Then Sam shook his head. It wouldn't be so simple after all. Even now, people would be buzzing that Chief Eastlake had talked with him. And they would know all too soon that he and the exec had talked in his cabin. They would add two and two, sure as hell. And when Zwilling left the ship, Eastlake would be a power to reckon with indeed.

That wasn't good. You didn't want the crew thinking a CPO could hang an officer out to dry. Even more to the point, you didn't want a CPO thinking he could hang an officer out to dry. In this particular case, it happened to be true, which only made things worse. Sam shook his head again. Eastlake would have to go, too. That wasn't fair, but he didn't see that he had any other choice.

He wished for word of an enemy convoy. He almost wished for word of enemy aircraft on the way in. Anything that took his mind off the ship's internal politics would have been nice. But no enemy freighters came into sight. The sky remained clear of everything but the sun. The only thing he had to worry about was Myron Zwilling steering the Josephus Daniels with a face that looked as if he were watching his family tortured and killed.

Was I too hard on him? Sam wondered. He played back the conversation in his cabin inside his head. He really didn't think so. The only other thing he could have done was pretend he didn't know anything about what Zwilling had pulled. And that wouldn't fly, because Chief Eastlake would let the crew know he'd told Sam what was going on. Their respect would get flushed right down the head.

And so would Sam's self-respect. He'd never been any damn good at pretending. Oh, sometimes you had to. If you were dealing with a superior you couldn't stand, a little constructive hypocrisy didn't hurt. But that was about as far as he could make himself go. Ignoring this would have felt like ignoring a bank robbery right under his nose.

Lieutenant Walters took a long look at his Y-ranging gear. The screens must have been blank, for he stepped away from them and over to Sam. In a low, almost inaudible voice, he asked, "Sir, what's going on?"

Sam glanced at Lieutenant Zwilling. The exec didn't turn around. Did his back stiffen, though? Was he listening? It didn't matter any which way. Sam said what he would have said if Zwilling were down in the engine room: "Nothing that's got anything to do with you."

"Yes, sir." The Y-ranging officer nodded, but he didn't go back to his post. Instead, he asked, "Is it anything that will hurt the ship?"

Zwilling's ravaged voice and face made that query much too reasonable. But Sam didn't think he was lying when he shook his head. "No, we'll be all right," he said. "It's…" He stopped. Even saying something like It's a personnel matter went too far. Were he in the exec's place, he wouldn't want anybody running his mouth about him. "Just let it go, Thad. It'll sort itself out."

"I hope so, sir." Walters returned to his post. He'd needed nerve to make even that much protest.

Muttering to himself, Sam turned away. He didn't like the idea of blighting Zwilling's career. He hadn't liked it back in New York City, and he liked it even less here. But try as he would, he didn't see what else he could do. Zwilling had made his bed; now he had to lie in it.

And what will the fancy-pants officers back in the USA think about me when they get wind of this? Sam wondered. Now that he'd been a lieutenant for a while, he wanted to make lieutenant commander. That would be pretty damn good for somebody who started out an ordinary seaman. Would the men who judged such things decide he could have handled this better?

After worrying at it and worrying about it for a couple of minutes, he shrugged. The ship had to come first. If the brass hats didn't care for what he'd done, he'd retire a lieutenant, and the world wouldn't end. When he first signed up, even CPO had seemed a mountain taller than the Rockies, but he'd climbed a lot higher than that.

So he'd go on doing things the way he thought he needed to. And if anybody away from the Josephus Daniels didn't like it, too damn bad.

T he telephone on Jefferson Pinkard's desk jangled. He picked it up. "This is Pinkard."

"Hello, Pinkard," said the voice on the other end of the line. "This is Ferd Koenig, in Richmond."

"What can I do for you, sir?" Jeff asked the Attorney General, adding, "Glad to hear you still are in Richmond." From some of the things the papers were saying, the capital was in trouble. Since the papers always told less than what was really going on, he'd worried.

"We're still here. We aren't going anywhere, either," Koenig said. As if to contradict him, something in the background blew up with a roar loud enough to be easily audible even over the telephone. He went on, "We'll lick the damnyankees yet. You see if we don't."

"Yes, sir," Jeff said, though he'd already seen all the war he wanted and more besides in Snyder. Coming east to Humble was a wonderful escape. U.S. warplanes hardly ever appeared over the city of Houston (far, far away from the damnyankee abortion of a state that carried the same name) and had never been seen over this peaceful town twenty miles north of it.

"Wait till we get all our secret weapons into the fight," Koenig said. "We're already throwing those rockets at the USA, and we've finally got new barrels that'll make their best ones say uncle. Bigger and better things in the works, too."

"Sure hope so." From everything Pinkard could see, the Confederate States needed bigger and better things if they stood a chance of winning.

"Believe it. The President's promised we'll have 'em, and he keeps his word." Ferdinand Koenig sounded absolutely convinced, despite yet another big boom in the distance. He went on, "But there's something I need from you."

Of course there is. You wouldn't have called me if there wasn't, Jeff thought. Aloud, all he said was, "Tell me what."

"I want you to go through your guards. Anybody who's fit enough to fight, put him on a train for Little Rock. We'll take it from there," the Attorney General said.

"Everybody who's fit enough to fight?" Pinkard asked in dismay.

"That's what I said."

"Sir, you know a lot of my guys are from the Confederate Veterans' Brigades," Jeff said. Those were men the C.S. Army had already judged not fit to fight, mostly because of wounds from the Great War.

"Yes, I understand that. Sort through them, too. Some of 'em'll probably do-we aren't as fussy as we used to be," Koenig said. "But you've got plenty of Congressmen's nephews and Party officials' brothers-in-law. Come on, Pinkard-we both know how that shit works. But we can't afford it any more."

"Shall I get on the train myself, then?" Jeff asked. "Reckon I still know which end of a rifle's which."

"Don't be dumb," Koenig told him. "We've got to keep the camp running. That's damn important, too. Way things are, though, we need every warm body we can get our hands on at the front."

"Well, I'll do what I can, sir," Jeff said.

"I reckoned you would," the Attorney General replied. "Freedom!" The line went dead.

"Freedom," Jeff echoed as he hung up, too. Once the handpiece was back in the cradle, he added one more word: "Shit."

He wondered how few guards he could get away with sending. The men on the women's side, sure. They wouldn't be a problem. He could always replace them with dykes. Plenty of tough broads ready to send Negro women to the bathhouses. Plenty of tough broads eager to do it. And if some of them ate pussy in the meantime…well, hell, as long as the colored gals got what was coming to them sooner or later, Jeff supposed he could look the other way in the meantime. Yeah, lezzies were disgusting, but there was a war on, and you had to take the bad with the good.

Losing guards from the men's side would hurt more. He couldn't bring female guards over here. Some of them, the butch ones, would have liked it. But it would stir up trouble among the coons if he tried it, and it would stir up more trouble among his men. So he'd have to do some pruning, and then live with personnel being gone.