In At the Death sa-4

by Harry Turtledove

  "Four cans of deviled ham. She was skinny as all get-out. How was I supposed to know she'd give me a drippy faucet?"

  "You're supposed to think about shit like that," his platoon commander snapped before O'Doull could say anything. "How many times did you hear about it in basic?"

  "Yes, sir," Donnelly said. O'Doull had a good notion of what he wasn't saying: that the only thing he'd cared about was getting his jollies.

  That was natural enough. Of course, so was running away if somebody started shooting at you. Soldiers could learn not to. They could also learn not to screw without being careful. They could, but this one hadn't.

  "Clap isn't the only thing to worry about down here," O'Doull said. "Medic who worked with me got murdered for laying a Confederate woman."

  "I wasn't worried about that, sir. I wasn't worried about anything," Donnelly said.

  He wouldn't listen. O'Doull could see that. "Well, pull your pants up and get the hell out of here," he said. "If you come down with another dose, so help me God I'll find a bigger needle." The threat might work if anything did.

  It made Donnelly look worried as he covered himself again, anyhow. The lieutenant kept barking at him as he led him away from the aid station. "How often does that happen?" Lord asked.

  "Every now and again," O'Doull answered. "At least this guy didn't have a chancre."

  "Penicillin'll do for syphilis, too," Sergeant Lord said.

  "Sure a lot better than the chemicals full of arsenic we used before," O'Doull agreed. "And before that it was mercury and all kinds of other poison."

  The senior medic made a face. "I think I'd rather have the pox. A lot of the time, something else would kill you before it got bad."

  "Maybe," O'Doull said. "But maybe not, too. A lot of the time, you'd get sick over and over, one thing after another. They'd all be different. They'd all look different, anyhow. But they'd all have syphilis at the bottom. Damn thing's the great pretender."

  "You know more about it than I do, sir," Sergeant Lord said. "I played the trombone before I got conscripted. I knew some guys who had it, and it didn't seem to bother them all that much."

  "Seem to is right," O'Doull said, and then, "The trombone, eh? Have one with you?"

  "Afraid not, sir. It's not like a flute or even the trumpet-not so easy to carry around."

  "Too bad. Well, maybe you can liberate one."

  "Maybe." Goodson Lord looked dubious. "I've seen fiddles and pianos and guitars in these pissant Confederate towns, but that's about it."

  "Well, let the corpsmen know. Let the guys in front of us know," O'Doull said. "You'd be amazed at what they can come up with-besides the clap, I mean."

  "If I want that, I'll get it myself," Lord said. O'Doull snorted.

  Since the medic didn't seem to want to spread the word, O'Doull did it for him. Inside of three days, Eddie produced a horn. "Here you go," he said. "Merry Christmas."

  "I'll be a son of a bitch," Goodson Lord said. He took the trombone and started to play. Notes smooth and mellow as butter filled the tent. They made the Army bugles O'Doull was used to seem like screeching blue jays by comparison.

  "Wow!" Eddie said. "You really can play that so-and-so."

  "You think I was lying?" Lord asked, lowering the trombone.

  "No, not like that," Eddie answered. "But there's playing, and then there's playing, you know? You're really good!"

  "Oh. Thanks." The corpsman's enthusiasm made the sergeant blink. He started to play some more.

  He got about thirty seconds into a number from Oh, Sequoyah! before a corpsman brought in a man with a piece of shrapnel in his thigh. "You can blow that thing, man," the soldier said. "Can you keep playing while the doc works on me?"

  "Sorry," Lord said after a quick look at the wound. "I think we're gonna have to knock you out."

  "Aw, hell," the wounded man said. As far as Leonard O'Doull could remember, that was the first time he'd ever heard a man ask not to be anesthetized.

  Sergeant Lord got the patient etherized on the table. O'Doull cut away the man's trouser leg and started cleaning out the wound and tying off bleeders. He could see the femoral artery pulsing in there, but it wasn't cut. If it had been, the man likely would have bled out before he got back to the aid station.

  O'Doull sewed him up and injected him with penicillin and tetanus antitoxin. "These aren't so bad," he said. "He should heal up fine."

  "You do like to work on 'em when they turn out that way," Lord agreed. "How many amputations have you done?"

  "I couldn't even begin to count 'em. They're like burns: more than I ever wanted to, that's for damn sure," O'Doull said.

  "Yeah, same here," Lord said. "They're easy to perform, they're fast, and the patient usually comes through 'em pretty well. But you know he'll never be the same afterwards, the poor bastard."

  "Ain't it the truth?" O'Doull said sadly. "Most of the time when I do an amputation, I feel more like a butcher than a surgeon."

  "That's about the size of it," Lord said.

  O'Doull wished they hadn't been talking about it, because the very next man the corpsman carried in had a foot and lower leg smashed beyond the hope of saving. The doctor pulled out the bone saw and did what he had to do. As Sergeant Lord had said, the soldier would probably pull through. Whether he would be happy about it was a different question. O'Doull wasn't likely ever to learn his answer to it.

  Fayetteville lay south and even a little west of Atlanta. A rail line ran through it. Once the U.S. Army got astride that line, it would pinch off one more Confederate artery into the beleaguered capital of Georgia. Lieutenant Michael Pound didn't think the enemy would be able to hold Atlanta much longer after that happened.

  Being a platoon commander, Pound wore earphones more often than he wanted to. Instead of doing as he pleased, he had to keep track of what the other units in the regiment and the other barrels in his platoon were up to. He thought it cramped his style.

  "Marquard's platoon has lost three barrels at square G-5," a voice from somewhere in back of the line intoned. "Need armor there to cover the infantry advance."

  Pound checked the map. If his platoon was where he thought, they were right on the edge of G-5 themselves. "Pound here," he answered on the same frequency. "We can cover. Do you know why they lost them? Over."

  He waited. He didn't have to wait long. "Roger your covering," the voice said. "Report is that the losses are due to enemy barrels. Over."

  "What the hell's wrong with Marquard?" Pound asked, but not with the TRANSMIT key pressed. He happened to know that the other lieutenant had new-model machines. To his way of thinking, you had to be worse than careless to lose three in a hurry to C.S. barrels. You damn near had to be criminally negligent.

  He wirelessed the news to the other four barrels in his platoon. By what their commanders said, they felt the same way. "We'll take care of it," one of the sergeants promised. "Those butternut bastards can kiss their butts good-bye."

  "Damn straight!" Pound said. He led a bunch of hard-charging pirates, men who thought the same way he did. "Let's go get 'em. Follow me."

  He led the platoon west and a little south, to come in where the luckless Marquard had got in trouble. He hadn't got far before realizing the trouble might not be what he thought. There sat a dead U.S. barrel in a field-not just dead but decapitated, for the turret lay upside down, about ten feet from the chassis.

  "Fuck," Sergeant Scullard said. "Where'd they get a gun that could do that?"

  "Good question," Pound said, which didn't answer the gunner. He got on the platoon circuit again: "Be careful, guys. Use all the cover you can. I think Featherston's fuckers just came up with something new."

  For most of a year, the latest U.S. barrels had dominated the battlefield. If they couldn't do that any more…then everything got harder. Michael Pound approved of easy, not that the enemy cared.

  He flipped up the lid to the cupola and stood up in the turret. He needed to be able to see; the periscopes
built into the cupola just didn't do the job. There wasn't a lot of small-arms fire. If the C.S. gunners who nailed that U.S. barrel opened up on him with an automatic rifle or a machine gun…that was better than having them shoot at his barrel with whatever monster gun they had.

  One of the other barrels in his platoon was about a hundred yards to his left. He saw a blast of flame burst from a thick stand of bushes, heard a thunderous roar, and a moment later watched the other U.S. barrel brew up. The men inside couldn't have had a chance-and that gun, whatever it was, would be aiming at him next.

  "Front!" he bawled as he tumbled back into the turret.

  "Identified," Scullard answered. "I'm going to give it AP. I think a hull's hiding in there."

  "I don't know. I didn't see one." But Pound added, "If you got a better look, go with what you think."

  Mouradian had already slammed the round into the breech. The gunner fired the piece. The cannon's bellow was slightly muffled inside the turret. Smoke and fire spurted from the heart of the bushes. Michael Pound whooped and thumped Sergeant Scullard on the back. "Gimme another round!" Scullard told the loader. He fired again. More flames burst from the bushes. Shame Moses isn't here, Pound thought.

  "Sir, I think that son of a bitch is history," Scullard said.

  "I think you're right," Pound said. "And if you weren't so quick-and if you weren't so sure about what was hiding there-we would be instead." He spoke into the intercom: "Move forward-carefully. I want to see what the hell we killed."

  "Yes, sir," the driver answered.

  By the time Pound's barrel drew near, the bushes were burning briskly. Through them, he got a pretty good look at a low hull, a turret as smoothly curved as a turtle's carapace, and a gun that looked as if it came off a destroyer.

  "Fuck," Scullard said again. "Gonna be a ton of work killing these babies."

  "We can do it. You did it," Pound said.

  "I know," the gunner said. "But they can kill us, too, easy as you please. I hope the Confederates don't have a lot of 'em."

  "Me, too," Pound admitted. "We can't go marching around like no gun can touch us any more-that's for sure." Sometimes U.S. new-model barrels, confident in their armor, would almost dare C.S. machines to shoot at them. If you did that against one of these barrels, they'd bury your ashes in a tobacco pouch.

  He got on the wireless to pass what he'd found to division HQ. "Roger that," came the reply. "We've had a couple of other reports about them."

  The soldier on the other end of the connection sounded calm and relaxed. Why not? He was well behind the line. "Why the devil didn't you pass the word along?" Pound yelled. "You damn near got me killed!"

  "We said the losses were due to enemy barrels," the wireless man answered, as if that were enough. He probably thought it was.

  Pound took off the earphones. "We can beat the enemy," he said to nobody in particular, "but God help us against our own side."

  "Headquarters being stupid again?" Scullard asked sympathetically.

  "They'd have to wise up to get to stupid." Warming to his theme, Pound added, "They've got their headquarters in their hindquarters."

  "And we're the ones who'll end up paying for it," the gunner predicted.

  "Guy in one of our uniforms coming up," Mouradian said.

  That sent Pound out of the cupola again, a captured Confederate submachine gun at the ready. Just because somebody wore a U.S. uniform, he wasn't necessarily a U.S. soldier. But he stopped by himself before Pound could tell him not to come any closer. "You nailed that fucker," he said. His harsh accent claimed he was from Kansas or Nebraska, but that didn't prove anything, either.

  "Yeah," Pound answered. "And so?"

  "More of 'em around-bound to be," said the U.S. soldier-Pound supposed he was a U.S. soldier, anyhow. "Can you clear 'em out?"

  "Who knows?" Pound didn't just look at the monstrous machine his barrel had just wrecked. He looked back at the U.S. barrel the Confederates had killed. Those were five men of his, five friends of his, gone in the wink of an eye. He hadn't had even a moment to grieve. He still didn't, not really.

  "Those other guys, they walked into a buzz saw," the infantryman in green-gray said. "Bam! Bam! Bam! They went out one after another. I don't think they ever knew what got 'em."

  Pound hoped the men in the barrel from his platoon didn't know what got 'em. Was that a 4Ѕ-inch gun on the C.S. machine? A fiveincher? Whatever it was, it was devastating.

  A Confederate machine gun started snarling. The foot soldier threw himself flat. Pound ducked down into the turret. He got on the platoon circuit with the survivors: "We're moving up. For God's sake, watch it. We aren't the biggest cats in the jungle any more."

  How many of those big barrels did Featherston's men have? How fast were they? How maneuverable? How well did they do on bad ground? A barrel's engine could be as important a weapon as its gun. But the gun in that bastard…

  "Kinda revs up the pucker factor, doesn't it, sir?" Scullard said, which came unpleasantly close to echoing Pound's thoughts.

  "Maybe a little," he answered, his voice as dry as he could make it. He didn't want to admit he was scared, but he couldn't very well deny it, either. He got on the wireless: "Any chance of sending up some more armor to G-5? We don't know what's ahead of us, and it feels pretty naked around here."

  "Well, we'll see what we can do," said the wireless operator on the other end of the line. He was sitting in a chair under canvas somewhere. For all Michael Pound knew, he was eating bonbons and patting a cute nurse on the ass to hear her giggle. He wasn't up here at the sharp end of the wedge, wondering if he'd cook like a pot roast in the next few seconds.

  Two rounds of HE silenced that chattering machine gun. The country was pine woods and little clearings. Pound stayed away from the clearings when he could and dashed across when he couldn't. Somewhere ahead lay the Georgia Southern line, somewhere ahead and to the right the unreduced town of Fayetteville. If everything worked, the enemy would have to abandon it along with Atlanta. Pound had been confident. He wished he still were.

  He also wished the enemy were still counterattacking. That would have made things easier. Then those big honking barrels would have had to show themselves. As things were, they lurked in ambush. The only way to find one was…the hard way.

  Having foot soldiers along came in handy. Pound waited in the woods while the men in green-gray trotted across a field. A big round of HE slammed into the poor bloody infantry. Some U.S. soldiers went flying, while others flattened out and dug in.

  "See where that came from, sir?" Scullard asked.

  "Bearing was almost straight ahead of us-behind that twisted tree with the chunk of bark missing," Pound answered, peering through the periscopes. "If he's smart, he'll back away-he ought to figure our guys have armor with 'em."

  "Maybe he'll get greedy instead," the gunner said.

  Pound wouldn't have, but the enemy crew did. They fired twice more at the infantrymen in the field. They had good targets in front of them, and they were going to take advantage of it. To give them their due, they didn't have any room to retreat, not if the CSA wanted to hang on to the railroad line.

  "Identify 'em now, Mel?" Pound asked.

  "Oh, hell, yes," Scullard said, and then, to the loader, "AP!" He added, "Be ready for another round as fast as you can. If the first one doesn't do the trick, we've got to try again."

  "Right," Mouradian said.

  If the second one doesn't do the trick, we've got to get away-if we can, Pound thought. The C.S. barrel would know where the shots were coming from, and would answer. Pound didn't want to be on the receiving end of that reply.

  The gun spoke twice in quick succession. Scullard didn't wait to see if the first round hit before sending the second on its way. As soon as he'd fired both of them, Pound shouted, "Reverse!" The barrel jerked backward.

  No enemy antibarrel rounds came after it. Pound popped out of the turret to see what they'd done to the C.S. barrel. Smoke rose f
rom behind the tree, an ever-growing cloud. He spotted motion back there-somebody'd got out and was running away. That impressed him in spite of himself. His own barrel wouldn't have let anybody inside survive, not after it got hit twice. The Confederates had themselves some deadly dangerous new toys here. He hoped like anything they didn't have too many of them.

  V

  Irving Morrell posed for U.S. photographers in front of the Atlanta city hall. New Year's Day for 1944 was chilly and overcast, with the wet-dust smell of rain in the air. Morrell didn't care. He would have posed for these pictures in the middle of a deluge.

  "A year ago, we were still mopping up in Pittsburgh," he said. "Now we're here. We've done pretty damn well for ourselves, by God."

  "Did you expect the Confederates to evacuate the city?" a reporter asked.

  "They were going to lose it either way," Morrell answered. "The question was, would they lose Atlanta, or would they lose Atlanta and the army that was holding it? They saved a good part of the army by pulling out."

  They'd saved more than he wished they would have. They'd started the evacuation at night, and bad weather had kept U.S. fighter-bombers on the ground, so their columns hadn't got the pounding they should have. Patton's army was still a going concern, somewhere over near the Alabama border. Morrell didn't know what his C.S. opposite number would do with the men he had left, but he figured Patton would think of something.

  A rifle banged, not too far away. Holdouts and snipers still prowled Atlanta. The Confederates had planted lots of mines. They'd attached booby traps to everything from fountain pens to toilet seats. The Stars and Stripes might fly here, but the town wasn't safe, and wouldn't be for quite a while.

  "How much does this victory mean?" another reporter called.

  "Well, the enemy will have a lot tougher time fighting the war without Atlanta than he would have with it," Morrell said. "It was a factory town and a transport hub, and now he'll have to do without all that."

  The reporter waved at the wreckage. "Doesn't look like he could have done too much with it even when he had it."