Honorverse favorite passages

"—stupidest damned idea I've ever heard of! It's not like we don't have other things—worthwhile things—we could be doing instead, after all! And if anything ever really happens to the station, who the hell's going to have time to run for a frigging life pod in the first place?"

Ensign Paulo d'Arezzo felt a very strong desire to throttle Lieutenant Anthony Berkeley. Unfortunately, he lacked Helen Zilwicki's aptitude for hand-to-hand mayhem. Or perhaps fortunately, given the fact that Berkeley was a full senior-grade lieutenant, which would have brought up all sorts of sticky things about "striking a superior officer, the Star Empire then being in a state of war." He rather doubted a court-martial would feel "because the deceased was such a loudmouthed moron" constituted sufficient justification for violating Article Nine. Although if the members of the court actually knew Berkeley . . . .

"And another thing," the lieutenant went on, waving his right hand, index finger extended to emphasize his point as he shared his insights, "how the hell much did this little brain fart cost? I mean, launching every single pod the station has? Jesus! Just recertifying all of them is gonna take weeks, and you know they're gonna downcheck at least some of them!"

You know, Paulo thought, it was a lot more fun aboard Hexapuma even when people were shooting at us! If Helen had to get herself sent back off to Talbott without me, why couldn't I have at least stayed aboard the ship, like Aikawa? For that matter, why couldn't I have stayed anywhere that would have kept me away from a klutz like Berkeley?

Deep inside, he rather suspected he would have been grumpy anyplace they sent him if Helen wasn't around. That thought was one he tried not to examine too closely, though. It still made him . . . uncomfortable after he'd spent so many years running away from any sort of serious emotional entanglement. But the truth was that her absence left an empty place down inside him—one he'd never realized was there when all he'd been able to think about was the attractive physical "packaging" Manpower, Incorporated, had designed into someone it had intended to sell as a pleasure slave. A sex toy, really.

But, be that as it might, assigning him to work directly under Anthony Berkeley had to come under the heading of cruel and unusual punishment. If there'd been any real justice in the galaxy, he'd have been assigned to Admiral Yeager's Research and Development Division, with Captain Lewis. That would have been interesting, especially for someone with Paulo's natural bent for the electronic warfare officer's career track. But, no. In their infinite wisdom, the powers-that-were at the Bureau of Personnel had decided he and Senior Chief Wanderman should get a little hands-on time with the fabrication side. Which, little though he cared to admit it, might actually contain at least a modicum of rationality. It never hurt for an EWO to have at least some familiarity with the nuts and bolts of his hardware, after all. But there had to be some way for him to get that familiarity without putting up with Berkeley!

If only there were some way he could quietly and discreetly leave the small classroom in which their party of evacuees been instructed to wait. Unfortunately, there wasn't one, and Berkeley happened to be the senior officer present, which put him in charge of their small detachment. If Paulo tried to sneak out, the lieutenant would demand to know where he was going, and somehow "anywhere you aren't" didn't seem the most diplomatic possible response. Truthful, yes; diplomatic, no.

"And if we just had to do something this stupid," Berkeley continued, "at least we could have done it when we weren't—"

"Excuse me, Lieutenant," a contralto voice said from the doorway, "but exactly what 'stupid' something did you have in mind?"

Berkeley's mouth shut with an almost audible click, and he spun towards the slender, dark-haired commander standing in the open door with her head cocked to one side.

"I, uh, didn't see you there, Commander McGillicuddy," he said.

"No," Commander Anastasia McGillicuddy agreed pleasantly. "I don't suppose you did. However, I was just passing through when I heard what sounded remarkably like a raised voice. I was down at the end of the hall, you understand, so I wasn't completely certain that was what I was hearing. I decided to find out."

Her smile was as pleasant as her tone, but her brown eyes were cold, and the much taller and bulkier Berkeley seemed to shrink slightly.

"As I drew closer, I realized you were availing yourself of this opportunity to continue the instruction of the junior officers entrusted to your care," she went on. "I was impressed by your apparent vigor. Obviously, you'd been discussing a subject you felt strongly about. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to find out what it was."

"Ma'am, I was just—that is, well . . . ." Berkeley's abortive response trailed off, and despite himself, Paulo actually felt a feeble—very feeble—flicker of sympathy.

He throttled it without difficulty.

"Should I assume, Lieutenant, that you question Vice Admiral Faraday's priorities?" McGillicuddy asked softly.

Berkeley said nothing at all, and her nostrils flared. Then she looked past Berkeley to the junior officers and enlisted waiting in the classroom. She considered them briefly, then returned her attention to Berkeley.

"Since you feel qualified to critique this exercise, Lieutenant," she told him, "I'll arrange for you to present your view of it directly to Captain Sugihara." Berkeley's fair complexion turned considerably fairer at the mention of Captain Brian Sugihara, Rear Admiral Trammell's XO. "In the meantime, I strongly suggest you give some consideration to the appropriateness of your present forum. Especially considering that you happen to be the senior officer present. You might want to spend the time more profitably doing something like . . . oh, I don't know. Considering your report to Captain Sugihara, perhaps. In fact, you might want to give a little thought to whether or not Article Ten figures into your thinking, as well."

Paulo felt his lips trying to purse in a silent whistle as that last salvo landed. Obviously McGillicuddy had heard even more—and was even more pissed off—than he'd thought. From the little Paulo had seen of her, she didn't seem like the sort who normally screamed at a subordinate—even a stupid subordinate—in front of that subordinate's juniors. The fact that Berkeley had ticked her off enough to do that was sufficiently significant on its own, but her last sentence had been so pointed not even Berkeley could miss the implication. Article Ten was the article which forbade actions or speech prejudicial to discipline and the chain of command. If Berkeley was brought up on that charge and it went into his personnel record . . . .

McGillicuddy held Berkeley's eyes for another few seconds, then nodded, glanced once at the breathlessly watching group of JGs, ensigns, and enlisted, and left without another word.

The treecat was a fraction of a second too slow, lingered to slash at the hexapuma's shoulders for just an instant too long, and a mid-limb paw flashed up savagely. Ten-centimeter claws gleamed like scimitars, and she heard—and felt—the treecat's scream of agony as that brutal blow landed.

It didn't hit squarely, but it was square enough. It stripped him away from the hexapuma's neck, flicking him aside like a toy, and he screamed again as he slammed into the trunk of a tree. He tumbled down it in a broken, bloody ball of fur, and the hexapuma rose on its rearmost limbs. It hovered there, howling its rage and triumph, and then it lowered all six feet to the ground and crouched to spring and rend and tear and crush its tiny enemy.

Stephanie saw it, understood it, knew what it intended . . . and that she couldn't possibly stop it. But the treecat—her treecat—had known he couldn't stop it from killing her, either, and that hadn't kept him from trying. A part of her knew it was only a pathetic gesture, no more than the hiss and spit of a kitten in the instant before hungry jaws closed on it forever, but it was a gesture she simply could not not make.

She lunged, ignoring her snapped rib, the agony in her wounded knee and broken arm. In that moment, she wasn't just an eleven-year-old girl. There was no time for her to fully grasp all that was happening, but something inside her had changed forever when the treecat offered his life to save hers, and her scream was a war cry as she brought the vibro blade slashing forward and offered her life for his.

The hexapuma shrieked as the high-tech blade sliced into it. It had forgotten about Stephanie, narrowed all its intention to Climbs Quickly, and it was totally unprepared for the unadulterated agony of that blow. The blade caught it on its right flank, so "sharp" that even an eleven-year-old's arm could drive it hilt-deep. The creature's own frantic lunge to escape the pain did the rest, and blood sprayed across the fallen leaves of winters past as its movement dragged the unstoppable blade through muscle, tendons, arteries, and bone.
Stephanie staggered and almost fell as the huge predator squirmed frantically away. Her hand and arm were soaked in its blood, more steaming blood had gouted across her face and eyes, and if she'd had time for it, she would have been nauseated. But she didn't have time, and she staggered further forward, putting herself between the treecat and the hexapuma.

It was all she could do to stay on her feet. She shook like a leaf, her blood-coated face streaked with tears while terror yammered within her, yet somehow she stayed upright and raised the humming blade between them as the hexapuma stared at her in animal disbelief. Its right rear leg trailed helplessly while blood pulsed from the huge, gaping wound in its flank, but the very sharpness of the vibro blade worked against Stephanie in at least one respect. That wound was fatal, but the hexapuma didn't know it. It would take time to bleed out, and the knife was so sharp, the wound inflicted so quickly, that the creature had no idea of the catastrophic damage it had just received. It only knew it was hurt, that the injured prey it had expected to take so easily had inflicted more agony than any enemy it had ever faced, and it howled its fury.

It paused for just a moment, hissing and spitting, the ears Climbs Quickly had shredded flat to its skull, and Stephanie knew it was going to charge. She had no more idea than the hexapuma that she'd already inflicted a mortal wound, and she tried to hold her knife steady. It was going to come right over her, but if she could get the knife up, stick it into its chest or belly and let its charge do there what its lunge away had done to its hindquarters, then maybe at least the treecat would—

The hexapuma howled again, and Stephanie wanted desperately to close her eyes. But she couldn't, and she saw it lunge—saw it spring forward in the first of the two leaps it would take to reach her, dragging its crippled leg, fang-studded maw agape.

Only it never completed that lunge, and Stephanie's head jerked up as a dreadful noise filled the forest. She'd heard a single echo of it from the treecat who'd fought to protect her, but this wasn't the defiant cry of one hopelessly gallant defender. This was the rippling snarl of dozens—scores—of treecats, filled with hate and vengeance, and its challenge pierced even the hexapuma's rage. Its head snapped up, as Stephanie's had done, and its yowl was filled with as much panic as fury as the trees exploded above it.

A cream-and-gray avalanche thundered down with a massed, high-pitched scream that seemed to shake the forest. It engulfed the hexapuma in an unstoppable flood of slashing ivory claws and needle-sharp fangs, and Stephanie Harrington collapsed beside a dreadfully wounded Climbs Quickly as the scouts and hunters of his clan literally ripped their foe to pieces.

dreamrider wrote:I am once more reminded:

If there is a Sag-C named Hexapuma, WHY have we not yet encountered HMS Treecat?

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:

Hutch" quote="akira.taylor wrote:We don't know the third of the eleven (there are now 4 empty crypts). What makes me a little curious is the fact that Honor's is between Saganami and D'Orville, not next to them (I would have thought they would lay them out sequentially).

Vince. D'OH!! Thanks for the catch.

akira, thanks for saving at least some of my dignity (if not my intelligence, that is a lost cause).

Have to do some re-reads of House of steel to see if there are any clues there.

saber964 wrote:

dreamrider wrote:
Note that the tombs of Saganami and d'Orville could be anchoring each end of the hero's row, and Honor's would still be "between" them.

Who wants to bet along with me that Honor has now turned her spot over to either Sebastian d'Orville or Theodosia Kuzack?

As for the empty tombs:
- the older ones
Edward Saginami
Ellen d'Orville
Tomb of the Unknowns (my speculation)
- the newer ones
Sebastian d'Orville
Theodosia Kuszack (formerly Honor Harrington)
The Duke of Cromarty
The Unknowns of the Station Strike (Yawata Crossing)

Its been a rough few years for the brave and the loyal of Manticore.

- Quentin St James is undoubtedly in one of the other eight occupied tombs.

dreamrider

Theodosia Kuszack's tomb would not empty IIRC HMS King Roger III suffered a compensator failure, which means they would have been able to recover the body-sort of after they scraped it off a bulkhead-for burial.

Also I don't think there would be a Tomb of the Unknown unless it was entirely symbolic in nature because of the advanced DNA technology.

saber964 wrote:
Also I don't think there would be a Tomb of the Unknown unless it was entirely symbolic in nature because of the advanced DNA technology.

dreamrider wrote:

saber964 wrote:
Also I don't think there would be a Tomb of the Unknown unless it was entirely symbolic in nature because of the advanced DNA technology.

Thermonuclear explosions, and deep space ship kills with no friendlies around do not leave analyzable DNA.

dreamrider

saber964 wrote:
Also I don't think there would be a Tomb of the Unknown unless it was entirely symbolic in nature because of the advanced DNA technology.

akira.taylor wrote:

dreamrider wrote:
Thermonuclear explosions, and deep space ship kills with no friendlies around do not leave analyzable DNA.

dreamrider

The details may have changed, but the idea probably hasn't. There are those who go off to war, and never come back, even as a body (or as a note on which grave they are in overseas). The Tomb of the Unknown is for them (or their families, or their comrades who know that could be them, depending). It might have a different name, though.