Honorverse favorite passages

cthia wrote:Bravo Timmopussycat. Excellent postings. I really love your style and appreciate revisiting the particular passages, especially regarding Stacey. That is when I fell in love with Stace. Head over heels in love. I opened a fresh box of tissue.

Welcome to the forums. Your favorite drink is on us. Put it on my tab at Dempsey's Bar. I see you are going to be a formidable and entertaining poster. Here's to your time in the forum being quite pleasant. ''clink''

Kudos!

Now where did I just put that box of tissue?

"Captain Terekhov, Mr. Van Dort, the Montana System owes the two of you a debt which I doubt we'll ever be able to repay," President Warren Suttles said. The President was a politician, but just this once, at least, there was nothing but sincerity in his face and voice. "Stephen Westman and the entire rank and file of the Montana Independence Movement have agreed to surrender to the Marshals Service and to turn in all their heavy weapons. The threat of guerrilla warfare and insurrection on this planet, with all of the damage and deaths that might have entailed, has just been removed thanks to your efforts."

Terekhov, Van Dort, and a still-subdued Helen Zilwicki sat in the President's office along with Chief Marshal Bannister. The captain waved one deprecating hand, but the President shook his head.

"No. You can't just wave it off, Captain. We do owe you an enormous debt. I wish there were something we could do to at least begin paying down some of the interest!"

"Actually, Mr. President," Terekhov said diffidently, "there is one little thing you could do for us."

"Anything!" Suttles said expansively, and Bannister closed his eyes in momentary pain. He'd helped craft this particular ambush himself, but it still hurt to see its intended prey walk into it with such utter innocence.

"Well, Mr. President," Terekhov said, "there's a Solarian-registry freighter, the Copenhagen, in Montana orbit, and . . ."

cthia wrote:Bravo Timmopussycat. Excellent postings. I really love your style and appreciate revisiting the particular passages, especially regarding Stacey. That is when I fell in love with Stace. Head over heels in love. I opened a fresh box of tissue.

Welcome to the forums. Your favorite drink is on us. Put it on my tab at Dempsey's Bar. I see you are going to be a formidable and entertaining poster. Here's to your time in the forum being quite pleasant. ''clink''

Kudos!

Now where did I just put that box of tissue?

Amaroq wrote:

cthia wrote:Bravo Timmopussycat. Excellent postings. I really love your style and appreciate revisiting the particular passages, especially regarding Stacey. That is when I fell in love with Stace. Head over heels in love. I opened a fresh box of tissue.

Welcome to the forums. Your favorite drink is on us. Put it on my tab at Dempsey's Bar. I see you are going to be a formidable and entertaining poster. Here's to your time in the forum being quite pleasant. ''clink''

Kudos!

Now where did I just put that box of tissue?

I'll help you out, cthia!



That tissue box is getting a workout.

roseandheather wrote:

Amaroq wrote:
I'll help you out, cthia!



That tissue box is getting a workout.

....there's still some of those left, even after I went off about Haven twice in one day? Are they bottomless or something?

Amaroq wrote:

cthia wrote:
Bravo Timmopussycat. Excellent postings. I really love your style and appreciate revisiting the particular passages, especially regarding Stacey. That is when I fell in love with Stace. Head over heels in love. I opened a fresh box of tissue.

Welcome to the forums. Your favorite drink is on us. Put it on my tab at Dempsey's Bar. I see you are going to be a formidable and entertaining poster. Here's to your time in the forum being quite pleasant. ''clink''

Kudos!

Now where did I just put that box of tissue?

I'll help you out, cthia!



That tissue box is getting a workout.

roseandheather wrote:....there's still some of those left, even after I went off about Haven twice in one day? Are they bottomless or something?

"Well, I thought that went fairly well," Terekhov said as the cabin hatch closed behind Eleanor Hope and Lieutenant Commander Osborne Diamond, her executive officer.

"You did, did you . . . Sir?" Ginger Lewis responded, and he turned to look at her. She sat in one of his comfortable armchairs, just to one side of Sinead's portrait. Terekhov was certain the juxtapositioning was a coincidence, but he was struck again by how much Commander Lewis looked like a younger, slightly taller version of his wife.

Which isn't precisely what you need to be thinking about your acting XO, Aivars, he told himself wryly.

"Yes, I did," he replied. He poured himself a fresh cup of coffee from the carafe Joanna Agnelli had provided, leaned back, and crossed his legs. "Why? Didn't you?" he asked innocently.

"Skipper, far be it from me to suggest you're talking through your beret, but Hope doesn't care much for this little brainstorm of yours. And she still doesn't know the half of it, whatever she may suspect."

"Nonsense. Just a little perfectly understandable . . . -apprehension at having her previous orders overruled on such short notice, I'm sure."

"Sure it was," Ginger said, shaking her head with a smile. Then her expression sobered. "Skipper, I don't much care for Hope. She looks to me like an ass-coverer who abhors the very thought of sticking her neck out. When she figures out what you're really planning, she's going to have three kinds of hissy fit."

"What I'm really planning?" Terekhov arched his eyebrows, and she snorted.

"I'm an engineer, not a tactical officer, Sir. I check the gizmos and widgets, oil the parts, wind the ship up, and make her go wherever you lordly tactical types decide. And I do my best to patch up the holes you same tactical types eventually get blown in my perfectly good ship. Still, I'm not exactly brain dead, and I've had six months now to watch you in action. Do you really think I haven't figured it out?"

Terekhov considered her thoughtfully. He'd found himself missing Ansten FitzGerald more and more badly since sending him off to Monica seventeen days ago. Indeed, he'd been more than a little surprised by just how badly. The executive officer wasn't brilliant, but he was far, far from stupid, and he was also competent and experienced and possessed the courage of his convictions. He'd become exactly the sort of sounding board a good XO was supposed to be, even when Terekhov never said a word to him. Simply visualizing FitzGerald's probable response was often all he needed to do.

Ginger Lewis was different. Although, as she'd just pointed out, she was an engineering specialist, not a tac officer, she had a first-class brain—a better one than FitzGerald's, as a matter of fact. Possibly even a better one than Terekhov himself had, he often thought. And the fact that she'd come up as a mustang, without ever attending Saganami Island, gave her a different perspective. It was as if thinking outside the box came naturally for her, and she possessed a degree of irreverence which was both rare in a regular officer and refreshing. In many ways, he realized, she was almost more valuable to him in the present circumstances than FitzGerald himself might have been.

"I imagine you've deduced most of it, Ginger," he conceded after a moment. "And you're probably right that Hope isn't going to be delighted when she finds out. Assuming, of course, that worse comes to worst and we do end up provoking a major interstellar incident."

"You remember, back in 281, when Duchess Harrington blew that Peep Q-ship out of space in Basilisk, Skipper? You know, the one that got her convicted as a mass murderer in absentia by the Peeps?" Ginger asked, and he nodded.

"Well, that was 'a major interstellar incident,'" she said. "What you've got in mind is going to be something else entirely. Something I'm not sure they've actually invented a word for yet. Although, now that I think about it, 'act of war' might come pretty close."

He considered disagreeing with her, but he didn't.

She was right, after all.

"This interview is over," Elizabeth said, and stood, shaking with fury, too angry even to notice the incredulity in her guests eyes as she violated all the solemn protocol of the occasion. "I can't keep you from forming a government. Send me your list of ministers. I want it by noon tomorrow. I will act upon it immediately. But—" her eyes stabbed each of them in turn "—remember this day. You're right, My Lord. I'm not a dictator, and I refuse to act like one simply because of your own stupidity and arrogance. But I need not be a 'dictator' to deal with the likes of you, either, and the time will come when you—when all of you—will rue this day!"

"In addition, Your Majesty," he continued, "given the significance and extreme gravity of the Republic's actions, and the fact that the entire Star Kingdom is now forced, however unwillingly, to take up arms once again, it is my considered opinion as your Prime Minister that your Government must represent the broadest possible spectrum of your subjects. An expression of unity at this critical moment must give our allies encouragement and our enemies pause. With your sovereign consent, I believe that it would be in the Star Kingdom's best interests to form a government of all parties, working together to guide your subjects in this moment of crisis."

"I see," the Queen said yet again.

"In time of war, such a suggestion often has merit," she continued after a brief pause, her eyes deadly as her sentence reminded him of another meeting in this same office four years before. "Yet in this instance, I think it may be . . . premature." High Ridge's eyes widened, and the merest hint of a smile touched her lips. "While I am, of course, deeply gratified by your willingness to reach out to your political opponents in what you've so correctly described as a moment of crisis, I feel that it would be most unfair to burden you with possible partisan disputes within your Cabinet at a moment when you must be free to concentrate on critical decisions. In addition, it would be unjust to create a situation in which you did not feel completely free to continue to make those decisions for which you, as Prime Minister, must bear ultimate responsibility."

He stared at her, unable to believe what she'd just said. The Constitution required him to inform her and obtain her formal consent to any proposal to form a new government, but no monarch in the entire history of the Star Kingdom had ever refused that consent once it was sought. It was unheard of—preposterous! But as he gazed into Elizabeth Winton's unflinching, flint-hard eyes, he knew it was happening anyway.

She gazed back at him, her face carved from mahogany steel, and he recognized her refusal to countersign his bid for political survival. There would be no "coalition government," no inclusion of the Centrists and Crown Loyalists to broaden his basis of support . . . or share in the guilt by association if additional reports of disaster rolled in. Nor would she even permit him to extend in her name the invitation William Alexander would almost certainly have refused, thus giving High Ridge at least the threadbare cover of being able to accuse the Centrists of refusing to support the Crown at this moment of need.

She had limited him to just two options: to continue without the cover of a joint government with the Opposition, or to resign. And if he resigned, it would be no more and no less than a formal admission of full responsibility on his part.

The moment stretched out between them, shivering with unspoken tension, and he hovered on the brink of threatening to resign if she did not endorse a coalition. But that was what she wanted. That was precisely the politically suicidal misstep into which she strove to drive him, and he felt a flowering of indignant outrage that the Crown should resort to such blatant political maneuvering at such a moment.

"Were there any further measures you wish to propose or discuss?" she asked into the ringing silence, and he recognized the question's message. Whatever he might propose, whatever he might recommend, she would saddle him unmistakably, personally, and permanently with responsibility for it.

"No, Your Majesty," he heard himself say. "Not at this time."

"Very well, My Lord." She inclined her head in a slight bow. "I thank you for your solicitous discharge of your responsibilities in bringing this news to me. I'm sure it must have been a most unpleasant task. And since there are undoubtedly many matters which require your urgent attention in the wake of this unprovoked aggression, I won't keep you longer."

"Thank you, Your Majesty," he got out in a strangled voice. "With your permission?"

He bowed considerably more deeply to her, and she watched with pitiless, unflinching eyes as he withdrew.

"I don't fucking believe this!"

More than one of the people seated around the conference table flinched at the venom in Secretary of War Esther McQueen's snarl. Not because they were afraid of her (although some of them were), but because no one who wasn't completely insane spoke to Rob Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just that way.

Despite himself, Pierre felt a grin—more of a grimace, really—twitch the corners of his mouth. There were nine people at the table, including himself and Saint-Just. Among them, they represented the core membership of the most powerful group in the entire People's Republic. After better than eight T-years, the Committee of Public Safety still boasted a total membership of twenty-six, almost thirty percent of its original size. Of course, that was only another way of saying that it had been reduced by over seventy percent. And allowing for new appointments to replace those who'd disappeared in various purges, factional power struggles, and other assorted unpleasantnesses (and for the replacement of several of those replacements), the actual loss rate among the Committee's members had been well over two hundred percent. Of the original eighty-seven members, only Pierre himself, Saint-Just, and Angela Downey and Henri DuPres (both of whom were little more than well-cowed place-holders) remained. And of the current crop of twenty-six, only the nine in this room truly mattered.

And six of them are too terrified to breathe without my permission. Mine and Oscar's, at any rate. Which was what we thought we wanted. They're certainly not going to be hatching any plans to overthrow me . . . but I hadn't quite counted on how useless their gutlessness would make them when it hit the fan.

Which—fortunately or unfortunately, depending on one's viewpoint—is at least not something anyone would ever consider saying about McQueen.