Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

“HE,” Bergman said. A white-tipped high-explosive round went into the breech. Pound lined up the sights on the C.S. machine gun’s winking muzzle. He jerked the lanyard. The cannon bellowed. The shell casing clanked on the floor of the fighting compartment.

A 2.4-inch shell didn’t have room for a whole lot of explosive. A three-incher from one of the Confederate barrels would have held almost twice as much. Sandbags and rubble flew from in front of the C.S. gun, but it kept shooting. Tracers drew fiery lines through the air.

Pound abstractly admired the enemy gunners’ nerve. If a round burst right in front of him, he would have got the hell out of there. They kept doing what they’d been trained to do. “Another round,” he said. In went the shell. He swung the cannon’s muzzle a gnat’s hair to the left and fired again.

Another hit, but the enemy gun went on firing. He needed two more rounds before it fell silent. The stink of cordite was thick in the turret. “Stubborn bastards,” Lieutenant Griffiths said.

“Yes, sir,” Pound agreed, coughing. “They’re the ones you’ve especially got to get rid of.”

With the machine gun knocked out, U.S. infantry moved up some more. They took casualties. With automatic rifles and submachine guns, the Confederate soldiers could outshoot them. But how long could the Confederates keep outshooting them if more ammunition didn’t come into Pittsburgh?

The Confederates couldn’t use captured U.S. ammo unless they also used captured Springfields. They’d chosen different calibers on purpose, to make it harder for U.S. soldiers to turn captured automatic rifles against them. It must have seemed a good idea at the time. It probably was. But it cut both ways.

Off to the left, a U.S. barrel got hit and started burning. Nothing in Pittsburgh came cheap. Nothing came easy. The Confederates weren’t going to quit, and they fell back only when they had no choice. How long could they keep it up?

He shrugged. That wasn’t his worry. People with shoulder straps and metal ornaments on them had to fret about such things. All he had to do was shoot whatever he and Lieutenant Griffiths spotted in front of their barrel and hope like hell nobody shot him. He nodded. That would do nicely.

Shells started bursting around them. The bursts weren’t the ordinary kind; they sounded wrong, and even through the gunsight he saw the crawling mist that spread from them. “Gas!” he yelled.

Griffiths clanged down the hatch on top of the cupola. “I saw it,” he said. “I was hoping those fuckers were running short. No such luck, I guess.”

“No, sir,” Pound said as he put on his mask. Out in the open, U.S. infantrymen paused to do the same. Pound went on, “Now we’ll throw some at the Confederates, just to make sure they have to wear masks, too. As long as both sides have it, it doesn’t change anything.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Griffiths answered. He had his mask on, too. “But I am saying it’s out there.” Pound couldn’t very well quarrel with that. The barrel commander started to wave to emphasize his point. He choked off the gesture before it was well begun. The inside of a turret was a crowded place.

Michael Pound made a good prophet, as he often did. A U.S. gas barrage followed in short order. It was heavier than the one the enemy had laid down. Infantrymen advanced in short rushes. The barrel moved up to the next decent firing position. Another block of Pittsburgh, cleared of Confederates.

New Year’s Eve. One more day till 1943. Flora Blackford was back in her Philadelphia apartment. She hadn’t expected to be anywhere else. Even if she hadn’t campaigned at all, she thought she would have beaten Sheldon Vogelman. People in her district were used to reelecting her. She nodded to herself. It was a nice habit for them to have.

Joshua was out with friends. “I’ll be back next year,” he’d said. How long had people been making that joke? Probably as long as people had divided time into years. He was liable to come back drunk, too, even if he was underage. Well, if he did, the hangover the next morning ought to teach him not to do it again for a while. She could hope so, anyhow.

“Underage,” she muttered, and clicked her tongue between her teeth. He would turn eighteen in 1943. Old enough to be conscripted. And conscripted he probably would be. He was healthy. He didn’t have flat feet, a punctured eardrum, or bad eyes. Nothing could keep him out of the war-except being a Congresswoman’s son.

And he was as stubborn and as stupid as her brother had been in the last war. He didn’t want her to do anything to keep him out. Not even Uncle David’s artificial leg could make him change his mind. He didn’t believe anything like that would happen to him. No one ever believed anything would happen to him-till it did.

The telephone rang. It made her start. She hurried towards it, more relieved than anything else. If she was talking to somebody, she wouldn’t have to worry about Joshua… so much. “Hello?”

“Flora?” That cheerful baritone could belong to only one man.

“Hello, Franklin,” she said. “What can I do for you?” Roosevelt had never called her at the apartment before.

“How would you like to ring in the New Year with me at the War Department?”

She hesitated only a moment. “I’ll be over as soon as I can get a cab.”

“See you in a little while, then.” He hung up.

She didn’t think the USA’s military planners had a fancy party waiting for her. But the Assistant Secretary of War wasn’t going to go into detail about why he wanted to see her, not over the telephone. She called the cab company. They started to tell her she would have to wait half an hour. “It’s our busiest day of the year, lady. Sorry.” The dispatcher didn’t sound the least bit sorry.

“This is Congresswoman Blackford.” Flora didn’t tell him he would be sorry if she didn’t get a cab sooner than that, but she didn’t need to, either. He got the message, loud and clear.

A cab sat waiting when she got to the street. An ordinary person wouldn’t have been able to summon one so fast. Remembering that chafed at her Socialist sense of equality. She consoled herself by thinking she carried more responsibility than an ordinary person. From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs. Right now, she needed to get to the War Department in a hurry.

The cabby hopped out and held the door open for her. “Where to, ma’am?” he asked. She told him as she got in. He nodded. “Fast as I can,” he promised; the dispatcher must have let him know who she was.

He kept his word, but he couldn’t go very fast. Confederate bombers had been over the night before, so some of the roads had fresh craters, while sawhorses and red tape closed off others so specialists could try to defuse time bombs. Flora had heard their life expectancy was measured in weeks. That information was secret from the public, but she feared the specialists knew it.

Not far from downtown, the wreckage of a downed C.S. airplane further snarled traffic. “Nice to see we nail one every once in a while,” the taxi driver said. “Those… people need to pay for what they do.” The little pause said he’d remembered just in time that he carried someone important.

“Yes.” Flora almost spoke more strongly herself. There wasn’t enough plywood and cardboard in Philadelphia-there probably wasn’t enough in the world-to cover up all the windows the Confederates had blown out. So many buildings had pieces bitten from them, or were only charred ruins. Ordinary bombs could start fires, and the Confederates dropped incendiaries, too. One popular propaganda poster showed a long, skinny incendiary bomb with Jake Featherston’s bony face at one end clamped in a pair of tongs and about to go into a bucket of water. Underneath the sizzling Confederate President were three words: COOL HIM OFF!