The Grapple by Harry Turtledove

Confederate convoy stalled on the road a few miles west. Let’s go get ’em!”
    Along with the others nearby, his own machine rumbled down off Mount Pleasant. Even after giving up the high ground, they had no trouble tracking their quarry: the pyre from that one burning truck—and maybe from more by now—guided them straight to it.
    They met a warm reception when they got there. The Confederates had to know trouble was on the way. They didn’t stay in the trucks waiting around to get shot up. Some of them made their way south on foot. And others had manhandled an antibarrel gun into position, and opened up on the U.S. machines as soon as they came into range.
    The Confederates hit one, too, fortunately with a round that glanced off instead of penetrating. “Front!” Morrell said.
    “Identified!” Frenchy Bergeron answered. “HE!” the gunner called to the loader. The barrel stopped. He fired a couple of high-explosive shells at the gun. He wasn’t the only barrel gunner shooting, either. The Confederates serving the cannon had only a small splinter shield to protect them. They soon went down.
    Brave bastards,
Morrell thought, watching with his head and shoulders out of the cupola. Small-arms fire came his way, but not a lot of it. He ignored it with the stoicism of a man who’d known worse. One bullet was all he needed to make this as bad as it could be, but he didn’t think about that.
    Then something different happened. A projectile trailing smoke and flame seemed to come out of nowhere. It slammed into a U.S. barrel and set it afire. Morrell couldn’t see if any of the men got out. He didn’t think so.
    “What the fuck was that?” Bergeron must have seen it through the gunsight.
    “I’ll be goddamned if I know,” Morrell answered.
    He didn’t have to wait long. A couple of minutes later, another one of those darts of fire lanced out to incinerate a U.S. barrel. “It’s some kind of rocket, like on the Fourth of July,” Frenchy Bergeron said. “How the hell did they come up with that?”
    “How? I don’t know, but they sure did.” Morrell ducked down into the turret. “Did you see where they’re shooting it from?”
    “Yes, sir,” the gunner answered. “Behind that stone fence there near the road.”
    “All right. If they pop up again, try and shoot them before they can let go with it. I’ve got to get on the horn to my people.” He flipped to the circuit that would connect him to senior armor officers. “The Confederates have a portable antibarrel device, something an infantryman can use to knock out a machine at a couple of hundred yards. I say again, a foot soldier can use this thing to knock out a barrel at a couple of hundred yards.”
    Life suddenly got more complicated. If foot soldiers really could fight back against armor without the suicidal impulse required to fling a Featherston Fizz…
We need something like that ourselves,
Morrell thought.
    The coaxial machine gun chattered. “
Got
the son of a bitch!” Bergeron said.
    Plainly, the C.S. rocket was new. Plainly, the Confederates here didn’t have many rounds. Just as plainly, the damn thing worked. And how many factories would start turning it out as fast as they could? Morrell swore. Yes, life was a lot more complicated all at once.
             
    W hen Jake Featherston wanted to fly into Nashville, his bodyguards didn’t just have kittens. They had puppies and lambs and probably baby elephants, too. Their chief was a group leader—the Freedom Party guards’ equivalent of a major general—named Hiram McCullough. “Mr. President,” he said, “your airplane could crash.”
    Featherston scowled at him. “My train could derail, too, if I go that way,” he growled.
    “Yes, sir,” Group Leader McCullough agreed stolidly. That gave Featherston’s ever-ready anger no good place to light. McCullough went on, “The other thing that could happen is, the damnyankees could shoot you down. The country needs you too