"He should talk. 'I was lucky'!" Sam glanced toward Cressy. "No offense, sir, but you sandbag like a son of a gun."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Cressy said, deadpan. Everybody laughed.
The rear admiral returned to business. "You had a little trouble with your previous exec, Carsten. How does Lieutenant Menefee suit you?"
"He's a fine officer, sir," Sam said quickly-he didn't want to screw Menefee. "I recommend him without reservation. That's the short answer. Details are in his fitness reports, but it all boils down to the same thing."
"Short answer will do for now." The rear admiral nodded to one of the captains, who wrote something down. The admiral's sea-gray eyes swung back to Sam. "Where do you see yourself going from here?"
"As long as it's in the Navy, sir, I'll take a shot at whatever you want to give me," Sam replied.
"We've heard that before," said the captain, who was taking notes.
"Haven't we just?" the rear admiral agreed. "I don't think the Navy's going to shrink the way it did after the last war. We've got the Japs to keep an eye on, God only knows how friendly Germany will stay, and we really are going to sit on the Confederates-and the damn Canucks-this time around. We won't leave you on the beach."
"That's mighty good to hear, sir," Sam said. "Will Congress give us the money we need to do all that good stuff?"
The rear admiral glanced over to Captain Cressy. "Well, you were right. He's plenty sharp."
"I said so, didn't I?" Cressy returned.
"You sure did." The flag officer gave his attention back to Sam. "They will for this year, anyhow, because we're still running on war appropriations. What happens after that…I've never believed in borrowing trouble. Have you?"
"Only when I worry about my ship," Sam answered.
All the senior officers sitting across from him nodded. "There is that. Yes, indeed. There is that. You understand what command's all about, all right. Suppose we give you a choice. You can keep the Josephus Daniels and go on occupation patrol in Confederate waters. Or, if you'd rather, you can have a real destroyer out in the Sandwich Islands. I don't know what kind of duty that would be. Technically, we're still at war with the Empire of Japan, but it looks like we'll let things peter out on the status quo ante bellum, same as we did the last time around. You may end up gathering moss out there. If you go down to the Confederacy-to the South, I suppose I ought to call it, since we're going to try to hold on to it…"
"If I go down there, it won't be dull, whatever else it is," Sam finished for him.
"Well, yes," the rear admiral said. "That's how it looks."
"I'll hang on to the DE, sir," Sam said. "If I were Captain Cressy's age, I'd take the bigger, newer ship. It'd look spiffier in my service jacket. But I figure I can do more good keeping the Confederates in line. The Pacific war…" He shook his head. "The supply lines are just too damn long to let either side fight a proper war out there."
"That's how it's been so far, anyhow," Captain Cressy said. "If we get airplanes that can carry a superbomb from Midway, say, to the Philippines-"
"Or if they get one that can carry a superbomb from Guam to Honolulu," the rear admiral broke in.
"Or if either side gets a bomber that can fly a superbomb off an airplane carrier," Sam said.
"There's a cheerful thought. With these new turbos, it'll probably happen in the next few years," the rear admiral said. "Or else the smart boys'll make the bombs smaller, so the prop jobs we've already got can carry them. Interesting times, interesting times." However interesting they might be, he didn't sound as if he looked forward to them.
Sam understood that, because he knew he didn't. "Sir, how the heck is the Navy going to fight a war when one airplane with one bomb can knock out a flotilla?"
"You want the straight dope?" the rear admiral asked.
"Yes, sir!" Sam said eagerly.
"All right. The straight dope is, right now nobody has the faintest idea in the whole wide world. If you've got any hot suggestions, put 'em down in writing and send 'em to the Navy Department. They'll go into the mix-you bet your sweet ass they will."
"The only idea I've got about a superbomb is, being under it when it goes off is a bad plan."
"You're even with everybody else, Sam," Captain Cressy said. "Hell, you're ahead of some people. There are officers and civilians in Philadelphia who think the Kaiser is our buddy and the Japs don't know how to build superbombs, so why worry?"
"I believe you. Even though it's Philadelphia, I believe you," Sam said. "Some people don't believe things are real till they happen to them. And if a superbomb happens to you, it's too late."
"Sometimes you can talk till you're blue in the face, and it doesn't do you one damn bit of good. Makes you wonder." The rear admiral shook his head. "All right. We'll cut orders for you, and we'll get your ship refitted. And congratulations again, Commander."
"Thank you, sir!" Sam got to his feet and saluted. Hearing it that way sounded even better. It was as if he'd got the whole third stripe, not just half of it. Most of the time, people didn't bother calling you Lieutenant Commander, any more than they bothered calling you Lieutenant, Junior Grade. Sam knew all about that. He'd been a j.g. for a long time.
Two and a half stripes! And they still had a slot for him! He really hadn't expected the one, and he'd flabbled about the other. Once he got back to his ship, he owed all the officers drinks. Well, he could take care of that. He could tie one on if he felt like it-he'd earned the right. Maybe I will, he thought. When am I ever going to have another promotion party? The answer to that was all too plain. Never.
S omebody said you could never go home again. Back in Augusta, Georgia, Jerry Dover would have said that whoever it was had a point. The city he came back to wasn't the one he'd left when he joined the Confederate Army.
When he left, the war hadn't touched Augusta. Negro rebels had set off auto bombs in town, but that was different. So was the isolation of the Terry from the white part of town. Whites and Negroes had always lived apart. Barbed wire between them didn't seem to matter so much-not if you were white, anyhow.
Everything had got shabby even before he joined up. Nobody put any effort into keeping things neat; that all went into doing whatever it took to beat the damnyankees. Well, the whole damn country did whatever it took to beat the damnyankees, and that turned out not to be enough.
And now the whole damn country was paying for it.
Augusta sure was. The Stars and Stripes flew over city hall for the first time in more than eighty years. The Yankees had captured the town more or less by sideswipe in their drive down the Savannah River to the port of the same name. They'd bombed it a few times, but the Confederates didn't make a stand here. Jerry Dover had seen what happened to places where one side or the other made a stand. He thanked heaven Augusta wasn't one of them.
Incidental damage was bad enough. Streets had craters in them. Walls had chunks bitten out of them. Most windows stared with blind eyes. The smell of death was old and faint, but it was there.
His family had survived. His house was-mostly-intact. He supposed he ought to thank heaven for all that, too. As a matter of fact, he did. But he would have liked things better if the town and the way of life he'd liked so well had come through the war in one piece.
They hadn't. It wasn't just that U.S. soldiers tramped through the streets of Augusta now. The life, the energy, were gone from the city. Like the rest of the CSA, it had done everything it knew how to do. It didn't know how to do anything any more.
So many men were missing. A lot were dead. A lot were maimed. Some remained in U.S. POW camps, though every day more came back on the train. But even the ones who were there seemed missing in action. After a losing war, how could you give a shit about putting things back together and making a living again?