1635: THE CANNON LAW – snippet 85:
Sharon looked at Ruy. "Does that sound likely to you?" she asked, and then realized how it must sound to Isaac. "Sorry, Isaac, " she said, "but Signor Sanchez is a soldier and can probably make a better guess than either of us whether there might be that many soldiers who can come from Naples."
Ruy shrugged. "Maybe. I think they have more troubles of their own in Naples than to send the three or four tercios it would take to do anything worthwhile in Rome. In all likelihood your first thought was the right one."
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SOME GOLDEN HARBOR – snippet 67:
CHAPTER 18: Haven City on Pellegrino
"I don't bloody like the look of this," said Woetjans as a third police vehicle pulled in line with the others, completely blocking the end of the dock at which the Princess Cecile had tied up. "Sure you want to handle it this way, Six?"
"It's all going to plan, Woetjans," Daniel said. "I'd worry if they weren't waiting for me."
That was technically true, but he was injecting a little conscious cheeriness into his tone for the sake of the bosun and the nearest of the liberty party. Daniel could admit in the silence of his mind that the riot control vehicles were imposing even though he knew they mounted water cannon rather than plasma weapons,
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1635: THE CANNON LAW – snippet 84:
The fellow who came in shortly was a far cry from what Sharon had imagined when she'd heard he was a saddler and a relative of Don Francisco. For a start, he didn't look like he belonged in the needle trades of any kind at all. Had Sharon been asked to guess what he did for a living, she'd have said he was a blacksmith, maybe, or possibly a professional prize-fighter. She knew quite a few big, powerful men. The man Adolf had announced as Isaac, no other name, was definitely among the top five. He had the big, scarred hands and rough knuckles of a man who did hard manual work and had grown up in a tough neighborhood, which by all accounts the Rome ghetto was. There was hardly a trace of the features Sharon had come to think of as Sephardic in his face. Had she not known the man was Jewish, she'd have simply taken him for an ordinary, if rather large, Roman. His face was one of those that, under the thick black hair, was always frowning with either worry or concentration. Right now, it seemed to be worry.
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SOME GOLDEN HARBOR – snippet 66:
"Mistress-s-s?" Fallert said. "Do you mean that if you became drunk, you would not be able to kill?"
"Not that," said Tovera, still smiling. "I might forget to stop, though."
She laughed, and Fallert laughed, and Hogg laughed so hard that some of his big mouthful of wine squirted out his nostrils. Corius looked a little queasy. Adele wasn't sure he understood all the by-play, but there was enough going on even at a surface level to disturb anybody who wasn't used to it. And he'd been in the car also when the APCs bore down on it shooting….
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SOME GOLDEN HARBOR – snippet 65:
Adele was sitting at the checker's desk when the two attendants raised the overhead door. Noises from the night outside became louder and sharper: occasional shots, a klaxon in the far distance, and the growing murmur of the returning aircar.
The desk terminal was intended only for inventory control, but it was cabled to the database that the communications suite on the roof fed. Adele hadn't found it difficult to link her personal data unit to the terminal and through it to control the entire system. The display in the commo center was far better and so, she supposed, was the security; but neither of those things was as significant as being on hand when Daniel and Hogg returned.
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1635: THE CANNON LAW – snippet 83:
CHAPTER 30
Rome
"Your Excellency," Ruy said, coming in to Sharon's office and dragging up a chair, in to which he flopped dramatically.
"It sounds weird when you call me that, Ruy," Sharon said. "I became an ambassador by accident, and it still feels a little unreal."
"It is a task you undertake well, and I find that remembering the correct title when we are working helps me to be clear as to the task in hand."
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SOME GOLDEN HARBOR – snippet 64:
As he spoke, he switched his viewing mode from light amplification to IR. He saw an APC lifting from the opposite shore of Mandelfarne Island even as Adele said, "You've been… The APCs they use to es… are to shoot you … … was manned when the alert sounded. O…"
"Fallert!" Daniel said. He pointed his carbine as the snakeman's head turned enough to catch the motion with his peripheral vision. Air compressed by the APC's fans was a warm plume spreading beneath the vehicle. "They're on us!"
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1635: THE CANNON LAW – snippet 82:
Magdeburg
"My sister's in that mess." Mike Stearns' tone was quiet and understated.
"We cannot be sure it is a mess quite yet," Don Francisco said. This message had come in overnight in time for this morning's twice-weekly briefing, and Ed Piazza had joined them.
"From what I hear," Ed said, "the real mess is further south. Whatever Borja's up to, it'll be a side-show to what's brewing in Naples. Or to whatever the Spanish are doing to stop it."
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SOME GOLDEN HARBOR – snippet 63:
Daniel could see scores of lights across Mandelfarne Island. A few were on moving vehicles. More were area lights on poles erected in front of pre-fab buildings–operations rooms and officers' quarters, presumably; Daniel's goggles easily picked out the details. The largest number were low-wattage incandescents which snaked on jury-rigged lines from the fusion plant on the north shore of the island and through the tents of the enlisted personnel.
From the lack of visual security at the base, one got the impression that the Pellegrinian garrison didn't think it was at war. To a degree they were right: the Federal troops had no long-range artillery, and an air attack would be quick suicide against plasma cannon. The sloppiness still made Daniel frown.
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1635: THE CANNON LAW – snippet 81:
Frank was chuckling. "Give it a rest, Ruy. Sharon, he's been lecturing me on how I've got to do right by Giovanna ever since we left my place, like I couldn't figure out that part by myself."
Ruy was all affronted dignity in an instant. "It is the proper place for those wise in years to guard against the folly of youth."
"Damn straight," said Doctor Nichols, senior.
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