Dragons Of Englor rb-24 Read online

  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 t
he 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.

  Chapter 6

  Blade slowly became aware that he was in a bed, with sheets and blankets under and over him and pillows piled high under his head. A hospital bed? No, the usual combination of sterile, antiseptic hospital smells was missing. This room smelled of fresh air and flowers, like a guest room in a comfortable country inn.

  He opened his eyes. What he saw confirmed the impression of the smells. The room was large and I sunlit, with French windows on one end that gave a view of well-kept green lawns and flower beds, with trees and a lake in the distance. It was furnished with the bed, two large armchairs, a writing desk and chair, a small table, and a large antique wardrobe. There was restful green carpeting on the floor and wallpaper in a subdued floral pattern on the walls. The room was comfortable, without being luxurious.

  Blade sat up in bed, threw off the blankets, and examined himself. He was wearing pajamas, blue silk ones that fitted as if they’d been custom-tailored. In its own way that was as impressive a demonstration of the resources of the people who held him prisoner as the big VTOL transport plane.

  Blade had no doubt that he was a prisoner, although from the room around him he might have concluded that he was more of an honored guest. The French windows were undoubtedly wired with alarms and bolted inside and out, while concealed surveillance devices were just as undoubtedly monitoring his every movement, if not his every breath.

  Blade climbed out of bed, took off the pajamas, and examined his body for signs of what might have happened to him since the one-eyed man knocked him out. He could find no cuts, bruises, burns, or even needle marks.

  That didn’t prove that nothing had happened to him, of course. Skilled interrogators could reduce a man to a whimpering wreck without leaving any traces on his body. By using spray injectors they could fill him full of a dozen different drugs without leaving a single needle puncture. He could have been broken thoroughly and pumped dry, then filled with amnesiac drugs so that he would not remember a second of the whole grim process. At least this could have happened if the people who held him were top-caliber professionals, and they probably were.

  Examining himself again, he realized that he’d been shaved, bathed, manicured, and fed. So it would be nearly impossible to tell how long he’d been here from the growth of his beard or nails or how hungry he felt. He pushed the desk and one of the armchairs aside to clear a space in the center of the room. Then he went through a series of vigorous exercises to limber up and test for any loss of muscle tone.

  He could detect none. Apparently he hadn’t been a prisoner long enough to get out of shape. He continued with the exercises until he’d worked up a good sweat, then went into the bathroom. It was gleaming and modern, with a full set of towels, colognes, bath salts, and the rest. No razor or scissors, of course, but he’d hardly expected them. He stepped into the blue-tiled shower and turned on the water.

  A hot shower left him feeling relaxed and ready for almost anything. He was toweling himself dry when the door clicked open and a woman walked in. Blade hastily wrapped the towel around himself and snatched a robe from the bathroom closet.

  The woman paid no more attention to him than if he’d been one of the pieces of furniture. She walked over to the bed and began making it with the brisk, practiced movements of the experienced housemaid. She wore a plain blue coverall, and from her face and graying hair Blade judged that she was about forty, neither seductive nor seducible. From the way she moved he suspected that she was both armed and combat trained.

  Blade had no intention of trying to take the maid and use her as a hostage. At the same time he could never stop absorbing facts about his surroundings and drawing conclusions from them. He never knew when he might suddenly need something he’d learned that way. He did know that this habit had saved his life a number of times.

  The maid went on making up the room, still paying no attention to Blade. When the last jar of bath salts was dusted off and placed back in the medicine cabinet, she finally turned to Blade. Her thin lips creased in an apparently sincere smile.

  «Ah, Mr. Blade. You’re awake.»

  Blade nodded. «I am,» he said, matching her politeness with his own. It could do no harm.

  «Very good, sir. I’ll tell the Master. I’m quite sure he’ll be happy to hear it.» She turned and was gone before Blade could even begin to wonder, let alone ask, who or what «the Master» might be.

  Less than five minutes later the door opened again and the one-eyed man entered. He walked with a brisk, military stride. It was a moment before Blade noticed that he also walked with a slight stiffness in the lower part of his right leg. Blade recognized that stiffness as the sign of an artificial limb. No doubt that was part of the reason for the revolver in the quick-draw holster under the man’s left arm. He might be a bit slow on his feet, but there was nothing wrong with his hands or arms. Blade remembered the lightning stroke with the hypodermic and took care to keep his hands in clear sight as he sat down in one of the armchairs.

  The one-eyed man drew up the other armchair and sat down facing Blade. Blade suspected that the distance between them was carefully calculated to be greater than he could cross before the one-eyed man could draw, fire, and hit him. The man looked like the type who would make that sort of calculation continuously and by instinct.

  The man rested his left hand on the arm of his chair and looked at Blade. «Mr. Blade,» he said, «my name, for the purposes of our conversation, is R. I am Director of the Special Operations Division of the Office of Military Intelligence of the Imperial
Armed Forces. I am here to offer you a position with the Special Operations Division.»

  Blade kept his face carefully expressionless. «Perhaps you can tell me more?»

  «Certainly. Regardless of the various unknowns in your background, you seem to have the skills and instincts to make you an exceptionally fine field operative for the Division. I need not tell you that we are entering a period of desperate crisis for Englor. I rather doubt I need to tell you that men highly gifted for field intelligence work are rare. In a crisis like this they are exceedingly valuable. I am offering you a position to which you seem well suited, where you can make an exceptionally valuable contribution to Englor’s fight against the Red Flames.»

  Blade was astonished. About the last thing he’d expected was such a blunt offer of a position as a secret agent in the service of Englor, and from Englor’s chief spymaster! What had they learned about him-or not learned about him-that made them willing to make this offer?

  Blade leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. «I take it that you’ve-«He was about to use the phrase «interrogated me,» but thought better of it. «-that you’ve examined my qualifications as thoroughly as you feel is necessary.» A cumbersome phrase, but neutral.

  «Yes,» said R. There was a crisp finality in that single word that told Blade a great deal. It told him that he had indeed been interrogated, that they’d found out a great deal about him, and that he would never learn what they’d found out, no matter how many times he asked. In fact, asking would be not merely a waste of time, it would be dangerous.

  Blade very badly wanted to know how much he’d said. Above all, he wanted to know if he’d revealed that he was-from another Dimension. He might not have said so in plain words, but this was a scientifically advanced Dimension. Its interrogators could interpret his words and draw conclusions from them in ways that men from a world of swords and castles never could. Revealing his origins to these people would amount to revealing the Dimension X secret, and to people who might be able to make use of the knowledge. Blade did not know how advanced Englor’s computer technology was. He suspected it was uncomfortably close to that of Home Dimension.