That fancy barrel the kid was driving couldn’t help but improve his odds. If we’d had these when the war started… Tom shook his head. The CSA hadn’t had them, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. The damnyankees hadn’t had them, either. How long would they need to come up with barrels that matched these? How long before both sides sported land dreadnoughts, behemoths that laughed at danger and squashed antlike mortal men under their tracks without even knowing they were there?

Tom shook his head again. Nothing he could do about it except try to make sure he wasn’t one of the poor sorry bastards who got squashed. He had no guarantees of that, either, and he knew it.

The barrels had rolled east out of Sandusky, not west. That said something, anyhow. He’d expected them to go in that direction, but nothing was carved in stone. It did look as if the CSA would have to hit the USA another lick to make the bigger country fall over. Cutting the United States in half hadn’t quite done the job.

Why hadn’t Al Smith thrown in the sponge, dammit? Everybody could have gone home. Tom would rather have been in St. Matthews than in Sandusky. He didn’t know anybody who wanted to be here. But needing to be here was a different story.

Not all the reinforcements that came in were armored units. The infantrymen Tom saw made him raise an eyebrow. They weren’t raw troops in fresh uniforms. They wore butternut frayed at the cuffs and the elbows and knees, faded by the sun, and deprived of all possibility of holding a crease by hard use. Their weapons were well tended, but a long way from factory-new. They were, in other words, just as much veterans as the men he commanded.

Where had they come from? Virginia seemed the only likely answer. Outside of Ohio, it was the only place that could have produced men like this. Fighting went on here and there in the West, but neither side put full force into that effort. The CSA and the USA both seemed sure the decision would come where they were strongest, not at the periphery. As far as Tom could see, the big brains on both sides were likely right.

But the damnyankees were still pounding away in Virginia. Could the Confederate States pull men out of there and go on holding them off? Tom had to hope so.

A day or two later, he realized that wasn’t necessarily the right question. An even more pressing one was, couldn’t the Confederate States do anything in Ohio without bleeding Virginia of men? The answer to that one looked to be no, and it wasn’t the answer Tom wanted to find. Robbing Peter to pay Paul wasn’t a good way to fight a war.

But what choice did the CSA have? None Tom could see. This was the downside of getting into a fight with a country that had a lot more manpower than you did. He called down more curses on Al Smith’s head. The whole idea of storming up through Ohio, of cutting the United States in half, had been to knock the USA out of the fight before numbers really mattered. The Confederates had tried it. They’d succeeded as well as they’d hoped to. Everything had been perfect.

Except the United States hadn’t quit.

Now the Confederate States faced the same sort of grinding struggle as they’d seen in the Great War. What should have been a one-punch KO was a no-holds-barred wrestling match now.

Airplanes droned by overhead. Tom Colleton cast a wary eye up to the heavens. He knew where he’d jump if they turned out to be U.S. airplanes. He looked for shelter as automatically as he breathed. That he looked for shelter so automatically helped keep him breathing.

But they were C.S. machines. Even when the silhouettes were tiny, he recognized them. He wondered what he’d do when his side-or the damnyankees-brought out new models. He had a pretty good notion, too: the first few times, he’d dive for cover whether he needed to or not. After that, he’d be able to tell friend from foe again.

The day was coming. It was probably coming soon. The Confederate States had new, improved barrels. Before long, they were bound to have new, improved airplanes, too. So were the United States.

Where would it end? Probably with both sides flying to the moon, with guns that could strike from five hundred miles away, and with bombs that could blow up whole counties if not whole states. Tom laughed at himself, but then he wondered why. Back in 1917, he couldn’t have imagined the weapons the CSA and the USA were using now. What would the state of the art be in 1967, or in 1992?

He shivered, standing there under the warm spring sunshine. Things were much deadlier now than they had been a generation earlier. If that went on for another twenty-five years, wouldn’t wars end almost before they started? And if not, why not?

“Sir?”

Tom started. He wondered how long the sergeant standing beside him had been trying to get his attention. By the exaggerated patience on the man’s face, he’d done everything but wave wigwag flags. “What is it, Meyers?” Tom asked. “I’m here-I really am.”

“That’s good, sir,” Sergeant Meyers said. “I was going to ask you if you knew when the balloon was going up. Not officially, you understand, but if you knew. It’d help the men get ready.”

“I wish to God I did, Sergeant, but whatever we’re doing, nobody has bothered to tell me about it yet. You can take that for whatever you think it’s worth.” Tom’s laugh was half rueful, half furious. “One of the drivers for those new barrels had a pretty good notion, or reckoned he did. He had to pull out before he could tell me what it was. Damned impressive barrel, though.”

“Oh, yes, sir!” Meyers was not a man given to wild enthusiasms; few sergeants were. That sort of man was much more likely to be a private or a lieutenant. But the sergeant waxed enthusiastic now. “We have enough of those critters, we’ll make the damnyankees say uncle for sure.”

“I hope you’re right, Sergeant.” Tom meant it. After what the C.S. Army had been through the year before, though, and after what it had accomplished, he took nothing for granted. That any one weapon, no matter how wonderful, could knock the USA out of the war struck him as unlikely.

He kept his mouth shut. If Sergeant Meyers thought the Yankees would fall over dead as soon as the Confederates kicked them back one more hill, fine. That made him a more cheerful soldier, a better soldier, at least until the damnyankees did get pushed back past that last hill, if they ever did. If they got pushed back and didn’t fall over dead… Well, in that case Meyers and the other men like him would have some rethinking to do. He might not be such a terrific soldier for a while after that.

Wherever we’re going, we’re going east, Tom thought. Right into the heart of Yankeeland. We’d better make ’em say uncle, by God.

“Steady as she goes, Mr. Cooley,” Sam Carsten told his executive officer.

“Steady as she goes-aye aye, sir,” Pat Cooley replied, his freckled face intent on keeping the Josephus Daniels as steady as she could possibly go. The destroyer escort crept through the hot, muggy night towards a shoreline that was…

Carsten didn’t like to think about how very ready to receive them that Virginia shoreline probably was. Keeping anything secret in these crowded waters required a miracle beyond the power of any Navy Department functionary to provide. Sam wasn’t altogether certain the Holy Ghost could have given him one as big as he needed. Sneaking into Chesapeake Bay without getting either mined or torpedoed hadn’t been the smallest of miracles all by itself.

He spoke into the telephone that connected the bridge with the gun turrets: “Everything ready there? You have your targets?”

“Yes, sir!” the gun chiefs answered together.

“All right, then.” Sam smiled there in the darkness. Even as a rating, he’d been in charge of bigger pieces than these four-inch popguns. “At my order, and give it everything you’ve got… Fire!”