"See where that came from, sir?" Scullard asked.

"Bearing was almost straight ahead of us-behind that twisted tree with the chunk of bark missing," Pound answered, peering through the periscopes. "If he's smart, he'll back away-he ought to figure our guys have armor with 'em."

"Maybe he'll get greedy instead," the gunner said.

Pound wouldn't have, but the enemy crew did. They fired twice more at the infantrymen in the field. They had good targets in front of them, and they were going to take advantage of it. To give them their due, they didn't have any room to retreat, not if the CSA wanted to hang on to the railroad line.

"Identify 'em now, Mel?" Pound asked.

"Oh, hell, yes," Scullard said, and then, to the loader, "AP!" He added, "Be ready for another round as fast as you can. If the first one doesn't do the trick, we've got to try again."

"Right," Mouradian said.

If the second one doesn't do the trick, we've got to get away-if we can, Pound thought. The C.S. barrel would know where the shots were coming from, and would answer. Pound didn't want to be on the receiving end of that reply.

The gun spoke twice in quick succession. Scullard didn't wait to see if the first round hit before sending the second on its way. As soon as he'd fired both of them, Pound shouted, "Reverse!" The barrel jerked backward.

No enemy antibarrel rounds came after it. Pound popped out of the turret to see what they'd done to the C.S. barrel. Smoke rose from behind the tree, an ever-growing cloud. He spotted motion back there-somebody'd got out and was running away. That impressed him in spite of himself. His own barrel wouldn't have let anybody inside survive, not after it got hit twice. The Confederates had themselves some deadly dangerous new toys here. He hoped like anything they didn't have too many of them.

V

I rving Morrell posed for U.S. photographers in front of the Atlanta city hall. New Year's Day for 1944 was chilly and overcast, with the wet-dust smell of rain in the air. Morrell didn't care. He would have posed for these pictures in the middle of a deluge.

"A year ago, we were still mopping up in Pittsburgh," he said. "Now we're here. We've done pretty damn well for ourselves, by God."

"Did you expect the Confederates to evacuate the city?" a reporter asked.

"They were going to lose it either way," Morrell answered. "The question was, would they lose Atlanta, or would they lose Atlanta and the army that was holding it? They saved a good part of the army by pulling out."

They'd saved more than he wished they would have. They'd started the evacuation at night, and bad weather had kept U.S. fighter-bombers on the ground, so their columns hadn't got the pounding they should have. Patton's army was still a going concern, somewhere over near the Alabama border. Morrell didn't know what his C.S. opposite number would do with the men he had left, but he figured Patton would think of something.

A rifle banged, not too far away. Holdouts and snipers still prowled Atlanta. The Confederates had planted lots of mines. They'd attached booby traps to everything from fountain pens to toilet seats. The Stars and Stripes might fly here, but the town wasn't safe, and wouldn't be for quite a while.

"How much does this victory mean?" another reporter called.

"Well, the enemy will have a lot tougher time fighting the war without Atlanta than he would have with it," Morrell said. "It was a factory town and a transport hub, and now he'll have to do without all that."

The reporter waved at the wreckage. "Doesn't look like he could have done too much with it even when he had it."

"You'd be amazed," Morrell said. "We've seen how places that look beaten to death can go right on producing till they finally change hands."

A plaque on the bullet-pocked terra-cotta wall behind him said ATLANTA RESURGENS, 1847-1927. The city hall had gone up in the brief spell of prosperity that followed the CSA's devastating postwar inflation. Then the worldwide economic collapse sucked down the Confederacy along with almost everybody else, and paved the way for the rise of Jake Featherston.

"What do you aim to do now, General?" another reporter inquired.

By his earnest voice and expectant look, he really expected Morrell to answer in detail. Some reporters never did figure out that their right to a good story stopped where it began to endanger U.S. soldiers. As gently as he could, Morrell said, "Well, I don't want General Patton to read about it in tomorrow's paper, you know."

"Will you drive west into Alabama or east toward the Atlantic?" This fellow was stubborn or stupid or both.

"Yes," Morrell answered. The reporter blinked. Some of his colleagues, quicker on the uptake, grinned. Morrell said, "That's about all, boys. Happy New Year."

A few more flashbulbs popped. He didn't mind that-the Confederates already knew he was in Atlanta. Bodyguards closed up around him as the press conference ended. He didn't care for the guards, but he didn't care to get killed, either. Enemy snipers would have loved to get him in their sights.

The State Capitol wasn't far away. A lot of people on his staff had wanted him to make his headquarters there. He said no, and kept saying no till they believed him. Demolition men were still going through the building, which looked like a scaled-down version of the Confederate Capitol in Richmond-at the moment, including bomb damage. They'd already found a couple of dozen booby traps there…and how many had they missed?

A small, none too fancy house a couple of blocks away seemed a better, safer bet. The demolition experts had swept it, too, and found it clear. The Confederates didn't have enough ordnance or time to booby-trap everything, which came as a relief.

Morrell had other things to worry about, plenty of them. Sitting on his desk when he got back were photos of wrecked new-model C.S. barrels. By all reports, they were half a step ahead of the U.S. machines that had dominated the battlefield for most of 1943. How far could that race go? Would there be land dreadnoughts one day, with twelve-inch guns and armor thick enough to stop twelve-inch shells? You could build one now. What you couldn't build was an engine that would make it go faster than a slow walk-if it moved at all.

He was glad the reporters hadn't asked him anything about the new enemy machines. He wouldn't have had much of an answer for them, except to note that the Confederates didn't seem to have very many. How long would that last? Hit Birmingham harder by air, he wrote. Notes helped him remember the million things he had to do. They were already dropping everything but the kitchen sink on the town. Have to throw that in, too.

A large explosion stunned the air and his ears. He ducked, not that that would have done him any good had the blast been closer. He hauled out his notebook again. Hit Huntsville, too, he scribbled. Intelligence said the Confederates made their rockets there. Not many of them had crashed down on Atlanta yet, but how long would that last? Not long enough-he was dismally sure of it.

He was also sure he couldn't do a damn thing about the rockets except smash the factories that made them and the launchers that sent them on their way. Once they got airborne, there was no defense.

If Featherston had had them from the beginning…That would have been very bad. He was content to leave the thought there. Neither side had all of what it needed when the war began. Part of what the war was about was finding out what you needed. He'd heard rumors that higher-ups in Philadelphia were all excited about some fancy new explosive. Maybe that would end up meaning something, and maybe it wouldn't. They'd throw money and talent at it and see what happened next. What else could they do?