Dragons Of Englor

Chapter 5

As the days passed, the training battalions at the camp went out more and more often on route marches and field exercises. Bit by bit they became familiar with the whole area between the camp and the Nord Sea coast, from Whitby well to the north.

It was a brisk, windy day, with scattered clouds scudding across a piercing blue sky. Blade's training battalion was marching along a narrow, winding road atop the sea cliffs about twenty miles north of Whitby. They'd been on the march since before dawn. Blade was beginning to look forward to the noon halt that was now only an hour and another three miles away.

Blade looked back along the double line of his platoon. He was now a Recruit Sergeant, and he stood a good chance of getting at least permanent corporal's stripes when he left the camp to join a unit. So far nobody had said anything to him about going to an Officer Training Course. Blade was half relieved at that, half disappointed.

His eyes wandered beyond his platoon, out over the sea. An army helicopter was skimming the waves, heading in toward the shore. A moment later Blade realized that it was heading directly toward the marching battalion. He followed it with his eyes as it whirred low overhead and landed near the head of the column.

A moment later the sergeant major gave the signal to halt. The battalion shuffled to a stop and waited, the men grateful for the unexpected break but also curious to see what it might mean. One of the NCOs at the head of the column ran across to the helicopter and climbed in. It rose into the air and swept back along the column, to land again a few feet from the cliffs, directly opposite Blade's platoon. The NCO jumped out, followed by two businesslike Military Policemen with ready Uzis. They strode briskly toward Blade's platoon, with an air of resolute purpose that Blade did not particularly like.

They strode directly up to Blade. He saluted. The NCO snapped, «Recruit Sergeant Blade!»

«Sir?»

«You are to accompany these sergeants. You are wanted for questioning.»

«Sir!» Blade saluted again, suddenly alert and uneasy. Who or what had caught up with him, and how? What was the purpose of whisking him away from his unit like this, and in broad daylight, too? He could think of several possible reasons, none of them particularly pleasant.

«Very good, Blade,» said the NCO.

Blade turned to the two sergeants, who had neither moved, spoken, nor relaxed their grip on their Uzis. «Am I under arrest?»

Neither of them spoke, but one of them blinked and the other shook his head fractionally. Blade realized that was all the answer he was likely to get out of them, at least here and now. In any case, there was no arguing with those Uzis. He shouldered his rifle and followed the two sergeants toward the helicopter.

They were airborne almost before Blade could strap himself into his seat. He leaned back against the vibrating wall of the cabin and tried to relax as much as possible. One thing somewhat eased his mind. They hadn't stripped him of his equipment or even of his rifle. Whatever they thought he was, it was apparently something not too dangerous.

Blade had no chance to ask any questions during the helicopter flight. The crew of the helicopter stayed in the cockpit, invisible from the cabin. The only people in the cabin besides Blade were the two MPs. He could hardly have talked with them even if they'd been willing to say anything, not in the cabin of a helicopter in flight.

Looking out the nearest window, Blade was able to roughly plot their course. For the first five minutes they flew due north along the coast, right above the beach. Then they climbed to about five hundred feet and swung inland. Blade saw the church towers of two small farming towns he recognized from exercises over the past weeks.

Then suddenly the helicopter was dropping like a stone, skimming low over the tops of a row of trees. The pilot cut the engine and they settled down to the ground. One of the MPs opened the cabin door and motioned to Blade to climb out. He picked up his rifle and obeyed.

Outside he found himself looking down the slope of a small hill to a grassy meadow beside a shallow stream. A twisting road, hardly more than an overgrown cowpath, ran across the meadow, passing over the stream on an ancient stone bridge. On the road just this side of the bridge was parked a gleaming black passenger sedan without any markings and an armored car with the markings of the Imperial Marines. The two MPs took position behind Blade and motioned him to descend the hill. He did so, aware every step of the way of the two gleaming Uzis pointed at his back.

At the bottom of the hill the MPs motioned him toward the sedan. Blade was conscious of a good many invisible eyes watching him as he walked across the meadow.

As he came up to the sedan, he saw that the door to the back seat was open, and someone was sitting in the seat. He took that as an invitation to climb in. He unslung his rifle, shifted it to his left hand, walked to the sedan, and started to climb in. Then he got a clear look at the man sitting on the far side of the rear seat, and froze in mid-movement. It took a very great effort of will to lock his suddenly numb fingers on the rifle so that it did not drop to the ground with a clatter.

Blade had expected to meet a long string of weird echoes of Home Dimension here in Englor. He had never expected to meet this one.

The man sitting in the back seat and now staring coolly at him had a black patch over his left eye. Otherwise, he was absolutely identical to J.

After a long pause, Blade completed the motions of sitting down on the back seat of the car, his rifle resting against the front seat. It was his body that completed the motions, without any help from his mind. His mind was racing off in other directions and into other places far from the sedan.

He'd more or less got over being surprised at finding in Englor duplicates of Home Dimension planes, buildings, cars, weapons, beers, and all the ordinary articles for living, working, and fighting wars. This was different. Somehow Englor had contrived at least a physical duplicate of a man who had been Blade's chief, mentor, and friend for many years. This was something so different that it was beyond Blade's power to avoid being shocked and stunned.

Slowly the shock faded, to be replaced by a quick series of ominous questions. Why had he been brought to this man? Was this twin of J also a spymaster, a power in Military Intelligence in Englor? If so, what could he want with Blade? Blade could not fight off an ugly suspicion that somebody had noticed something spectacularly mysterious about his origins and decided to take drastic action.

The man reached up to adjust the eyepatch. Blade noticed that there was a long whitish scar running up across the man's left cheek, disappearing under the patch. He also noticed that the man made the gesture in exactly the same way J would have done if he had been making it. The duplication of J seemed to go beyond mere physical appearances.

«Well, Mr. Blade. I rather imagine you're wondering why you've been brought here in this way?» The voice-and this was a relief-did not match J's. It was brisker, more clipped. Perhaps this man was younger than J, or perhaps he was simply less concerned about being a gentleman in all his relations with people, even those he might have to order shot in another five minutes.

«As a matter of fact, sir, I am.»

«That's only to be expected. We sometimes have to use more-ah, dramatic-methods than we'd prefer. But we also sometimes have our orders, and not much more discretion in obeying them than a private in the ranks of His Majesty's Armed Forces. I can't blame you for being rather bewildered, but I hope you'll appreciate our situation.»

The man's cryptic words explained practically nothing, including who were the «we» to which he referred so much. They did convey one very clear impression, however. This was the «soft» phase of whatever interrogation Blade was facing, with the interrogator pretending to be just another decent man who had to obey the orders of difficult superiors. Blade wondered when the «hard» phase-threats and abuse, or worse-would come. He was fairly sure that it would come sooner or later. Even the most civilized police and intelligence establishments used it, especially in wartime.

Blade decided to appear bewildered, but no more so than any reasonably intelligent man in his position would be. This man undoubtedly knew enough about him to know that he was not a fool. So it would be more dangerous than useful to attempt to play the fool. That would simply make the one-eyed man even more suspicious.

«As a matter of fact, sir, I don't-«he began. Then he noticed that the one-eyed man wasn't listening. After a moment Blade's own ears picked up what the other man was hearing-a peculiar deep-toned whistling roar that grew steadily louder. Then the other man was rolling down the window on his side and peering out. Blade did the same on his side.

An immense sharklike metal shape in Imperial Air Force markings and camouflage was drifting down out of the sky toward a landing spot in the meadow on the far side of the stream. For a moment Blade's mouth fell open in spite of himself, as the thought exploded into his mind that the scientists of Englor had discovered antigravity!

Then he realized that the approaching machine was simply a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. He could make out the wings folded back against the fuselage, the bulges that held lift engines or swiveling nozzles for vertical thrust, the various complex devices for precise control in low-speed flight.

The VTOL transport was nothing new to Blade, but this particular one was something of a surprise. It was several times the size of any VTOL plane in Home Dimension. Its size and appearance implied technical breakthroughs well beyond anything in Home Dimension. Blade had access to even the most secret intelligence files on Russian and American developments in the VTOL field, and he knew. Nobody in Home Dimension could build a VTOL transport plane the size of a Boeing 747 and able to land as lightly as a June bug in an unprepared open field.

The huge plane settled gently, its belly opened to sprout an impressive array of landing gear, and it touched down. The howl and whistle of its engines faded away as they cut out one by one. A large nose hatch opened, dilating like the lens of a camera, and a jointed metal loading ramp unfolded itself to the ground.

Blue smoke puffed from the exhaust of the armored car. It began to move, rolling up across the humpbacked little bridge and across the meadow toward the plane. The one-eyed man reached forward and tapped the sedan's driver on the shoulder. The sedan's motor purred to life.

It was obvious that the armored car and the sedan were both going to be loaded aboard the transport and carried off somewhere. Blade didn't like the idea. It suggested that he was in the hands of people who could casually tap the latest and most advanced military resources of Englor for any job they wanted done. Ordinary intelligence establishments seldom had that power. Did the Empire have some all-powerful secret police organization lurking behind the scenes?

Blade felt rather than saw the movement behind him. He started to turn, but he could not turn fast enough. A long tweed-clad arm seemed to explode toward him from the other side of the car. In the large hand at the end of that arm was a gleaming cylinder-a hypodermic needle or spray, Blade knew. He also knew that he was going to be just a bit too slow to avoid it. He still tried to twist clear, one hand lunging for the door handle. But the one-eyed man had thrown the locks on all the doors. There was no way out.

Blade had just realized that when the hypodermic shot its load into the back of his neck, and all awareness drained out of him in a few seconds.