Harry Turtledove - In At the Death

"Looks that way to me, too," Dover answered. "If they take Atlanta…Well, that's pretty bad."

We should have stopped them in front of Chattanooga, he thought glumly. Now that they're through the gap and into Georgia, they can go where they please. The paratroop drop that seized Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge from the Confederates and made them evacuate Chattanooga was a smart, gutsy operation. Dover admired it while wishing his side hadn't been on the receiving end.

When night fell, he slept in a tent with a foxhole right next to it. U.S. bombers came over at night even more often than in the daytime. The heavy drone of engines overhead sent him diving into the hole even before the alarm sounded. Bombs burst with heavy thuds that reminded him of earthquakes. He'd never been in any earthquakes, but he was sure they had to be like this.

Antiaircraft guns thundered and lightninged, filling the air with the sharp stink of smokeless powder. Dover listened hopefully for the concussive thud of stricken bombers smashing into the ground, but in that he was disappointed. Fewer bombs fell close by than he expected from the number of airplanes overhead, which didn't disappoint him a bit.

Then something fluttered down from the sky like an oversized snowflake and landed on top of his head. He grabbed the sheet of cheap pulp paper. The flash of the guns showed him a large U.S. flag, printed in full color, with text below that he couldn't make out in the darkness and without his reading glasses.

"More propaganda," he murmured with a sigh of relief. If the damnyankees wanted to drop their lies instead of high explosives, he didn't mind a bit. Had that been a bomb falling on his head…

He stuck the sheet into a trouser pocket and forgot he had it till the next morning. Only when it crinkled as he moved did he remember and take it out for a look.

Confederate soldiers, your cause is lost! it shouted, and went on from there. It urged him to save his life by coming through the lines holding up the picture of the Stars and Stripes. Maybe U.S. soldiers wouldn't shoot him if he did that, but it struck him as a damn good recipe for getting shot by his own side.

If his own side's propaganda was bad, the enemy's was worse. Look at the disaster Jake Featherston has led you into. Don't you want true freedom for your country? it said. All Jerry Dover wanted-all most Confederates wanted-was to see the Yankees go away and leave his country alone. They didn't seem to understand that. If the sheets falling from the sky meant anything, they thought they were liberators.

"My ass," Jerry Dover said, as if he had a U.S. propaganda writer in the tent with him. The United States had invaded the Confederate States four times in the past eighty years. If they thought they'd be welcomed with anything but bayonets, they were even bigger fools than Dover gave them credit for-not easy but not, he supposed, impossible.

And if the Confederates wanted to change their government, they could take care of it on their own. All the bodyguards in the world wouldn't keep Jake Featherston alive for long if enough people decided he needed killing. No Yankees had to help.

Dover started to chuck the propaganda sheet, then changed his mind. "My ass," he said one more time, now happily, and put it back in his pocket. As with the story in The Armored Bear, he could treat it as it deserved.

N ovember in the North Atlantic wasn't so bad as January or February, but it was bad enough. The Josephus Daniels rode out one big swell after another. On the destroyer escort's bridge, Sam Carsten felt as if he were on God's seesaw. Up and down, up and down, up and down forever.

"You still have that hydrophone contact?" he shouted down the speaking tube to Vince Bevacqua.

"Yes, sir, sure do," the chief petty officer answered. "Coming in as clear as you can expect with waves like this."

"All right, then. Let's give the submersible two ashcans," Sam said. "That'll bring it to the surface where we can deal with it."

He shouted the order over the PA system. The launcher crew at the Josephus Daniels' bow sent the depth charges flying into the ocean one at a time, well ahead of the ship. They were set to detonate not far below the surface. Sam felt the explosions through the soles of his feet.

Something rude came out of the speaking tube. "Had my earphones on when the first one burst," Bevacqua said. "That'll clean your sinuses from the inside out." He paused, then went on, "The sub's making noises like it's blowing water out of its dive chambers. Ought to be coming to the surface."

"We'll be ready for anything," Carsten promised.

And the destroyer escort was. Both four-inchers bore on the submarine when it surfaced. So did several of the the ship's twin 40mm antiaircraft guns and her.50-caliber machine guns. A swell washed over the sub's bow-and almost washed over the conning tower, too. This weather was tough to take in the Josephus Daniels. It had to be ten times worse in a submersible.

Sailors ran up a flag on the sub: the white, black, and red jack of the Imperial German Navy. Sam breathed a sigh of relief. "This is the one we're supposed to meet, all right," he said.

"So it would seem, sir," Lieutenant Myron Zwilling agreed. Sam wished he had more use for the exec. Zwilling was brave enough and more than willing enough, but he had all the warmth and character of an old, sour-smelling rag. Men obeyed him because he wore two stripes on his sleeve, not because he made them want to.

The submersible's signal lamp started flashing Morse. "We-have-your-package," Sam read slowly. "He knows English, then. Good."

He handled the destroyer escort's blinker himself. WILL APPROACH FOR PICKUP, he sent back.

COME AHEAD. BE CAREFUL IN THESE SEAS, the sub signaled.

Sam wished Pat Kelly were still aboard. But his old exec had a ship of his own, a newer, faster ship than the Josephus Daniels. He was probably showing his whole crew what a demon shiphandler he was. Sam wasn't, and never would be. Neither was Zwilling. Since he wasn't, Sam kept the conn himself.

As he steered closer to the submersible, he ordered Bevacqua to keep paying close attention to any echoes that came back from his hydrophone pings. The CPO laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, I'm on it, Skipper. Don't you worry about that," he said. "It's my neck, too, after all."

"Good," Sam said. "Long as you remember."

German subs weren't the only ones prowling the North Atlantic. Plenty of U.S. boats were out here, too. More to the point, so were British, French, and Confederate submarines. The odds against any one of them being in the neighborhood were long, but so were the odds against filling an inside straight, and lucky optimists did that every day.

In both the Great War and this one, U.S. admirals and their German counterparts dreamt of sweeping the British and French fleets from the North Atlantic and joining hands in the middle. It hadn't happened then, and it wouldn't happen this time around, either. The enemy kept the two allies apart, except for sneaky meetings like this one.

NEAR ENOUGH, the submersible's captain signaled. But Sam steered closer, anticipating the next swell with a small motion of the wheel. The sub's skipper waved to him then, seeing that he knew what he was doing. He lifted one hand from the wheel to wave back. THROW A LINE, came the flashes from the ugly, deadly, rust-streaked boat.

IS THE PACKAGE WATERPROOF? Sam asked.

JA, the submersible skipper answered. Sam knew more German than that; his folks had spoken it on the farm where he grew up. He ordered a line thrown. A German sailor in a greasy pea jacket and dungarees ran along the sub's wet hull to retrieve it. Sam wouldn't have cared to do that, not with the boat pitching the way it was. But the man grabbed the line, carried it back to the conning tower, and climbed the iron ladder, nimble as a Barbary ape.