Ragnarok

Epilogue

Dover, United Kingdom

29 November 1985

Dover had once been a thriving seaside town, Margaret Thatcher had been told, but most of the population had moved further inland after the Third Reich started building a vast array of air and naval bases on the far side of the channel. The British Army had practically taken over the whole region, turning Dover and the Channel Ports into a series of fortresses intended to intercept and crush any German invasion. And the defences — and the threat of nuclear war — had been more than enough to deter the Germans from trying.

She watched, from her vantage point, as the long line of Frenchmen and women walked towards the ship. Most of them were old, either Free French fighters who’d refused to abandon the war or refugees from Occupied France. Britain had given them a home, but now they were trying to get back to France. Margaret wished them well, although she suspected that none of them would find a warm welcome on the other side of the English Channel. It had been years since any of them had set foot in France and far too much would have changed.

“They have hope,” President Anderson said.

Margaret shrugged. Hope was not a strategy.

“They will have a chance,” she said. “But they will be lucky to get home.”

She looked up at her American counterpart. It had barely been two weeks since the end of the Reich Civil War, but the Americans were already talking about pulling out of their bases and heading home. Hell, Parliament too was talking about sweeping cuts to the military’s budget, no matter how hard she fought to keep the matter from a formal debate. She had no doubt that half of Britain’s most famous regiments would be cut from the books if some of her political enemies had their way…

“This isn’t the end,” she said. “There’s a whole new world in front of us.”

“I know,” Anderson said. “But Congress thinks otherwise.”

Margaret nodded in sympathy. Polish voters in the United States had protested, strongly, the lack of freedom for Poland. She understood their feelings, but Poland no longer existed. The Nazis had destroyed it as thoroughly as they’d destroyed every other nation they’d occupied directly. Even Norway and Denmark, both under relatively light rule, had been changed beyond recognition.

And the world outside Europe was very different.

She shook her head, bitterly, as a cold gust of wind swept in from the sea. Some of her political enemies were already sharpening their knives, whispering — quietly — that the Iron Lady was starting to rust. She’d been a great war leader, they acknowledged, but now the Cold War was over. It was time for someone else to take the helm and steer Britain into a Golden Age of peace, prosperity and freedom.

And unlimited rice pudding too, she thought dryly.

But it wasn’t time to leave, not yet. The chaos in Europe had yet to subside, while the chaos in Africa and the Middle East was growing steadily worse. Britain needed a strong hand at the helm as she navigated her way through suddenly-choppy seas and she, Margaret Thatcher, was that strong hand. None of her enemies had been tested, not like her. They had never sailed the ship of state, even in calm waters.

“Change is never easy,” she said. The Reich, for all of its horror, had been a predictable menace. Whatever rose from the ashes of history would be very different. “But we have to be ready.”

“This is not the end,” Anderson agreed. “History never ends.”