Dragons Of Englor

Chapter 20

Thanks to Blade's quick action, nobody at the inn except the unfortunate gardener was dead. A dozen or so people had minor burns or doses of smoke. One man had broken a leg falling down the stairs. The landlord was a sensible man who promptly brought out a barrel of beer and a case of good whiskey. Both vanished in record time, and after that even the injured felt a good deal better.

The only people who weren't feeling better were Blade and Rilla. They were alive, the dragon was dead, the inn was safe for the moment. But how many other dragons had come down on Englor this night? How many people had died from the fury of the dragons of the Red Flames? How much destruction had they left behind them?

The telephone lines were down, Blade's car was a burned-out wreck in the garage, and there were no buses or trains for miles around. Blade and Rilla had chosen an isolated country inn for their vacation-too isolated, it seemed now.

Eventually Blade borrowed the landlord's bicycle and set off in search of some way to get back in touch with the world. He was barely out of the inn yard when an Imperial Air Force helicopter came swooping in low overhead. It hovered as it passed over the inn and caught sight of the dead dragon, then landed. Blade dashed back, just in time to greet the pilot as he climbed down from the helicopter, camera in hand.

Blade identified himself and gave the pilot an account of the night's events. The pilot congratulated Blade on killing the dragon, noted down Rilla's comments, but could tell them little about the night's events.

It was certain that an enormous number of dragons had swooped down on Englor. The pilot was on a mission to search the countryside for them, alive or dead. He'd already found several live ones in the area. People were advised to stay put until further notice. No, he couldn't take Blade and Rilla back to his base. His helicopter couldn't handle the load. But he would radio his base and see if they would help.

As the helicopter vanished into the sunrise, three Imperial Air Force jet fighters flew overhead a thousand feet up. Blade noticed they all carried pods of air-to-ground rockets slung under their wings.

The landlord grinned. «That'll fix those damned monsters if they get a sight of them. You can bet on that.»

Blade nodded, wishing he could share the landlord's optimism. In the open countryside, a rocket salvo from the air could indeed blow a dragon to bits. But most of the dragons should have landed in heavily populated areas. They would be far deadlier there, also less vulnerable to heavy weapons.

Just before noon a larger helicopter landed near the inn. This one had not only room but orders to take Blade and Rilla aboard. As it carried them across the countryside toward its base, Blade was finally able to get from its crew a rough account of what had happened last night.

An enormous force of dragons had swarmed down on Englor-many hundreds, perhaps a thousand. Many of them were already dead and only a few would survive more than another day or two. The armed forces of Englor were hard at work.

Meanwhile, however, thousands of people were dead, and tens of thousands made homeless or driven into panic-stricken flight. Hundreds of buildings and even whole villages lay in ruin. Power and telephone lines, railroads, bridges were cut or blocked all up and down the whole eastern half of Englor. It was impossible to say more, for reports from areas heavily attacked by the dragons were few and seldom accurate.

Blade saw there was no point in pressing matters. The helicopter crew were able to do their duty, but they were obviously badly shaken by the night's events. The coming of the dragons seemed to have spread panic across the land. In the long run, that panic could be more deadly to Englor and to her war effort than the mere physical damage.

Blade's mind was filled with these thoughts and even grimmer ones all the way to the base.

At Special Operations Headquarters things were comparatively quiet. The area hadn't yet been attacked by any dragons. A number of the Independent Operations people and other combat-trained personnel were out reinforcing the local garrisons. No orders of any kind had come through.

That didn't bother R. He was not a man to wait for orders before starting to prepare for what might have to be done later. He started by giving Blade and Rilla a thorough briefing on the attack. He painted the same grim picture Blade had from the helicopter crew-death, destruction, panic. There was one photograph that summed up for Blade the whole nightmarish quality of the dragons' attack.

It showed Big Ben-the same in Englor as in England, spire for spire and window for window. It also showed a dragon perched high on the great tower, its claws firmly sunk into the roof, tail hanging down, head peering out over the street below and jetting flame. It was ghastly and grotesque. Blade could only feel that it was totally abominable that any of this should have happened at all, and that none of it should happen again.

«Unfortunately I think it will happen again, and soon,» said Rilla. «They have used no more than a thousand dragons in this attack. There should be at least three times that many in the bases in the Nordsbergen mountains. There will also be twice as many again in the breeding pens in Russland. The production rate will be over a thousand a month.»

Blade grimaced. He knew all this already, but it took on new and horrible dimensions in the wake of the night's attack. «So-we are planning on the basis of further attacks?»

R nodded. «I am going to set up a series of briefings on dragon-fighting tactics, starring you and Rilla. We haven't been asked for them yet, but I'm quite sure we will be after the next attack. I am also going to organize a mobile defense for this Headquarters. Your promotion to lieutenant colonel has come through, so I'd like to put you in charge of it.»

«Very good, sir.»

A second attack came two days later, only a few hundred dragons but concentrated almost entirely on London. What the first attack hadn't done to touch off a national panic, the second did. At least two-hundred thousand people left London the next day, or tried to. Roads and railroad stations were packed, and the traffic jams brought all military movements to a complete halt. Thousands of troops had to be called in to get traffic moving again, keep order, and prevent looting and fires. A whole infantry division that was about to sail for Gallia had its orders canceled.

R never looked really worried, but he looked rather ill-at-ease after reading the reports of the second dragon attack. «I begin to suspect what the Red Flames are planning. They want to force us to tie down troops for the defense of Englor instead of sending them to the Eighth Army in Gallia. Those defense troops in turn will have to be dispersed all over the country, to guard against the dragons.

«That makes no sense, of course. But all the average man can see is that he has to have a squad of soldiers camped on the vicar's lawn, in case the dragons come again. If he can't get that he'll panic. That will make a thorough shambles of the war effort.»

Blade and Rilla held their first briefing two days later. Rilla spoke from behind a screen, through a microphone fitted with a scrambler to disguise her voice. R was taking no avoidable chances on the Red Flames' being able to trace their prize defector.

Blade led off the briefing. He strode up to the speaker's stand, turned on the microphone, and stared down at the audience. A hundred high-ranking officers and civilians stared back at him. He cleared his throat and began.

«The Empire of Englor is under attack by artificially mutated dragons, produced by mass cloning methods at a facility in Russland. They are then transported to bases high in the mountains of Nordsbergen and launched across the Nord Sea. Their glide ratio is sufficient to bring them across the sea to the shores of Englor. After that, they seek targets of opportunity, using against such targets teeth, claws, tails, and the exhalation of burning methane from their gastrointestinal tracts.

«They are animals in appearance, but in another sense they are not animals. They are military machines, constructed of biological materials by biological methods, in much the same way as a tank is built in a factory out of steel and rubber. We face-«

And so on. Each briefing lasted two hours, and there were three of them that day. By the end of the third, Blade felt as weary and dry as if he'd fought in a pitched battle. He and Rilla each drained a pitcher of beer and emptied a plate of sausages before they felt like speaking again.

After the meal, R drew Blade aside.

«I think you've done as much as you can expect to do in the briefings. What I want you to do now is take command of a group of about fifty of our combat people. We're going to send you down to Norfolk.

«We are going to try using our shadow headquarters as bait in an experiment, to see if the dragons can be drawn to specific points where we're ready to meet them. Your old friend Elva Thompson is going to have a role in this experiment, although she won't realize it.»

«We are going to 'activate' the Norfolk facility, sending down a contingent of staff people and an assortment of files that will look important. I will add to this window-dressing by going down there myself.

«Your men will be stationed at various points in the general area, to move in against the dragons by helicopter or by fast boat. I'll have a small squad of combat men to hold down things at the headquarters itself. I think we can see to it that Elva Thompson won't know this. I also think we can see to it that she doesn't survive the night's fighting.»

That was the essence of the plan, and the details followed in swift and precise succession. As Blade left to join Rilla, it struck him what a bold, original, and flexible plan R had developed.

In fact, it was just the sort of plan that Blade would have expected from J.