Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

Michael Pound grinned as his barrel rumbled forward, jouncing over rubble and grinding a lot of the big chunks into smaller ones. “Advancing feels good, doesn’t it, sir?” he said.

Lieutenant Don Griffiths nodded. “You’d better believe it, Sergeant. We’ve done too much falling back.”

“Yes, sir.” Pound wouldn’t have argued with that for a moment. “Looks to me like the Confederates are starting to feel the pinch.”

“Here’s hoping,” Griffiths said. “I wouldn’t want to try reinforcing and supplying an army the size of theirs by air, I’ll tell you that. And I don’t think they’ve got an airstrip left that our artillery can’t reach.”

“My heart bleeds-but not as much as they’re going to bleed before long,” Pound said. “I wonder why they haven’t tried to break out to the west. Somebody in their high command must have his head wedged. Too bad for them.” He had no respect for his own superiors. Finding out some dunderheads wore butternut was reassuring.

A rifle bullet pinged off the barrel’s armored side. That wouldn’t do the Confederates any good. As if to prove it wouldn’t, the bow machine gun chattered. Pound peered through his own gunsight, but he couldn’t see what the bow gunner was shooting at-if he was shooting at anything. It hardly mattered sometimes.

Off to the left, something on the Confederate side of the line blew up with a roar loud enough to penetrate the barrel’s thick skin. “That sounded good,” Pound said. “Wonder what it was.”

“Want me to stick my head out and look around?” Lieutenant Griffiths asked.

“Not important enough, sir,” Pound answered. “Who knows if our machine gun took out whoever was shooting at us?” Barrel commander was a dangerous job. Now that Pound had finally found an officer with some notion of what he was doing, he didn’t want to lose him for no good reason. There were too many times when a barrel commander had perfectly good reasons for exposing himself to enemy fire.

Something else blew up, even louder. Griffiths put a hand to his earphones. He often did that when he was getting a wireless message. Sergeant Pound had no idea whether it helped or how it could, but he’d never said anything about it to the officer. It couldn’t hurt.

Lieutenant Griffiths leaned forward to use the speaking tube to the driver’s position: “Forward again, and a little to the left, but slowly,” he said. He turned to Pound. “That was an ammunition dump. They won’t be able to shell us so well for a while.”

“We hope,” said Pound, ever willing to see the cloud next to the silver lining.

“Well, yes. We hope. There’s always that,” Griffiths agreed. “But we’ve got infantry moving up with us. With luck, they’ll keep the short-range trouble away from us. As for the other side’s barrels and antibarrel guns-we’ve done all right so far. Of course, we’ve got a pretty good gunner.”

“So we do.” Pound knew his own talents too well to be modest about them. Half a second later than he should have, he added, “You’re not bad at spotting trouble before it spots us. Best way to get rid of it that I know.”

No sooner had he said that than something clanged against the front of the turret with force enough to shake the whole barrel. I’m dead, Pound thought. Only a moment later did he realize he would have been too dead to think if that round had got through. Thank God for the upgraded armor on the new turret. If this beast hadn’t been retrofitted, I’d be burnt meat right now.

Without waiting for orders, the driver roared forward, looking for cover behind the nearest pile of rubble. Then, abruptly, he slammed on the brakes. “Did you see it, sir?” Pound asked.

“No, goddammit.” Griffiths sounded angry at himself. “That son of a bitch knows where we’re at, and I didn’t spot the muzzle flash. Wherever he is, he’s hidden good.”

“Not sporting,” Pound agreed. He’d been more than happy enough to ambush C.S. barrels from an empty garage, but having them turn the tables on him wasn’t playing fair. Someone with a more objective view might not have found that unfair, but so what? It wasn’t the impartial observer’s neck. It was his.

He traversed the turret, staring through the gunsight as he did. The hatch opened. Lieutenant Griffiths stood up to get a better look than he could through the periscopes in the cupola. This was one of those times. Griffiths might get shot, but he also might get a better look at the hidden cannon or barrel that had just come within inches of incinerating him.

It didn’t fire again, which argued that the rubble in front of Pound’s barrel gave pretty good protection. A rifle bullet snapped past; as always, the sound seemed hatefully malicious. Lieutenant Griffiths ducked a little-you did that without thinking-but he didn’t come back inside the steel shell. He had balls. Pound nodded approvingly.

Probably not somewhere close, the gunner thought, looking for straight lines that broke the irregular pattern of the ruins of Pittsburgh. If the enemy were close, he would have a better shot at the U.S. barrel. And, if he were close, his round likely would have penetrated in spite of the improved turret. A cannon made a damned effective door knocker.

There! Or Pound thought so, anyhow. “Armor-piercing!” he snapped.

“Armor-piercing,” Cecil Bergman answered. The loader slammed a black-tipped cartridge into the breech. Pound worked the elevation handwheel. Fifteen hundred yards was a long shot. As near as he could tell, he fired at the same time as the C.S. gunner. The enemy’s shot snarled past, a few feet high. Pound’s struck home. The enemy barrel started to burn.

“Hit!” Lieutenant Griffiths shouted. “How on earth did you make that shot?”

“Twenty-odd years of practice, sir,” Pound answered. The Confederate gunner hadn’t had so much-though he’d hit Pound’s barrel before Pound even knew he was there. He wouldn’t get another chance now. A great cloud of black smoke was rising, almost a mile away.

The shot ricocheting inside the barrel would have killed or maimed some of the crew. The fire would be searing the rest. By the way the smoke billowed out, that barrel was a total loss. Odds were the crew was, too. Pound had bailed out of a crippled barrel, but then only the engine compartment was burning. Could anyone get out here? He didn’t think so.

I just killed five men. Most of the time, he didn’t worry about that. When he watched a barrel brew up, it was only a machine that died. But he’d just had his own brush with death, and it reminded him of the soldiers inside the barrels. He knew what they were going through; he’d come close to going through it himself. If he’d met them in a bar, he could have drunk the night away talking shop with them.

But they’d just done their best to kill him, and their best was hideously close to good enough. They’re dead and I’m alive and that’s how I want it to be.

“We can move up a little more now, sir,” he said.

Griffiths thought about it, then nodded. He called up to the driver. The barrel came out from behind the pile of wreckage and clattered towards another one. Pound tensed when it came out into the open. If the Confederates had drawn a bead on them… But no hardened-steel projectile tore into the machine’s vitals. He breathed again as a pile of tumbled bricks came between his machine and the people who wanted to do unto it as he’d done unto theirs.

U.S. foot soldiers ran forward with the barrels. A Confederate machine gunner opened up on them. “Front!” Lieutenant Griffiths shouted.

“Identified!” Pound answered. He turned his head and shouted to the loader: “HE!”