Uncompromising Honor chatter

pushmar wrote:And then there's the revelation the the Harringtons are an early Detweiler Alpha genotype, which more-or-less escaped (from the MAlign's point of view) from the Myerdahl system way back in the olden days, when Manticore was a backwater Verge system. Whether this was accidental, or there's a good story there about Richard and Marjorie Harrington is up to the author. Sounds like a neat little vignette.

But we already suspected that, right?

Not me, I just thought their increase intelligence was part of the Myerdahl package. Maybe Honor's geneticist mother will make some kind of connection in a future book. If the author doesn't want to play past 1923 PD anymore, he should at least write a short-story afterwords, I hope.

On the other hand, if a treecat meets another alpha genotype, are they more likely to bond with them? At least considering no sociopathic tendencies on the part of the human half (yeah, right), I think that would be - an interesting read. It could be the treecats themselves take down MAlign, with their neat little pulsers in true-hand.

UH wrote:Damien Harahap reached up to stroke Fire Watch’s ears gently as the treecat shifted on his shoulder. The ’cat hadn’t liked his person’s insistence that it would be wiser to leave his pulser aboard Tristram just this once, but that wasn’t the reason his muscles quivered with so much tension. It wasn’t difficult for Harahap to guess why they did, however, and he concentrated on thinking soothing thoughts.

That would have been easier if he hadn’t been so aware of the attitude of the red-haired, green-eyed lieutenant at the lift car’s control panel. Young Lieutenant Archer was not one of Damien Harahap’s admirers, and it seemed likely her flag lieutenant’s attitude mirrored Countess Gold Peak’s. That could be…unfortunate.

Fire Watch made a very soft hissing sound, and Harahap shook his head. None of that, he thought as hard as he could. We need to make a good impression on the lady. Trust me on that.

snip

“And this,” she said with a noticeable lack of warmth, “must be the infamous ‘Firebrand.’”

It wasn’t precisely a greeting, Harahap decided, and contented himself with a brief bow of acknowledgment. Fire Watch, on the other hand, flattened his ears at the admiral and Harahap felt his hand-feet’s claws sink deeper into the pad on his shoulder.

One of Gold Peak’s eyebrows rose slightly, and Harahap suppressed an urge to grimace. If anyone who’d never been adopted herself was going to understand treecat body language, it had to be Gold Peak, given her decades of friendship with Duchess Harrington and Nimitz. And the last thing they needed was for Fire Watch’s obvious belligerence to antagonize her.

pushmar wrote:On the other hand, if a treecat meets another alpha genotype, are they more likely to bond with them? At least considering no sociopathic tendencies on the part of the human half (yeah, right), I think that would be - an interesting read. It could be the treecats themselves take down MAlign, with their neat little pulsers in true-hand.

cthia wrote:I asked quite a few of the same questions awhile back. The MA are also Alphas, seeing as that treecats generally seem to be attracted to the smarter genome. It certainly seems possible, if Harahap is any indication. In fact, Harahap just might be the "missing link" between the possibility.

tlb wrote:

pushmar wrote:On the other hand, if a treecat meets another alpha genotype, are they more likely to bond with them? At least considering no sociopathic tendencies on the part of the human half (yeah, right), I think that would be - an interesting read. It could be the treecats themselves take down MAlign, with their neat little pulsers in true-hand.

cthia wrote:I asked quite a few of the same questions awhile back. The MA are also Alphas, seeing as that treecats generally seem to be attracted to the smarter genome. It certainly seems possible, if Harahap is any indication. In fact, Harahap just might be the "missing link" between the possibility.

Are you stating that you think Harahap is an Alpha? Because UH clearly states he is a native of the Startman System, which was heavily exploited by the StratoCorp Company starting when he was seven. He saw what that did to his parents and escaped by managing to get into the Gendarmes.

tlb wrote: Are you stating that you think Harahap is an Alpha? Because UH clearly states he is a native of the Startman System, which was heavily exploited by the StratoCorp Company starting when he was seven. He saw what that did to his parents and escaped by managing to get into the Gendarmes.

tlb wrote: Are you stating that you think Harahap is an Alpha? Because UH clearly states he is a native of the Startman System, which was heavily exploited by the StratoCorp Company starting when he was seven. He saw what that did to his parents and escaped by managing to get into the Gendarmes.

pushmar wrote:He may be, who knows? Perhaps unbeknownst to him. Maybe his family also "escaped" many generations before, as did Richard Harrington, with wife Marjorie and child Stephanie.

pushmar wrote:Now as for a 'cat bonding with a Detweiler, these is in-universe evidence of 'cats "repudiating" the bond. Forget where I read it. Once a treecat sees the evil in someone, it's over. Mentally unstable 'cats are very rare, likely wouldn't be allowed off Sphinx by the other 'cats.

pushmar wrote:There are so many places Mr. Weber could go with this, and I really hope he does. In fact, I think UH is one of the better HH books in the series as of late. As for a full novel, maybe, but I'd like to see short stories/novellas from David as well (Yeah, right! Is he capable of a short story? Still, I do like infodumps). Even if nothing again ever gets written in this universe, I'm satisfied.

UH wrote:“Commodore Quigley’s on station, Ma’am,” Rear Admiral Rosiak said.

“Thank you, Bart.”

Jane Isotalo nodded as she leaned back in her command chair and studied the master plot. Millicent Quigley’s TG 1027.4 was the real reason she was prepared to spend missiles like water against a Manty squadron outside a limit. Unless she somehow managed to close to a much shorter range than the opposing commander was likely to allow, she didn’t expect to kill very many of the Manties—not when they could duck into hyper to avoid her fire. No doubt the Manty CO would be willing to let her waste a lot of missiles trying for kills, and under normal circumstances, Isotalo would have been concerned about the sorts of ammunition expenditures involved. In this case, however, Quigley’s three 7,500,000-ton Voyager-class freighters gave her rather deeper magazines than usual.

Unfortunately, the Voyagers were part of the Navy’s TUFT fleet: civilian vessels designated to be “Taken Up From Trade” in an emergency. The Federal Government subsidized the construction of TUFT units, which gave it first call on them if the Navy decided to call in its markers, but they weren’t designed to military-grade specifications and the Voyagers were a civilian design. They were unarmed and carried no active defenses. They were also sluggish compared to warships their size, which was why she’d moved Quigley’s freighters, the Atlas-class fleet repair vessel Hercules, and their escorting light cruisers and destroyers, to a position a half million kilometers astern of Vice Admiral Tsukahara’s TG 1027.3, her trailing group of battlecruisers. That gave them more time to dodge if anything nasty came their way, but it left them close enough to deploy additional Huskies for Tsukahara’s battlecruisers if they were needed.

pushmar wrote:And then there's the revelation the the Harringtons are an early Detweiler Alpha genotype, which more-or-less escaped (from the MAlign's point of view) from the Myerdahl system way back in the olden days, when Manticore was a backwater Verge system. Whether this was accidental, or there's a good story there about Richard and Marjorie Harrington is up to the author. Sounds like a neat little vignette.

But we already suspected that, right?

Not me, I just thought their increase intelligence was part of the Myerdahl package. Maybe Honor's geneticist mother will make some kind of connection in a future book. If the author doesn't want to play past 1923 PD anymore, he should at least write a short-story afterwords, I hope.

On the other hand, if a treecat meets another alpha genotype, are they more likely to bond with them? At least considering no sociopathic tendencies on the part of the human half (yeah, right), I think that would be - an interesting read. It could be the treecats themselves take down MAlign, with their neat little pulsers in true-hand.

"You and I have never discussed this, mainly because there was no need to," she began, "but as I say, I've watched you and Nimitz together from the very first day. And because I have, I realized years ago that your relationship had begun changing. I've seen enough other bonded pairs to know your link was always a bit different, and I went back and looked over the Harrington medical records very carefully when you were just a little girl. On the basis of my study, I think there's a specific reason so many Harringtons have been adopted over the years."

"You do?" Honor had forgotten the cookie in her hand, and her good eye was very intent as she gazed into her mother's face.

"I do. I started out by looking at precisely what was involved in the Meyerdahl genetic mods. Most people don't realize it, but there were actually four different modification sets within the single project. By this time they've intermingled enough to lose some of their original differentiation, but like a lot of other 'locked' mods, they've managed to stay remarkably stable and dominant over the generations.

"You and your father are direct descendants of the Meyerdahl Beta mod. I won't go into all the specifics, which wouldn't mean a great deal to you, anyway, but most of what it gave you is exactly what all the Meyerdahl recipients got: more efficient muscles, enhanced reaction speed, stronger bones, tougher cardiovascular and respiratory systems, and so on. But the Meyerdahl Betas also got what they used to call an 'IQ enhancer.' We've learned enough more about human intelligence since then that reputable geneticists refuse to tinker with it except under extraordinary conditions. For the most part, you can only enhance one aspect of the entire complex of attributes we think of as 'intelligence' at the expense of other aspects. That isn't an absolute, but it works as a rule of thumb, and it's one reason I never mentioned my research to you or your dad. There was no reason to—and the . . . less successful efforts at engineered intelligence were one reason Old Earth's Final War was as bad as it was. And one reason humanity in general turned so strongly against the entire concept of engineering human genes at all."

cthia wrote:

pushmar wrote:And then there's the revelation the the Harringtons are an early Detweiler Alpha genotype, which more-or-less escaped (from the MAlign's point of view) from the Myerdahl system way back in the olden days, when Manticore was a backwater Verge system. Whether this was accidental, or there's a good story there about Richard and Marjorie Harrington is up to the author. Sounds like a neat little vignette.

But we already suspected that, right?

Not me, I just thought their increase intelligence was part of the Myerdahl package. Maybe Honor's geneticist mother will make some kind of connection in a future book. If the author doesn't want to play past 1923 PD anymore, he should at least write a short-story afterwords, I hope.

On the other hand, if a treecat meets another alpha genotype, are they more likely to bond with them? At least considering no sociopathic tendencies on the part of the human half (yeah, right), I think that would be - an interesting read. It could be the treecats themselves take down MAlign, with their neat little pulsers in true-hand.

I asked quite a few of the same questions awhile back. The MA are also Alphas, seeing as that treecats generally seem to be attracted to the smarter genome. It certainly seems possible, if Harahap is any indication. In fact, Harahap just might be the "missing link" between the possibility.

At any rate, it makes me wonder about a notion I broached some time ago about a possible conflict of interest between the cats and the two-legs on some upcoming matters, or irreconcilable differences. This passage reminded me of it . . .

UH wrote:Damien Harahap reached up to stroke Fire Watch’s ears gently as the treecat shifted on his shoulder. The ’cat hadn’t liked his person’s insistence that it would be wiser to leave his pulser aboard Tristram just this once, but that wasn’t the reason his muscles quivered with so much tension. It wasn’t difficult for Harahap to guess why they did, however, and he concentrated on thinking soothing thoughts.

That would have been easier if he hadn’t been so aware of the attitude of the red-haired, green-eyed lieutenant at the lift car’s control panel. Young Lieutenant Archer was not one of Damien Harahap’s admirers, and it seemed likely her flag lieutenant’s attitude mirrored Countess Gold Peak’s. That could be…unfortunate.

Fire Watch made a very soft hissing sound, and Harahap shook his head. None of that, he thought as hard as he could. We need to make a good impression on the lady. Trust me on that.

snip

“And this,” she said with a noticeable lack of warmth, “must be the infamous ‘Firebrand.’”

It wasn’t precisely a greeting, Harahap decided, and contented himself with a brief bow of acknowledgment. Fire Watch, on the other hand, flattened his ears at the admiral and Harahap felt his hand-feet’s claws sink deeper into the pad on his shoulder.

One of Gold Peak’s eyebrows rose slightly, and Harahap suppressed an urge to grimace. If anyone who’d never been adopted herself was going to understand treecat body language, it had to be Gold Peak, given her decades of friendship with Duchess Harrington and Nimitz. And the last thing they needed was for Fire Watch’s obvious belligerence to antagonize her.

I'm surprised that Harahap had to admonish Clean Killer in that regard. The 'cat should've long since absorbed as much manners about someone as important as the Queen's cousin of Nimitz' best friend, and how important it is to remain cordial and respectful to her. I can't imagine anything that would be more inappropriate, except maybe a treecat hissing at the Queen herself, or at Honor. I can just imagine another 'cat hissing at Honor in Nimitz' presence.

<Oh no you didn't!>

At any rate, if a cat does bond with a, let's say, Detweiler ( going whole hog) will the cat be a good influence on the Detweiler or will the Detweiler become a bad influence on the Cat? If bonding is anything like two-legs falling in love, we all can't help who our heart chooses.

What an eclectic cornucopia of interesting questions to use as wool while gathering.

cthia wrote:

UH wrote:“Commodore Quigley’s on station, Ma’am,” Rear Admiral Rosiak said.

“Thank you, Bart.”

Jane Isotalo nodded as she leaned back in her command chair and studied the master plot. Millicent Quigley’s TG 1027.4 was the real reason she was prepared to spend missiles like water against a Manty squadron outside a limit. Unless she somehow managed to close to a much shorter range than the opposing commander was likely to allow, she didn’t expect to kill very many of the Manties—not when they could duck into hyper to avoid her fire. No doubt the Manty CO would be willing to let her waste a lot of missiles trying for kills, and under normal circumstances, Isotalo would have been concerned about the sorts of ammunition expenditures involved. In this case, however, Quigley’s three 7,500,000-ton Voyager-class freighters gave her rather deeper magazines than usual.

Unfortunately, the Voyagers were part of the Navy’s TUFT fleet: civilian vessels designated to be “Taken Up From Trade” in an emergency. The Federal Government subsidized the construction of TUFT units, which gave it first call on them if the Navy decided to call in its markers, but they weren’t designed to military-grade specifications and the Voyagers were a civilian design. They were unarmed and carried no active defenses. They were also sluggish compared to warships their size, which was why she’d moved Quigley’s freighters, the Atlas-class fleet repair vessel Hercules, and their escorting light cruisers and destroyers, to a position a half million kilometers astern of Vice Admiral Tsukahara’s TG 1027.3, her trailing group of battlecruisers. That gave them more time to dodge if anything nasty came their way, but it left them close enough to deploy additional Huskies for Tsukahara’s battlecruisers if they were needed.

I didn't think any unit that wasn't as fast as the fleet was a viable option, especially ammunition ships which must be protected. What gives? Is SL compensator design so far behind the curve that TUFT units are, tactically, a viable option?

At any rate, replenishing the Huskies on the run (LOL) is a nice piece of technology. Is this something the RMN can adopt?

BTW, TUFT units are simply a nice way of saying commandeered unit, essentially making it a CUFT unit.