Sam’s own exec was a lieutenant, junior grade, just over half his age, a redheaded, freckle-faced go-getter named Pat Cooley. Cooley was probably headed for big things-he was almost bound to be if the war and its quick promotions lasted… and if he lived, of course. Carsten knew that he himself, as a mustang, had gone about as far as he could go. He could hope for lieutenant commander. He could, he supposed, dream of commander-as long as he remembered he was dreaming. Considering where he’d started, he had had a hell of a career.

Cooley looked around with a smile on his face. “Feels like spring, doesn’t it, Captain?”

Captain. Sam knew he couldn’t even dream about getting a fourth stripe. But he was, by God, captain of the Josephus Daniels. “Always feels like spring in San Diego,” he answered. “August, November, March-doesn’t make much difference.”

“Yes, sir,” the exec said. “Another three weeks and we’ll have the genuine article.”

“Uh-huh.” Sam nodded. “We’ll think it’s summer by then, I expect, cruising off the coast of Baja California.”

“Got to let the damn greasers know they picked the wrong side-again,” Cooley said.

“Uh-huh,” Sam repeated. The Empire of Mexico and the Confederate States had been bosom buddies ever since the Second Mexican War. There was a certain irony in that, since Mexican royalty came from the same line as the Austro-Hungarian Emperors, and Austria-Hungary lined up with Germany and the USA. But Confederate independence and Confederate friendship with the first Maximilian had kept the USA from invoking the Monroe Doctrine-had effectively shot the Doctrine right between the eyes. The Emperors of Mexico remembered that and forgot who their ancestors had been.

Pat Cooley was the one who took the Josephus Daniels out of San Diego harbor. Sam knew damn near everything there was to know about gunnery and damage control. His shiphandling skills were, at the moment, as near nonexistent as made no difference. He intended to remedy that. He was and always had been a conscientious man, a plugger. He went forward one step at a time, and it wasn’t always a big step, either. But he did go forward, never back.