In at the Death

by Harry Turtledove

  When a chief wanted to talk, listening was a good idea. “Sure,” Sam said. “What’s on your mind?”

  Instead of answering right away, Eastlake drew himself out of earshot of the damage-control party. A couple of snoopy sailors started to follow, but the chief ’s basilisk stare made them keep their distance. In a low voice, Eastlake said, “Notice anything funny about the prize crews the exec took for those Argentine pigs?”

  “Not a whole lot,” Sam answered. “Mostly guys who’ve been in for a while, but that’s more good than bad, you ask me. You need men with some experience when they go off on their own.”

  “If that was all, sure,” Eastlake said. “But the guys who’re gone, they’re the ones who busted a gut laughing when he stopped being a polliwog. I’d be gone myself, I bet, except I was holding it in and busting up where it didn’t show. Swelp me, Skipper, it’s the God’s truth.” He drew a cross on his chest.

  “Oh, yeah?” Sam said.

  “Swelp me,” the chief said again.

  Carsten thought about it. He hadn’t had much to do with the festivities. They were designed to let ratings get their own back. Even if the captain just watched, it dampened the fun. But he also had a pretty good notion of who’d enjoyed themselves most at Myron Zwilling’s expense—and who’d had reasons for enjoying themselves. Eastlake was right—an awful lot of those people weren’t on the ship any more. “Son of a bitch,” Sam said softly.

  “Yeah,” Eastlake said. “I didn’t think you noticed—you got bigger shit to worry about. But I figured you oughta know.”

  “Thanks—I guess.” Now Sam had to decide what to do about it, or whether to do anything at all. Zwilling could deny everything and say he hadn’t done it consciously. How would you prove he was lying? For that matter, maybe he wasn’t. Or he could say he damn well had done it, and so what?

  “You think I shoulda kept my big trap shut?” Eastlake asked.

  “No. I’d rather know what’s going on,” Sam answered. “I’ll take care of it.” The CPO nodded. He didn’t ask Sam how he’d take care of it, which was a good thing, because Sam still didn’t know.

  When he got back to the bridge, the exec was keeping station with the other warships in the flotilla. Zwilling was competent, precise, painstaking. The tip of his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth, as if he were a grade-schooler working on a big paper. He’d never be the shiphandler Pat Cooley was. He was plenty good enough to get the job done, though. Chances were he was better than Sam, who’d come to the wheel late. Whether he’d be better in an emergency, when instinct and balls could count for more than carefully acquired skill, was a different question.

  “Anything interesting going on?” Sam asked.

  “No, sir. All routine,” Zwilling answered.

  “All right. In that case, why don’t you let Thad have it for a bit?” Sam nodded toward the Y-ranging officer. “He can use the practice. You never know what could happen if a British fighter or bomber chews up the bridge.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Zwilling stepped away from the wheel. Lieutenant Walters took it, a wide grin making him look even younger than he did most of the time.

  Carsten gestured to the exec. “Come to my cabin, why don’t you?” Yes, he was going to take the bull by the horns. He didn’t know what else to do.

  “Of course, sir.” Zwilling’s eyes narrowed. He knew something was up, but he couldn’t very well say no.

  The cabin, small for one man, was crowded with two. But, with the door closed, it was about the only place on the destroyer escort that offered reasonable privacy. Sam sat down on the bed and waved the exec to the metal chair, saying, “I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Sir?” Zwilling didn’t show much. Well, with a superior getting ready to grill him, Sam would have shown as little as he could, too.

  “When you picked prize crews for those freighters we nabbed, how did you go about it?”

  Zwilling still didn’t show much. He would have made a pretty fair poker player, and probably did. “I mostly chose men with above-average experience, sir. They’ll be on their own going north. They’ll need to be extra alert for enemy action, and for trouble from the sailors. New fish are less likely to do well in a situation like that.”

  “I see.” Sam would have said the same thing. It was even likely to be true. But it wasn’t likely to be the whole truth. With a sigh, Sam went on, “Did you also choose men who gave you a hard time when we crossed the Equator?”

  Now the exec knew which way the wind was blowing. His mouth tightened. He hunched in on himself, just a little. But his answer was forthright: “Yes, sir. We’re better off without some of those troublemakers on board. That was a criterion of mine, too.”

  Thinking about the men who were gone, Sam shook his head. “They mostly aren’t troublemakers, Mr. Zwilling. They have good records. They may not love you, but that’s not the same thing.”

  By Zwilling’s scowl, it was to him. “They’re bad for discipline, sir. I’m not sorry to be rid of them.”

  “I’m sorry you used personal dislikes to influence what you did,” Carsten said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t do that again. I’m disappointed you did it once.”

  “If you’re unhappy with me, sir, may I request a transfer off this ship?” Zwilling asked. “You need to have confidence in your executive officer.”

  He didn’t say anything about his needing to have confidence in Sam. That would have been insubordinate, and he was a stickler for the proprieties. But it hovered in his tone and in the way he eyed Carsten.

  With another sigh, Sam nodded. “Yes, I think that’ll be best for everyone. This won’t go in your papers. You didn’t do anything against regulations. But you did something I don’t fancy, and I won’t try to tell you any different.”

  “Is that all, sir?” The exec’s voice might have come from a machine.

  “Yes, that’s all. Go take the conn back.” As far as the ship was concerned, Zwilling was fine. With the sailors, on the other hand…And with me, too, Sam thought sadly. There were skippers for whom Myron Zwilling would have been the perfect exec. Men who did things strictly by the book themselves would have been wild for him. But Sam flew by the seat of his pants. That drove Zwilling nuts, and the exec’s insistence on routine grated on the mustang just as much.

  Sam followed Zwilling back to the bridge. When the exec said, “I have the conn, Mr. Walters,” the Y-ranging officer almost jumped out of his skin. Sam didn’t blame him. Zwilling didn’t sound like a machine any more. He sounded like a voice from beyond the grave.

  Christ! Sam thought, now alarmed. I hope he doesn’t go hang himself from the first pipe fitting he finds. He didn’t want the exec dead, only off his ship and onto one where he fit better.

  Thad Walters retreated in a hurry. His eyes asked Sam what had happened in the cabin. Sam couldn’t tell him, even in private; that would have been monstrously unfair to Zwilling.

  Then Sam shook his head. It wouldn’t be so simple after all. Even now, people would be buzzing that Chief Eastlake had talked with him. And they would know all too soon that he and the exec had talked in his cabin. They would add two and two, sure as hell. And when Zwilling left the ship, Eastlake would be a power to reckon with indeed.

  That wasn’t good. You didn’t want the crew thinking a CPO could hang an officer out to dry. Even more to the point, you didn’t want a CPO thinking he could hang an officer out to dry. In this particular case, it happened to be true, which only made things worse. Sam shook his head again. Eastlake would have to go, too. That wasn’t fair, but he didn’t see that he had any other choice.

  He wished for word of an enemy convoy. He almost wished for word of enemy aircraft on the way in. Anything that took his mind off the ship’s internal politics would have been nice. But no enemy freighters came into sight. The sky remained clear of everything but the sun. The only thing he had to worry about was Myron Zwilling steering the Josephus Daniels with a face that looked as if he wer
e watching his family tortured and killed.

  Was I too hard on him? Sam wondered. He played back the conversation in his cabin inside his head. He really didn’t think so. The only other thing he could have done was pretend he didn’t know anything about what Zwilling had pulled. And that wouldn’t fly, because Chief Eastlake would let the crew know he’d told Sam what was going on. Their respect would get flushed right down the head.

  And so would Sam’s self-respect. He’d never been any damn good at pretending. Oh, sometimes you had to. If you were dealing with a superior you couldn’t stand, a little constructive hypocrisy didn’t hurt. But that was about as far as he could make himself go. Ignoring this would have felt like ignoring a bank robbery right under his nose.

  Lieutenant Walters took a long look at his Y-ranging gear. The screens must have been blank, for he stepped away from them and over to Sam. In a low, almost inaudible voice, he asked, “Sir, what’s going on?”

  Sam glanced at Lieutenant Zwilling. The exec didn’t turn around. Did his back stiffen, though? Was he listening? It didn’t matter any which way. Sam said what he would have said if Zwilling were down in the engine room: “Nothing that’s got anything to do with you.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Y-ranging officer nodded, but he didn’t go back to his post. Instead, he asked, “Is it anything that will hurt the ship?”

  Zwilling’s ravaged voice and face made that query much too reasonable. But Sam didn’t think he was lying when he shook his head. “No, we’ll be all right,” he said. “It’s…” He stopped. Even saying something like It’s a personnel matter went too far. Were he in the exec’s place, he wouldn’t want anybody running his mouth about him. “Just let it go, Thad. It’ll sort itself out.”

  “I hope so, sir.” Walters returned to his post. He’d needed nerve to make even that much protest.

  Muttering to himself, Sam turned away. He didn’t like the idea of blighting Zwilling’s career. He hadn’t liked it back in New York City, and he liked it even less here. But try as he would, he didn’t see what else he could do. Zwilling had made his bed; now he had to lie in it.

  And what will the fancy-pants officers back in the USA think about me when they get wind of this? Sam wondered. Now that he’d been a lieutenant for a while, he wanted to make lieutenant commander. That would be pretty damn good for somebody who started out an ordinary seaman. Would the men who judged such things decide he could have handled this better?

  After worrying at it and worrying about it for a couple of minutes, he shrugged. The ship had to come first. If the brass hats didn’t care for what he’d done, he’d retire a lieutenant, and the world wouldn’t end. When he first signed up, even CPO had seemed a mountain taller than the Rockies, but he’d climbed a lot higher than that.

  So he’d go on doing things the way he thought he needed to. And if anybody away from the Josephus Daniels didn’t like it, too damn bad.

  The telephone on Jefferson Pinkard’s desk jangled. He picked it up. “This is Pinkard.”

  “Hello, Pinkard,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “This is Ferd Koenig, in Richmond.”

  “What can I do for you, sir?” Jeff asked the Attorney General, adding, “Glad to hear you still are in Richmond.” From some of the things the papers were saying, the capital was in trouble. Since the papers always told less than what was really going on, he’d worried.

  “We’re still here. We aren’t going anywhere, either,” Koenig said. As if to contradict him, something in the background blew up with a roar loud enough to be easily audible even over the telephone. He went on, “We’ll lick the damnyankees yet. You see if we don’t.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jeff said, though he’d already seen all the war he wanted and more besides in Snyder. Coming east to Humble was a wonderful escape. U.S. warplanes hardly ever appeared over the city of Houston (far, far away from the damnyankee abortion of a state that carried the same name) and had never been seen over this peaceful town twenty miles north of it.

  “Wait till we get all our secret weapons into the fight,” Koenig said. “We’re already throwing those rockets at the USA, and we’ve finally got new barrels that’ll make their best ones say uncle. Bigger and better things in the works, too.”

  “Sure hope so.” From everything Pinkard could see, the Confederate States needed bigger and better things if they stood a chance of winning.

  “Believe it. The President’s promised we’ll have ’em, and he keeps his word.” Ferdinand Koenig sounded absolutely convinced, despite yet another big boom in the distance. He went on, “But there’s something I need from you.”

  Of course there is. You wouldn’t have called me if there wasn’t, Jeff thought. Aloud, all he said was, “Tell me what.”

  “I want you to go through your guards. Anybody who’s fit enough to fight, put him on a train for Little Rock. We’ll take it from there,” the Attorney General said.

  “Everybody who’s fit enough to fight?” Pinkard asked in dismay.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Sir, you know a lot of my guys are from the Confederate Veterans’ Brigades,” Jeff said. Those were men the C.S. Army had already judged not fit to fight, mostly because of wounds from the Great War.

  “Yes, I understand that. Sort through them, too. Some of ’em’ll probably do—we aren’t as fussy as we used to be,” Koenig said. “But you’ve got plenty of Congressmen’s nephews and Party officials’ brothers-in-law. Come on, Pinkard—we both know how that shit works. But we can’t afford it any more.”

  “Shall I get on the train myself, then?” Jeff asked. “Reckon I still know which end of a rifle’s which.”

  “Don’t be dumb,” Koenig told him. “We’ve got to keep the camp running. That’s damn important, too. Way things are, though, we need every warm body we can get our hands on at the front.”

  “Well, I’ll do what I can, sir,” Jeff said.

  “I reckoned you would,” the Attorney General replied. “Freedom!” The line went dead.

  “Freedom,” Jeff echoed as he hung up, too. Once the handpiece was back in the cradle, he added one more word: “Shit.”

  He wondered how few guards he could get away with sending. The men on the women’s side, sure. They wouldn’t be a problem. He could always replace them with dykes. Plenty of tough broads ready to send Negro women to the bathhouses. Plenty of tough broads eager to do it. And if some of them ate pussy in the meantime…well, hell, as long as the colored gals got what was coming to them sooner or later, Jeff supposed he could look the other way in the meantime. Yeah, lezzies were disgusting, but there was a war on, and you had to take the bad with the good.

  Losing guards from the men’s side would hurt more. He couldn’t bring female guards over here. Some of them, the butch ones, would have liked it. But it would stir up trouble among the coons if he tried it, and it would stir up more trouble among his men. So he’d have to do some pruning, and then live with personnel being gone.

  Congressmen’s nephews. Party bigwigs’ brothers-in-law. Sure, he had some guys like that. He didn’t want to get rid of all of them. They were the young, the healthy, the quick here. You couldn’t run a camp with a bunch of old farts who couldn’t get out of their own way…could you? He hoped he wouldn’t have to find out, and feared he would.

  He got on the intercom, and then on the PA system, to summon Vern Green to his office. The guard chief got there about fifteen minutes later. “What’s up, sir?” Pinkard told him what was up. He looked disgusted when he heard. “Well, for God’s sake! They reckon our boys gonna win the damn war all by their lonesome?”

  “Beats me,” Jeff answered. “But when the Attorney General tells you you got to do this and that, you can’t very well say no.”

  Green looked more disgusted yet, but he nodded. “I’ll ask around,” he said. “Maybe we can fix it.” He had his own back channels to Richmond. Someone in the capital would be keeping an eye on Jeff for the government or the Party or both. Usua
lly, that made the guard chief the camp commandant’s rival. They both wanted to pull in the same direction today, though.

  “Yeah, you do that,” Jeff said. “But don’t hold your breath. War news is bad enough, they’ll be grabbing anybody they can get their hands on.”

  “Uh-huh,” Green said. They both had to be careful when they talked about how things were going. Either could report the other for defeatism. But they couldn’t afford to pretend they were blind, either. If the news were better, Richmond wouldn’t be prying men loose wherever it could. The guard chief went on, “You got a roster handy?”

  “Sure do.” Jeff spread papers out on his desk. “I’ve made some marks already.”

  Green looked at them. He nodded. “What you’ve got makes sense. We can always come up with guards in skirts for the women’s side.”

  “Just what I was thinkin’,” Pinkard agreed. “The ones over here, though…That’s gonna be a bastard. Bastard and a half, even.”

  “Yeah.” The guard chief nodded again. “Some of these guys’ll bawl like castrated colts when you tell ’em they got to go and fight the damnyankees. Some of their fathers’ll bawl even louder.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jeff said with a wry grin. “But I know what to do about that, damned if I don’t. I’ll just say, ‘You want to squawk, don’t you come squawkin’ to me. Go squawk to Ferd Koenig, on account of he gave the orders. Me, I’m only doin’ like he said.’”

  Vern Green smiled a slow, conspiratorial smile. “Ain’t gonna be a whole lot o’ folks with the brass to try that.”

  “Hell, I wouldn’t,” Jeff said. “I know when I’m fightin’ out of my weight. Anybody who wants to take a swing at it, well, good luck.” He peered through his reading glasses at the roster. “Let’s see how we can finish this off and still have enough left to do our jobs here.”