Honorverse favorite passages

hanuman wrote:
Thistles are actually really pretty flowers. Prickly and all, but beautiful nonetheless.

Me? I thought Cthia is of the female persuasion...

His left hand snapped out, grasping Johnson's chin and yanking it upward, pushing the back of the StateSec man's head harder into his pillow and arching his neck. The corporal's eyes opened, unfocused and confused, but he hadn't even realized he was awake, much less what was happening, when Harkness' right hand came down like an axe. Johnson started to suck in air, but any shout he might have given died in an agonized wheeze as his larynx shattered. He thrashed and jerked, hands pawing at his throat while he fought for breath that wouldn't come, but Harkness had already turned away. Heinrich Johnson was already a dead man; he simply hadn't realized it yet, and Harkness still had Candleman to worry about.

The second StateSec guard made a snorting sound and stirred sleepily. For all their violence, Johnson's death throes weren't very loud, and Candleman never had a chance to realize what the harsh, choking sounds which had penetrated his sleep might portend. He was still moving muzzily towards the boundary of wakefulness when two callused hands locked on his head and twisted explosively. For just an instant, the sickening crunch of vertebrae seemed to completely bury the sounds of Johnson's fading, desperate efforts to breathe, and then those sounds, too, died, and Horace Harkness stood back in the darkness, closed his eyes, and shuddered with sick loathing.

It wasn't the first time he'd killed, but it was the first time he'd killed someone he actually knew or done it with his bare hands rather than missiles or an energy mount, and it was different this way. He felt unclean, for neither Johnson nor Candleman had even guessed what was coming. But that had been the point. He couldn't have allowed them to guess, and so he'd had to become their partner—their good friend and buddy the venal ex-Manty—so that he could murder them in their sleep.

cthia wrote:This was Harkness' first bare-handed kill. Why does that totally surprise me?

hanuman wrote:

cthia wrote:No, not everyone. I certainly didn't. There was something about your posts. The intimacy, I think. However, your screen name is masculine Native American. I thought you were Native American as am I. Of course, Amaroq could have been the leader of the pack of Inuit wolves. It's also Arabic. Incidentally, I know a French Amaroqa, female.

I for one knew Amaroq was female, but that was because I thought her handle was an alliteration for 'I'm a rock'.

Is 'alliteration' the right word? Anyways, the strong individuals in my life tend to be women, so there...

hanuman wrote:

cthia wrote:No, not everyone. I certainly didn't. There was something about your posts. The intimacy, I think. However, your screen name is masculine Native American. I thought you were Native American as am I. Of course, Amaroq could have been the leader of the pack of Inuit wolves. It's also Arabic. Incidentally, I know a French Amaroqa, female.

I for one knew Amaroq was female, but that was because I thought her handle was an alliteration for 'I'm a rock'.

Is 'alliteration' the right word? Anyways, the strong individuals in my life tend to be women, so there...

Amaroq wrote:
I think you mean anagram, hanuman.

The name is from a childhood novel I particularly liked, Julie of the Wolves. Amaroq was the leader of the wolf pack.

But if we want to deny them that public support, we're going to have to show everyone that you not only have that authority but that we're in the right in this particular confrontation."
"Despite what you just said about my 'idiot admiral'?" Anger crackled in Rajampet's voice.
"If the adjective offends you, I'm sorry." Abruzzi didn't waste a lot of effort on the sincerity of his tone. "But the fact remains that he was in the wrong."
"Then how in hell do you think we're going to convince that 'public support' of yours we're in the right if we smash the Manties like they deserve?" Rajampet sneered.
"We lie." Abruzzi shrugged. "It's not like we haven't done it before. And, in the end, the truth is what the winner says it is. But in order to rebut the Manties' version effectively, I have to know what it is, first. And we can't make any military moves until after I've had a chance to do the preliminary spadework."
"Spadework." This time, Rajampet's sneer was marginally more restrained. Then he snorted harshly. "Fine. You do your 'spadework'. In the end, it's going to be my superdreadnoughts that make it stand up, though."

cthia wrote:Mony a mickle maks a muckle! - Saving a little adds up to a lot. I heard that often.

cthia wrote:And "speak O' the devil" is apparently not an American phrase as I once thought.

Amaroq wrote:I guess that means that everyone thought I was a dude?

hanuman wrote:Me? I thought Cthia is of the female persuasion...

cthia wrote:

hanuman wrote:
Thistles are actually really pretty flowers. Prickly and all, but beautiful nonetheless.

Me? I thought Cthia is of the female persuasion...

Naa ... but I'm totally 'bi' you see. Half of me reaaaly likes women. The other half likes men — who have beautiful sisters.

Amaroq wrote:

hanuman wrote:
I for one knew Amaroq was female, but that was because I thought her handle was an alliteration for 'I'm a rock'.

Is 'alliteration' the right word? Anyways, the strong individuals in my life tend to be women, so there...

I think you mean anagram, hanuman.

The name is from a childhood novel I particularly liked, Julie of the Wolves. Amaroq was the leader of the wolf pack.

Amaroq wrote:

hanuman wrote:
I for one knew Amaroq was female, but that was because I thought her handle was an alliteration for 'I'm a rock'.

Is 'alliteration' the right word? Anyways, the strong individuals in my life tend to be women, so there...

I think you mean anagram, hanuman.

The name is from a childhood novel I particularly liked, Julie of the Wolves. Amaroq was the leader of the wolf pack.

hanuman wrote:
No, I know what an anagram is. I meant the word to describe a made-up or random sound that sounds like a proper word or phrase...as in: a-m-a-roq=I-'m-a-rock

An onomatopoeia (sometimes written as onomatopœia) (About this sound pronunciation (US) , from the Greek ὀνοματοποιία;[1] ὄνομα for "name"[2] and ποιέω for "I make",[3] adjectival form: "onomatopoeic" or "onomatopoetic") is a word that phonetically imitates, resembles or suggests the source of the sound that it describes.

Amaroq wrote:

But if we want to deny them that public support, we're going to have to show everyone that you not only have that authority but that we're in the right in this particular confrontation."
"Despite what you just said about my 'idiot admiral'?" Anger crackled in Rajampet's voice.
"If the adjective offends you, I'm sorry." Abruzzi didn't waste a lot of effort on the sincerity of his tone. "But the fact remains that he was in the wrong."
"Then how in hell do you think we're going to convince that 'public support' of yours we're in the right if we smash the Manties like they deserve?" Rajampet sneered.
"We lie." Abruzzi shrugged. "It's not like we haven't done it before. And, in the end, the truth is what the winner says it is. But in order to rebut the Manties' version effectively, I have to know what it is, first. And we can't make any military moves until after I've had a chance to do the preliminary spadework."
"Spadework." This time, Rajampet's sneer was marginally more restrained. Then he snorted harshly. "Fine. You do your 'spadework'. In the end, it's going to be my superdreadnoughts that make it stand up, though."

Just a nice view into how the upper echelons of the SL work from MoH. Later on we get into so much ass-covering, shifting the blame, and passing the buck it gets truly nauseating. Makes you wonder how anything constructive ever gets done.