Two of the assault transports converted into flying tankers would accompany the nine troop carriers. They would refuel in the air a strike of twelve attack planes launched from an Imperial carrier well out to sea. The attack planes would attack the nearest enemy airbase, making it unusable. Then they would fly air cover over the dragon base while the ground troops did their work.

The attack planes would not have the range to return to their carrier after that. So their pilots would bail out at low altitude, to land among the Battle Group and be picked up by its mobile troops. They would fly out in the assault transports along with the rest of the surviving raiders.

As many as half the raiders might become casualties. All the vehicles would also be left behind, carefully booby-trapped, to lighten the transports for the flight out. But in return for three hundred men and two hundred vehicles, the ability of the Red Flames of Russland to wage genetic warfare would be destroyed for many years.

No one seemed to doubt that this was a fair trade.

No one seemed to doubt either that Lieutenant Colonel Richard Blade should be in command of the raiding force. By Imperial Special Order he was given the acting rank of full colonel. After that he settled down to the grueling routine of training his handpicked six hundred for their great day.

He hardly had a moment to spare for Rilla during that time. He did observe that she seemed both happy and sad at the same time. Happy, because the dragon base to her meant the corruption and perversion of the great discoveries she'd made in genetics. Now it was about to be destroyed. Sad, because in that destruction would die many who had been her friends and colleagues for years, and she could not be totally indifferent to their fate. Blade thought it was perhaps just as well that he and Rilla were not seeing much of each other now. It was certainly good that she was not going on the raid herself.

Blade did have time to consider one amusing fact about his position. He'd been quite certain that Englor would offer him no opportunity to rise swiftly in rank and status. Yet here he was, risen from recruit to full colonel in only a few months, given one of the choicest assignments possible for an officer of his rank.

Perhaps this was not quite so great a rise as one from slave to prince. But no man could say that Blade had not risen, and many in Englor were saying he would rise farther still if he lived long enough.

Six hundred soldiers have to learn only so much in order to carry out even the most complicated operation. Even training for fifteen hours a day, six days a week, comes to an end sooner or later. Then there's nothing left to do but load the men aboard whatever is taking them to battle.

The night before Strike Force Blade took off, R took Blade out to dinner. It was a hasty dinner-too hasty, for the food and the wine both deserved a leisurely appreciation that neither man could afford to give them. Like the rest of the Strike Force, Blade had forty-eight hours' leave, and from the restaurant he would be joining Rilla. R obviously knew this, but was so much a gentleman about Blade's personal affairs that it was impossible to tell if he approved or disapproved. That was one more quality that R shared with J.

The dinner lasted long enough for R to become more talkative than usual. Perhaps it was the wine, perhaps it was the frustration at having to leave the rest of the fight against the dragons to younger men who would go where he no longer could. Whatever was working inside him, R said a great deal, almost certainly much more than he'd intended.

Blade did not remember much of it. He had an excellent memory, but he could also forget things when it seemed wise. One thing he didn't forget, and he knew afterward that he couldn't have forgotten it if he'd wanted to.

«You know something, Richard?» said R. «I had a son.»

That was a surprise to Blade. He sensed that R was not expecting any reply, just continued attention.

«Yes, I had a son. He was an Independent, like you, like me. He went off to Rodzmania on an assignment, like you. Only he didn't come back. That was ten years ago. If he'd lived, he would have been about your age, I think.»

R reached inside his coat with a hand that trembled slightly and drew out a small flat leather case. Blade looked down. It was his own face that stared back at him from the picture in the case-his own face, a few years younger.

«I see,» he said, and nodded. Perhaps there were more profound words, but none of them came to mind now. There was still some wine in Blade's glass. He picked it up and sipped.

One thought did pop into his mind. Should he take the chance to ask what R really knew about the man called Colonel Richard Blade? Might R now let slip what he knew about Blade's origins-if he knew anything at all?

Then the thought sank back out of Blade's mind. The answer to that question was the same as always. R might reveal some of his own past, some of his own motives. He would never reveal any of his professional secrets. He would never reveal whether or not he knew that Richard Blade had come to Englor from another Dimension.

Blade sighed, picked up the wine bottle, and poured until both his glass and R's were full again.

With Strike Force Blade aboard, the assault transports flew south to a base in West Africa. They flew across the continent to another base on the east coast. They flew those two legs of their journey at high altitude, to save fuel.

They flew north from the coastal base in darkness, keeping low. At seven hundred miles an hour they raced across the dark sea toward the secret island base off the southern coast of Russland. Once a circle of ships appeared on the radar, then dropped astern. The Imperial carrier and her escorts were on station, ready to launch the attack planes on schedule.

The island came out of the night at them. The transports shifted from horizontal to vertical flight and sank down through a thousand feet of air to safe landings on the rocky top of the island. The fuel was waiting for them in great flexible bladders, towed submerged across the sea by Imperial submarines and anchored to the rocks offshore. Pumps whined in the darkness, fuel lines stiffened, gauges registered the hundreds and thousands of gallons pouring into the tanks. One by one each transport reported «Full Up.» One by one they lifted into the darkness with an ear-cracking howl of jets and orange flares of exhaust. As Blade watched, the jet flares reminded him strangely of the flaming breath of the dragons.

Then his own transport rose to join the others. They burned navigation lights until the formation was complete. Then they shifted power back from vertical lift to horizontal thrust and headed toward the coast of Russland. A few minutes later the two tankers made rendezvous and swung into place at the rear of the formation. Now there were eleven of the metal giants on their way to Russland.

The coast passed below as the eastern sky began to pale. As the sky showed pink, the transports began to climb slowly. They kept a thousand feet above the ground as it rose into the rugged tableland that made up the heart of South Russland.

The land below showed few colors even as daylight spread across it. Browns and tans, grays, and an occasional flash of red or black that came and went so fast it was hard to believe it had ever been there. Small ranges of jagged peaks, like giant boulders set on end. Dry canyons and some with faint silver trickles of water in the bottom. Scarred and fissured cliffs plunging down five hundred feet. No vegetation, no sign of human life. A harsh, ugly, unnatural landscape, one that seemed to Blade an entirely appropriate setting for the dragons. They also were harsh, ugly, and unnatural.