1000 Worst Ways to Die in the Honorverse

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Being stranded in space in the manner that almost befell Ginger Lewis has to rank high on my list. Claustrophobic and floating about, aimlessly lost in the great big huge void that is space, closing in all around you.

Since the question was about the worst ways to die, many of these where a person dies almost instantly (such as compensator failure or getting in Victor Cachet's way) do not count. For awhile I thought the Flying Dutchman you mention would be worst, but in UH we learned that the medic kit in the suit can put you into a chemical sleep until you are either recovered or dead. So now I think the worst deaths were suffered by the would-be mutineers on Wayfarer, who were forgotten in the brig as the ship was abandoned. They may have water and air until the ship breaks apart, but no food except for each others company.

cthia wrote:It's probably much easier and convenient to wear in the Honorverse, yet, I'm not certain Ginger would have donned the entire evac suit with the full range of gear, rather than the least bit of accessories needed to complete the job. She didn't actually need the full capabilities of the suit. Although protocol may have been to wear the full capabilities at all times, and it may not have been optional.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:It's probably much easier and convenient to wear in the Honorverse, yet, I'm not certain Ginger would have donned the entire evac suit with the full range of gear, rather than the least bit of accessories needed to complete the job. She didn't actually need the full capabilities of the suit. Although protocol may have been to wear the full capabilities at all times, and it may not have been optional.

It is true that Ginger was just in a suit and not also in an escape pod, as was the case in UH, but I do not think you have an option on what you get when you don the suit to go outside. I do believe the medical kit is part of the suit.

In a way, the people stuck in the brig are in something of the same position as the Kilkenny Cat Rationing on Hell, but there are some differences:

State Sec made sure the prisoners knew that was an option for camps that rebel.

Honor and the RMN command structure was in charge of the brig, so the abandonment was totally unexpected. With search and rescue teams combing the ship for survivors, how did they miss the brig? When Samantha was rescued, that was stated to be the last one that needed assistance.

Jonathan_S wrote:Actually the people in the brig were dead long before Kilkenny Cat Rationing might have kicked in.


They did get missed in the initial evacuation of non-essential personnel (Ch 39) because "Master at Arms Thomas was dead, as was his senior assistant, and none of Wayfarer's surviving police force thought to check the brig." So whoever inherited responsibility for brigged crew when the 2 normal people died was either unaware they'd inherited that responsibility or some off-screen communication mix-up caused them to think the prisoners had been moved. (for example they might have asked the senior of the remaining police force for status and being told that everyone was accounted for; the person they asked was only thinking about the other police personnel while the officer asking could erroneously think that status covered the prisoners too)

Samantha's survival module is being freed from Honor's wall at the end of Ch 41; after Wayfarer and Achmed crippled each other with point blank energy fire. That's when Sally McBride reports she can spare people to work on that because Samantha's "the only crewman still trapped."

But by that point that statement was true. Randy Steilman et al died during that brief combat in the previous chapter. "A laser slashed deep into the heart of her hull, destroying Fusion One and stabbing straight through the brig, where Randy Steilman and his fellows would never come to trial, and another blew straight into the command deck itself."


So they might have had some terror as they were screaming to be let out and nobody could hear. But their actual death would have been quite quick.

Jonathan_S wrote:Actually the people in the brig were dead long before Kilkenny Cat Rationing might have kicked in.

They did get missed in the initial evacuation of non-essential personnel (Ch 39) because "Master at Arms Thomas was dead, as was his senior assistant, and none of Wayfarer's surviving police force thought to check the brig." So whoever inherited responsibility for brigged crew when the 2 normal people died was either unaware they'd inherited that responsibility or some off-screen communication mix-up caused them to think the prisoners had been moved. (for example they might have asked the senior of the remaining police force for status and being told that everyone was accounted for; the person they asked was only thinking about the other police personnel while the officer asking could erroneously think that status covered the prisoners too)

Samantha's survival module is being freed from Honor's wall at the end of Ch 41; after Wayfarer and Achmed crippled each other with point blank energy fire. That's when Sally McBride reports she can spare people to work on that because Samantha's "the only crewman still trapped."

But by that point that statement was true. Randy Steilman et al died during that brief combat in the previous chapter. "A laser slashed deep into the heart of her hull, destroying Fusion One and stabbing straight through the brig, where Randy Steilman and his fellows would never come to trial, and another blew straight into the command deck itself."


So they might have had some terror as they were screaming to be let out and nobody could hear. But their actual death would have been quite quick.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:It's probably much easier and convenient to wear in the Honorverse, yet, I'm not certain Ginger would have donned the entire evac suit with the full range of gear, rather than the least bit of accessories needed to complete the job. She didn't actually need the full capabilities of the suit. Although protocol may have been to wear the full capabilities at all times, and it may not have been optional.

It is true that Ginger was just in a suit and not also in an escape pod, as was the case in UH, but I do not think you have an option on what you get when you don the suit to go outside. I do believe the medical kit is part of the suit.

In a way, the people stuck in the brig are in something of the same position as the Kilkenny Cat Rationing on Hell, but there are some differences:

State Sec made sure the prisoners knew that was an option for camps that rebel.

Honor and the RMN command structure was in charge of the brig, so the abandonment was totally unexpected. With search and rescue teams combing the ship for survivors, how did they miss the brig? When Samantha was rescued, that was stated to be the last one that needed assistance.

cthia wrote:The med kit probably is built into the suit and not optional. Though the human element is alive and well here too. As I recall, the med kit is for those who are injured, and/or in pain. If it were me, I'd want to stay alert as long as possible, in hopes I can contact the ship, or any ship that may happen along. At any rate, Ginger was frightened out of her wits and dying of fear isn't a happy proposition.

I'm only human and I certainly won't hold your "Oops" against you, but I can't remember the extent of Steilman's sabotage, or why Ginger couldn't contact the ship, by beacon, or whatever. Or if the med kit was also part of the sabotage.

But, the fear would have been gripping and debilitating. Just the short time she was in it's grasp was plenty enough for Ginger. As for me, I would have shit the suit full. Which brings me to why I'd like to consider that some of the suits accessories are optional. I wouldn't want to shove the "plumbing" up my arse if the projected time in the suit is short lived. Pardon the unintended pun.

But she wasn't here to admire the view. She centered the HUD reticle on Pod Twenty-Four's beacon, locking her vector into the automated guidance systems of the outsized Sustained Use Thruster pack strapped over her skinsuit. The SUT packs were designed for extended EVA use, with much greater endurance and power than the standard skinsuit thrusters, and Ginger loved her rare opportunities to play with them. Now she double-checked her vector, grinned in anticipation, and tapped the go button.
That was when it happened.
The second she enabled the thrusters, the entire system went mad. Instead of the gentle pressure she'd expected, the SUT went instantly to maximum power. It slammed her away from the ship under an acceleration intended only for emergency use, and she grunted in anguish, unable to cry out properly under the massive thrust. Her thumb reached frantically for the manual override, finding the button with the blind, unerring speed of relentless training, and jabbed sharply . . . and nothing happened at all.
Nor was that the worst of it. Her attitude thrusters were equally berserk, whipsawing her wildly and sending her pinwheeling insanely off into space. She lost all spatial reference in the first two seconds, and her inner ear went mad as she whirled crazily away from the ship. It was only God's good grace that she was headed away from the ship; her malfunctioning SUT could just as easily have turned her straight into the hull, with instantly lethal consequences.
But the consequences she had were bad enough. For the first time in her life, Ginger Lewis was hammered by the motion sickness which had always evoked amused sympathy when she saw it in others. She vomited helplessly, coughing and choking as the instinct-level responses her instructors had beaten into her fought to keep her airways clear. She'd never expected to need that training—she wasn't the sort to whoop her cookies over a little vacuum work!—but only the legacy of her merciless DIs kept her alive long enough to hit the vomit-slimed chin switch that dropped her com into Flight Ops' EVA guard frequency.
"Mayday! Mayday! Suit malfunction!" she gasped while her thrusters continued to bellow like maddened animals. "This—" She retched again, choking as dry heaves wracked her. "This is Blue Sixteen! I'm—God, I don't know where I am!" She heard the panic in her own voice, but she couldn't even see. The contents of her stomach coated the inside of her helmet, wiping away the stars, compounding her disorientation, and still the thrusters thundered without rhyme or reason! "Mayday!" she screamed into the com.
And no one answered at all.

*** snip ***

"Absolutely," Lieutenant Commander Tschu grated. "Some sick son-of-a-bitch rigged her SUT, Skipper. He tried to make it look like a general system failure, but he got too cute when he set her com up to 'fail.' The com's not part of the SUT, and he had to interface her SUT computers with her skinny. That's not hard, but it doesn't happen by accident; someone has to make it, and someone damned well did. The SUT computer's totally fried, and all his execution files were supposed to crash and burn with the rest of the system, but my data recovery people found a single line of code directing output to her com buried in the garbage. It's only a fragment, but it's also completely outside normal programming parameters, because there's not supposed to be a link from the SUT to her com. This wasn't a hardware failure, and it wasn't corrupted files. It took specifically planted files to make it all happen."