Honorverse favorite passages

kzt wrote:

roseandheather wrote:
I beg your pardon??

It's still OK to beat dead horses, right?

hanuman wrote:Hey Rose, you do know necrophilia is just so no-no, yeah?

kzt wrote:

roseandheather wrote:I beg your pardon??

It's still OK to beat dead horses, right?

hanuman wrote:
Hey Rose, you do know necrophilia is just so no-no, yeah?

kzt wrote:

roseandheather wrote:
I beg your pardon??

It's still OK to beat dead horses, right?

KNick wrote:
As much of that as we do around here waiting for a snippet from any Weberverse, it better be.

Screw the Havenites," Alexander snapped, forgetting to laugh. "And screw Hauptman, too! It sounds to me like she's doing exactly what we're supposed to have been doing for years, Jim!"

"Oh? And do you think Sir Edward Janacek will share your view?"

"No, but that's no reason to come down on Harrington for doing her job. Damn it, from what you're saying, Young tried his damnedest to put a knife in her back! Do you want to stick it in for him?"

"You know I don't!" Webster ran his hands through his hair again. "Hell, Hamish, my grand-nephew is on Fearless. If I relieve Harrington, I'll be sending him exactly the wrong message about the discharge of an officer's responsibilities. For that matter, every officer in the Fleet will draw the same conclusion!"

"Exactly."

"Goddamn it," Webster sighed. "I'm First Space Lord. I'm not supposed to have to decide what to do with a damned commander."

"Admiral, it's time," Captain DeLaney said quietly over the com, and Lester Tourville nodded.
"Yes, I suppose it is," he agreed. "Send the Fleet to battle stations, Molly. I'll be up directly."
"Yes, Sir."
Tourville terminated the connection and stood. He patted his skinsuit's cargo pocket automatically, checking to be certain his trademark cigars were where they were supposed to be. They'd become so much a part of his image that he probably could have demoralized his entire flag bridge crew by the simple expedient of giving up smoking.
The thought made him chuckle, and he was glad he was alone as he detected the edge of nervousness in the sound.
Let's just get that out of our system right here, Lester. No butter-flies in front of the troops. They deserve a hell of a lot better than that out of you.
He glanced at himself in a bulkhead mirror. It was probably just as well none of his personnel knew he'd been sitting here, already skinsuited, for the last fifteen minutes. Not that it had been because of any opening-night jitters. Or, at least, not very much so. It was more calculating than that. By suiting up early, he could take the time to do it right and arrive on flag bridge calm and collected, looking as if he'd just stepped out of a training holo. Just another of those little tricks to inspire his subordinates to pretend, even to themselves, that he was an unflappable, calm, confident leader. So sure of himself he would turn up perfectly turned out, without a single hair out of place.
He ran one hand over the hair in question, and chuckled again, much more naturally . . . just as the music began to play.
One of Thomas Theisman's reforms had been to allow the captains of capital units the right to substitute more personalized selections for the stridency of the standard fleet alarms. Captain Houellebecq had a fondness for really old opera, much of it actually dating from pre-space Old Earth. Tourville had cherished private doubts when she decided to use some of it aboard Guerriere, but he had to admit she'd come up with a suitable selection for this particular signal. In fact, he'd thought it was an appropriate one even before she told him what it was called.
"Now here this! Now here this! All hands, man Battle Stations! Repeat, all hands man Battle Stations!" Captain Celestine Houellebecq's calm, crisp voice said through the ancient, surging strains of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.

hanuman wrote:
So true. On the other hand, Rosie is just plain greedy. Or is that indecisive?

roseandheather wrote:

hanuman wrote:Morning all

Hey Rose, you do know necrophilia is just so no-no, yeah?

I beg your pardon??

That's what the Navy's here for, Ma'am," Honor replied, and the commissioner snorted. Honor let it pass, but she hadn't missed the fact that Dame Estelle didn't seem to regard her as really belonging to the RMN. It was part and parcel of the way the commissioner addressed her by her first name, as if to distance her from the real Fleet officers (i.e., deadbeat incompetents) she'd had to deal with so often.

cthia wrote:On Basilisk Station

That's what the Navy's here for, Ma'am," Honor replied, and the commissioner snorted. Honor let it pass, but she hadn't missed the fact that Dame Estelle didn't seem to regard her as really belonging to the RMN. It was part and parcel of the way the commissioner addressed her by her first name, as if to distance her from the real Fleet officers (i.e., deadbeat incompetents) she'd had to deal with so often.

Just can't get enough of the Honor<->Estelle one-two combo.

roseandheather wrote:

cthia wrote:On Basilisk StationJust can't get enough of the Honor<->Estelle one-two combo.

Join. The. Freaking. CLUB.

I could practically write a dissertation on the profound effect Honor Harrington had on Estelle Matsuko and her perception of the Navy, and how that's shaped her as the Talbott Quadrant's governor, but I shall spare you.

Just. Their relationship is so gah and if things were even just a tiny bit different I would be Cupiding that like a very, very busy Cupid.

hanuman wrote:
Cthia, did you really HAVE to? You know what just the mention of Dame Estelle does to Rose - we don't want her to slip and break something, do we?

Honor's wounded ship had taken four more hours just to decelerate to rest relative to Basilisk, but her people had used the time well. McKeon and Rierson had continued their repair activities, bringing more and more of the internal control systems back on line, and Lieutenant Montoya (and thank God she'd gotten rid of Suchon!) and his medical parties had labored beyond collapse, dragging the wounded out and laboring over their broken bodies in sickbay. Too many of Montoya's patients had slipped away from him, far more than he would ever find it easy to live with, but it was thanks to him that people like Samuel Webster and Sally MacBride had lived.

And then there had been the long voyage home. The long, slow voyage that had seemed to crawl, for Fearless's communications had been out. There was no way to tell Dame Estelle or the Admiralty what had happened, who had won, or the price her people had paid. Not until Fearless limped brokenly back into Medusa orbit thirteen hours after she'd left it and a white-faced Scotty Tremaine brought his pinnace alongside her air-bleeding wreck.