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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
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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
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