Honorverse favorite passages

cthia wrote:I just love Abby so much.

How much do I love Abby? Well, besides the fact that it began on a rebound from my loss of Carolyn Wolcott, you know how roseandheather feels about Allen Higgins?

Well that's pitiful puppy love next to me and my little fairytale of an Abigail! I'm telling you!

roseandheather wrote:

cthia wrote:I just love Abby so much.

How much do I love Abby? Well, besides the fact that it began on a rebound from my loss of Carolyn Wolcott, you know how roseandheather feels about Allen Higgins?

Well that's pitiful puppy love next to me and my little fairytale of an Abigail! I'm telling you!

Of course it is! The true love of my life is Eloise Pritchart. Everyone knows this.

But yes, I want to be Abigail when I grow up. Except for the part where I actually want to be Elaine Mayhew. I've already got the hair!!

cthia wrote:

roseandheather wrote:
Of course it is! The true love of my life is Eloise Pritchart. Everyone knows this.

But yes, I want to be Abigail when I grow up. Except for the part where I actually want to be Elaine Mayhew. I've already got the hair!!

How could I forget about Elly?

You really shouldn't oughta done that. You know my weakness is long hair. Now I'm panting like a winded little kid running behind the ice-cream truck. I dream of telling my therapist of dreams of lying in a castle tied up with long tresses and short dresses, by some vixen named Rapunzel. The nightmare begins when she tries to let me go, and I wake up tied in sheets. Am I seeing this shrink in my dreams because I'm crazy? Nah, she has long hair too.

I fell head over heels with Abby when she refused to cut her hair. No wonder my favorite cartoon character is Daffy. "Mine! Mine Mine, MINE!"

Bad. Bad Rose. Thorny Rose. Long hair huh?

But Victor Cachat was the armed fist of the Revolution, not a torturer. A champion of the downtrodden, not an assassin lurking in ambush. So he thought of himself, and so he was.

The boy inside the man rebelled, the man demanded the uniform he had thought to wear. Say what they would, think what they would.

Officer of the Revolution. Sneer and be damned.

Victor waded into the mob of Scrags, firing relentlessly, using the modern flechette gun in close quarters like a rampaging Norseman might have used an ax. Again and again and again, just as he had trained for in the years since he marched out of the slums to fight for his own. He made no attempt to take cover, no attempt to evade counterfire. Never realising, even, that the sheer fury of his charge was his greatest protection.

But Victor was no longer thinking of tactics. Like a berserk, he would meet his enemies naked. The Red Terror against the White Terror, standing in the open field of battle. As he had been promised.

He would make it so. Sneer and be damned!

The shots went true and true and true. The boy from the mongrel warrens hammered supermen into pulp; the young man betrayed wreaked war gods terrible vengeance; and the Officer of the Revolution found its truth in his own betrayal.

Sneer and be damned!

He stopped speaking and raised his hand as if in signal. The silence in the Chamber was once more a living thing as the whipsawed steadholders wondered what that signal foretold, and then, unexpectedly, the massive doors opened once more, and Honor Harrington stepped through them.

The click of her heels echoed and reechoed in the stillness as she moved down the stone-floored Chamber's length like a tall, slender flame of white and green. The Harrington Key glittered on her breast below the Star of Grayson, and the Star's scarlet ribbon was stained with darker spots whose origin every man in that chamber guessed. The dark line of a deep cut, already responding to quick heal, seamed her forehead, and her right cheek was brutally bruised and discolored. The fluffy pelt of the treecat on her shoulder was singed and scorched, yet he held his head as high as she held her own, gazing, as she, straight at the Protector. It was as if they and Benjamin were alone in the Chamber, and the pain in her eyes—the sorrow for the deaths of her own people, and always and above all for the gentle and compassionate man who had died for her—was a weight no man there could face. They stared at her, frozen in shame, grief, and fear, and she ignored them all as she walked to the foot of Benjamin IX's throne.

"Your Grace, I come before you for justice." Her soprano voice was a thing of cold steel, the pain in it deeper even than the pain in her eyes. "By my oath to you, I call upon yours to me. As I swore to protect and guard my people, so I now require your aid to that end, for he who has killed and maimed my steaders carries the key of a steadholder, and I may not touch him while he shelters behind its protection."

The entire Chamber held its breath as it recognized the formal appeal to the Protector's Justice, unheard in this Chamber in generations, and then Benjamin spoke.

"By my oath to you, I honor your demand for justice, My Lady. If any man in this Chamber has offended against you or yours, name him, and if you bear proof of his crimes, then steadholder or no, he shall answer for them as the laws of God and Man decree."

William Fitzclarence stared in horror at the woman before the throne, for he knew, now. Even through his own shock at the news of Reverend Hanks' death, he knew. Mayhew would never have allowed it to go this far unless the harlot did have proof, and his promise of justice was a sentence of death.

"Your Grace, I have proof," Honor said, and her anguish at the deaths of Julius Hanks, Adam Gerrick, Jared Sutton, Frederick Sully, Gilbert Troubridge, and ninety-one other men and women fused with a rage as deep and bitter as that of any man in that Chamber as she turned from the throne at last and looked straight at Burdette.

"I name my enemy William Allen Hillman Fitzclarence, Steadholder Burdette," she said in a voice colder than the heart of space. Her treecat hissed, baring his fangs, and Burdette's knees sagged as every eye in the Chamber turned upon him like the closing jaws of a trap. "I accuse him of murder, of treason, of my own attempted assassination, and of conspiring in the murder of children and of Reverend Julius Hanks. I bring before you the witnessed and sealed confession of Edward Julius Martin of Burdette Steading, freely offered under the law of Church and Sword, that William Fitzclarence personally ordered my death; that William Fitzclarence, Edmond Augustus Marchant, his steader, Samuel Marchant Harding, also his steader, Austin Vincent Taylor, also his steader, and twenty-seven other men in his service, contrived the collapse of the Mueller Middle School dome and the deaths of fifty-two men and thirty children; and that as a direct consequence of William Fitzclarence's orders, the Reverend Julius Hanks, First Elder of the Church of Humanity Unchained, died giving his own life that I might live."

She paused, and Burdette's ragged breathing was the only sound in the vast, hushed Chamber. She let the silence linger while a small cruel part of her—one whose vicious strength shocked her—savored what must be running through his mind, and then she raised her right hand and pointed at him.

"Your Grace, by your oath to me and the proofs I have offered, I claim the life of William Allen Hillman Fitzclarence as forfeit for his crimes, for his cruelty, and for his violation of his sacred oaths to you, to this Conclave, to the People of Grayson, and to God Himself."

"My Lady," Benjamin Mayhew said softly, "by my oath to you, you shall have it."

When was the last time you saw him alive?”
Callie nodded her head in the direction of her former gang partner. “Teddy checked in on him about two hours ago.”
“He seemed fine,” Teddy insisted. “We didn’t speak to each other when I brought him breakfast, but he looked at me and didn’t seem sick or anything.” He sounded nervous, as if he were worried that Victor would blame him for the prisoner’s death and . . .
Do . . . something.
Victor found the reaction irritating, but he was used to it. He didn’t quite understand why, but he knew from experience that a lot of people found him frightening. As if he might kill or injure someone for no reason. A notion which he found ridiculous, but . . . there it was.
“Not your fault, Teddy,” he said. “If it’s anyone’s, it’s mine. I was being circumspect in my questioning of him because I was pretty sure he had a built-in suicide program that would be triggered off by anything too overt. Apparently, I wasn’t circumspect enough. Or he just got too excited and triggered it himself.”
“Could you have done anything to prevent it?” asked Callie.
“Not if it was well-designed—which I’m sure it was. The people he worked for are ruthless.”
He spotted the expressions on both Callie and Teddy’s faces and had to fight down a smile. They were looking at him the way people might look at a shark who accused a crocodile of being excessively carnivorous.

By Ruth’s rough count, there were at least twenty thousand people who’d immigrated and taken Torch citizenship since the new star nation was created who’d done so purely out of idealism.

Yet it was the major’s prisoner who interested her. He looked far more composed than he could possibly be, and she felt an unwilling respect for him as he gazed levelly back at her. He’d done an outstanding job—better, she suspected, than she could have done under the circumstances—yet she sensed an odd sort of strain under his self-possessed surface and wondered if it had anything to do with his request for this interview with her.

The commander tucked his cap under his arm and braced to attention.

“Commander Thomas Theisman, Navy of the Faithful, Ma’am,” he said crisply—in an accent that had never come from Masada.

“Of course you are, Commander.” Honor’s irony was impaired by her persistently slurred speech, and she saw his eyes widen as he took in her dead, ravaged face and bandaged left eye. But though she waited expectantly, he refused to rise to the bait of her response, and she shrugged.

“What was it you wished to see me about, Commander?”

“Ma’am, I—"

Theisman glanced at Ramirez, then back at her, his appeal for privacy as eloquent as it was silent. The major stiffened, but Honor regarded the Havenite thoughtfully as he closed his mouth tight and stared back at her.

“That will be all for the moment, Major,” she said at last, and Ramirez bristled for an instant, then clicked to attention and withdrew in a speaking silence. “And now, Commander?” she invited. “Was there something you wanted to tell me about why the People’s Republic attacked Her Majesty’s Navy?”

“Captain Harrington, I’m a registered Masadan citizen,” Theisman replied. “My vessel is—was—the Masadan Naval Ship Principality.”

“Your ship was the destroyer Breslau, built by the Gunther Yard for the People’s Republic of Haven,” Honor said flatly. His eyes widened a fraction, and the mobile corner of her mouth smiled thinly. “My boarding parties found her builder’s plaque, as well as her splendidly official Masadan registry, Commander Theisman.” Her smile vanished. “Shall we stop playing games now?”

He was silent for a moment, then replied in a voice as flat as hers.

“My ship was purchased by the Masadan Navy, Captain Harrington. My personnel are all legally Masadan citizens.” He met her eye almost defiantly, and she nodded. This man knew his duty as well as she knew hers, and he was under orders to maintain his cover story, patently false or not.

“Very well, Commander,” she sighed. “But if you intend to stick to that, may I ask why you wanted to see me?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Theisman replied, yet for the first time he appeared clearly uncomfortable. “I—" He clenched his jaw, then went on steadily. “Captain, I don’t know what you intend to do about the base on Blackbird, but I thought you should know. There are Manticoran personnel down there.”

“What?!” Honor half-stood before she could stop herself. “If this is some kind of—" she began ominously, but he interrupted her.

“No, Ma’am. Captain Y—" He cleared his throat. “One of my superiors,” he went on carefully, “insisted that the survivors from HMS Madrigal be picked up. They were. Thereafter, they were delivered to Blackbird to be held by . . . the appropriate local authorities.”

Honor sank back into her chair, and his painstaking choice of words sounded a warning deep in her brain. She had no doubt Masada would have happily abandoned any of Madrigal’s survivors to their fate—indeed, she’d assumed that was what had happened and tried not to think of the deaths they must have died. Now she knew some of them had lived, instead, but something about the way Theisman had said “appropriate local authorities” chilled her instant surge of joy. He was distancing himself from those authorities, at least as much as his cover story allowed.

Why?

She started to ask him, but the plea in his eyes was even stronger than before, and she changed her question.

“Why are you telling me this, Commander?”

“Because—" Theisman started sharply, then stopped and looked away. “Because they deserve better than getting nuked by their own people, Captain.”

“I see.” Honor studied his profile and knew there was more—much more—to it than that. He’d started to reply too angrily, and his anger frightened her when she added it to the distaste with which he’d first referred to “local authorities.”

“And if we simply leave the base for the moment, Commander, do you feel they would be endangered?” she asked softly.

“I—" Theisman bit his lip. “I must respectfully decline to answer that question, Captain Harrington,” he said very formally, and she nodded.

“I see,” she repeated. His face reddened as her tone accepted that he had answered it, but he met her gaze stubbornly. This man had integrity as well as ability, she thought, and hoped there weren’t many more like him in Haven’s service. Or did she?

“Very well, Commander Theisman, I understand.” She touched a stud and looked past Theisman as the hatch behind him opened to readmit Ramirez.

“Major, please return Commander Theisman to his quarters.” Honor held the major’s gaze. “You are to hold yourself personally responsible for seeing to it that he and his personnel are treated with the courtesy of their rank.” Ramirez’s eyes flashed, but he nodded, and she looked back at Theisman. “Thank you for your information, Commander.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Theisman came back to attention.

“When you’ve returned the Commander to his quarters, Major, return straight here. Bring your company commanders with you.”

Hutch wrote:Well, I'm back. (30 days in Australia, New Caledonia and New Zealand didn't give me much chance to post).

Researching another issue for another thread, I bumped into this passage and think it's worth recording.

Honor Harrington meets a Commander who will play a critical role in her future..

From the Honor of the Queen:

Yet it was the major’s prisoner who interested her. He looked far more composed than he could possibly be, and she felt an unwilling respect for him as he gazed levelly back at her. He’d done an outstanding job—better, she suspected, than she could have done under the circumstances—yet she sensed an odd sort of strain under his self-possessed surface and wondered if it had anything to do with his request for this interview with her.

The commander tucked his cap under his arm and braced to attention.

“Commander Thomas Theisman, Navy of the Faithful, Ma’am,” he said crisply—in an accent that had never come from Masada.

“Of course you are, Commander.” Honor’s irony was impaired by her persistently slurred speech, and she saw his eyes widen as he took in her dead, ravaged face and bandaged left eye. But though she waited expectantly, he refused to rise to the bait of her response, and she shrugged.

“What was it you wished to see me about, Commander?”

“Ma’am, I—"

Theisman glanced at Ramirez, then back at her, his appeal for privacy as eloquent as it was silent. The major stiffened, but Honor regarded the Havenite thoughtfully as he closed his mouth tight and stared back at her.

“That will be all for the moment, Major,” she said at last, and Ramirez bristled for an instant, then clicked to attention and withdrew in a speaking silence. “And now, Commander?” she invited. “Was there something you wanted to tell me about why the People’s Republic attacked Her Majesty’s Navy?”

“Captain Harrington, I’m a registered Masadan citizen,” Theisman replied. “My vessel is—was—the Masadan Naval Ship Principality.”

“Your ship was the destroyer Breslau, built by the Gunther Yard for the People’s Republic of Haven,” Honor said flatly. His eyes widened a fraction, and the mobile corner of her mouth smiled thinly. “My boarding parties found her builder’s plaque, as well as her splendidly official Masadan registry, Commander Theisman.” Her smile vanished. “Shall we stop playing games now?”

He was silent for a moment, then replied in a voice as flat as hers.

“My ship was purchased by the Masadan Navy, Captain Harrington. My personnel are all legally Masadan citizens.” He met her eye almost defiantly, and she nodded. This man knew his duty as well as she knew hers, and he was under orders to maintain his cover story, patently false or not.

“Very well, Commander,” she sighed. “But if you intend to stick to that, may I ask why you wanted to see me?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Theisman replied, yet for the first time he appeared clearly uncomfortable. “I—" He clenched his jaw, then went on steadily. “Captain, I don’t know what you intend to do about the base on Blackbird, but I thought you should know. There are Manticoran personnel down there.”

“What?!” Honor half-stood before she could stop herself. “If this is some kind of—" she began ominously, but he interrupted her.

“No, Ma’am. Captain Y—" He cleared his throat. “One of my superiors,” he went on carefully, “insisted that the survivors from HMS Madrigal be picked up. They were. Thereafter, they were delivered to Blackbird to be held by . . . the appropriate local authorities.”

Honor sank back into her chair, and his painstaking choice of words sounded a warning deep in her brain. She had no doubt Masada would have happily abandoned any of Madrigal’s survivors to their fate—indeed, she’d assumed that was what had happened and tried not to think of the deaths they must have died. Now she knew some of them had lived, instead, but something about the way Theisman had said “appropriate local authorities” chilled her instant surge of joy. He was distancing himself from those authorities, at least as much as his cover story allowed.

Why?

She started to ask him, but the plea in his eyes was even stronger than before, and she changed her question.

“Why are you telling me this, Commander?”

“Because—" Theisman started sharply, then stopped and looked away. “Because they deserve better than getting nuked by their own people, Captain.”

“I see.” Honor studied his profile and knew there was more—much more—to it than that. He’d started to reply too angrily, and his anger frightened her when she added it to the distaste with which he’d first referred to “local authorities.”

“And if we simply leave the base for the moment, Commander, do you feel they would be endangered?” she asked softly.

“I—" Theisman bit his lip. “I must respectfully decline to answer that question, Captain Harrington,” he said very formally, and she nodded.

“I see,” she repeated. His face reddened as her tone accepted that he had answered it, but he met her gaze stubbornly. This man had integrity as well as ability, she thought, and hoped there weren’t many more like him in Haven’s service. Or did she?

“Very well, Commander Theisman, I understand.” She touched a stud and looked past Theisman as the hatch behind him opened to readmit Ramirez.

“Major, please return Commander Theisman to his quarters.” Honor held the major’s gaze. “You are to hold yourself personally responsible for seeing to it that he and his personnel are treated with the courtesy of their rank.” Ramirez’s eyes flashed, but he nodded, and she looked back at Theisman. “Thank you for your information, Commander.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Theisman came back to attention.

“When you’ve returned the Commander to his quarters, Major, return straight here. Bring your company commanders with you.”

roseandheather wrote:

*silently explodes*