Harry Turtledove: In At the Death

And he could see enough, if not quite everything he wanted. "They're coming, all right," he said. "Infantry first-probably probing to find out where the mines are and whether we've got any weak spots. And when they find some, that's where the barrels will try and get through."

"Let the goddamn barrels come," Scullard said. "They'll regret it."

In the first year and a half of the war, U.S. forces were sorry more often than not when they came up against C.S. barrels. Confederate machines had bigger guns, stronger engines, and thicker, better-sloped armor. But the newest U.S. models finally got it right. Their 3Ѕ-inch guns outclassed anything the enemy used, and their powerplants and protection also outdid the opposition. With problems elsewhere, the Confederates were slow to upgrade their barrels.

Some of the machines advancing now weren't barrels at all, but squat, ugly assault guns. Pound, a purist, looked down his nose at them. But throw enough of them into the fight and something would probably give. Quantity had a quality of its own.

"What's the range to those bastards?" he asked.

Scullard checked the rangefinder. "More than a mile and a half, sir. Even a hit at that range isn't a sure kill-they've got thick glacis plates."

"Take a shot at the lead machine anyway," Pound said. "If you do kill it way the hell out there, the rest of them will know right away they've got a tough row to hoe."

"I'll do it, sir," the gunner answered. Then he spoke to the loader: "Armor-piercing!"

"I thought you'd never ask," Joe Mouradian said, and handed him a long, heavy cartridge with the nose painted black.

Scullard traversed the turret a little to the left. He peered through the rangefinder again, raised the gun, peered once more, muttered, and brought the cannon up a hair farther. Pound wouldn't have hesitated so much. He had uncommon confidence in himself. He wasn't always right, but he was always sure. He was sure he ought to keep quiet now. Scullard's style was different from his, but the gunner usually hit what he aimed at.

If he didn't hit here, Pound intended to say not a word. It was long range, even for a gun that fired on a fast, flat trajectory like the 3Ѕ-incher.

Boom! Inside the turret, the noise wasn't too bad. Right outside, it would have seemed like the end of the world. Michael Pound looked through the periscopes, hoping he could see the shot fall if it missed.

But it didn't. The lead Confederate assault gun suddenly stopped. Greasy black smoke spurted from it. A hatch in the side opened. Somebody bailed out. More smoke belched from the hatch.

"Good shot! Good shot!" Pound thumped Scullard on the back. "Now kill the next one. The others will think twice about coming on after that."

"I'll try, sir," the gunner said, and then, "AP again, Mouradian!"

"Right." The loader slammed another round into the breech.

Scullard traversed the turret to the right. He fired again, then swore. That was a miss. Pound swore, too; he saw no puff of dust to mark where the shot came down. The wet weather complicated lives all kinds of ways.

Scullard tried again. This time, the shot went home. The assault gun slewed sideways and stopped, a track knocked off its wheels. The enemy could probably fix it, but that would take a while. In the meantime, it was out of the fight, a sitting duck. Odds were somebody would blast it before it got fixed.

Other U.S. barrels opened up. More C.S. assault guns and barrels got hit. Others stopped to return fire. Having expended three rounds from this spot, Pound figured it was time to move. They would have a good idea where he was, the same as if he'd lit three cigarettes on a match. He ordered the barrel back and to the left to a secondary firing position he'd marked out ahead of time.

Nobody ever said the Confederates lacked guts. They pressed the attack hard. Pound could see only his little part of it, like any soldier at the front. Thanks to the mines and the machine guns and the barrels and the fighter-bombers that swooped down on the enemy, the men in butternut never made it across the open ground and into the pine woods. They tried three different times, which only meant they paid a higher price for failure than if they'd left well enough alone after the first time.

When they sullenly pulled back late that afternoon, Pound said, "We ought to go after them. We might be able to walk right into Atlanta."

"Easy to walk into Atlanta, sir," Scullard said. "If we do, though, how many of us'll walk out again?"

Pound grunted. Having seen what the fighting in Pittsburgh was like, he didn't want to wind up on the other end of that. But watching the enemy get away went against all his instincts.

Then rockets started screaming down on the open ground in front of the woods and on the trees as well. Blast made even the heavy barrel shudder on its tracks. The Confederates were doing everything they could to discourage pursuit. He feared the foot soldiers were catching it hard.

Even so…"They won't take Lawrenceville away from us like that," he said.

"No, sir," Scullard agreed. "We'll likely try a flanking move from there, I bet. If we can make them leave Atlanta without us going in and taking it away from them, that sounds goddamn good to me."

"To me, too," Pound said. "The cheaper, the better."

The order to move forward came early the next morning. The axis of the advance was southeast: not straight towards Atlanta, but deeper into central Georgia. That warmed the cockles of Michael Pound's heart. It also told him that General Morrell, whom he'd known for many years, still had what it took. Morrell was all but inviting the Confederates in Atlanta to strike at his flank again. If they did, he would give them lumps.

They didn't. Watching their first counterattack fail must have taught them something. Pound didn't-wouldn't-believe they'd lost too many men and too much equipment for another try. They'd counterattacked again and again, all the way down from the Ohio River-usually before they should have. And it had cost them a lot more than standing on the defensive and making U.S. forces come to them would have done. Maybe they were finally wising up.

But if they were, it was liable to be too late. If they didn't come out of Atlanta, men and barrels in green-gray would curl around and cut them off from the east and south as well as from the north. And what would stop Irving Morrell's armor from slashing across the rest of Georgia to Savannah and the Atlantic and cutting the Confederacy in half?

Nothing Second Lieutenant Pound could see.

Here and there, the Confederates still fought hard. The Freedom Party Guard units, in their mottled uniforms, had the best gear the CSA could give them and a vicious determination to use it. They took few prisoners, and mostly didn't let themselves get captured. And their fanatical resistance got them…

Not very much. Jake Featherston didn't have enough Guard outfits to go around. He didn't come close. In between the towns they defended and the strongpoints they manned lay…again, not very much. Most Confederate soldiers, like most soldiers most places, weren't so enthusiastic about dying for their country. Militias of beardless boys and old men mixed bolt-action Tredegars from the last war with hunting rifles and shotguns. Some of them were brave. It hardly mattered. They didn't have what they needed to fight a real army.

Mel Scullard machine-gunned a kid who was running up to the barrel with a Featherston Fizz. The youngster fell. The burning gasoline from the bottle made his last minutes on earth even worse than they would have been otherwise.

With cold eyes, the gunner watched him die. "You want to play against the first team, sonny, you better bring your best game," he said.

"That's about the size of it," Pound agreed. "And most of their first team is in Atlanta, and it's doing them less and less good the longer it sits there. In the meantime, by God, we'll just clean up their scrubs."