Honorverse favorite passages

"Which dispatch boat has the current duty, Loretta?" Rear Admiral Khumalo asked.

"The Destiny, I believe, Sir. Lieutenant Quayle. May I ask why you wanted to know?"

"Because we're about to send him off to Montana," Khumalo said. He and Captain Shoupe exchanged eloquent glances, and then the rear admiral shrugged. "There's no one to blame for it except Nordbrandt. And it's hardly the first time some poor Navy ship's been harried back and forth between pillar and post. Can't even blame the political leadership this time."

"No, Sir." Shoupe sat for a moment, making mental calculations, then cocked her head at her boss. "Do you think Terekhov and Van Dort are going to get much done in the next eleven days, Sir?"

"I gave up believing in miracles about the same time I gave up believing in the tooth fairy, Loretta," Khumalo rumbled like an irritated boar. Then he snorted and shook his head. "I suppose it's possible they might make a little progress, and at the moment, I'm prepared to settle for whatever we can get. But I don't see any way they're going to manage anything significant in that much time. And if they are making progress, we're likely to undo most of it by snatching them out of the star system with absolutely no warning."

"I imagine you're right, Sir," Shoupe sighed. "I assume Baroness Medusa will send dispatches and directions along with the recall?"

"You assume correctly." Khumalo managed a tart smile. "In this case, to a large extent, ours truly isn't to wonder why. Go ahead and draft a dispatch to Terekhov directing him to transport Mr. Van Dort to Split in the most expeditious manner and to render such assistance to Mr. Van Dort in his efforts there as may be directed in the Provisional Governor's dispatches."

"Yes, Sir," she said. "I'll get right on it."

GofyTomcat1 wrote:quote]

*files away "massive amounts of Khumalo and/or Matsuko posts" under "ways to punish hanuman"*

roseandheather wrote:
I think, if I ever actually met her in person, that my instinctive reaction to Dame Estelle Matsuko would be the deepest curtsey of my life and the complete loss of any ability to put words together.

Followed by a rapid retreat to a private area and an incredibly loud squealing noise.

Isn't she just glorious??

hanuman wrote:
:jawdrop: GOFY!!! What have I ever done to you...?

roseandheather wrote:

hanuman wrote:
:jawdrop: GOFY!!! What have I ever done to you...?

I write him Disney songs. 'nuff said.

"I should have realized she looked young for her age. I should've trusted her enough to tell her I'd received prolong. But I'd kept quiet about it for so long it was a reflex to keep on saying nothing. So I did keep quiet. I was here long enough for both of us to realize how deeply we were attracted to one another. And I came back, for a long visit, three months later. I was here almost five T-months that time, and when I left, we were married."

He closed his eyes, his face wrung with pain.

"That was when I told her I was a prolong recipient and that, as a surprise honeymoon gift, I'd arranged a trip to Beowulf itself for her to receive the same therapies. And that was when I found out she was too old. That she was her father's daughter by his first wife, and that she was over twenty years older than Trevor."

He was silent again for what seemed like minutes. Then he inhaled deeply and opened his eyes.

"There are myths from Old Earth, from almost every culture and civilization there ever was, of immortal beings-elves, gods and goddesses, nymphs, demigods-who fall in love with mortals. They all end badly, one way or another. Mine was no exception. She forgave me for not telling her, of course. That made it almost worse. I'm not saying we didn't love each other very much, and that we didn't take a tremendous joy in one another, but the entire time, we knew I was going to lose her. I think she felt worst about the thought that she'd be 'deserting' me. Leaving me behind. We had two daughters, Phillipia and Mechelina. They'd received prolong at the earliest possible age, of course, and I think it made Suzanne feel better when she reflected on the fact that we'd have each other when she was gone.

"I also think the fact she hadn't received prolong made her more aware of her mortality, gave her the sense that she had less time in which to do all the things she wanted to do. When I came up with the idea for the Trade Union, she was one of my most enthusiastic backers. And she threw herself into the project the same way she did everything, with every gram of her energy, every scrap of ability.

"Her brother, Trevor, was old enough by then that he'd already begun his career in the Marshals Service, and he didn't think much of the idea. He never really understood, I think, that Suzanne and I were trying to build some sort of bastion here in the Cluster that might be able to resist Frontier Security. He'd never forgiven me, anyway, for marrying his sister without warning her I was going to outlive her by a century or two, and now I'd seduced her into helping me loot the economies of other planets, other star systems. He and his best friend, Stephen Westman-young, intemperate hotheads, the pair of them, even for Montanans-were both convinced I was a ruthless, self-centered bastard who didn't give much of a rat's ass-to use Westman's charming turn of phrase-for anyone else as long as I got what I wanted. Suzanne was… irritated with them for their attitude, and she did have a temper. Words were exchanged, and feelings were badly hurt on both sides. But Suzanne and I were certain that, eventually, they'd come to understand what we were doing, and why."

He picked up the stylus again, turning it in his fingers.

"By that time, Suzanne and I were both in our fifties, and she was beginning to look noticeably older than I did. Still an amazingly attractive woman, and not just in my opinion, but definitely the older of the two. It hurt her, I think. No, I know it did, but she found it useful, too. She was one of the RTU's best negotiators. She could make people who loathed and distrusted the entire concept decide it was a good idea, and she used that attractive-but-mature, decisive personality and appearance like some sort of lethal weapon. I, on the other hand, looked too young, too wet behind the ears, to make some people happy, so I often let her handle the negotiations. Sometimes we double-teamed the other side, with her hitting them high and me hitting them low, and we usually traveled together. She was my wife, my friend, my lover, my partner-she and the girls were everything in the universe to me, and just like my mother and father, we spent most of our time living aboard one or another of the Van Dort Line ships.

"I'd originally been scheduled to go open a round of negotiations with New Tuscany, but she decided to go, instead. She said she could handle the assignment at least as well as I could've, and by going, she could free me up to stay home and deal with some other problems which had arisen. So I took the shuttle up with her and the girls, kissed them, watched them board the Anneloes and set out for New Tuscany.

"I never saw any of them again."

Helen's jaw tightened-in pain, not really in surprise.

"We never found out what happened," Van Dort said softly. "The ship simply… vanished. It could've been almost anything. The most logical explanation was pirates, although she was armed, and there hadn't been much pirate activity in the Cluster for two or three years. But we never found out, never knew. They were just… gone.

"I didn't take it well. I'd spent so long worrying about her shorter life expectancy, thinking about how I was going to lose her, about how I should have told her before I ever married her, of how incredibly lucky I'd been that she loved me anyway. But it never occurred to me in my worst nightmares that the last thing I'd ever see of her was her and our daughters smiling, waving goodbye. That they'd just be… erased out of my life, like some deleted computer file."

She's big—a seven-point-six m-ton Astra-class," he said. "Captain Johan Coglin, People's Merchant Service, commanding. According to our files, she suffered an engineering casualty—or, more precisely, she's afraid she will if she moves on. Coglin reported his engineers spotted a fluctuation in his Warshawski tuners when he left hyper and declared an emergency. She's waiting for replacement tuners from home."

"She's what?" Santos twitched upright in her chair and frowned.
"A problem, Commander?" Honor asked.
"Well, it just seems awfully odd, Skipper. Of course, I don't know a lot about Havenite maintenance patterns, and a Warshawski flutter isn't anything to monkey around with. If she's really got one, Captain Coglin was probably right to declare an emergency. The only thing is that a fluctuation isn't something that usually creeps up on you. The tuners take more strain than any other sail component, so unless you're terminally dumb, you watch for the tiniest frequency kicks like a hawk. By the time you start showing actual flutter, you're normally well past the point at which they should've been pulled for routine refit, and the Haven government owns all Haven-flagged freighters. They're self-insured, too, so if they take a loss, they can't recover from anyone else on it. It doesn't sound to me like they'd be cutting maintenance corners the way some private owners do."

"Another thing." McKeon's eyes were very bright. "A flutter is something you're more likely to notice going into hyper than coming out. The power bleed when you transit downward tends to hide it."

"But what good would it do them to cook up a reason to keep a freighter in orbit?" Lieutenant Panowski asked a bit plaintively. Honor looked at him, and he squirmed a little. "I mean, they've already got a courier boat in permanent orbit, Ma'am. What would a freighter do for them that a courier boat wouldn't?"

"I don't know about that," Santos said, "but I just thought of something else odd about Sirius's story. They've got tuner flutter, right? Well, why sit here and wait for spares from home? They've already been here for three months, but unless they're way up into critical failure levels, they could pop through the terminus to Manticore. That's a short hop, with minimal tuner stress and demand, and one of the big yards there could put in a whole new sail, much less tuners, in less than two months. But even if they were afraid to transit the Junction, why not order the replacements from Manticore? It'd be a hell of a lot cheaper and faster than shipping them out from home, and we've got scads of privately-owned repair ships. If they send new tuners from Haven, they're either going to have to send their own repair ship to install them or else charter one of ours, anyway, and the time they're spending in orbit has to be costing them a lot more in lost profit than paying us for the parts would." She shook her head. "No. They've got to be up to something, Skipper. There's just no logical economic or engineering reason for the way they're going about this."

“She was a big woman, with a hard, determined face and what one thankfully anonymous subordinate had once described as the disposition of a grizzly bear with hemorrhoids trying to pass pinecones. In fact, Commander Hago Shavarshyan thought, that had been a gross libel against grizzly bears”

TSotS
Two passages I like. Both about the Miss Owens aka Abigail Hearns and Captain Oversteegan and the sense of tradition and history they represent mixed with the unspoken potential for adventure and breaking new ground for more adventures and building new history.

...she wanted to be a naval officer. It was all she'd ever wanted, from the night she'd stood on a balcony of Owens House, staring at a night sky, and watched pinpricks of nuclear fire flash among the stars while a single, foreign warship commanded by a woman fought desperately against another ship twice its size in defense of her planet. She'd known what she wanted, fought for it with unyielding determination, and finally won not simply her father's grudging permission but his active support.



“Ah, Mr. Grigovakis!" he said. "Forgive me, I'd forgotten I asked you t' stay." He smiled and gestured for Grigovakis to have a seat at the table.
The midshipman sank into the indicated chair with a wary expression. It was the first time, outside one of the formal dinners in the captain's dining cabin, that Oversteegen had invited him to sit in his presence.
"You wanted to speak to me, Sir?" he said after a moment.”
“Yes, I did, actually," Oversteegen agreed and tipped back in his own chair. He gazed at Grigovakis long enough for the midshipman to fidget uneasily, then cocked his head to one side and arched an eyebrow.
"It's come t' my attention, Mr. Grigovakis, that you don't appear t' have exactly what one might call a sense of rapport with Ms. Hearns," he said. "Would you care t' comment on just why that is?”
“I—" Grigovakis paused and cleared his throat, then gave the captain a small, troubled smiled. "I really don't know why, Sir," he said earnestly. "It's certainly not anything she's ever done to me. We just don't click somehow. Of course, she's the only Grayson I really know well enough to consider myself at all familiar with. That may be part of it, though I know it shouldn't be. To be honest, I'm a bit embarrassed. I shouldn't needle her the way I do, and I know it. But sometimes it just gets away from me.”
“I see." Oversteegen frowned thoughtfully. "I notice that you referred t' the fact that Ms. Hearns is a Grayson. Does that mean you're prejudiced against Graysons, Mr. Grigovakis?"
"Oh, no, Sir! It's just that sometimes I find them a bit . . . overly focused. I started to say 'parochial,' but that isn't really the right word. They just seem . . . different, somehow. Like they're marching to a different drum, I suppose."
"I suppose that's fair enough," Oversteegen mused. "Grayson is quite different from the Star Kingdom, after all. I would submit t' you, however, Mr. Grigovakis, that it behooves you t' overcome whatever personal . . . discomfort you may feel around Graysons in general, and particularly around Ms. Hearns.”
“Yes, Sir. I understand, Sir." Grigovakis said earnestly, and Oversteegen regarded him silently for a moment or two. Then he smiled, and it was not an extraordinarily pleasant expression.
"Be sure that you do, Mr. Grigovakis," he said conversationally. "I realize some members of the Service—includin' some of its more senior ones—seem t' feel that somehow Graysons aren't quite up t' Manticoran standards. I suggest you disabuse yourself of that notion, if you should happen t' share it. Not only are Graysons up t' our standards, but in many ways, particularly now, we aren't up t' theirs.”
“Grigovakis paled slightly. He opened his mouth, but Oversteegen wasn't finished yet.
"As a midshipman, you may have failed t' note that the Queen's Navy is currently in the process of buildin' down, Mr. Grigovakis. In my considered opinion, that is . . . not a wise policy. But however wise or unwise it may be, the Grayson Navy, on the other hand, is doin' exactly the opposite. And if you make the mistake of assumin' that simply because Grayson is for all intents and purposes a theocracy it must therefore be backward, ignorant, and inferior, you will be in for an extremely sad and rude awakenin'.”
“In addition t' that, you are a member of my ship's company, and it is not my practice t' tolerate harassment of any member of my crew by another. Ms. Hearns has not complained t' me, or t' Commander Abbott. That does not mean we are unaware of the situation, however. Nor does it mean I am unaware that you have a tendency t' speak t' your enlisted personnel with a . . . vigor not yet justified by the level of your experience. I expect both of these practices on your part t' cease. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Sir!" Grigovakis said quickly, fighting a temptation to wipe sweat from his forehead.
"It had better be, Mr. Grigovakis," Oversteegen told him in that same, conversational tone. "And while I'm on the subject, perhaps it wouldn't hurt t' point out another reality t' you. I am familiar with your family. In fact, your Uncle Connall and I served together some years ago, and I consider him a friend. I am aware that your family is quite wealthy, even by Manticoran standards, and can trace its earliest Manticoran ancestors back t' shortly after the Plague Years.”
“As such, you rightly enjoy a certain standin' and prominence among the better families of the Star Kingdom. However, I think it would be wise of you t' reflect upon the fact that Ms. Hearns can trace her ancestry in unbroken succession through almost a thousand T-years of history t' the first Steadholder Owens. And that despite the fact that she bears no noble title—beyond, of course, that of 'Miss Owens,' which I've observed she never uses—her birth takes precedence over that of anyone below ducal rank in the Star Kingdom."
Grigovakis swallowed hard, and Oversteegen gave him another wintry smile.”
“I'll leave you with one last thought about Ms. Hearns, Mr. Grigovakis," he said. "Your family, as I said, is noted for its wealth. That wealth, however, pales t' insignificance beside the Owens family fortune. We are accustomed t' thinkin' of Grayson as a poor planet, and t' some extent, that's no doubt justified, although I believe you might be surprised if you considered the actual figures and how they've changed over the past ten or fifteen T-years. Steadholder Owens, however, is one of only eighty steadholders . . . and Owens Steading was only the eleventh founded. It's been in existence for nine T-centuries, almost twice as long as the entire Star Kingdom. Steadholder Owens is wealthy, powerful, and unaccustomed t' acceptin' the discourteous treatment of members of his family. Especially its female members. I would be most surprised if Ms. Hearns would ever appeal t' him for assistance in such a minor matter, and I strongly suspect that she would be most upset if she ever discovered that her father had chosen t' take a hand in her affairs. Neither of which, I imagine, would dissuade him in the least. Aristocrats, you know, look after their own.”
“Grigovakis seemed to wilt in his seat, and Oversteegen allowed his own chair to come fully upright once more.
"I commend t' your consideration the example of the treecat, Mr. Grigovakis," he said. "At first glance, treecats are simply fuzzy, adorable woodland creatures. But they, too, look after their own, and no hexapuma in his right mind ventures into their range. I trust the applicable implications will not be lost upon you."
He held the midshipman's eye a moment longer, then nodded towards the open hatch.
"Dismissed, Mr. Grigovakis," he said pleasantly.”