Honorverse favorite passages

roseandheather wrote:Well, Hutch, if you're going to be that way about it...

Have I posted this passage before?

Probably. Ask me if I care.

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.

From On Basilisk Station

...can someone help me find a mop for this drool?

Hutch wrote:Well, if we can return to the thread....

I have never been that big a fan of "Field of Dishonor", it is the weakest book in the whole series for me (YMMV). However, the death of Denver Summervale, seen from his viewpoint, was one of the better-written scenes in the series and deserves recording here:

hanuman wrote:
Here it is <hands Rose a mop & bucket>. Went to get it the moment I saw the name Estelle :sigh:

Allen Higgins' face was parchment-pale as he stared at the FTL platform-driven flag bridge master plot. It was only chance he'd been on flag bridge at all, but that coincidence wasn't much help as CIC's computers emotionlessly updated the plot. Home Fleet was much too far away from either space station to have offered any sort of protection even if it had realized the attack was coming . . . or been able to see it when it did. Because it was, it was also too far away to be attacked, and in some ways, that made it far worse. The people who were supposed to protect the Star Empire—who were supposed to die to prevent something like this from ever happening—were perfectly placed to see exactly how totally they'd failed in that purpose, and the fact that it wasn't even remotely their fault meant nothing at all beside that terrible sense of failure.

And for Allen Higgins, their CO, it was even worse than it was for the rest of them.

For a moment, he was paralyzed, his mind replaying the memories of Grendelsbane with merciless clarity. Yet that lasted only for a moment. Only until he realized how infinitely much worse this disaster was.

And then the conventional Mesan missiles began their attack runs.

roseandheather wrote:

hanuman wrote:
Here it is <hands Rose a mop & bucket>. Went to get it the moment I saw the name Estelle :sigh:

And you haven't even seen the worst of my feelings about Augustus Khumalo and Allen Higgins yet...

hanuman wrote:
Aiyeee!!! That's a wail of despair, just in case you were wondering. Your taste is truly deplorable, woman. Deplorable. Honestly. Couldn't you find someone, anyone, who's just a bit less...um...staid, let's say, than Augustus Khumalo. I mean, he's turned out well enough, I suppose, but dammitall, he just doesn't have that extra bit of oomph that someone like, oh, Victor or Aivars have. And he's nowhere near as much FUN as Scotty is.

I mean, really.

hanuman wrote:
Aiyeee!!! That's a wail of despair, just in case you were wondering. Your taste is truly deplorable, woman. Deplorable. Honestly. Couldn't you find someone, anyone, who's just a bit less...um...staid, let's say, than Augustus Khumalo. I mean, he's turned out well enough, I suppose, but dammitall, he just doesn't have that extra bit of oomph that someone like, oh, Victor or Aivars have. And he's nowhere near as much FUN as Scotty is.

I mean, really.

Medusa was no longer a good place to transship prohibited goods, and the word was getting around. She hadn't realized what a holy terror Tremaine was going to be—he seemed to be developing some sort of ESP where smugglers were concerned—and Stromboli's eagle eye on ship-to-ship traffic had guided the ensign to three mid-space pounces that had netted close to half a billion more dollars of contraband. She'd seen to it they both got "well dones" for their success, and Lieutenant Venizelos had come in for quite a few of his own for his efforts at the terminus. Judging by the violence and volume of the protests they were generating, they and their people were putting an extremely painful crimp into someone's profits, and she'd made sure they knew she knew it.

And, as she'd hoped, the recognition Fearless's company was earning, not just from her but from Dame Estelle, the NPA, and the ACS, as well, was turning the corner. She no longer had to bully and harass her crew into doing their jobs. The notion that they, unlike anyone else who had ever been assigned to Basilisk Station, were making a difference was pulling them together. They were overworked, dog-tired, and only too well aware that they were scoring their successes in spite of the system rather than because of it, and that only made them prouder of themselves. They deserved their pride.

Indeed, she was proud of them, and their sense of accomplishment was starting to earn her their regard.

The captain's share was six percent of the total, which gave Honor herself a tidy little half million so far (she'd discovered that even she could do that math easily enough), which was almost eight years' salary for an RMN commander, but her noncoms and enlisted personnel got seventy percent to split among them. That meant even the least senior of them would receive almost twelve thousand dollars, and by long tradition and despite periodic assaults by the Exchequer, prize money was untaxable.

roseandheather wrote:You can blame Lord Sir Wyldon of Cavall and Tamora Pierce for that.

I don't know why - but I have such a terrible weakness for the staid ones. (See also: my feelings for John Chandler Simpson.) Wave a stiff-necked and staid but compassionate, dedicated, and loyal conservative military man under my nose, and I melt like butter on hot tarmac. There's something so delicious about breaking through all that reserve to finally see what's underneath.

And I think Augustus Khumalo might surprise you... after all, Estelle Matsuko wouldn't fall in love with someone terminally boring, would she?

crewdude48 wrote:Oh god. He is going to get her started, isn't he? Duck and Cover!!!

cthia wrote:On Basilisk Station

Medusa was no longer a good place to transship prohibited goods, and the word was getting around. She hadn't realized what a holy terror Tremaine was going to be—he seemed to be developing some sort of ESP where smugglers were concerned—and Stromboli's eagle eye on ship-to-ship traffic had guided the ensign to three mid-space pounces that had netted close to half a billion more dollars of contraband. She'd seen to it they both got "well dones" for their success, and Lieutenant Venizelos had come in for quite a few of his own for his efforts at the terminus. Judging by the violence and volume of the protests they were generating, they and their people were putting an extremely painful crimp into someone's profits, and she'd made sure they knew she knew it.

In other words ...
"Who let the dogs out, Woo... Woo Woo Woo Woo ..."