"There are reports of Confederate soldiers assembling near the borders of Kentucky and Houston," Cressy answered. "What do you want to bet they'll be marching in as soon as we finish pulling out, just the way you said they would?"
"Sir, if you think I'm happy to be right, you're wrong," Sam said. "What happens if they do go in?"
Commander Cressy shrugged. "I don't know. I hope President Smith does. He'd better. Somebody had better, anyhow."
"If they go in, won't it take a war to get them out?" That was Lieutenant Commander Hiram Pottinger, Carsten's superior on the damage-control party.
Nobody in the officers' mess said anything for some little while after that. They knew what war meant. Not many of them besides Sam had served in the Great War, but they'd all been through the inconclusive Pacific War against Japan.
"A lot will depend on what happens in Europe," Commander Cressy said.
"France is starting to whoop and holler about Alsace and Lorraine," Sam said meditatively. "I saw an Action Franзaise riot before those boys came to power. I don't think they'll take no for an answer. They're just as sure they've got God on their side as Jake Featherston is."
"And the Russians are squawking about Poland, and they're starting to squawk about the Ukraine, too," Cressy said. "And the limeys are growling at the micks, and ain't we got fun?"
Sam sighed. He wished for a cigarette, but the smoking lamp was out. "We're going to hell in a handbasket all over again," he said. "Didn't anybody learn anything the last time around?"
"I'll tell you one thing we didn't learn," the Remembrance's exec said. "We didn't learn to make sure the sons of bitches who lost took so many lumps, they couldn't get back up on their feet and have another try. And I'm afraid we're going to have to pay for it."
Lieutenant Commander Pottinger said, "They've learned something in South America, anyhow. Argentina and the Empire of Brazil are cuddling up, even if Argentina and Chile are yelling again."
"Sir, that's good news for Britain, not for us," Carsten said. "If there is a war, it means Brazil will let Argentina ship food through its territorial waters and then make the short hop across the Atlantic to French West Africa, same as happened the last time."
"How do you know so much about that?" Commander Cressy asked, as if to say, You're a mustang, so you're not supposed to know much of anything.
"Sir, I was there, in the Dakota," Sam answered. Cressy was a young hotshot. He had more book learning and learned faster than anyone Sam had ever seen. If war did come, he would likely have flag rank by the time it was done, assuming he lived. But he did sometimes forget that people could also learn by good, old-fashioned experience.
The other side of the coin was, Sam had only been a petty officer then. Officers also had the unfortunate habit of believing that men who weren't didn't know anything. (Petty officers, of course, were just as sure that officers' heads either had nothing in them or were full of rocks.)
"We can lick the Confederates," Pottinger said. "We did it before, and this time we won't have to take on Canada, too."
Everyone in the mess nodded. Somebody-Sam didn't see who-said, "Goddamn Japs'll try and sucker punch us in the Pacific when we're busy close to home."
More nods. Sam said, "They did that in the last war-the last big war, I mean. I was there for that, too."
Something in his tone made Commander Cressy's gaze sharpen. "The Dakota was the ship that went on that wild circle through the Battle of the Three Navies, wasn't she?"
"Yes, sir," Carsten said. "One of the hits we took jammed our steering, so all we could do was circle-either that or stand still, and the Japs or the limeys would have blown us out of the water if we had."
"You've had an… interesting career, haven't you?" the exec said.
"Sir, I've been lucky," Sam answered. "Closest I came to buying a plot was from the Spanish influenza after the war. That almost did me in. Otherwise, hardly a scratch."
"They tried taking the Sandwich Islands away from us in the Pacific War." Hiram Pottinger went on with the main argument: "Odds are the bastards will try it again. And if they do, the Pacific coast had better look out."
Nobody argued with him. After the wake-up call the Japanese had given Los Angeles in 1932, nobody could. They'd built their Navy to fight far out into the Pacific, and so had the United States. If the two countries ever went at each other with everything they had…
"If we go at the Japs full bore, instead of doing a half-assed job of it the way we did the last time, we'll lick 'em," Sam said.
Commander Cressy nodded. "If we could do that, we would," he said. "But if we're at war with Japan any time soon, we're also likely to be at war with the Confederate States. And if we're at war with the CSA, we aren't going to be able to hit the Japs with everything we've got. And they've built up a tidy little empire for themselves since the last war."
That was true enough. Japan had owned Chosen, Formosa, and the Philippines going into the Great War. Since then, she'd gained a lot of influence in China and quietly acquired Indochina from France and the oil-rich East Indies from Holland. In the aftermath of defeat, Britain hadn't been able to do anything but grumble and hope she could hold on to Malaya and Singapore if she ever got on Japan's bad side. But, since the limeys and the Japs both worried about the USA, they put up with each other.
"If they hit us again, those sons of bitches are going to put a rock in their fist," somebody predicted gloomily.
"Well, gentlemen, that's why we wear the uniform." Commander Cressy got to his feet. He was always sharply turned out. Sam envied him the knife-edged creases in his trousers. His own clothes were clean, but they weren't what you'd call pressed. Neither were those of anybody else in the officers' mess-except the exec's. Cressy nodded to the other men and left, ignoring the ship's motion with the air of a man who'd known worse.
Sam stayed long enough to drink another cup of coffee. Then he left the mess, too. As often happened, the officers' bull session went aimless and foolish without Cressy's sharp wit to steer it along. The exec also had the rank to make that wit felt. Sam thought he might have done some steering, too, but he was junior in grade, too damn old, and a mustang to boot. Nobody would take him seriously.
More than a little wistfully, he went up to the flight deck. He wished he had more to do with sending airplanes off into battle. That was why he'd wanted to serve on the Remembrance in the first place. He'd done good work, useful work, in damage control since returning to the ship as an officer. He knew that. He was even proud of it. But it still wasn't what he wanted to be doing.
Mechanics in coveralls had the cowl off a fighter's engine. They were puttering with a fuel line, puttering and muttering and now and then swearing like sailors. Funny how that works, Carsten thought, smiling at the bad language that flavored the conversation the way pepper flavored scrambled eggs.
The fighter itself was a far cry from the wire-and-canvas two-deckers that had flown off the Remembrance when Sam first came aboard her. It was a sleek, aluminum-skinned one-decker with folding wings, so the belowdecks hangar could hold more of its kind. Because of the strengthening it needed to cope with being sent forth with a kick from a catapult and landing with an arrester hook, it was a little heavier and a little slower than a top land-based fighter-a little, but not much.
Carsten looked out to sea. As always, destroyers shepherded the Remembrance on all sides. The way things were these days, you just couldn't tell. If the Confederates or the limeys wanted to use a submersible to get in a quick knee in the nuts, those destroyers were the ones that would have to make sure they couldn't. He'd served aboard a ship not much different from them. Compared to the Remembrance, they were insanely crowded. They were also much more vulnerable to weather and the sea. But they did a job no other kind of vessel could do.