Comedy/Tragedy of Errors: Stupidity in the Honorverse

When Captain Harrington found out about the atrocities committed by Williams and his crew, she drew her sidearm and prepared to shoot him. It took Major Ramirez and several of her crew to restrain her.

Dafmeister wrote:Ramirez could restrain her without help, no battle armour required, no matter how angry she was.Doing it without hurting her, on the other hand, required assistance. That's why you'll often see four or five cops pinning one suspect to the ground - immobilising someone without injuring them typically requires one person per limb.

kenl511 wrote:May I offer another pair of candidates?

Robert Stanton Pierre and Oscar Saint Just, Not shooting Cordelia Ransom about two or three years after the revolution, when she started becoming a liability.

Valen123456 wrote:

kenl511 wrote:May I offer another pair of candidates?

Robert Stanton Pierre and Oscar Saint Just, Not shooting Cordelia Ransom about two or three years after the revolution, when she started becoming a liability.

We know that that was what they should have done, they even knew that they probably should be doing it.

The trouble was that Ransom had become a very popular figure with the public who were largely ignorant of her increasing craziness, also they had a string of counter-revolutions including the Leveller Uprising.

They needed her expertise to hold the public together and blow the trumpets on the inner housing clearing they needed to do. If they had got rid of her at or around that point, the whole house of cards would have collapsed even sooner, or at least that was how Pierre and St Just viewed it.

They knew they were "using a live rattlesnake to beat the cockroaches" (as the late Pratchett might have said), but they held off for what were to them valid reasons.

JeffEngel wrote:

Valen123456 wrote:

We know that that was what they should have done, they even knew that they probably should be doing it.

The trouble was that Ransom had become a very popular figure with the public who were largely ignorant of her increasing craziness, also they had a string of counter-revolutions including the Leveller Uprising.

'Counter-revolution' probably isn't the right word there - it connotes something for the purpose of restoring the old regime, or at least something ideologically back in that direction. The Levellers were off on the other end of the spectrum, making theirs... oh, call it a "hyper-revolution" perhaps.

They needed her expertise to hold the public together and blow the trumpets on the inner housing clearing they needed to do. If they had got rid of her at or around that point, the whole house of cards would have collapsed even sooner, or at least that was how Pierre and St Just viewed it.

They knew they were "using a live rattlesnake to beat the cockroaches" (as the late Pratchett might have said), but they held off for what were to them valid reasons.

And quite possibly they were. They really didn't have a menu of great options. Esther McQueen would have nipped Ransom sooner, but then, Admiral Clusterbomb had another way to keep the mob in check. Using it may have worked well enough for her, but from Pierre and St. Just's POV, that's just trading the crazy empire-building demagogue who was content being part of a triumvirate for the dangerously sane, capable, and ambitious Bonapartist who was surely picturing both their heads mounted on her wall every time she had a meeting with them.

cthia wrote:During the kerfuffle on Blackbird, Captain Williams, CO of Blackbird, had the nerve and audacity to spit in the face of Captain Harrington, right in front of one of her most loyal officers dressed in battle gear.

Imagine being battle-gear slammed into a wall!

When Captain Harrington found out about the atrocities committed by Williams and his crew, she drew her sidearm and prepared to shoot him. It took Major Ramirez and several of her crew to restrain her.

Bold am I.

I always find reading that line amusingly humorous. What do you get when you cross a salamander with the blood of Bruce Banner?

You get a Harrington that will put a foot up your ass!

Can you imagine someone built like Major Ramirez calling for help to restrain Honor? "Help dammit! This woman doesn't know her own strength!" And Honor didn't have a bionic arm then!

I always meant to reread that passage though, as I thought Ramirez was the one in battle armor. Someone in battle armor diverted a punch, JIT, that was directed at Williams' head. A hole in the nearby wall was the result.

"This is your brain. This is your brain on battle armor! I guess there won't be any questions."

You really don't want to piss off someone in battle armor. Can we say 'mechanical Hulk?'

Honor studied the Masadan curiously. The right side of his face was almost as badly bruised and swollen as the left side of her own; the other side was tight and sullen, and it tightened further as he glared back at her.
“Captain Williams,” she said courteously, “I regret—"

He spat in her face.

The glob of spittle hit the dead skin of her left cheek. She couldn’t feel it, and for just one moment she couldn’t quite believe it had happened, but Major Ramirez’s left arm shot out. Armored fingers twisted in the neck of the Masadan’s one-piece uniform, and exoskeletal muscles whined as he snatched Williams off his feet. He slammed him back against the wall like a puppet, and his right fist started forward.

“Major!” Honor’s voice cracked like a whip, and Ramirez diverted the blow in the nick of time. His gauntlet smashed into the stone wall beside Williams’ head like a mace, so hard flying stone chips cut the Masadan’s cheek, and the red-faced, strangling captain flinched aside with a gasp of terror.

“Sorry, Ma’am.” The major was white with fury as he muttered his apology—to Honor, not Williams—and dropped the Masadan. He rubbed his left hand on his equipment harness as if to scrub away contamination, and Sergeant Talon handed Honor a napkin from a dispenser on one of the mess tables. She wiped her numb face carefully, her eyes still on the major, and wondered if Williams truly understood how close to death he’d just come.

A Marine officer saluted, then flinched back from her in shock, and she went past him as if he didn’t exist. Her eye swept the lines of prisoners, searching for the face she sought, and found it.

Captain Williams looked up as if he felt her hatred, and his face paled. She walked towards him, shoving people out of her way, and the voice calling her name was even louder as its owner pushed and shoved through the crowd behind her.

Williams tried to twist away, but her left hand tangled in his hair, and he cried out in agony as she slammed his head back against the wall. His mouth worked, gobbling words she didn’t bother to hear, and her right hand pressed the muzzle against his forehead and began to squeeze.

Someone else’s hands locked on her forearm, shoving frantically, and the sharp, spiteful explosion of a pulser dart pocked the mess hall roof as her pistol whined. She wrenched at the hands on her arm, trying to throw whoever it was off, but they clung desperately, and someone was shouting in her ear.

More voices shouted, more hands joined the ones on her arm, dragging her back from Williams while the man sagged to his knees, retching and weeping in terror, and she fought madly against them all. But she couldn’t wrench free, and she went to her own knees as someone snatched the pistol from her grip and someone else gripped her head and forced it around.

“Skipper! Skipper, you can’t!” Scotty Tremaine half-sobbed, holding her face between his hands while tears ran down his cheeks. “Please, Skipper! You can’t do this—not without a trial!”

She stared at him, her detached mind wondering what a trial had to do with anything, and he shook her gently.

“Please, Skipper. If you shoot a prisoner without a trial the Navy—" He drew a deep breath. “You can’t, Ma’am, however much he deserves it.”

cthia wrote:Planning a coup on Protector's Palace, but not allowing for the most dangerous person there, Nimitz, was painfully stupid.

Nimitz, <Oh no they di-int.>

n7axw wrote:I thought that kidnapping Helen Zilwicke was a less than bright move on the part of the Peep ambassador. Using the Scrags was even worse.

Don