Thandi vs. Honor

Rob the Fiend wrote:Good thing they are both female.
Imagine the level of mayhem they could make with the help of some testosterone.

I like my Y chromosome, but it is capable of some REALLY iffy decision making.
And self control/anger issues.

Mitchell, Esq. wrote:Honor to Thandi after the match, "You are really tough, but I have something you do not."

Thandi, "What's that?"

Honor, "Pod laying Superdreadnoughts..."

Thandi, "Yeah, but I have Victor, and that's basically the same thing..."

Honor, "Point...Point...I have a treecat."

Thandi, "Victor...and celery."

Honor, "Shut up and drink your beer..."

Zakharra wrote:

Rob the Fiend wrote:Good thing they are both female.
Imagine the level of mayhem they could make with the help of some testosterone.

I like my Y chromosome, but it is capable of some REALLY iffy decision making.
And self control/anger issues.

It doesn't matter what your chromosomes are, male or female, anyone that is trained and experienced can be dangerous. In this case, Thandi was put in the best role her genetics could get her; ground/melee combat. With that and the years of experience she has in that type of fighting, she has the edge over Honor. Now if Honor had chosen to be in the RMM (Royal Manticore Marines)... then she might have the edge with a decade or more of direct experience in the combat style Thandi is trained in.

SharkHunter wrote:

Rob the Fiend wrote:Didn't Honor have that sparring bot set to a dangerous level?

Wey-lllll...we're kinda thinking...there's BOT level dangerous, and then there's "Black Victor looks up in astonishment"-level mayhem dangerous".

Not sure how far you can turn up the dial on the 'droid. Not sure I WANT to know how far you can turn up the dial on former Lt. Palane.

War of Honor Chapter Eleven wrote:
Hamish Alexander followed James MacGuiness through the door to the private gymnasium under Honor's Jason Bay mansion and stopped.

Honor was on the mat at the center of the large, brightly lit and well appointed gym. She wore a traditional white gi, with the black belt which now bore eight braided rank knots. That didn't surprise him, because he'd known she'd gained the eighth one just over a T-year ago. Coup de vitesse wasn't his sport—he'd put his time into soccer and fencing—but he knew that there remained only a single formally recognized grade for her to attain. Given her tenacity where things which mattered to her were concerned, that ninth knot was as good as on her belt; it was only a question of when.

But somehow he didn't think that was what she had on her mind this afternoon. She wasn't running through her practice katas, nor was she working out against a human partner. No, she was going all out in a full-contact bout against the humanoid training remote she'd had specially built, and [/b]it was pushing her hard[/b].

Just how hard became evident as the remote executed a devastating attack. White Haven knew too little about coup de vitesse to understand what he'd seen. It was like fencing, where the untrained eye could see the action but never hope to understand its nuances and complexity. All he knew was that he'd seen the remote's hands move with blurring speed. One of those hands locked onto Honor's right arm and carried it high, while the other shot out in a fist-thrust that slammed into her belly, and then it turned, twisting her captive arm, throwing hips and shoulders into her torso, and she went flying through the air to slam down on the mats with bone-bruising force.

White Haven's surprise turned into alarm as the remote charged after her with—literally—inhuman speed. But she hit the mat rolling, came up on her knees in one, fluid motion, and her own hands were waiting by the time the remote reached her. She reached up, seized the front of its gi, and rolled backwards, as if to pull it down atop herself. But even as she rolled and her shoulders touched the mat, her knees came up into the remote's belly. They lifted powerfully, her legs straightened, and suddenly it was the remote which went hurtling through the air.

It hit the mat with an earthquake shock, and promptly started to come upright, but Honor had continued her own motion through a backwards somersault. Before the remote could regain its balance and come to its feet, she was upon it from behind. Her right arm snaked forward, locking itself around the remote's neck, squeezing its throat in the crook of her elbow, and then the heel of her other hand smashed into the back of its head like a sledgehammer.

White Haven winced in sympathetic anguish. For all its savage power, that ferocious, left-handed blow was delivered with lethal precision, and the fact that it was her left hand made its precision even more remarkable, because that hand was no longer human. He suspected that no one, outside her therapists (and probably Andrew LaFollet), would ever know how hard she'd had to work to master the replacement for the arm she'd lost on Cerberus. But he knew few people ever learned how to use a powered prosthesis as naturally as the organic limb it had replaced or to regain the true full range of motion, and the process took many years for those who did manage it.

Honor had done it in little more than three . . . and done it well enough to not merely regain her old form at coup de vitesse, but to actually attain the next rank of mastery.

Of course, the prosthesis did provide a few unusual advantages. For one thing, it was several times more powerful than natural flesh and bone. There were limits to what she could do with that strength, because her shoulder had been undamaged when she lost her arm, and the natural limitations of that joint dictated how much stress she could exert. But the fact that "her" left arm was far stronger than any arm had any business being was dramatically—one might almost have said gruesomely—evident when the back of the training remote's "skull" deformed under the force of her blow and the entire head flopped forward in a disturbingly realistic representation of a snapped neck.

The remote collapsed onto its front, and Honor slumped across it, her breathing harsh and ragged in the suddenly silent gym. No one moved, and White Haven glanced across to where Andrew LaFollet and Simon Mattingly had stood watching their Steadholder.

Their expressions were not reassuring. Remotes like Honor's were rare. That was primarily due to their expense, but it also reflected the fact that they could be dangerous. In fact, they could be deadly. Like Honor's prosthetic arm, their maximum strength was far greater than that of any human, even a genetically-modified heavy-worlder like Honor Harrington, and their reflexes were much faster. Any training remote came equipped with governors and software inhibitors intended to protect the user, but it was ultimately the responsibility of the person training against one of them to determine its actual settings. More than one human being had been seriously injured, or even killed, as a consequence. No remote had ever "gone berserk," but they performed precisely as their owners instructed them to, and sometimes those owners made mistakes when they specified performance levels.

It was obvious from LaFollet's worried expression that the Grayson thought Honor was approaching precisely that mistake. Given the fact that, unlike White Haven, LaFollet was also a practitioner of coup de vitesse—that he regularly sparred with Honor, in fact—the armsman was certainly in a position to judge, and the earl swallowed a bitter mental curse as he watched Honor push herself pantingly back up on her knees, and then stand.

Kizarvexis wrote:Nah, the bot is just as dangerous as Thandi. Quite possibly, more dangerous. (italics are the authors, but the bolding is mine) So, pish posh on the statements that Honor has never fought someone as tough as she is.

War of Honor Chapter Eleven wrote:...
Of course, the prosthesis did provide a few unusual advantages. For one thing, it was several times more powerful than natural flesh and bone.
...
(armsmen) Their expressions were not reassuring. Remotes like Honor's were rare. That was primarily due to their expense, but it also reflected the fact that they could be dangerous. In fact, they could be deadly. Like Honor's prosthetic arm, their maximum strength was far greater than that of any human, even a genetically-modified heavy-worlder like Honor Harrington, and their reflexes were much faster. Any training remote came equipped with governors and software inhibitors intended to protect the user, but it was ultimately the responsibility of the person training against one of them to determine its actual settings. More than one human being had been seriously injured, or even killed, as a consequence. No remote had ever "gone berserk," but they performed precisely as their owners instructed them to, and sometimes those owners made mistakes when they specified performance levels.

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping, just for brevity, excellent post-

War of Honor Chapter Eleven wrote:...
Of course, the prosthesis did provide a few unusual advantages. For one thing, it was several times more powerful than natural flesh and bone.
...
(armsmen) Their expressions were not reassuring. Remotes like Honor's were rare. That was primarily due to their expense, but it also reflected the fact that they could be dangerous. In fact, they could be deadly. Like Honor's prosthetic arm, their maximum strength was far greater than that of any human, even a genetically-modified heavy-worlder like Honor Harrington, and their reflexes were much faster. Any training remote came equipped with governors and software inhibitors intended to protect the user, but it was ultimately the responsibility of the person training against one of them to determine its actual settings. More than one human being had been seriously injured, or even killed, as a consequence. No remote had ever "gone berserk," but they performed precisely as their owners instructed them to, and sometimes those owners made mistakes when they specified performance levels.

That is exactly the question but I still love the reference. You're right that it shows that Honor is working out against someone in Thandi's speed and strength range, and in sparring Thandi's not going to go into "berserk mode". In that situation in which case I'd argue she'd might stil be deadlier than Honor's 'bot opponent because she's now amped up to "Nbdele plus pure unpredicactably useful fury" speed and strength. That said, in either Honor or Palane's full kill mode, it's not very likely that anyone is a one on one match for either of them due to each's ability with pulser weaponry. Good thing they're not going to end up in that mode against each other, eh?

Now there's an interesting thought: Honor's 'Bot with a "laser tag" designator/pulser design, Honor's implanted pulser with no dart's and it's own designator. Use some form of SD class supercomputing to motion capture the match so that the rest of us mere mortals can actually see what in the heck is going on other than "movement blur".

cthia wrote:Continuing to read all of the posts, one thing is evident.

The bodies that would be in the most danger are the poor souls standing too close to the match.

SharkHunter wrote:

cthia wrote:Continuing to read all of the posts, one thing is evident.

The bodies that would be in the most danger are the poor souls standing too close to the match.

Of course, we could let Thandi play with Honor's 'bot just to see how they stack up.

Of course that could also result in "Ah girl, you broke my 'bot! Let's skip sparring and go have an Old Tilman while they fix the darn thing. [it was expensive, too! ]"