Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

“You’re full of cheerful thoughts today, aren’t you?” Sam said. Pat Cooley just grinned. Either or both of those things was perfectly possible, and both men knew it too well. Those weren’t the only nasty possibilities, either, and Sam also knew that only too well. He spoke into a voice tube: “You there, Bevacqua?”

“Not me, Skip,” came the voice from the other end. “I been asleep the last couple weeks.” A snore floated out of the tube.

“Yeah, well, keep your ears open while you’re snoozing. This is good submarine country,” Sam said.

“Will do, Skip,” Vince Bevacqua said. The petty officer was the best hydrophone man the Josephus Daniels carried, which was why he was on duty now. Back during the Great War, hydrophones had been as near worthless as made no difference. The state of the art had come a long way since then. Now hydrophones shot out bursts of sound waves and listened for echoes-it was almost like Y-ranging underwater. It gave ships like this one a real chance when they went after subs.

“Not the best submarine country,” Cooley observed. “Water’s pretty shallow.”

“Well, sure, Pat, but that’s not quite what I meant,” Sam said. “It’s good sub country because we’ve just made it past the minefields. When some people get through something like that, they go, ‘Whew!’ and forget they’re not all the way out of the woods. They get careless, let their guard down. And that’s when the bastards on the other side drop the hammer on them.”

The bridge was dark. Showing a light in crowded, contested waters like these was the fastest way Sam could think of to get the hammer dropped on him. In the gloom, he watched the exec swing toward him, start to say something, and then think twice. After a few seconds, Cooley tried again: “That’s… pretty sensible, sir.”

He sounded amazed, or at least bemused. Carsten chuckled under his breath. “You live and learn,” he told the younger man. “You’ve got an Academy ring. You got your learning all boiled down and served up to you, and that’s great. It gives you a hell of a head start. By the time you get to my age, you’ll be a four-striper, or more likely an admiral. I’ve had to soak all this stuff up the hard way-but I’ve had a lot longer to do it than you have.”

Again, Pat Cooley started to answer. Again, he checked himself so he could pick his words with care. Slowly, he said, “Sir, I don’t think that’s the kind of thing they teach you at Annapolis. I think it’s the kind of thing you do learn with experience-if you ever learn it at all. You’re-not what I expected when they told me I’d serve under a mustang.”

“No, eh?” Instead of chuckling, Sam laughed out loud now. “Sorry to disappoint you. My knuckles don’t drag on the deck-not most of the time, anyway. I don’t dribble tobacco juice down my front, and I don’t spend all my time with CPOs.” A lot of mustangs did hang around with ratings as much as they could: those were still the men they found most like themselves. Sam had been warned against that when he got promoted. He suspected every mustang did. A lot of them, though, didn’t listen to the warning. He had.

“Sir, you’re doing your best to embarrass me,” Cooley said after one more longish pause. “Your best is pretty good, too.” He laughed as Sam had. Unlike Sam, though, he sounded distinctly uneasy when he did it.

A tinny ghost, Vince Bevacqua’s voice floated out of the mouth of the tube: “Skipper, I’ve got a contact. Something’s moving down there-depth about seventy, range half a mile, bearing 085.”

“Seventy,” Sam echoed thoughtfully. That was below periscope depth. If the hydrophone man had spotted a submersible, the boat didn’t know the Josephus Daniels was in the neighborhood-unless it had spotted the destroyer escort and submerged before Bevacqua realized it was there. Sam found that unlikely. He knew how good the petty officer was… even if he didn’t hang around with him. “Change course to 085, Mr. Cooley,” he said, switching to business.

“I am changing course to 085, sir-aye aye,” the exec replied.

Sam tapped a waiting sailor on the shoulder. “Tell the depth-charge crews to be ready at my order.”

“Aye aye, sir.” The sailor dashed away. He didn’t care whether Sam was a mustang. To a kid like him, the Old Man was the Old Man, regardless of anything. And if the Old Man happened to be well on the way toward being an old man-that still didn’t matter much.

“I’ll be damned if he thinks we’re anywhere around, sir,” Bevacqua said, and then, “Whoops-take it back. He’s heard us. He’s picking up speed and heading for the surface.”

“Let’s get him,” Sam said. “Tell me when, and I’ll pass it on to the guys who toss ash cans.”

“Will do, Skipper.” Bevacqua waited maybe fifteen seconds, then said, “Now!”

“Launch depth charges!” Sam shouted through the PA system-no need to keep quiet anymore.

During the Great War, ash cans had rolled off over the stern. The state of the art was better now. Two projectors flung depth charges well ahead of the ship. The charges arced through the air and splashed into the ocean.

“All engines reverse!” Cooley said. Sam nodded. Depth charges bursting in shallow water could blow the bow off the ship that had launched them. Carsten recalled the pathetic signal he’d heard about from a destroyer escort that had had that misfortune befall her: I HAVE BUSTED MYSELF. If it happened to him, he’d be busted, too, probably all the way to seaman second class.

Even though the Josephus Daniels had backed engines, the ash cans did their damnedest to lift her out of the water. Sam felt as if somebody’d whacked him on the soles of his feet with a board. Water rose and then splashed back into the sea. More bursts roiled the Atlantic.

Somebody at the bow whooped: “She’s coming up!”

“Searchlights!” Sam barked, and the night lit up. He knew the chance he was taking. If C.S. planes spotted him before he settled the sub, he was in a world of trouble. Have to settle it quick, then, he thought.

Men spilled out of the damaged submersible’s conning tower and ran for the cannon on the deck. It was only a three-inch gun, but Carsten’s destroyer escort wasn’t exactly a battlewagon. If that gun hit, it could hurt.

“Let ’em have it!” Sam yelled. The forward gun spoke in a voice like an angry god’s. The antiaircraft cannon at the bow started barking, too. They were more than good enough to tear up an unarmored target like a sub. The enemy got off one shot, which went wild. Then men on that deck started dropping as if a harvester were rumbling down it.

“White flag!” Three people shouted the same thing at the same time.

“Cease fire!” Sam yelled through the intercom, and then, “If they make a move toward that gun, blow ’em all to hell!” He turned away from the mike and spoke to Cooley: “Approach and take survivors.”

“Aye aye, sir,” the exec said. He had a different worry: “I hope to hell she’s not one of our boats.”

“Gurk!” Sam said. That hadn’t even crossed his mind. It wasn’t impossible in these waters, one more thing he knew too well. They wouldn’t just bust him for that. They’d boot him out of the Navy.

As the Josephus Daniels drew closer, he breathed again. The shape of the conning tower and the lines of the hull were different from those of U.S. boats. And the sailors tumbling into life rafts wore dark gray tunics and trousers. They were Confederates, all right.

A last couple of men popped out of the hatch atop the conning tower. The submersible startled rapidly settling down into the sea. They opened the scuttling cocks, Sam realized. He swore, but halfheartedly. In their place, he would have done the same thing.