Honorverse favorite passages

Yow wrote:Mechanics? I'm almost afraid to ask... I'll bite. So what are the differences in the messengers delivery via smoke signals? (Crosses fingers hoping it has nothing to do with the Ping pong show I saw in Thailand.)

cthia wrote:

phillies wrote:
I confess I had assumed that Cthia's closing line about hanging referenced his gender correctly.

RoseAndHeather I had inferred.

I am using my last name and have mentioned that I write books, which is actually adequate to determine exactly who I am.

Early on in my posting, I didn't have that closing line.

phillies wrote:
But more recently you did.

cthia wrote:
Yes, of course phillies. And believe me, I am thankful that you knew I was male. I was just being honest, on behalf of those in the early days of my postings, who didn't have that benefit.

I think human nature requires a certain 'familiarity' when communicating. *From the beginning of time people enjoyed the knowledge of gender when communicating. Enter BBS's of the 70's, internet chatting, forums, et cetera, and that human element sometimes is removed. For some it yields unfamiliarity of a different, uncomfortable sort. Personally, I'd like to know the gender of who I am talking. Not because I feel either male/female has more intelligent (or any other adjective) input, rather because of the gentlemanly way I was raised. Females are owed a bit more ... respect.

*An aside:
As part Native American, many Native Americans, who continually practice the art of smoke signals, can sometimes tell if the sender is female, via the mechanics involved.

Yow wrote:
Mechanics? I'm almost afraid to ask... I'll bite. So what are the differences in the messengers delivery via smoke signals? (Crosses fingers hoping it has nothing to do with the Ping pong show I saw in Thailand.)

She swiveled the chair to face her terminal and began tapping keys. Okay. They couldn't make it if they built the beacon bodies entirely from scratch, and they didn't have time to design a new one, but . . . suppose they used the targeting bus from a Mark Fifty missile? If they yanked the warhead and sidewall penaids, they could jigger the sensor heads and astro packs into the empty spots—

No, wait! If they pulled the penaids, they should be able to convert the terminal guidance units from the same missiles into astro packs! That would save components all down the line, and the guidance units would just have to go into storage if they didn't use them. The bus thrusters wouldn't have anywhere near the endurance of a standard beacon kit, but they had power to burn, and the platforms only had to do their job for a couple of months. They weren't going to be moving around, so they wouldn't really need tons of endurance, either, now would they? And if she used standard components, she could use her missile maintenance mechs to do two-thirds of the work in a quarter of the time without any reprogramming at all!

Now, let's see. . . . If she sectioned the bus off here to clear the passive receptor arrays, then took out this panel to mate the signal booster with the main ECM emitter, then she could . . .

Lieutenant Commander Santos's fingers flew over her console with gathering speed, and a whole new sensor platform took shape on her display.

She was almost to her destination when it happened. She didn't see the events actually leading up to the collision, but the consequences were painfully obvious. A three-man work party from Engineering, towing a counter-grav pallet of crated electronic components, had collided head-on with a missile tech using a push-pull to maneuver five linked missile main drive units down the same passage. It was a near-miracle no one had suffered serious physical injury, but there'd obviously been a fair number of bruises, and it was clear that the participants' emotions were even more bruised than their hides.

"—and get your goddamn, worthless pile of frigging junk out of my f***ing way!" the missile tech snarled.

"F*** you and the horse you rode in on!" the senior rating from the Engineering party snapped back. "Nobody ever tell you forward traffic to starboard, sternward traffic to port? Or are you just naturally stupid? You were all over the goddamn place with that piece of s**t! It's a damn miracle you didn't kill one of us!"

She gave the linked drive units a furious kick to emphasize her point. Unfortunately, she failed to allow for the low grav conditions, and the result was more prat fall than intimidating. She sent herself flailing through the air towards the center of the passage, where she landed flat on her posterior on the decksole, without even budging the drive units, none of which did a thing for her temper. It did, however, have the effect of infuriating the missile tech even further, and he unbuckled from his push-pull and shoved himself off the saddle with obviously homicidal intent. One of the male Engineering ratings moved to intercept him, and things were headed rapidly downhill when Honor reached out for one of the bulkhead handrails and brought herself to a semi-floating stop.

"Belay that!"

Her soprano was very little louder than normal, yet it cracked like a whip, and the disputants' heads snapped around in sheer surprise. Their surprise only grew when they saw the fuzz-haired midshipwoman who had produced the order.

"I don't know who did what to whom," she told them crisply while they gawked at her in astonishment, "and I don't really care. What matters is getting this mess sorted out and getting you people to wherever it is you're supposed to be." She glared at them for a moment, and then jabbed a finger at the senior Engineering rating. "You," she told the woman. "Chase down those loose crates, get them back on the pallet, and this time get them properly secured! You and you—" she jabbed an index finger at the other two members of the work party "—get over there and give her a hand. And you," she wheeled on the missile tech who had just begun to gloat at his rivals' stunned expressions, "get that push-pull back under control, tighten the grav-collars on those missile drives before they fall right out of them, and see to it that you stay in the right heavy tow lane the rest of the way to wherever you're going!"

"Uh, yes, Ma'am!" The missile tech recognized command voice when he heard it, even if it did come from a midshipwoman who looked like someone's preteen kid sister, and he knew better than to irritate the person who had produced it. He actually braced to attention before he scurried back over to the bundle of drive units and began adjusting the offending counter-grav collars, and the Engineering working party, which had already come to the same conclusion, spread out, quickly corralling their scattered crates and stacking them oh-so-neatly on their pallet. Honor stood waiting, one toe tapping gently on the decksole while Nimitz watched with interest from her shoulder and the errant ratings—the youngest of them at least six standard years older than she—gave an excellent imitation of small children under the eye of an irritated governess.

It took a remarkably short time for the confusion to be reduced to order, and all four ratings turned carefully expressionless faces back to Honor.

"That's better," she told them in more approving tones. "Now I suggest that all of you get back to doing what you're supposed to be doing just a little more carefully than you were."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," they chorused, and she nodded. They moved off—far more sedately than before, she suspected—and she resumed her own interrupted trip.

That went fairly well, she told herself, and continued her progress along Axial One, unaware of the grinning senior chief who had arrived behind her just in time to witness the entire episode.

cthia wrote:I think human nature requires a certain 'familiarity' when communicating. *From the beginning of time people enjoyed the knowledge of gender when communicating. Enter BBS's of the 70's, internet chatting, forums, et cetera, and that human element sometimes is removed. For some it yields unfamiliarity of a different, uncomfortable sort. Personally, I'd like to know the gender of who I am talking. Not because I feel either male/female has more intelligent (or any other adjective) input, rather because of the gentlemanly way I was raised. Females are owed a bit more ... respect.

*An aside:
As part Native American, many Native Americans, who continually practice the art of smoke signals, can sometimes tell if the sender is female, via the mechanics involved.

cthia wrote:

cthia wrote:

Yes, of course phillies. And believe me, I am thankful that you knew I was male. I was just being honest, on behalf of those in the early days of my postings, who didn't have that benefit.

I think human nature requires a certain 'familiarity' when communicating. *From the beginning of time people enjoyed the knowledge of gender when communicating. Enter BBS's of the 70's, internet chatting, forums, et cetera, and that human element sometimes is removed. For some it yields unfamiliarity of a different, uncomfortable sort. Personally, I'd like to know the gender of who I am talking. Not because I feel either male/female has more intelligent (or any other adjective) input, rather because of the gentlemanly way I was raised. Females are owed a bit more ... respect.

*An aside:
As part Native American, many Native Americans, who continually practice the art of smoke signals, can sometimes tell if the sender is female, via the mechanics involved.

Yow wrote:
Mechanics? I'm almost afraid to ask... I'll bite. So what are the differences in the messengers delivery via smoke signals? (Crosses fingers hoping it has nothing to do with the Ping pong show I saw in Thailand.)

I appreciate your interest Yow. However, I am going to have to respectfully decline, for the most part. The specifics of smoke signals are passionate secrets held within Native American communities and within each tribe, shared only traditionally within families and during private *pow wows. It is a source of pride how long and well these secrets have been held, for obvious reasons. A perusal of various sites may point you in the right direction, but specifics are missing, and much of what is there is inaccurate.

Having said that, it has to do with the various methods tribes use in producing the smoke (mechanics) and the density, color and frequency. A wet blanket isn't always available in an emergency. Even with the wet blanket there are varying techniques. My niece is a past winner at the games in her emergency technique, twice going.

Aside:
Even the object of 'pow wow' has been gutted. It is actually 'pauau' or 'pau-wau.'

His hands fisted in his lap, and then he did rise. He paced up and down the small briefing room like a caged animal, and Honor felt his anguish and self-condemnation. She could almost see the fog of his misery, wrapped around him like poison, but she sat on her sudden desire to break his monologue, to stop him or defend him from himself. She couldn't. He needed to say it—and she needed for him to say it, if there was any hope the barriers between them would truly come down.

"I hated you." His voice was muffled, bouncing back from the bulkhead as he looked away from her. "I told myself I didn't, but I did. And it didn't get better. It got worse every day. It got worse every time I saw you do something right and realized I'd wanted you to do it wrong so I could justify the way I felt.

"And then there were the maneuvers." He wheeled to face her once more, his expression twisted. "Damn it, I knew they'd handed you an impossible job after the way they gutted our armament! I knew it was impossible—and instead of digging in and helping you do it anyway, I let you carry the whole load because deep down inside I wanted you to fail. Captain, I'm a tac officer by training. Every single time something went wrong, every time another one of those goddamned Aggressor crews 'destroyed' us, something inside me kept saying I could have done better. I knew I couldn't have, but that didn't matter. It was what I felt. I tried to do my duty anyway, but I couldn't. Not the way I should have."

He came closer to the table, leaning forward to brace himself on its top and bend towards her across it.

"And then this." He raised one hand to gesture at the bulkheads. "Basilisk Station." He returned his hand to the table beside its companion and stared down at them both. "I told myself it was your fault, that you were the one who'd gotten us sent here, and that was another lie. But every time I told myself one lie, I had to tell another to justify the ones that came before it. So it was your fault, not mine, and all that nonsense about doing our duty, about meeting our responsibilities whether anyone else had ever bothered to meet theirs or not—that was crap, Captain. That was bright-eyed, runny-nosed, idealistic, Academy crap, not the real world."

He looked up at her again.

"But it wasn't, was it, Ma'am?" he said softly. "Not to you. I don't know why Young dumped this on you. It doesn't matter why he did. What matters is that you didn't cry and moan. You didn't slack off. You just dug in and—" He shook his head and straightened.

"You kicked us in the ass, Captain. You kicked us over and over again, until we got up off our self-pitying backsides and started acting like Queen's officers again. And I knew what you were doing, and why you were doing it, the whole time, and I hated it. Hated it. Because every time you did something right, it was one more proof that you deserved the job I wanted."

He dropped into a chair, facing her across the table, and raised one hand almost pleadingly.

"Captain, you were right, and I was wrong. What's happening in this system right now proves you were, and if you want me off your ship, I wouldn't blame you at all."

He fell silent at last, hunched in despair, and Honor leaned forward in her chair.

"I don't want you off my ship, Commander," she said softly. His head jerked back up, and she waved a hand in the air between them.

"You're right. You did drop it all on me. I wanted you to meet me halfway—needed you to—and you wouldn't. Everything in the galaxy was coming together and falling on me at the same time, and you just sat there, refusing to open up, and left everything up to me. Oh, yes, Commander. There were days when I would gladly have sent you packing, with an efficiency report that would've put you ground-side forever, if I hadn't been so shorthanded, if I'd had enough experienced officers aboard to replace you with someone I could rely on. But—"

She paused, letting silence linger behind the word, then gave a tiny nod.

"But, Mr. McKeon, I would have been wrong to do that." He blinked in astonishment, and she smiled faintly. "Oh, there were times I wanted to kick you, or strangle you, or bite your head off in front of the entire wardroom, but then I realized you were trying. I didn't know what the problem was, and you weren't doing things my way, but you were trying. I watched you work with Rafe on that probe reprogramming, and you handled him perfectly. I saw you taking time with Panowski, the way you were never too busy to handle anything that came up—as long as I wasn't involved. And I realized something, Mr. McKeon. Whatever else you may be, you're no hack. And you're not a plodder, either."

She leaned back, her eyes level.

"You screwed up. You did let me down, and the ship, and it could have been a disaster for all of us. But everyone screws up sometimes, Mr. McKeon. It's not the end of the world."

McKeon stared at her for a long, still moment, then exhaled a wracking breath and shook his head.

I can't—" He paused and cleared his throat. "One of the things I was always afraid of was that if I told you, if you knew how I felt, you'd react exactly like this," he said huskily. "You wouldn't chew my ass out, wouldn't spit in my face. And that . . . Well, it scared me. It would have been the final proof that you really did deserve the job—and that I didn't. Do you understand what I mean, Ma'am?"

Honor nodded, and he nodded back. "Stupid, wasn't it? I don't think a kid like Cardones or Tremaine is a worthless fuck-up just because he makes a mistake, admits a problem. But I couldn't admit that I had one. Not to you."

"Not stupid, Mr. McKeon. Just very, very human."

"Maybe," McKeon whispered, and stared down at his hands again. Honor let the silence linger for a few heartbeats, then cleared her own throat.

"But whatever the past was like, it's past," she said more briskly.

"Isn't it, Mr. McKeon?"

"Yes, Ma'am." The executive officer straightened in his chair and nodded with matching briskness. "Yes, Ma'am, it is."

"Good." Honor stood and smiled at him across the table. "Because since it is, Mr. Exec, be warned! The next time I think you're slacking off, I'm going to kick your ass so hard you'll make it all the way to Basilisk Control on pure momentum! Is that clear, Mr. McKeon?"

"Yes, Ma'am." He rose from his own chair with a grin. It looked unnatural and out of place on the face which had been a mask for so long, but it also looked completely right, somehow.

"Good," Honor repeated more softly. She hesitated for just a moment, and then extended her hand across the table. "In that case, Commander McKeon, welcome aboard. It's good to see you back."

"Thank you." He took her hand and clasped it firmly. "It's good to be back ... Skipper."

cthia wrote:The specifics of smoke signals are passionate secrets held within Native American communities and within each tribe, shared only traditionally within families and during private *pow wows. It is a source of pride how long and well these secrets have been held, for obvious reasons. A perusal of various sites may point you in the right direction, but specifics are missing, and much of what is there is inaccurate.

Having said that, it has to do with the various methods tribes use in producing the smoke (mechanics) and the density, color and frequency. A wet blanket isn't always available in an emergency. Even with the wet blanket there are varying techniques. My niece is a past winner at the games in her emergency technique, twice going.

Aside:
Even the object of 'pow wow' has been gutted. It is actually 'pauau' or 'pau-wau.'

AoV

"They don't seem very interested in letting us set up any ambushes, do they, Aristides?" Vice Admiral of the Red Frederick Malone's smile was wintry on Trikoupis' com screen.
"No, Sir, they don't," Trikoupis agreed.
Whoever was in command over there was obviously anxious about something. Trikoupis doubted it was Izzie and Esterhaus, since there was no way for the Peeps to know they were even here, much less what they were capable of, but if it wasn't BatDiv 62, he didn't know what else it could be, either.
"I suppose they might be afraid we'd try to pull off the same sort of thing Admiral Harrington tried at Cerberus," he suggested, and Malone snorted.
"I'll be delighted to take your money if you want to put down a bet on that! Or are you suggesting their intelligence people have some reason to question my sanity?"

Before he went out, Hauptman hit every button he could reach back home in Landing. He didn't make much headway with the Duke, but he certainly bent Janacek's ear. And he called in his markers with Countess New Kiev and Sheridan Wallace's 'New Men,' too. I think we've underestimated the contributions he's been making to certain parties' coffers, including the New Men, but he definitely has his hooks even deeper into the Liberals than we'd thought. New Kiev can't give a centimeter—officially—without breaking with the Government and losing her post as Minister for Medusan Affairs. She's not about to do that, but it's pretty obvious she and Wallace were primed to come down on the Navy's entire handling of Basilisk Station. If Harrington had crumbled at this point, they would've been able to claim the Navy, in her person, had bungled and made the Kingdom a galactic laughing stock by first creating interstellar incidents with our neighbors and then proving its irresolution by backing away from its duties under pressure."