“Oh?” The second lieutenant’s voice already had a defensive quaver to it, and he’d known Pound for only a few days at that point. “Why, pray tell?”

Pray tell? Pound thought. Had anyone since the Puritans really said that? Bryce Poffenberger just had, by God. Patiently, the sergeant answered, “Because on the reverse slope we’re hull-down to the enemy, sir. This way, the whole barrel makes a nice, juicy target.”

Lieutenant Poffenberger sniffed. “I don’t believe there are any Confederates close by.” He stood up in the turret to look out through the cupola. That was something good barrel commanders did. It took a certain nerve. Poffenberger might have been a moron, but he wasn’t a cowardly moron.

Not half a minute later, a round from a Confederate antibarrel gun assassinated an oak tree just to the barrel’s left. Poffenberger ducked back down with a startled squeak. Sometimes-not often-Sergeant Pound was tempted to believe in God. This was one of those times.

“Reverse!” Poffenberger ordered the driver. “Back up!” The Confederates got off one more shot at the barrel before it put the hill between itself and the gun. Lieutenant Poffenberger eyed Michael Pound. “How did you know that was going to happen, Sergeant?”

“I have more combat experience than you do, sir,” Pound answered matter-of-factly. So does my cat, and I haven’t got a cat.

“They warned me about you,” Poffenberger said. “They told me you had a big mouth and were insubordinate.”

“They were right, sir.” Pound knew he shouldn’t sound so cheerful, but he couldn’t help it.

The young lieutenant went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “They told me you were all puffed up because you’d served with Colonel Morrell for so long, and he used to let you get away with murder. They told me you’d started to think you were a colonel yourself.”

That did hold some truth, which Sergeant Pound also knew. He said, “Sir, there was one difference between when I talked to Colonel Morrell and when I talk to you.”

“Oh?” What’s that?” Poffenberger sounded genuinely intrigued.

“When I said something to the colonel, sometimes he’d believe me before the barrel almost blew up.”

Poffenberger was a fair-haired, fair-skinned youngster from somewhere in the upper Midwest. When he turned red, it was easy to see. He turned red as a traffic light now. “Maybe you have a point, Sergeant,” he choked out. “Maybe. But I command this barrel. You don’t. There’s no getting around that.”

“I don’t want to get around it, sir,” Pound answered earnestly. “I don’t want to be an officer. I could have been an officer years ago if I wanted to put up with the bother.” Watching Lieutenant Poffenberger’s jaw drop was amusing, but only for a little while. Pound added, “I don’t want to be an officer, but I don’t want to get killed, either. Not even sergeants like getting killed… sir.”

“I didn’t think they did.” Poffenberger couldn’t have sounded any stiffer if he’d been carved out of marble.

Pound pretended not to notice. He said, “Well, in that case, sir, don’t you think we ought to scoot to one side or the other? We’re hull-down here, but we’re not turret-down, and if those butternut bastards get a halfway decent shot at us, they’ll remind us the hard way.”

He waited. How stubborn was the lieutenant? Stubborn enough not to listen to somebody with a lower rank even if not listening made getting nailed with a high-velocity armor-piercing round much more likely? Some officers-more than a few of them-were like that. They wanted to be right themselves, even if it meant being dead right. Short of knocking them over the head, what could you do?

But Poffenberger spoke to the driver, and the barrel shifted position. Quietly, Pound said, “Thank you, sir.”

“I didn’t do it for you.” The lieutenant was testy. “I did it for the sake of the barrel.”

Like a man who’d sweet-talked a girl into bed with him, Sergeant Pound cared little about the whys and wherefores. All he cared about was that it had happened. He didn’t point that out to Lieutenant Poffenberger. He didn’t want the lieutenant thinking he’d been either seduced or screwed. And if Poffenberger hadn’t done it for love… well, so what?

No steel dart came hurtling toward them. That was the only thing that mattered. A little later, a platoon of U.S. foot soldiers went over the hill and chased away the antibarrel cannon. A tiny triumph, no doubt, but anything that looked even a little like a victory pleased Pound.

Lieutenant Poffenberger had an extra circuit on his wireless set, one that hooked him to division headquarters. When he started saying, “Yes, sir,” and, “I understand, sir,” and, “We’ll be careful, sir,” Pound started worrying. Something had gone wrong somewhere, and what was even a tiny triumph worth?

“What’s up, sir?” the sergeant prompted when his superior showed no sign of passing along whatever he’d learned.

Poffenberger gave him a resentful look, but maybe the lesson from the antibarrel gun was sticking, at least for a little while. “There are reports the Confederates are stirring around,” the lieutenant said unwillingly. Even more unwillingly, he added, “There are reports they’ve got a new-model barrel, too.”

Michael Pound nodded. “Yes, sir, I’ve heard about that. Did they give you any details on the beast?”

“What do you mean, you’ve heard about it?” Poffenberger’s eyes seemed ready to start from his head. “I just this minute got word of it.”

“Well, yes, sir.” Pound smiled. That only unnerved the lieutenant more, which was what he had in mind. “Trouble is, you have to wait for the wireless to tell you things. Enlisted men have their own grapevine, you might say. From what I’ve heard, the new enemy barrel’s supposed to be very bad news: bigger gun, better armor, maybe a bigger engine, too.”

“Jesus,” Poffenberger muttered, more to himself than to his gunner. “What the hell do we bother with espionage for? Put a few corporals on the job and they’d have Jake Featherston’s telephone number in nothing flat.”

“It’s FReedom-1776, sir,” Pound answered seriously. Poffenberger stared at him, convinced for one wild moment that he meant it. That told Pound everything he needed to know about how much he’d intimidated the lieutenant. In a gentle voice, he said, “I’m only joking, sir.”

“Er-yes.” Lieutenant Poffenberger gathered himself. The process was very visible, and so funny that Pound had to bite down on the inside of his lower lip to keep from laughing out loud. Carefully, Poffenberger asked, “How did Colonel Morrell ever put up with you?”

“Oh, we didn’t have any trouble, sir,” Pound answered. “Colonel Morrell wants to go after the bad guys just as much as I do. I hear they’ve sent him to Virginia. The people over there must be keeping him under wraps, or else we would have heard a lot more out of him.”

“I… see.” Poffenberger eyed Pound the way a man wearing a suit made of pork chops might eye a nearby bear. More than a little plaintively, the lieutenant said, “I want to go after the enemy, too.”

“Of course, sir,” Pound said in tones meant to be soothing-but not too soothing. “The point is, though, to be as sure as we can that we get them and they don’t get us.”

Poffenberger started to say something. After what had almost happened on the forward slope of the hill, though, he couldn’t say a whole lot, not unless he wanted Pound to blow a hole in it the way the antibarrel cannon had almost blown a hole in the machine he commanded. What he finally did say was, “You are a difficult man, Sergeant.”

“Why, thank you, sir!” Pound exclaimed, which only seemed to complete Lieutenant Poffenberger’s demoralization.

An officer? Who needs to be an officer? Pound thought, more than a little smugly. As long as you’ve got the fellow who’s supposed to be in charge of you eating out of the palm of your hand, you have the best of both worlds.