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be found in Home
Dimension. But the Red Flames were a very different proposition from the
Soviet Communists. They were an aristocratic and militaristic order, dedicated
to war and conquest. They reminded Blade of the
Teutonic Knights of medieval Germany. But the Teutonic Knights had collapsed
in the early fifteenth century. In this Dimension the Red Flames had survived,
prospered, expanded, come to rule all of
Russland, and embarked on a course of expansion and conquest.
Over the last two hundred years they had expanded east, south, and finally
west. During their expansion west they had absorbed nearly a dozen formerly
independent countries and peoples. Their march of conquest had stopped for the
moment at the borders of Gallia, but only because those boarders were now
defended by Imperial troops. Gallia's army was not large enough or
well-equipped enough to meet the Russlanders in battle.
Now the march seemed to be underway again. The ultimatum over Nordsbergen was
the signal. The mainland of Nordsbergen was about the size and shape of Norway
and Sweden combined. On islands off its west coast, Englor had radar stations
and air bases. The Nordsbergen people accepted those bases, knowing that their
precarious "neutrality" depended entirely on them.
Now the Red Flames were demanding that Englor evacuate those bases. The next
step after that would certainly be a Russland invasion of Nordsbergen. Then it
would be the Russlanders who would have bases on the western islands, looking
directly across the Nord Sea at the coast of Englor less than five hundred
miles away.
A week after the field exercises began, the newspapers and radio announced
that the Imperial government was accepting the Red Flame ultimatum and
evacuating all facilities in Nordsbergen. There was a good deal of angry
grumbling among the men in the camp when the news came out. There was also an
increase in the training schedule, starting the very next day. After that no
one had the energy to complain any more about the government's weakness.
Blade was quite certain that accepting the ultimatum had been no more than a
move to buy time. Englor badly needed that time to mobilize and concentrate
her army before war broke out. In the air and on the sea the Empire could
match the Red Flames more than plane for plane and ship for ship, and with
better planes and ships, too. On land, the Empire was outnumbered four or five
to one. The Imperial troops were better trained and better armed, man for man,
but there were not enough of them. The forces in the
Home Islands and on the Gallic frontier would have to be reinforced by new
recruits and men brought
home from the garrisons abroad. Otherwise the Red Flames might very well
overrun Gallia, destroying the Imperial forces there. Then Englor would stand
alone, stripped of half her army and with her deadly enemies crouching on the
coast of Gallia less than a hundred miles away.
Blade said nothing about his thoughts along these lines. He did not need any
posters shouting LOOSE
LIPS SINK SHIPS to be security-conscious. He'd learned his own
security-consciousness in a school far harsher than the men around him had
known, one they could not even imagine.
He was beginning to wonder if he'd ever have a chance in this Dimension to use
everything else that he'd learned in that same harsh school.
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
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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
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