on MILNET. There would be a reference, he’d been told, even if his precise history was classified. If there was no reference, there was no career history. Tobias felt his smirk grow wider. The Beast had never been in the military at all.

  Which should have been obvious, the moment I met a real military officer, he thought, as he hurried home. He was nothing like the Beast.

  His heart sank as he turned onto the street and headed down to his house … his mother’s house now, he supposed. He was no longer a registered resident. The houses were practically identical, save for the handful of decorations and flags in the windows. A couple of families had lost fathers and sons to the war. He wasn’t too impressed. His father had died on active service. The war had to be fought - Tobias knew enough to understand the truth - but it wasn’t easy to lose a father. If the old man had lived … who knew what Tobias would have become?

  “Tobias.” His mother greeted him as he stepped into the house. “Did you have a nice walk?”

  Tobias said nothing, unsure what to say. He’d hoped … in truth, he wasn’t sure what he’d hoped for. Validation, perhaps? Respect? Or just an acknowledgement that the school was little more than a breeding ground for thugs, a place where the intellectuals were bullied until their souls were crushed and they became consumed with hatred for a world that treated them like dirt and denied them their chance to shine … he shook his head, sourly. There was no point. He’d been young and now he felt old without ever having been … been what? He wasn’t sure.

  “It was fine,” he said. Their relationship had changed, in the past week. He’d been away for too long. She seemed torn between showing off her navy son and fear she might lose him, as she’d lost her husband. “Elizabeth got to school on time.”

  “Good,” his mother said. “Are you still leaving this evening?”

  “Yes.” Tobias knew there was no more time. He had orders to report to the spaceport the following day. After that … if rumour was to be believed, the gunboats were being assigned to a carrier. “I’ll be catching the last train to London and sleeping in the barracks.”

  “I’ll cook you a nice tea,” his mother said. “And pack you a lunch.”

  “Thanks.” Tobias headed for the stairs. His room wasn’t really his anymore, either. He was mildly surprised his mother hadn’t cleared his stuff out, then rented it to someone in desperate need of a cheap place to live. Perhaps she just hadn’t found any takers. He found it hard to believe anyone would willingly live in Liverpool. “Did anyone …?”

  He shook his head and walked upstairs, leaving the question unfinished. No one was going to call for him, no one real. He could be someone else on the datanets, if he wished; he could claim to be anything and anyone and it wouldn’t matter. But here … he sighed as he entered the room and closed the door. No one from his unit had contacted him. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. They’d practically been living in each other’s pockets over the last few months. They all needed a break.

  We’ll be on our first deployment soon, he thought, as he sprawled on the bed. And some of us might not be coming back.

  ***

  “So tell me,” Patrick Miller. “Is it true the ladies really love a marine?”

  Corporal Colin Lancaster allowed himself a grin as he drank his beer. He’d only been able to wrangle a couple of days of leave from his unit, before they left the base for their first real deployment, and he was determined not to waste it. The sergeant wouldn’t be remotely happy if he saw Colin drinking himself senseless, but the sergeant was somewhere down south and Colin … was in Liverpool. He was disappointed that most of his old friends were scattered around the country, but … Patrick was here and a couple more had promised to meet him for a kebab and more boozing later, before he headed back to base. He’d probably regret it in the morning, yet … he snorted, rudely. There’d be no alcohol onboard ship.

  “It’s very true,” he said. “The girls in Portsmouth? You have to beat them off with a stick.”

  He smiled in happy memory. The training had been intense - for the first time in his life, he’d put his head down and really worked at something - but it had been worthwhile. The older cadets had taken him and the others to a bar, their first day of leave, and introduced them to the girls. Dozens of girls. Some of them had been prostitutes, willing to do absolutely anything for money, but others had just wanted to spend time with a man in uniform. Colin felt his smile grow wider as he remembered one particular girl …

  “Perhaps I should have tried for the marines,” Patrick said. “But I thought the army would be good for me.”

  “It’s probably a good thing you didn’t try for the Paras,” Colin said. “We have a sacred obligation to fight them, whenever we meet them.”

  “Really?” Patrick didn’t sound convinced. “Even during wartime?”

  Colin shrugged. Truthfully, he’d never done it himself. The old sweats had explained the rivalry was more a matter of form than anything else, a test of their skills rather than a fight to the finish. Jokes about Moe the Marine and Peter the Para battering themselves senseless over nothing were just jokes. They weren’t very funny, either. The Royal Marines might wind up depending on the Parachute Regiment to pull them out of a jam - or vice versa - if things really went wrong. They couldn’t start to think of the others as anything more than rivals.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He took another swig of his beer. “Is Annie still around?”

  “I think she’s getting married next month,” Patrick said. “She and Ham were pretty damn close. Rumour has it she’s been knocked up.”

  “Ham had better be sure the kid is his,” Colin said. Annie had been a very popular girl - in all senses of the word - before they’d left school. Her father had been very controlling and she’d responded by sleeping around. “What about Joelle?”

  “Moved out, no forwarding address,” Patrick told him. He snapped his fingers at the waitress, ordering more beer. “She did take one of the entrance exams to university, so she might have gotten in.”

  “Who knows?” Colin tried to remember the other girls. There’d been so many, once upon a time. “Who’s left?”

  “Hannah, but you know what her dad is like,” Patrick said. “You even take one look at his daughter and he’ll pound on you.”

  Colin laughed. “I remember,” he said. The waitress returned, placing two more beers in front of him. “I guess I’m not that desperate.”

  He watched the waitress stroll away, his eyes lingering on her sinfully short skirt. There was one definite advantage to wearing a uniform and that was that, no matter how young you looked, the police wouldn’t chase you out of the pub. He’d completed the Golden Mile wearing his uniform and no one had even thought to question his age. Not, he supposed, that anyone would mistake him for a kid. He’d been big for his age well before he’d joined the Royal Marines. And they - somehow - had forced him to grow extra muscles.

  Patrick nudged him. “They say she’s putty in the hands of anyone who gives her money.”

  Colin snorted as he drank his next beer. He wasn’t sure how much he’d had to drink, but no one was counting. If he’d been alone, perhaps he would have hit on the waitress. What was the worst that could happen? A slap? He’d had worse in training. He snickered at the thought of the sergeant slapping his recruits, as a woman might slap a man who’d gone too far, the snickers becoming chuckles as he imagined the man’s reaction to a suggestion he should. He’d be doing push-ups forever.

  “What’s so funny?” Patrick sounded more perplexed than annoyed. “Y
ou know her?”

  “No.” Colin stared down at his drink. “I’m giggling at a stupid thought. How much have we had to drink?”

  “Well …” Patrick made a show of pretending to count. “One … two … three … lots?”

  “Don’t try to count past twenty without taking off your pants,” Colin said. He put the beer aside. He didn’t want to get that drunk, at least not until he met up with the rest of the old gang. “Is it just me, or … have things gotten quiet recently?”

  “It’s probably just you,” Patrick said. “If you don’t want that beer, pass it over here.”

  “That’s a terrible rhyme,” Colin said, pushing the glass to his friend. “Don’t give up the day job.”

  Patrick snorted. “I’ll have you know my rendition of We’ll Keep A Welcome provoked strong feelings in the audience.”

  “Shock, terror, rage …” Colin laughed. “I heard a rumour someone wanted to use your soundtrack to force terrorists to talk. Unfortunately, it was deemed too cruel.”

  “Rats.” Patrick finished the beer and belched loudly. “You’d think I’d get some money out of my singing.”

  “I think you have to be good at it first,” Colin pointed out. “Bringing the house down isn’t always a good thing.”

  “I should just have stuck with screaming swear words at the top of my voice while banging on the drums,” Patrick said. “No one would have noticed.”

  Colin shrugged and stood. “Let’s go,” he said, as he paid for the drinks with his credit chip. “There must be something to do around here.”

  He sighed as they nodded to the waitress and left the pub. What had he done all day? He’d gone to school, he’d played football, he’d been in the CCF, he’d chased girls, he’d roamed the streets … he hadn’t done much, had he? His world had been so small. He could have done more, if he’d known it was out there to do. And now … he shook his head as they started to walk. Liverpool was just too small for him now. He knew he wouldn’t be coming back.

  And Patrick … Patrick hadn’t grown up at all. He was still the prat Colin remembered, the immature prat … it was funny how Colin hadn’t seen it before. But then, Colin had been pretty damn immature himself.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” he said, as they headed down the streets. “Let’s go to the maglev station. I have to get back to base.”

  “You’re going?” Patrick belched, again. “Why?”

  “It’s time to go,” Colin said. “Now.”

  Chapter Five

  “Welcome back, sir,” Commander Staci Templeton said. “It’s like we never left.”

  Mitch smiled as he boarded HMS Unicorn for the first time. He’d spent the shuttle flight reading the files, which were as detailed as one could wish, but there was nothing like actually boarding the ship to determine how closely the reports matched reality. It was always hard to tell from the outside. Every ship had quirks of her own, issues that were never truly solved. Unicorn wasn’t a completely non-standard design, but there were enough variances between her and a standard corvette for him to be concerned. He’d need to take her out on a shakedown cruise before he knew what his ship could really do.

  “I have escaped from prison,” he said, grandly. “The wardens kept me chained to the bed, locked in the room …”

  “You were pretty badly injured,” Staci pointed out. “We’re lucky we didn’t lose you.”

  “Yes, but …” Mitch shrugged. “I see you got a promotion too.”

  Staci tapped the stripe on her shoulder. “Vague promises were made about me getting the next corvette when she comes out of the yard,” she said. “I’m supposed to learn everything I can from you in the next six months.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mitch said. “Did they even realise you’d been my XO for the past year or so?”

  “Probably not,” Staci said. She grinned. “But then, you were in a ward for the last few months. You weren’t in command of a ship.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Mitch glanced around the compartment. “Do you want to give me the tour?”

  “Of course,” Staci said. “If you’ll follow me …”

  Mitch slung his knapsack over his shoulder and followed her down the corridor. Unicorn followed the same basic design as Pelican, but there were a handful of tiny differences he made a mental note to check before he took the ship into action. He’d been so used to his previous command that he’d known her like the back of his hand. Unicorn was just different enough that he might injure himself if he ran through the ship without looking where he was going. It might seem the height of humour if he ran into a conduit and knocked himself out, but it would be utterly disastrous if he did it in the middle of a fight. He kept his eyes open as Staci showed him his cabin - small and cramped, but private - and then led him onto the bridge. Everything was fresh and new.

  He glanced at Staci. “How’s the crew?”

  “A couple jumped ship, sad to say, and took transfers elsewhere,” Staci said. “The remainder are in place, old and new alike. No real problems so far, save for a couple of crewmen who aren’t used to life on a corvette. I’ve been running them through endless drills, all of which I’ve noted in the log. They’ve been getting better.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Mitch said. A fleet carrier could afford to tolerate crewmen who slacked off, every once in a while. A corvette could not. She simply didn’t have the manpower. “Anything I ought to know about?”

  “Nothing too major,” Staci said. “A handful of crewmen completed their additional training while you were in hospital. I’ve had crewmen practicing their shooting in their copious spare time. We should be ready to handle boarders if they risk invading the hull.”

  Mitch nodded, shortly. “Let’s just hope we don’t have to deploy boarding parties,” he said. It had been dangerous enough before the war, according to the old sweats, but now it was impossible. Even hardened marines had trouble boarding infected starships. It was much safer to blow them away from a safe distance. “I assume you’ve been running counter-boarding drills too?”

  “Yes, sir,” Staci assured him. “We just don’t have room to manoeuvre.”

  “But we do have a more coherent crew,” Mitch countered. “They know what they’re doing.”

  He sighed as he keyed his console, bringing up the system display. Unicorn was tiny, compared to a fleet carrier or battleship. A direct hit that wouldn’t so much as scratch a battleship’s paint would blow a corvette into atoms. His crew were experienced - he promised himself he’d spend time getting to know the newcomers, as well as reconnecting with the old hands - but there were limits. It was all too easy to get overwhelmed, if they had to do too many things at once. He switched to the near-space display and frowned as he saw Lion, holding station close to Unicorn. The missile-heavy battlecruiser looked as if someone had taken a corvette and scaled her up, past the boundaries of reason and sanity. Lion looked cool - the child in him thrilled to the sight of a ship that was neither crude nor hulking - but how well would she handle herself in combat?

  I guess we’ll find out, he thought. The concept seemed sound, and the scenarios he’d studied looked good, but he’d been in the navy long enough to know that nothing worked as well as the boffins claimed. The whole idea might prove worse than useless. She does look ready for action.

  His lips quirked. Looks weren’t everything, not in naval combat. Military warships simply couldn’t afford the elegance of civilian designs. No one would ever call a fleet carrier pretty, even though they did have a certain charm. Unicorn was brutally functional, her hull designed for efficiency rather than looks. He smiled as he surveyed his ship’s power curves, silently assessing her promise. She might be ugly, but there was a decent chance she was the fastest ship in space. Only a starfighter could outrun her, once she got her drives up, and a starfighter would run out of juice very quickly.

  Staci kept talking, outlining everything she’d done since the transfer to Unicorn. Mitch listened carefully, trusting her to know what she
was talking about. He was mildly surprised she’d been left under his command, particularly since Pelican had been scuttled. She should have been in line for promotion, if only because she was an experienced officer with no apparent ambition to move to larger ships. She deserved a corvette of her own.

  An officer who stays with the corvettes might wind up in command well before his peers, he reminded himself. He’d once admitted, openly, that he’d gone into smaller ships because promotion tended to come quickly. There was far less competition amongst junior officers for coveted slots. And Staci definitely deserves a command of her own.

  “And Captain Hammond has taken command of Lion,” Staci finished. “I think he’d like you to call him as soon as reasonably possible.”

  “As soon as reasonably possible,” Mitch repeated. “Do you think I could define reasonably possible as next year?”

  Staci managed to look incredibly disapproving without quite crossing the line into open insubordination. “Are you sure it was a prison you escaped from?”

  “I’m sure of it.” Mitch grinned as he stood. “I’ll make the call in my cabin, then … then we can explore the rest of the ship.”

  “Aye, sir,” Staci said. “Good luck.”

  Mitch snorted and headed for the hatch. It rankled, more than he cared to admit, to be subordinate to another captain. One of the other reasons he’d gone into small ships was to be the sole commander, captain of his ship and master of his soul … he shook his head, telling himself not to be silly. Captain Hammond was senior to him. Protocol dictated he’d be in command of the small squadron, unless the Admiralty saw fit to put Mitch in command. It wasn’t likely. Mitch didn’t have the experience that would convince his superiors to put him ahead of an aristocratic officer with nearly ten years of seniority.