Attack on Catherine Montaigne by Manpower.

roger.books wrote:I'm 99.9% sure i've purchased and read all of the Honorverse books. I can't recall this event. If anyone knows which book, if any, where this occurs I would appreciate it if you let me know.

Thanks
Roger

ncwolf wrote:Yeah, it took me half of forever to figure out that it was a "noodle incident."

(I would link to the definition, but it would be like dialing into a black hole, as far as the amount of time you could waste on tvtropes, unless your self-control is iron-clad; ie, better than mine.)

kzt wrote:Yes. Not ever shown. I remember a comment by someone, possibly David, that it just wasn’t that big a deal and they would probably never write a story about it.

roger.books wrote:I'm 99.9% sure i've purchased and read all of the Honorverse books. I can't recall this event. If anyone knows which book, if any, where this occurs I would appreciate it if you let me know.

Thanks
Roger

Kevin grinned. "Not after the way Zilwicki turned their strike force against Cathy Montaigne on Manticore last year into so much hamburger."

Pritchart snorted. The sound combined sarcasm with something very close to pure glee. Like any old-style Aprilist, Eloise detested Manpower and all it represented. Granted, she had sharp differences and animosities with the Star Kingdom, but whatever else divided Pritchart and Manticore's Queen Elizabeth, hatred of genetic slavery was not part of it.

So Eloise had been savagely amused herself when Manpower's attempted retaliation on Montaigne had backfired so badly. In the years since Montaigne had returned to Manticore from Earth with her new-found lover, Captain Anton Zilwicki had spent his time and energy after his dismissal from service in the Star Kingdom's Navy building what was publicly passed off as a "security agency." The depiction had been accepted readily enough, given Zilwicki's skill at deception. He'd even managed to keep it intact after foiling the assassination attempt on Montaigne.
Which had been . . . difficult, given that the grounds of the Tor estate had been littered with the corpses of would-be assassins. Not a single member of the large and well-organized assassination team had survived.

Rumor had it that their bodies—pieces of them, anyway—had wound up being delivered by freight shipping to several of the large recruiting halls on Manpower's home planet of Mesa. Slavery was not Mesa's only profitable business. The planet was also the galaxy's largest center for free-lance mercenary outfits.

The whole episode had been successfully passed off for public consumption as a murky and mysterious business. After a few days, it had faded out of public notice in the Star Kingdom; and had never been noticed much at all in the Solarian League, since Solarians always tended to be oblivious to anything happening outside of their own gigantic borders. Manpower Unlimited had not, obviously, accepted any public responsibility for the affair. And, for different reasons, neither "Zilwicki Security" and Catherine Montaigne nor—certainly!—the High Ridge Government had wanted the thing scrutinized carefully. But, soon enough, every serious intelligence agency in the settled portion of the galaxy had figured out the truth. Catherine Montaigne was now using her fortune and the talents of her new lover to finally give the Anti-Slavery League some real teeth—and Anton Zilwicki had just bared them, dripping with blood.

Since then, from all anyone could determine, Manpower had kept a distance from Montaigne. If nothing else, after seeing two task forces shredded by Zilwicki—one in Chicago, and now another on Manticore—the sort of professional mercenaries who provided Manpower with their muscle would be demanding astronomical prices for any further such projects.