Honorverse favorite passages

Tenshinai wrote:

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.

Liberal? Hardly, he´s an openly selfproclaimed socialist (which is rather brave in USA).
http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/about/

I´m really happy about his contributions to the Honorverse though and simply cant understand why some people dislike the Torch series.

The Baen free library was also his idea, and that´s the ONLY reason i found the HH series at all.

“Hai!"
Honor's right foot came down on the polished floor, quickly and neatly, her weight centered, and her wooden practice sword flashed. Master Thomas' blade caught the head cut, and her left foot swept around behind her, carrying her to his left. She shifted her weight, driving his sword back to gain a split-second's freedom, then slid her own weapon down his, twisted her wrists, and feinted a cut to his left arm in a single blur of movement.

“Hai!" she shouted again, diverting her stroke into a whistling torso cut as he moved to parry, but his parry had also been a feint.
"Ho!" He floated aside, graceful as a dancer or a cloud of smoke, and Honor grunted as his blade cracked down on her padded right forearm just before her own strike went home. She lowered her sword instantly and bent her head to acknowledge the touch which had preempted her own attack, then stood back and took her right hand from her hilt. She shook it for a moment, grimacing at the tingle in her fingers, and Master Thomas raised his mask with a smile.

“The best offense, My Lady, is sometimes to offer your opponent a juicy target in order to turn her attack against her."
"Especially when you can read her like a book," Honor agreed. She removed her own mask and mopped her face on the sleeve of her fencing tunic. It was similar in cut to the gi she wore for her coup de vitesse workouts, but stiffer and heavier. Grayson had long ago adopted high-tech substitutes for more traditional fencing armors, and the tunic was designed to let her move easily yet absorb blows which could easily break unprotected limbs.

Unfortunately, it was not so well designed as to prevent bruising, for Grayson's swordmasters subscribed to the theory that bruises taught best.
"Oh, I wouldn't say you were quite that obvious, My Lady," Master Thomas disagreed, "but you might cultivate a more, ah, subtle approach."
"I thought I was being subtle!" Honor objected, but her fencing master shook his head with another smile.

"Perhaps against someone else, My Lady, but I know you too well. You forget this isn't a real battle, and you think in terms of decision. Given an opportunity to achieve outright victory, your instinct is to seize it even at the expense of taking damage yourself, and in a real fight, I'd probably be dead now, while you would simply be wounded. But in the salle, you must always remember that it's the first touch which counts.”

“You did it on purpose, didn't you? Just to make your point."
"Perhaps." Master Thomas smiled serenely. "Yet it also gave me the victory, didn't it?" Honor nodded, and his smile broadened. "And whether I did it as an object lesson or simply to win is really beside the point. I was able to do it by taking advantage of the way you think, because I knew your arm cut would be only a feint when I offered you the opening to the body."
"Did you, now?" Honor cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Of course, My Lady. Did you really think my guard could be that weak by accident?" Master Thomas shook his head sadly, and Nimitz bleeked a laugh from his perch on the uneven parallel bars.
"You," Honor said, wagging a finger at the 'cat, "can just be quiet, Stinker!" She turned back to Master Thomas and tugged at the end of her nose while her eyes crinkled in amusement. "Would you have tried something like that against someone you didn't know as well as you know me?"
"Probably not, My Lady—but I do know you, don't I?"
"True." Honor shook her arm again. "It is a bit hard to surprise someone who's taught you everything you know, isn't it?”...


...“Well," she said now, working her fingers as the last tingles drained out of them, "I suppose I should be grateful practice swords don't have edges. On the other hand, you realize you've just motivated me to land at least one touch of my own, don't you?"
"A man's—or woman's—reach should always exceed her grasp, My Lady," Master Thomas agreed with a gleam of humor, and Honor snorted.
"My reach, indeed! All right, Master Thomas," she lowered her mask and stepped back into the guard position, "let's be about it."
"Of course, My Lady." Master Thomas took his own position and they exchanged salutes, but the soft, insistent tone of the salle's door buzzer sounded before either of them could make another move.

"Darn!" Honor lowered her blade. "Looks like you've been saved by the bell, Master Thomas."
"One of us has, My Lady," he replied, and she chuckled again, then turned her head as James Candless crossed to the door. He touched a button and listened for a moment, then straightened with an expression of surprise.
"Well, Jamie?" Honor asked.
"You have a visitor, My Lady.”

hanuman wrote:
I thought all liberals were evil socialists in league with the devil? Isn't that what conservatives call them? :whistle:

But I agree, without the Free Library I would never have discovered the series. Sci-fi is considered such a niche market in South Africa that our public library systems tend to spend very little of their acquisition budgets on books in the genre.

"Oh?" Papadapolous furrowed his brow for a moment, then shrugged. "I'll get right on it, Ma'am, but I don't see any problems."

He smiled, but his smile faded as the Captain looked back at him expressionlessly. He glanced sideways at Isvarian and stiffened, for the NPA major wasn't expressionless at all. His bloodshot eyes looked right through the Marine with something too close to contempt for Papadapolous's comfort, and he turned defensively back to Honor.

"I'm afraid I can't quite share your confidence, Major," she said calmly. "I think the threat may be somewhat more serious than you believe."

"Ma'am," Papadapolous said crisply, "I still have ninety-three Marines aboard ship. I have battle armor for a full platoon—thirty-five men and women—with pulse rifles and heavy weapons for the remainder of the company. We can handle any bunch of Stilties armed with flintlocks." He stopped, jaw clenched, and added another "Ma'am" almost as an afterthought.

"Bullshit." The single flat, cold word came not from Honor but from Barney Isvarian, and Papadapolous flushed as he glared at the older man.

"I beg your pardon, Sir?" he said in a voice of ice.

"I said 'bullshit,'" Isvarian replied, equally coldly. "You'll go down there, and you'll look pretty, and you'll beat the holy living hell out of any single bunch of Medusans you come across, and that'll be fucking all you do while the nomads eat the rest of the off-worlders for breakfast!"

Papadapolous's face went as white as it had been red. To his credit, at least half his anger was at hearing such language in his commanding officer's presence—but only half, and he glared at the haggard, unshaven Isvarian's wrinkled uniform.

"Major, my people are Marines. If you know anything about Marines, then you know we do our job." His clipped voice made no effort to hide his own contempt, and Honor started to raise an intervening hand. But Isvarian lurched to his feet before she got it up, and she let it fall back into her lap as he leaned towards Papadapolous.

"Let me tell you something about Marines, Sonny!" the NPA man spat. "I know all about them, believe me. I know you're brave, loyal, trustworthy and honest." The bitter derision in his voice could have stripped paint from the bulkheads. "I know you can knock a kodiak max on his ass at two klicks with a pulse rifle. I know you can pick a single gnat out of a cloud of 'em with a plasma gun and strangle hexapumas with your bare hands. I even know your battle armor gives you the strength of ten because your heart is pure! But this ain't no boarding action, 'Major' Papadapolous, and it's no field exercise, either. This is for real, and your people don't have the least damned idea what they're fucking around with down there!"

Papadapolous sucked in an angry breath, but this time Honor did raise her hand before he could speak.

"Major Papadapolous." Her cool soprano wrenched him around to face her, and she smiled faintly. "Perhaps you aren't aware that before joining the NPA, Major Isvarian was a Marine." Papadapolous twitched in shock, and her smile grew. "In point of fact, he served in the Corps for almost fifteen years, completing his final tour as command sergeant major for the Marine detachment on Saganami Island."

Papadapolous looked back at Isvarian and swallowed his hot retort. The Saganami Marines were chosen from the elite of the Corps. They made up the training and security detachments at the Naval Academy, serving as both examples and challenges for the midshipman who might one day aspire to command Marines, and they were there because they were the best. The very best.

"Major," he said quietly, "I . . . apologize." He met the older man's red-rimmed eyes unflinchingly, and the NPA man slumped back into his chair.

"Oh, hell." Isvarian waved a hand vaguely and flopped back into his chair. "Not your fault, Major. And I shouldn't have popped off that way." He rubbed his forehead and blinked wearily. "But all the same, you don't have any idea what you're getting into down there."

"Perhaps not, Sir," Papadapolous said, his voice much more level as he recognized the exhaustion and pain behind the NPA major's swaying belligerence. "In fact, you're right. I spoke without thinking. If you have any advice to offer, I would be most grateful to hear it, Major."

"Well, all right, then." Isvarian managed a tired, lop-sided grin.

cthia wrote:Marines are badasses. But Saganami Marines are assbad.

Riddle me this ...

What happens when an indestructible force (Saganami Marine) meets a force to reckon with (Horace Harkness?)

Tenshinai wrote:

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.

Liberal? Hardly, he´s an openly selfproclaimed socialist (which is rather brave in USA).
http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/about/

I´m really happy about his contributions to the Honorverse though and simply cant understand why some people dislike the Torch series.

The Baen free library was also his idea, and that´s the ONLY reason i found the HH series at all.

The limo banked, and she frowned, looking out the window.

"Where are we going?"

"I'm afraid we're going to Admiralty House," Hamish told her.

"No!" Honor said sharply. "I want to see Emily and Katherine!"

"I know you do. But Elizabeth wants—"

"I don't give a damn what Elizabeth wants!" Honor snapped. Hamish blinked, sitting back and looking at her in astonishment. "Not this time, Hamish!" she continued angrily. "I want to see my wife and daughter. The Queen of Manticore, the Protector of Grayson, and the Emperor of the Known Universe can all get in line and wait behind the two of them!"

"Honor," he began carefully, "she wants to congratulate you, and she arranged to do it at Admiralty House, not Mount Royal Palace, because she wants all the rest of the Navy to be part of it. And she scheduled it originally to give you at least five hours at Jason Bay before the ceremony."

"I don't care." Honor sat back and crossed her arms. "Not this time. I'm going to hug our daughter before I do one more thing. Elizabeth's hung all these honors and rewards and presents on me, but I've never asked her for a thing. Well, today I'm asking. And if she doesn't want to give it to me, then I'm telling, instead of asking."

"I see."

Hamish gazed at her for a moment, remembering the diffident, focused, professionally fearless yet personally unassertive young captain he'd first met in Yeltsin so many years before. That Honor Harrington would never have dreamed of telling the Queen of Manticore to get in line behind her infant daughter. This one, however . . .

He pulled out his personal communicator and activated it.

"Willie?" he said. "Hamish. I told you not rescheduling was a bad idea. She's really, really pissed, and I don't blame her."

He listened for a moment, then shrugged.

"You're the Prime Minister of Manticore. I think dealing with situations like this is part of the job. So you trot into your office, screen Elizabeth, and suggest, ever so respectfully, that we reschedule. Personally, I think she'll see the wisdom of the suggestion. I hope she does, anyway."

He paused, listening again, and Honor could taste his amusement. She could also actually hear Baron Grantville's raised voice rattling the receiver pressed to Hamish's ear.

"Well, that's your problem, brother dear," he said with a grin. "Personally, I'm not stupid enough to argue with my wife—either of my wives—over something like this. So, we're going home. Have a nice day."

He deactivated the com and dropped its back into his pocket, then rapped on the partition between them and the pilot's compartment. It opened, and Tobias Stimson looked back at him.

"Yes, My Lord?"

"Jason Bay, Tobias."

"Very good, My Lord," Stimson said with obvious approval, and Hamish smiled at Honor as the air limo banked again.

"Better?"

"Yes," she said, just a bit darkly. "And the fact that you came around so quickly means you'll live to see another day despite the fact that you were going to drag me off to Admiralty House in the first place."

"Um." He rubbed the side of his head for a moment, then nodded. "Fair enough. In my defense, I'll only plead that the schedule was set yesterday, before you ran late. I'd gotten the timing into my head then."

"Hmph." She looked at him, then gave her head a little toss. "Fair enough, I suppose," she agreed grudgingly. "Just . . . don't let it happen again."

She closed her eyes, reaching out with mental hands, trying to touch the infant mind-glow as drowsy contentment turned into fear and confusion, shock as he left the soft, warm safety of the womb for the cold and frightening unknown. She felt him protesting, squirming, fighting to return, and then, in a fashion she knew she would never be able to explain to another human being, Nimitz and Samantha were with her. And so was Farragut, and behind him came Ariel and Monroe.

The treecats reached out with her as the first, thin squall of protest sounded, and suddenly, as easily as slipping her hand into a glove, she touched him. Touched him as she had never touched another human being, even Hamish. It was as if her hand had reached out into the dark, and a smaller, warmer, utterly trusting hand had found it with unerring accuracy.

The squalling complaint stopped. The infant eyes moved, unable to focus and yet sensing the direction of the warm, comforting welcome, the love and the eagerness flowing from Honor into him. His was an unformed presence, and yet he knew her. He recognized her, and she felt the unhappiness and fear flowing out of him as he nestled close to her.

Her outer vision wavered, vanishing into the blur of tears, and she felt Hamish's arms around her. She tasted his love for her, for their son, for Emily, rising to engulf her. She clung to him, without ever releasing Emily's hand, and in that moment, she knew her entire life had been worthwhile.

The baby squirmed, protesting the intrusion of other hands, of instruments, as he was weighed, examined, evaluated. But even as he squirmed, face wrinkled in newborn concentration, tiny mouth moving, eyes squeezed indignantly shut, she cuddled him in immaterial, steel-strong hands of love. And then he was a tiny, red-faced, neatly wrapped bundle in Illescue's hands as the doctor carried him out of the delivery room to his waiting parents.

Illescue stepped into the gallery, his face one huge smile, and for once Honor tasted no trace of his prickly personality, his innate sense of superiority. There was only the pleasure, the sense of wonder and renewal, which had drawn an arrogant aristocrat into the world of medicine's most joyous specialization in the first place, and she smiled back at him, holding out her hands eagerly, as he crossed to her.

"Your Grace," he said softly, "meet your son."

Honor's lips trembled as she gathered the tiny, tiny weight carefully to her. She could have held him stretched along one forearm, his head cupped in the palm of her hand, and she stared down at the ancient, eternally new miracle in her arms. His eyes slipped open once again, moving, unfocused and yet seeking the loving presence wrapped about him like another blanket, and she lifted him to her breast. She held him close, inhaling the indescribable newborn smell of him, feeling the incredibly smooth, fragile skin against her own cheek. She crooned softly, and his lips moved, nuzzling her. Perhaps he was only searching for a nipple with newborn hunger, but fresh tears of joy spilled down her cheeks.

"Welcome to the world, baby," she whispered into his ear, then lowered him and brushed a kiss across his forehead. She turned to Hamish and Emily, stooping beside Emily's life-support chair, holding him out to them, and Emily brushed aside her own tears so that they could see their son together.

Honor looked up as her father and mother stepped close behind her, and her mother rested both hands on her shoulders.

"He's beautiful," Allison Harrington said, and smiled tenderly as she reached past her daughter to touch her first grandchild's cheek. "You may not believe that, right this minute," she continued, brushing the tip of her finger across the screwed-up, still somehow indignant face, "but give him a little while. He'll knock your socks off."

"He already has," Emily said, and looked up at Honor and Hamish. "My God, he already has."

Honor smiled at her, blinking on her own tears, and then she straightened and turned. She stepped past Emily and Hamish, past a beaming Elizabeth Winton and Justin Zyrr-Winton, past a crooning Nimitz and Samantha, and faced Andrew LaFollet.

"This is my son," she said to them all, her eyes locked with the man who had been her personal armsman for so many years, "Raoul Alfred Alistair Alexander-Harrington. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, heir of heart and life, of power and title. I declare him before you all, as my witnesses and God's."

"He is your son," Austen Clinkscales replied, bowing deeply. "So witness we all."

"This is my son," she repeated more softly, speaking only to LaFollet, "and I name you guardian and protector. I give his life into your keeping. Fail not in this trust."

LaFollet looked back at her, then dropped to one knee, resting his hand lightly on the blanket-wrapped baby, and met her eyes unflinchingly.

"I recognize him," he said, his voice soft yet clear as he spoke the ancient formula, "and I know him. I take his life into my keeping, flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone. Before God, Maker and Tester of us all; before His Son, Who died to intercede for us all; and before the Holy Comforter, I will stand before him in the Test of life and at his back in battle. I will protect and guard his life with my own. His honor is my honor, his heritage is mine to guard, and I will fail not in this trust, though it cost me my life."

His voice fogged on the final sentence, and his eyes were suspiciously bright as he rose from his knee. Honor smiled at him, and worked one tiny, preposterously delicate hand free of the swaddling blanket. LaFollet extended his own hand, fingers opened, and she placed her son's palm against his.

"I accept your oath in his name. You are my son's sword and his shield. His steps are yours to watch and guard, to ward and instruct."

LaFollet said nothing more, only bent his head in a slight yet profound bow, and then stepped back. Honor bent her own head to him, tasting and sharing both his joy and his deep, bittersweet regret, and then she turned back to the others.

For all its rich pageantry and centuries of tradition, the liturgy of the Church of Humanity Unchained was remarkably simple. The funeral mass flowed smoothly, naturally, until, after the lesson and the gospel, it was time for the Memory. Every Grayson funeral had the Memory—the time set aside for every mourner to recall the life of the person they had lost and for any who so chose to share that memory with all the others. No one was ever forced to share a memory, but anyone who wished to was welcome to do so.

Reverend Sullivan seated himself on his throne, and silence fell once more over the cathedral until Benjamin Mayhew stood in the Protector's Box.

"I remember," he said quietly. "I remember the day—I was six, I think—when I fell out of the tallest tree in the Palace orchard. I broke my left arm in three places, and my left leg, as well. Howard was in command of Palace Security then, and he was the first to reach me. I was trying so hard not to cry, because big boys don't, and because a future Protector should never show weakness. And Howard radioed for a medical team and ordered me not to move until it got there, then sat down beside me in the mud, holding my good hand, and said 'Tears aren't weakness, My Lord. Sometimes they're just the Tester's way of washing out the hurt.'" Benjamin paused, then smiled. "I'll miss him," he said.

He sat once more, and Honor rose in the Stranger's Aisle.

"I remember," she said, her quiet soprano carrying clearly. "I remember the day I first met Howard, the day of the Maccabeus assassination attempt. He was—" she smiled in fond, bittersweet memory "—about as opposed to the notion of women in uniform and any alliance with the Star Kingdom as it was possible for someone to be, and there I was, the very personification of everything he'd opposed, with half my face covered up by a bandage. And he looked at me, and he was the very first person on Grayson who saw not a woman, but a Queen's officer. Someone he expected to do her duty the same way he would have expected himself to do his. Someone he grew and changed enough to accept not simply as his Steadholder, but also his friend, and in many ways, as his daughter. I'll miss him."

She sat once more, and Carson Clinkscales stood, towering over his aunts.

"I remember," he said. "I remember the day my father was killed in a training accident and Uncle Howard came to tell me. I was playing in the park with a dozen of my friends, and he found me and took me aside. I was only eight, and when he told me Father was dead, I thought the world had ended. But Uncle Howard held me while I cried. He let me cry myself completely out, until there were no tears left. And then he picked me up, put my head on his shoulder, and carried me in his arms all the way from the park home. It was over three kilometers, and Uncle Howard was already almost eighty years old, and I was always big for my age. But he walked the entire way, carried me up to my bedroom, and sat on my bed and held me until I drifted off to sleep." He shook his head, resting his right hand on the shoulder of his Aunt Bethany. "I never knew before that day how strong and patient, how loving, two arms could truly be, but I never forgot . . . and I never will. I'll miss him."

He sat, and an elderly man in the dress uniform of a Planetary Security brigadier rose.

"I remember," he said. "I remember the first day I reported for duty with Palace Security and they told me I was assigned to Captain Clinkscales' detachment." He shook his head with a grin. "Scared the tripes right out of me, I'll tell you! Howard was a marked man, even then, and he never did suffer fools gladly. But—"

At most Grayson funerals the Memory took perhaps twenty minutes. At Howard Clinkscales' funeral, it took three hours.

runsforcelery wrote:Eric is one of my favorite people, but the free library was Jim Baen's idea.

I believe it was Spyder Robinson who concluded that Jim Baen was the only science fiction publisher who actually wanted to live in the 21st century.