Honorverse favorite passages

KNick wrote:Hey, who's got the popcorn? This should be good.

hanuman wrote:

roseandheather wrote:Not true!! Of all the characters I adore - and that's more than a dozen - only two of them have died! (Andrew and Javier - *bawl*)

...now I just have to hope it stays that way - please, RFC!!!

Hey, even the occasional black widow male manages to escape the female's jaws of death. The fact that only two of your victims have died just reflects badly on your hunting skills...

Makes me glad I'm queer...BRRR!!!

hanuman wrote:

KNick wrote:Hey, who's got the popcorn? This should be good.

You expecting a cat fight? Or porn?

roseandheather wrote:Answer me this, then: why on earth would I want any of these characters to die, given that said dying greatly limits, ah, certain opportunities regarding said characters?

KNick wrote:With Rose on one end and you on the other, as well as the ones who are likely to egg you both on? Either, both or neither. Any way it goes, it is sure to be interesting and entertaining. You two seem to be sparking ideas off of each other.

And no one seemed to have the least doubt what the outcome of Haven's plans would have been had Lord Pavel Young remained the senior officer on Basilisk Station.

He and Warlock had been banished to escort duty, poking along through hyper to guard tramp freighters plying back and forth to the Silesian Confederacy. Not even First Lord Janacek or his father had been able to save him from that. He was lucky they'd been able to keep him on active duty at all.

KNick wrote:

hanuman wrote:Good Goddess, NOOOOO!!!!!!!!! Between Michelle and Dame Estelle no man's bum will be safe...

Who's to say the men wouldn't enjoy that? After all, they both seem to be very attractive women.

hanuman wrote:
Oh well, the story of my life. What chance does a poor gay boy have against a good looking lady like them? BOOHOOHOO!!!

cthia wrote:BOOHOOHOO? You've got oh, a 99.99% chance to get 'up against' those girls, in the locker room with them, watching them nude in the shower, talking shop, fielding questions about the unequal size of their puppies, petting them ... ...

Whether or not you'll enjoy it, I don't know. But you've got my envy!

Castellaño drew his pulser and raised his voice once more.

"You have agreed to meet under the Ellington Protocol." He drew a white handkerchief from his pocket and held it up in his left hand, fluttering in the breeze. "When I drop my handkerchief, you will each raise your weapon and fire. Fire will continue until one of you falls or drops your weapon in token of surrender. Should either of those things happen, the other will cease fire immediately. If he or she fails to do so, it will be my duty to stop him or her in any way I can, up to and including the use of deadly force. Do you understand, Mr. Summervale?" Summervale nodded curtly, and Castellaño looked at Honor. "Lady Harrington?"

"Understood," she said quietly.

"Very well. Take your positions."

Summervale turned his right side to Honor, his arm straight down beside him, pointing the muzzle of his weapon at the grass. Honor stood facing him squarely, her own pistol aimed at the ground, and his mouth wrinkled into a snarl of pleasure at the proof of her inexperience. This was going to be even easier than he'd hoped, he thought. The idiot was giving him the entire width of her body as a target, and he felt an ugly little shiver of lust at the thought of pumping his hate into her.

Honor twitched her left eye socket's muscles, bringing up the lowest telescopic setting on her cybernetic eye to watch his face. She saw his snarl, but her own expressionless face mirrored the hollow, singing stillness at her core as white cloth fluttered at the edge of her vision. Tension crackled in the morning air, and even the newsies fell silent as they stared at the motionless tableau.

Castellaño opened his hand. The handkerchief leapt into the air, frisking in the playful breeze, and Denver Summervale's brain glowed with merciless fire as his hand came up. The pistol was an extension of his nerves, rising into the classic duelist's stance with the oiled speed of long practice while his eyes remained fixed on Harrington. His target was graven in his mind, waiting only to merge with his weapon's rising sights, when white flame blossomed from her hand and a spike of Hell slammed into his belly.

He grunted in disbelief, eyes bulging in shock, and the fire flashed again. A second sledgehammer slammed him, centimeters above the agony of the first shot, and astonishment flickered through him. She hadn't raised her hand. She hadn't even raised her hand! She was firing from the hip, and—

A third shot cracked out, and another huge smear of crimson blotted his black tunic. His pistol hand was weighted with iron, and he looked down stupidly at the blood pulsing from his chest.

This couldn't happen. It was impossible for him to—

A fourth shot roared, punching into him less than a centimeter from the third, and he screamed as much in fury as in agony. No! The bitch couldn't kill him! Not before he got even one shot into her!

He looked back up, staring at her, wavering on his feet, and his gun was back at his side. He didn't remember lowering it, and now hers was up in full extension. He stared at her, seeing the wisps of smoke blowing from her muzzle in the breeze, and bared his teeth in hatred. Blood bubbled in his nostrils, his knees began to buckle, but somehow he stayed on his feet and slowly, grimly, fought to bring his gun hand up.

Honor Harrington watched him over the sights of her pistol. She saw the hate on his face, the terrible realization of what had happened, the venomous determination as his pistol wavered up centimeter by agonized centimeter. It was coming up, rising toward firing position while he snarled at her, and there was no emotion at all in her brown eyes as her fifth bullet smashed squarely through the bridge of his nose.

Tremaine followed Babcock into the paneled interior, with Harkness bringing up the rear. The others were inside now, as well, advancing with quick, efficient stealth and taking out the chalet's inhabitants as they went. Things were going well, Harkness reflected, when he heard someone behind him.

"What the he—?!"

Harkness spun. A beefy, over-muscled type gawked at him, one hand reaching for a shoulder-holstered pulser in bemused reflex, and the chief swore under his breath. The bastard was too close for Harkness to get the muzzle of his stun rifle around, so he brought the butt up in a crisp, flashing arc that landed neatly on the other man's jaw and sent him crashing to the floor.

"Aw, shit!" someone muttered as the impact shook the hall. Harkness flushed, but there was no time to feel properly embarrassed, for other doors were opening as "guests" in the bedrooms off the hall roused.

The chief dropped one with a quick shot, then whipped back around to the front just as Lieutenant Tremaine stunned a third man. A single pulser shot whined, and Ramirez took three—two men and the woman who'd fired—with a wide-angled shot, less efficient but just as effective at this range.

But Sergeant-Major Babcock had been directly in front of a door when it jerked open, and the man and woman inside it had clearly been engaged in something besides sleep. They were minimally clothed but wide awake, and the woman grabbed Babcock's stunner before she could even begin to react.

Harkness cursed and tried to get his own weapon up, but the sergeant-major was too close to them. He couldn't get a clear shot—and a moment later, he didn't need one. Babcock let the woman tighten her grip on her stunner, and then both the Marine's feet left the floor at once. She pivoted on the firmly held weapon like a gymnast, and the other woman flew back with a gurgling grunt as two size-eight Combat Boots, Marine skinsuit, Mark Seven, hit her in the belly. The impact flung her into her fellow, who opened his mouth to shout—just as Babcock touched the floor once more and her left elbow struck his skull like a hammer. He went down without a sound, and the Marine stepped back, still holding her stunner, and calmly shot the woman before she stopped whooping for breath.

It was all over in a heartbeat, and Harkness gawked at Babcock's swift, silent efficiency. The sergeant-major glanced into the room her victims had come from and gave the man an insurance stun bolt of his own, then looked over her shoulder at the chief.

"Next time, bring a goddamned drum and bugle band along!" she snarled over the com.

"Can it, Gunny!" Ramirez snapped. The colonel stood stock-still, running his skinsuit's external sound pickups up to max, then relaxed. "No damage done, I think." He did a quick count of the unconscious bodies littering the hallway. "Twelve, repeat, total twelve down," he said over the com, and turned to dart his own look at Harkness. The chief expected something severe, but the colonel only shook a finger at him and turned back to his front.

Maybe, Harkness reflected, Marines weren't all that bad after all.

Not that there hadn't been "interesting" developments. Dame Estelle's sulfurous description of her interview with Countess New Kiev's courier had been one. Honor had never imagined the genteel, composed Resident Commissioner could be so elementally enraged. Dame Estelle had looked ready to bite pieces out of the furniture, but as Honor had listened to her account of the meeting, she'd understood perfectly.

....Honor hadn't quite understood the gleam in the commissioner's eye once she stopped ranting and started speculating on the political situation back home. Of course, Honor didn't understand most of the machinations that went on inside the Parliament of Manticore. She vastly preferred the Navy, where the chain of command was at least generally clear, whatever infighting went on between factions and power groups. But Dame Estelle did seem to grasp the byzantine rules of the game, and she appeared convinced that something deep, complex, and probably drastic was going on beneath the surface . . . and that whatever it was boded ill for Countess New Kiev.

...But there were limits to how far from the Government line she could stray without losing her position, and it seemed she'd reached them, for her messenger had arrived in Dame Estelle's office with "suggestions," not directives.

The commissioner hadn't cared for those suggestions at all, and as far as Honor could decipher them, they seemed to have consisted entirely of variations on a single theme. Dame Estelle should remember the commercial importance to the Kingdom of its great trading houses. She should strive to adopt a "more conciliatory tone" when dealing with them and "mediate between the Navy's overly rigorous application" of the commerce regulations and the cartels' "legitimate concerns over sudden and abrupt changes in the regulatory climate." Above all, she should "remember the transitory nature of our custodial presence on Medusa" and avoid any actions which would anger the natives or those who would someday trade with them as equals. And, of course, she should "strive to abate" the possibly over-zealous manner in which the present senior officer on Basilisk Station seemed to be wielding her powers over the remainder of the star system.

It had, Honor reflected, sounded like the most mealy-mouthed, double-tongued case of interstellar arm-twisting she'd ever heard of, and its timing had been unfortunate. Dame Estelle had been back in her office for less than ten minutes after a visit to the Government House hospital, where the worst injured of her wounded NPA troopers had just died, when New Kiev's courier caught up with her, and she hadn't been in the mood for it.

She'd snapped the unlucky messenger's head off and sent him home with it under one arm and a detailed account of the nature and severity of recently discovered violations of Her Majesty's Medusan Protectorate's laws under the other. And, she'd told Honor with grim delight, she'd concluded her report with the observation that the discovery of those violations had been made possible solely by the "dedicated, professional, persistent, and outstandingly successful efforts, both in their own right and in association with the NPA" (that was a direct quote) of Commander Honor Harrington and the crew of HMS Fearless. Under the circumstances, Dame Estelle had added, she had no intention of striving to abate Commander Harrington's activities and every intention of aiding and abetting them in any way she could. And if Her Majesty's Government disapproved of her intentions, she would, of course, submit her resignation.