Four Days On The Danube – Snippet 06
Another burst of gunfire came from Ingolstadt. Where were the Americans? Stefano’s concern was for himself as well as for them. He couldn’t get the airship ready to fly on his own. They’d deflated the balloon after they arrived in Ingolstadt, as they normally did when they were stopping somewhere for any significant stretch of time. The sheer mass involved in getting the balloon re-inflated was just too much for one person to handle in any reasonable amount of time.
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Four Days On The Danube – Snippet 05
Chapter 3
Hearing another burst of gunfire, Stefano Franchetti was distracted from his work with the airship’s burners. Nervously, he glanced in the direction the gunfire was coming from. Insofar as he could determine the direction, at least, which he couldn’t with any precision. There was a three-quarter moon in the sky, but he still couldn’t see very far. A line of trees at the edge of the clearing where they’d set up the airship station impeded his view of Ingolstadt.
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Four Days On The Danube – Snippet 04
She gave the apartment a quick survey, to see if there was anything she wanted to take with her. The walkie-talkie radio, of course, which was also perched on the mantelpiece. Hopefully that would enable her to get in touch with Tom, since his unit had a radio also. Beyond that…
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Four Days On The Danube – Snippet 03
Chapter 2
Tom found his commanding officer dead in his quarters, just a block away. The door to the apartment had been blown in by the same sort of explosion that had destroyed Tom’s own. Colonel Friedrich Engels’ body was sprawled across the floor of his living room, half-dressed, with at least two gunshot wounds that Tom could see at a glance. The floor was covered with drying blood. A pistol was lying near the colonel’s body that Tom recognized as belonging to Engels. It was a wheel-lock and the mechanism hadn’t been engaged. Obviously, the attack had come so quickly that Engels had been roused from sleep but hadn’t had time to arm the weapon.
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Four Days On The Danube – Snippet 02
It was bleeding a fair amount, but she didn’t think it was really all that serious. The proverbial “minor flesh wound” — except that now it was starting to hurt, damn it all.
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Four Days On The Danube – Snippet 01
Four Days On The Danube (From ROF III) by Eric Flint
Chapter 1
The first notice Rita had that something was amiss was on the startling side. The front door to the small apartment in Ingolstadt’s military headquarters that she and her husband Tom had just finished settling into was blown in by an explosion. A splinter from the door sliced open her left arm just below the shoulder. Another splinter flew into her side and stuck there like a pin, just above the hip.
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The book should be available now so this is the last snippet.
1636: The Saxon Uprising — Snippet 76
Gunther shrugged. “So everyone tells me. I can’t see it myself. What difference does it make how they get here? Just another damn prince and princess. The world’s full of them.”
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1636: The Saxon Uprising — Snippet 75
Chapter 28
Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe
Rebecca Abrabanel was a little amused by her emotional reaction to Gunther Achterhof at the moment. How quickly we adapt! Her Imperial Majesty Rebecca I, annoyed by a stubborn adviser.
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1636: The Saxon Uprising — Snippet 74
” ‘Foolish’ isn’t exactly the right word,” Ulrik said. “A ruler can seem foolish to his subjects and still have legitimacy, because he had it to begin with. But the day Chancellor Oxenstierna started breaking the laws — which he did when he unilaterally moved the capital to Berlin; when he summoned a convention that had no legal authority to act; most of all, when he arrested Prime Minister Wettin — then he placed himself in a position where he had to establish his legitimacy.”
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1636: The Saxon Uprising — Snippet 73
Chapter 27
Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe
Rebecca Abrabanel tried to think of any other possibility she hadn’t explored, when it came to available aircraft. The exercise was more in the way of a formality, though — the sort of final double-check a careful person will do just to remind themselves to be careful — than anything she expected to produce results. There simply weren’t all that many aircraft in existence in January of 1636. Most of those were military, furthermore — and Jesse Wood had made clear that he wasn’t lending any of the air force’s planes to this purpose.
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