Honorverse favorite passages

dreamrider wrote:
Just to be clear (and evilly pedantic), Filarta's Folly is 3rd Manicore, BoMA is 2nd Manticore.

1st Battle of Manticore is the action involving Travis Long. About 400 years ago.

dreamrider

"The Captain sent for me?"

"Yes, thank you, Bosun." Honor nodded for MacBride to stand easy. "I need some people with rather specialized talents, and I thought you might be able to help me out."

"Whatever the Captain requires, Ma'am." MacBride was a native of Gryphon, as were a surprisingly high percentage of the RMN's noncoms, given the planet's relatively sparse population. Manticore-B's single habitable planet was the least hospitable and last settled of the Manticore System's three Earth-like worlds, and native Manticorans and Sphinxians argued that Gryphons only joined the Navy to escape Gryphon's weather. For their own part, the Queen's Gryphon-born subjects seemed to feel a sort of divine mission to keep the sissies of Manticore-A in shape. The divergence of opinion led to occasional off-duty "discussions" that could make them a bit difficult to live with, but Honor was glad she had MacBride. The bosun was the indispensable link between the bridge officers and enlisted people aboard any warship, and MacBride had all the tough, professional confidence of her years of service.

Augustus Khumalo was grayer than Michelle remembered.

He was some sort of distant cousin of hers, although she had only the vaguest idea of exactly how and through whom they were related, and she'd met him in passing half a dozen times. This was the first time she'd ever really spoken to him, though, and as she followed his chief of staff, Captain Loretta Shoupe, into his day cabin aboard HMS Hercules, she found herself looking into his eyes, searching for some sign of the moral courage he'd displayed when he received Aivars Terekhov's bombshell dispatch.

She didn't see it. Not surprisingly, perhaps. She'd discovered long since that people who looked like warriors too often proved to be Elvis Santinos or Pavel Youngs, while the most outwardly unprepossessing people frequently turned out to have nerves of steel.

I wonder if I'm looking so hard because I feel guilty about the way I've always dismissed him in the past?

She spoke informally because in the weeks since what had come to be called the Battle of Torch, a quiet but profound sea change had swept through the small number of Torch's leaders who knew the truth about the Stein assassination and the events that had followed on The Wages of Sin and elsewhere. A change in the way they looked at Rear Admiral Luiz Rozsak.

Before the battle, they'd considered Rozsak an ally, true enough. But it had been purely an alliance of convenience and not one of them had personally trusted the admiral. No farther than I could throw him—when I was a toddler, was the way Jeremy had put it. Indeed, not only had they not trusted Rozsak, they'd been deeply suspicious of him.

Today, it was still unlikely (to say the least) that anyone was going to confuse the admiral with a saint. But it was impossible to match the previous assessment of Rozsak as a man driven solely, entirely and exclusively by his own ambition with the admiral who'd led the defense of Torch at such an incredible cost to his own forces and risk to his own life.

A man driven by a fierce ambition, yes. Solely by ambition, however . . . No. That, it was no longer possible to believe.

At that, the growing warmth of Torch's inner circle toward the admiral was a candle, however, compared to the enthusiastic embrace with which Torch's population had greeted the Mayan survivors of the battle. Any officer or enlisted person in the fleet who went down to the planet—and there none who didn't, except for those still too badly injured to make the trip—swore then and thereafter that there was not, never had been, and never would be a shore leave better than the one they enjoyed on Torch in the weeks that followed the battle.

No one on Torch doubted that those Mayan fighting men and women had saved the planet's population from complete destruction. Not once the StateSec officers who survived the battle and the ones who surrendered afterward started talking.

And they started talking very quickly, and they talked and talked and talked. Their immediate fear had been that Torch would hand them over to the Republic of Haven. Then Jeremy X and Saburo started interrogating, and within two days it was the profound hope of every StateSec officer that they would be turned over to the Haven navy.

Jeremy X's notions concerning "the laws of war" and the proper rules governing the treatment of POWs would have met with the approval of Attila the Hun. And while Berry Zilwicki might have squelched Jeremy, she wasn't going to squelch Saburo.

He started every interrogation by placing a holopic between himself and the person being interrogated. "Her name was Lara. And her ghost really, really, really wants you to tell me everything you know. Or her ghost is going to get really, really, really peeved."

So, within a few days, they knew everything—at least, everything that had been known by Santander Konidis and the other surviving officers. But that was enough to know the three critical items.

First, that Manpower had surely been behind the whole plot. Second, that the Mesa System Navy had played a major part in providing training and logistical support. And, third, and beyond any faintest shadow of a doubt, that Manpower had planned and ordered a complete violation of the Eridani Edict.Thereafter, however—quite to the surprise of Konidis and his subordinates—all threats and mistreatment had stopped. Within a month, all of the StateSec survivors had been relocated onto an island and provided with the wherewithal to set up reasonably comfortable if austere living quarters, along with a sufficient food supply brought in once a week under heavy guard.

The armed forces of Torch placed no guards on the island itself, and didn't even maintain a naval patrol beyond a small number of vessels. But the more adventurous of the StateSec forces who experimented with the possibility of trying to escape by sea soon gave it up. It turned out that the lifeforms in Torch's warm oceans were every bit as exuberant as the ones in its tropical rain forests. Especially the predator that looked like a ten-meter long cross between a lobster and a manta ray, and whose dietary preferences seemed to exclude rocks but absolutely nothing else.

Hutch wrote:Well, I posted the final line to this chapter in the one-liners, but the following shines an interesting light on a character I expect to see more of in the future as chaos begins to descend on the SL.

And I know a number of folks here don't care much for the "Torch" books, but I've found the characters within some of the more charming and...complex individuals in the Honorverse. IMHO as always....YMMV.

She spoke informally because in the weeks since what had come to be called the Battle of Torch, a quiet but profound sea change had swept through the small number of Torch's leaders who knew the truth about the Stein assassination and the events that had followed on The Wages of Sin and elsewhere. A change in the way they looked at Rear Admiral Luiz Rozsak.

Before the battle, they'd considered Rozsak an ally, true enough. But it had been purely an alliance of convenience and not one of them had personally trusted the admiral. No farther than I could throw him—when I was a toddler, was the way Jeremy had put it. Indeed, not only had they not trusted Rozsak, they'd been deeply suspicious of him.

Today, it was still unlikely (to say the least) that anyone was going to confuse the admiral with a saint. But it was impossible to match the previous assessment of Rozsak as a man driven solely, entirely and exclusively by his own ambition with the admiral who'd led the defense of Torch at such an incredible cost to his own forces and risk to his own life.

A man driven by a fierce ambition, yes. Solely by ambition, however . . . No. That, it was no longer possible to believe.

At that, the growing warmth of Torch's inner circle toward the admiral was a candle, however, compared to the enthusiastic embrace with which Torch's population had greeted the Mayan survivors of the battle. Any officer or enlisted person in the fleet who went down to the planet—and there none who didn't, except for those still too badly injured to make the trip—swore then and thereafter that there was not, never had been, and never would be a shore leave better than the one they enjoyed on Torch in the weeks that followed the battle.

No one on Torch doubted that those Mayan fighting men and women had saved the planet's population from complete destruction. Not once the StateSec officers who survived the battle and the ones who surrendered afterward started talking.

And they started talking very quickly, and they talked and talked and talked. Their immediate fear had been that Torch would hand them over to the Republic of Haven. Then Jeremy X and Saburo started interrogating, and within two days it was the profound hope of every StateSec officer that they would be turned over to the Haven navy.

Jeremy X's notions concerning "the laws of war" and the proper rules governing the treatment of POWs would have met with the approval of Attila the Hun. And while Berry Zilwicki might have squelched Jeremy, she wasn't going to squelch Saburo.

He started every interrogation by placing a holopic between himself and the person being interrogated. "Her name was Lara. And her ghost really, really, really wants you to tell me everything you know. Or her ghost is going to get really, really, really peeved."

So, within a few days, they knew everything—at least, everything that had been known by Santander Konidis and the other surviving officers. But that was enough to know the three critical items.

First, that Manpower had surely been behind the whole plot. Second, that the Mesa System Navy had played a major part in providing training and logistical support. And, third, and beyond any faintest shadow of a doubt, that Manpower had planned and ordered a complete violation of the Eridani Edict.Thereafter, however—quite to the surprise of Konidis and his subordinates—all threats and mistreatment had stopped. Within a month, all of the StateSec survivors had been relocated onto an island and provided with the wherewithal to set up reasonably comfortable if austere living quarters, along with a sufficient food supply brought in once a week under heavy guard.

The armed forces of Torch placed no guards on the island itself, and didn't even maintain a naval patrol beyond a small number of vessels. But the more adventurous of the StateSec forces who experimented with the possibility of trying to escape by sea soon gave it up. It turned out that the lifeforms in Torch's warm oceans were every bit as exuberant as the ones in its tropical rain forests. Especially the predator that looked like a ten-meter long cross between a lobster and a manta ray, and whose dietary preferences seemed to exclude rocks but absolutely nothing else.

I get the feeling Rozcak and Aivars Therkhov would get along just fine if they ever met....

I also think that I never want to get interrogated on Torch...or go swimming there.....

roseandheather wrote:Luis Roszak is definitely on my list of "characters I desperately want to see more of, please and thank you." There's something marvellously intriguing about him. And can you imagine the man teaming up with Tourville and/or Oversteegen??

Flint's work was a bit of an acquired taste for me at first, but eventually I really started to love his wry humor, his characterization, and his deft hand with a romance ( ). The Torch books aren't ones I keep going back to time after time, the way the Grand Alliance and Talbott novels are, but they're always a wonderful read and the characters are exquisite. (And then there is the 1632 series, which is just.... *dramatic swoon* ....yeah.)

Damn it, I am playing favorites, he admitted cheerfully to himself. Of course, unlike some people I've known, I try to make sure that the favorites I play deserve it. And, by God, if anyone deserves it, Abigail does! If she just manages to avoid getting herself killed in the next few years, that young lady's going to be one of the admirals who go into the history books. And when that happens, I'll be able to kick back, sniff my brandy, and say "Why, I knew her when she was only a JG, and let me tell you . . . !"

"I just—" Santos paused, staring down at the fingers caressing the treecat. "I just want you to know that whatever's wrong is hurting him, too, Skipper," she said finally. "He tries not to show it, but I think he thinks he's letting you down—letting the ship down. And he is, in a way. I don't know why, but he's just not involved the way he was under Captain Rath, and he loves every scrape and dent of this old ship." She raised her head and looked around the briefing room, eyes slightly misty, and smiled. "So do I," she admitted. "She's old, and they raped her when they gutted her armament, but she's a grand old bitch. She won't let us down in the crunch, and—" she met Honor's eyes again "—neither will Alistair. Whatever his problem is, he won't let you down when it really counts, Skipper. That's—" She paused again, then waved her hand. "That's all I wanted to say."

hanuman wrote:
It's a toss-up really between Mr Weber & Mr Flint who's the best at characterisation. Mr Flint is an absolute genius at translating socio-political dynamics into really really good (i.e. enjoyable & readable) fiction writing. But that's to be expected. He is a liberal, after all :tongue: Oh, he also has a really great sense of humor.

cthia wrote:On Basilisk Station

"I just—" Santos paused, staring down at the fingers caressing the treecat. "I just want you to know that whatever's wrong is hurting him, too, Skipper," she said finally. "He tries not to show it, but I think he thinks he's letting you down—letting the ship down. And he is, in a way. I don't know why, but he's just not involved the way he was under Captain Rath, and he loves every scrape and dent of this old ship." She raised her head and looked around the briefing room, eyes slightly misty, and smiled. "So do I," she admitted. "She's old, and they raped her when they gutted her armament, but she's a grand old bitch. She won't let us down in the crunch, and—" she met Honor's eyes again "—neither will Alistair. Whatever his problem is, he won't let you down when it really counts, Skipper. That's—" She paused again, then waved her hand. "That's all I wanted to say."

This choked me up. Both, what she thought about McKeon and what she thought about Fearless.

They raped her. That made Fearless real to me. And she really was a grand ole ...right 'til the end, when they sent her to the breakers.

I miss Santos. She had a little Montgomery Scott in her.

Lieutenant Commander Rafael Cardones looked up as the bridge lift opened. He was officer of the watch, supervising the skeleton bridge crew of a ship in a repair slip, and he came to his feet quickly as the Captain stepped from the lift. One of her green-uniformed armsmen followed her, but the Grayson parked himself against the bulkhead, standing at parade rest and watching his steadholder as she walked to the command chair at the center of the bridge.

She moved slowly, hands folded behind her, and her face was composed and serene. But Rafael Cardones knew her too well. He'd seen that same serenity while she kicked a dispirited, hostile crew back to life . . . and when she'd taken a crippled heavy cruiser on a death-ride straight into a battlecruiser's broadside. Now he saw it again, on the night before she met a man who hated her with a pistol in her hand, and he wondered how many years she'd needed to perfect that mask. How long to learn to hide her fear? To learn how to radiate confidence to her crew by concealing her own mortality from them? And how long, how many nights of pain and loneliness, to hide the fact that she cared—cared more than she should ever let herself care—about the people around her?

She stopped beside the command chair, and one hand stroked the stored displays and readouts the way a horsewoman might caress a beloved mount. She stood there, staring into the depths of the main visual display, only her hand moving, as if it were independent of the rest of her. He saw the pain in her eyes, despite her mask, and suddenly, he understood.
She was saying goodbye. Not just to Nike, but to the Navy, and fear filled him. Fear for her, but for himself, as well. She might die tomorrow, he told himself, yet only his intellect spoke, for his heart, his emotions, knew better. Pavel Young couldn't kill the Captain. The very idea was ludicrous.

But even if she lived, her career would end. She'd been told that too often to doubt it, and it was a price she'd chosen to pay. Yet when she lost the Navy, the Navy would lose her. Someone else would command HMS Nike and all the other ships she might have commanded, and someone else could never replace her, be all the things she'd been. No one could, and Rafael Cardones and Alistair McKeon, Andreas Venizelos and Eve Chandler and Tomas Ramirez, would all be diminished by it. Something special and wonderful would have gone out of their lives, and it would leave them the poorer for having known and lost it.

He was ashamed of himself. Ashamed for thinking of what he wanted, what he needed from her, yet he couldn't help it. Part of him wanted to shout at her, to curse her for abandoning the people who depended upon her, and another part wanted to weep for what leaving them behind must be costing her. He was trapped between his tangled emotions, unable to speak while his eyes burned, and then her treecat raised his head on her shoulder, looking in Cardones' direction. The 'cat's prick ears twitched, his green eyes glowed, and the Captain turned her head, as well.

“Rafe," she said very softly.
"Skipper." He had to clear his throat twice before the word came out, and she nodded to him, then looked back down and ran her hand along the arm of her command chair once more. He could feel her need to sit in that chair one more time, to look around her bridge and know it was hers. But she didn't. She only stood there, looking down at it, her long, strong fingers stroking its arm with delicate grace, and Cardones raised a hand. He held it out to her, with no idea of what he meant to do with it or say to her, and then she drew a deep breath and stepped back from the chair. She turned and saw his hand, and he opened his mouth, but she shook her head.

It was a tiny movement, barely seen, yet it crystallized all she was. It was a captain's headshake, its authority so absolute and unquestionable there would never be a need to enunciate it. And as he recognized it, Cardones recognized something he'd always known without quite realizing that he knew. Her authority came not from her rank; it came from who and what she was, not what the Navy had made her. Or perhaps it was even more complex than that. Perhaps the Navy had made her what she was, yet if that were true, she had long since become more than the sum of her parts.

She was Honor Harrington, he thought. No more and no less, and no one and nothing could ever take that from her, whatever happened.
He lowered his hand to his side, and she drew herself to her full height and straightened her shoulders.
"Carry on, Commander," she said quietly.
"Aye, aye, Ma'am." His voice was just as quiet, but he came to attention as he spoke, and his hand rose to the band of his beret in a salute that would have done Saganami Island proud.

Pain flickered in her eyes, and sadness, yet there was more to it than that. A measuring something that he dared to hope was approval, as if she were passing something more precious than life itself into his keeping.
And then she nodded and turned away and walked away without another word, and HMS Nike's bridge was suddenly a smaller, a lonelier, and an infinitely poorer place than it had been only a moment before.