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Kchama
Jul 25, 2007

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

Aubrey's good but even he acknowledges that a lot of his successes came down to luck, and he'll be quick to point out that he's no Nelson. Like near the end of HMS Surprise where someone said of his defense of the Indiamen that it had "the Nelson touch" and he instantly responds "no, there you're wrong; Nelson would have taken the Marengo!"

Harrington, on the other hand, seems to be the greatest officer to have ever lived in... whatever that setting is called.

Not only the greatest as an officer, but as a politician, a CEO, ruler, and warrior.

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jng2058
Jul 17, 2010

We have the tools, we have the talent!





Kchama posted:

Not only the greatest as an officer, but as a politician, a CEO, ruler, and warrior.

...best pilot, best martial artist, best swordswoman, best pistol shooter, most beautiful, most inspiring, and overall the best person in hers or any universe as evidenced by the fact that your objective worth as a person in the Honorverse is judged by how much you love Honor Harrington. If you dislike Honor for any reason you are evil and will probably die. If you hate Honor, you are a coward and a rapist and will definitely die, probably in a particularly awful fashion.

The only way to survive is to throw yourself at Honor's mercy like Hauptman and Hemphill do. Only then will you be redeemed and allowed to become truly great, even if you don't actually change your behavior. It doesn't matter if you're a bullying rear end in a top hat who throws his wealth around like a cudgel to get his way. Once you join the Church of Honor, all your sins are forgiven so long as you throw your wealth around to help Honor. You can still be a mad scientist throwing wacky ideas out there at a whim, but once you join the Church of Honor all your ideas suddenly go from crazy and unworkable to brilliant and decisive. Just don't try and claim the credit for devising the invincible missiles that made your nation the greatest military power in the universe. Clearly all credit for winning the wars goes to her divine majesty Honor whose brilliant strategy of "Fire All The Missiles" is unparalleled in naval history.

More holy than Mary, gentler than Susan, surely no character in all of creation can best she for whom the universe bends a knee, Honor Harrington.

...

...

...

God this series pisses me off the more I think about it. I want all those hours I spent reading this poo poo back! :argh:

Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

Harrington, on the other hand, seems to be the greatest officer to have ever lived in... whatever that setting is called.

She really just gets drummed up as that. When you look at it, though, she really only has two kinds of victories.

The first kind are 100% luck. The Q-ship decides to pull up broadside in grav-lance range, despite not needing to do so. The Masadans kill everybody on board their battlecruiser who knows how naval combat works before they engage her. The admiral leading the massive fleet to Grayson doesn't think they can repair superdreadnoughts as fast as they did, so they wade into point blank range fat and dumb and happy and eat poo poo because of it. The enemies who take her prisoner are idiots who give a brand new defector unfettered access to their main computers. Reinforcements arrive just in time to prevent them from losing Hancock. These are all cases where she would have lost if not for circumstances entirely out of her control.

The second kind are just straight up technological superiority. Anybody who's even halfassed competent is going to win under these conditions.

This is probably the thing that bothers me the most about the books.

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






Whatever happens, we have got
The missile pod, and they have not.

PupsOfWar
Dec 6, 2013

theory: weber's characterization of Honor is entirely based on his poor interpretation of the old filk song Signy Mallory, which is a tribute to the hero from Downbelow Station

weber has of course never read Downbelow Station, he just heard the song once at a convention in 1985

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.
Signy Mallory is a great character, but also a rapist.

PupsOfWar
Dec 6, 2013

General Battuta posted:

Signy Mallory is a great character, but also a rapist.

what I was getting at is I think it would be pretty easy for someone to be hanging around thinking "how do I make an interesting lady space captain?", have a sort of superficial encounter with Downbelow Station w/o really getting into it, and conclude "okay, Hard Woman Making Hard Choices, but really in secret she cares about her crew when they get killed, got it!" while missing all the stuff where Mallory is super hosed up

Gnoman
Feb 12, 2014

Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme




PupsOfWar posted:

theory: weber's characterization of Honor is entirely based on his poor interpretation of the old filk song Signy Mallory, which is a tribute to the hero from Downbelow Station

weber has of course never read Downbelow Station, he just heard the song once at a convention in 1985

Honor's characterization is boilerplate Rookie Hotshot, seasoned with a bit of Hornblower, sauteed with a side of Horatio Nelson, and adjusted to be female. Pretty much the only things really unique to her are the body image issues and her murderous temper. Even the math issues from the first books are just taking the standard "I can steer a ship by feel, but have trouble doing so with paper" characterization I've seen in half a dozen mediocre Age Of Sail stories.

Drakyn
Dec 26, 2012

General Battuta posted:

Mission of Honor: Retold is complete! Everything is ruined! We're all going to die! I actively cannot believe the effect even one relativistic impactor has on a planet, poo poo's hosed up.
This was really enjoyable and if you ever DO work on a followup I look forward to the further effects of removing the natural protagonizing tendency of the universe to make everything the people of Manticore do be 110% correct at all times, because if there's one thing I still wanted to see by the end of this it was them involuntarily having to follow someone else's lead rather than stiffen their upper lips and threaten righteous violence if the universe didn't dance to their tune.

EDIT: or, if you're still running that informal poll of 'what kind of endgame do you guys want from this?', put me down for 'Manticore gets absolutely fuckin' smashed.' If they don't outright get occupied, I want to see them fundamentally realign their entire society around not being the protagonists anymore. Their special wormhole farts and dies, their technological and strategic innovations are copied and surpassed, their 'Star Empire' member states quietly mosey off, they take down all the flags and bared teeth and retire the monarchy and give up on framing their entire existence around being horrifically wronged and then Striking With Perfectly Justified Righteous Fury in favour of being meekly boring and average because what they were before was unbearable and nobody's putting up with it anymore.

edit edit: okay to put it WAY less aggressively, all I want is for the delicate veil of fiction that demands the plucky little guy triumph resoundingly against the big jerk to be lifted aside. Just this once. Because lordy, I have not met a more unbearably big and jerky plucky little guy, or one who was more smugly aware of their role.

Drakyn fucked around with this message at 18:17 on May 28, 2020

Jack2142
Jul 17, 2014

Shitposting in Seattle

I think my biggest problem with this series is it just makes me want to read Hornblower or Aubrey-Maturin.

Kchama
Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

Honor's characterization is boilerplate Rookie Hotshot, seasoned with a bit of Hornblower, sauteed with a side of Horatio Nelson, and adjusted to be female. Pretty much the only things really unique to her are the body image issues and her murderous temper. Even the math issues from the first books are just taking the standard "I can steer a ship by feel, but have trouble doing so with paper" characterization I've seen in half a dozen mediocre Age Of Sail stories.

The math thing isn't even entirely thing because it's basically that she has trouble doing math HOMEWORK but it amazing at tests or doing it practically, and in fact it goes on to specify that she's probably the best in her class at it.

Which is just one of those 'have your cake and eat it too' things.



Drakyn posted:

This was really enjoyable and if you ever DO work on a followup I look forward to the further effects of removing the natural protagonizing tendency of the universe to make everything the people of Manticore do be 110% correct at all times, because if there's one thing I still wanted to see by the end of this it was them involuntarily having to follow someone else's lead rather than stiffen their upper lips and threaten righteous violence if the universe didn't dance to their tune.

EDIT: or, if you're still running that informal poll of 'what kind of endgame do you guys want from this?', put me down for 'Manticore gets absolutely fuckin' smashed.' If they don't outright get occupied, I want to see them fundamentally realign their entire society around not being the protagonists anymore. Their special wormhole farts and dies, their technological and strategic innovations are copied and surpassed, their 'Star Empire' member states quietly mosey off, they take down all the flags and bared teeth and retire the monarchy and give up on framing their entire existence around being horrifically wronged and then Striking With Perfectly Justified Righteous Fury in favour of being meekly boring and average because what they were before was unbearable and nobody's putting up with it anymore.

edit edit: okay to put it WAY less aggressively, all I want is for the delicate veil of fiction that demands the plucky little guy triumph resoundingly against the big jerk to be lifted aside. Just this once. Because lordy, I have not met a more unbearably big and jerky plucky little guy, or one who was more smugly aware of their role.

Woah hey not everyone in Manticore is a good guy! Don't forget that every politician who isn't of Weber's own preference is an evil ungenuine schemer who has no belief in the things they fight for and are, in fact, probably rapist slave-owners and murderers.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




I occasionally deliver on stuff I said I might do. Herewith,

BOLOS !

Book 1: Honor of the Regiment 1/2


This is the first installment of a review and recap of the Bolo anthologies and novels Baen put out, starting in 1993. The anthologies are mostly really good milsf, the novels range from serviceable, to gore porn, to "oh David Weber, there you go again". There will be spoilers and I'll give away twists, but unless I say otherwise assume any given story is worth reading, so I'll try and leave plenty of good stuff for the first-time reader to discover. And I think you should.

I've been a fan of the Bolo series since 1978 or so when a friend of the family gave me their copy of Laumer's original collection because I had my nose in it every time we visited. These are stories about honor, sacrifice, last chances, and redemption. I ate them up as a kid and I still appreciate a good "I can save this world before I die" story.

A Bolo is an autonomous combat unit, heavily armed and armored and possessed of sufficient automation to not only follow orders on the battlefield, but to demonstrate initiative and at least mimic a personality. Which marks of Bolo were the first to achieve true sentience is canonically the Mk XX because there are stories about the prototype Mk XX involving the shenanigans a newly awakened AI in a giant tank sleeve with some really weird poo poo going on that only it knows about, can get up to. And these AIs live in big sleeves. Tens of meters in every dimension, meters of armor, mounting energy weapons suitable for a capital ship, Bolos are often referred to as CSUs, Continental Siege Units. Or Planetary for marks in the mid XXXs. You'll see marks as early as the XVIs get written as people - the one in this volume is very capable, and even a Mk III can imitate its operator and do its job while the op catches a nap. The human tendency to anthropomorphize machines gets a big boost when the machine is built so you can have a natural language conversation about tactics, strategy, or military tradition with it. Bolos are organized into the Dinochrome Brigade, which is of various sizes in different stories, but it's always a pure-Bolo unit with a human commander/companion for each Bolo, plus a command section and logistics tail.

Just because the prototype Mk XX thinks it's the first truly sentient Bolo doesn't mean it is - I grew up a lot between 15, 20, and 25, and very few people will argue that a 15 year old human isn't a person under standards that will grant the 25 year old that status. This ambiguity also underscores another theme of the Bolo stories, there is no canon. Explicitly stated hard facts about specific marks of Bolo get contradicted. The only constant about the Enemy is that there always is one. If you want to write a Mk XII defending what may be the last human settled colony against The Enemy and annihilation, there's no reason someone else can't write a story about a XXXVIII doing the same thing. Maybe the same war, maybe not. There is a conceit introduced by David Weber that all of these stories are recovered from the ruins of two civilizations that killed each other, so some of the details are naturally wrong or misunderstood.

Themes win out over facts. And that's the strength of the series. Any writer has scope to tell a wide range of stories, and has a good assortment of themes that are well-suited for having a 10,000 ton talking tank driving around in the middle of it. For starters, that AI is going to be sent off to kill and die. Is this despicable slavery or honorable volunteerism ?

And then David Weber stuck his nose in. I'll get to that in later installments. For now we're breaking new ground, we're going to tell (or in our actual case, read) some new Bolo stories, and that's awesome !

I'm not being sarcastic, new Bolo stories are a great thing. It's just that there's a point where they should have stopped.

BOLOS Book 1: Honor of the Regiment

This is the first of the Baen anthologies and is credited to "Created by Keith Laumer". And that's a major theme, one of the original stories is titled For the Honor of the Regiment and this volume leans heavily in that direction.

Dating from 1993, it contains stories by the following authors.

Lost Legion by S.M. Stirling
Camelot by S.N Lewitt
The Legacy of Leonidas by J. Andrew Keith
Ploughshare by Todd Johnson
Ghosts by Mike Resnick & Barry N. Malzberg
The Ghost of Resartus by Christopher Stasheff
Operation Desert Fox by Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon
As Our Strength Lessens by David Drake

For Baen in 1993 this is pretty much an all-star lineup. Stirling was big, Keith was in his in-between phase from "the guy who did a shitload of Traveller stuff and some licensed novels" to having multiple series under different pen names going at once, Resnick and Malzberg are B-grade at worst, Mercedes Lackey is still a popular author, and lastly we're getting a Bolo story by David loving Drake !!!

Spoilers abound. Enter at your own risk. I'll try to hit the thematic highlights without ruining the actual story, but... wish me good luck, I'm doing the same.

Lost Legion
S.M. Stirling


This is the first of a series covering the attempts of a company of US soldiers trying to get home from Central America after everything falls apart. If you've read the original Bolo anthology by Laumer (and if you haven't, please do so RFN) this is more or less contemporary with Night of the Trolls. It takes place during the Collapse and before, so far as these people know anyway, the launch of the first interstellar expedition.

In this installment, the company commander takes delivery of a Mk III Bolo, a "four-sided pyramid with the top lopped off" and its operator. getting the word that the poo poo has hit the fan and no help, supplies, or evac will be forthcoming, the company decides to take the overland route home from a fictional country in Central America. With Bolo support they might make it. Stirling does an excellent job developing characters that we'll get attached to as the story progresses, as well as playing up how people will anthropomorphize and bond with even a fairly clever expert system. I rate this one pretty highly, following these characters for their journey home over then next few volumes is highly entertaining. If someone runs a Twilight 2000 game built around a PC unit and an actual loving Bolo that would be amazing.

This is milsf done right. The focus is on the people, including the Bolo. This unit isn't self-aware, but it has a learning-enabled expert system that can impersonate the operator if the Op is napping and the CO wants a report. It's good SF in that obstacles are overcome within the established framework of the setting, and good milfic in that massive explosions are involved. Stirling even emphasizes that while a motorized infantry unit couldn't make the trek without Bolo support, the Bolo wouldn't make it without infantry support.

There's a lot to love here. It's a love letter to combined-arms warfare. These stories are a big part of why this series went as long as it did; much like the Man-Kzin Wars series getting a huge boost from Poul Anderson writing Known Space stories.


Camelot
S.N. Lewitt

Lewitt is a pretty obscure author, but she's done work. We'll see her again when I pick up my review of The Fleet.

Camelot is a peaceful planet, they're basically cosplaying a golden age. New settlers take on names that are setting appropriate. Our PoV character, "Jazz for Jasper" takes the name Geoffrey and marries a local girl. Things go well, life is good, then pirates land in a wheat field, zap a few locals with plasma guns and demand all the portable wealth. The get it. Then they say they'll be back for the harvest and maybe a few of the prettier boys and girls.

The locals form a militia, but they've got nothing by way of weapons. They scrape up all their foreign exchange and send a delegation offworld to purchase weapons. naturally, since this is a Bolo story, Jazz-for-Geoffrey and a buddy take the trip and they're veterans of the Dinochrome Brigade. Geoffrey commanded Bolos in the field and Frederick was a top-flight mechanic. They end up purchasing a decommissioned Mk. XXIV Bolo (they served with XXXs, so this one is obsolete and demilitarized).

Unit KNY of the Line makes short work of the pirates, but then the story's main dilemma rars it's ugly head. How does a ten kiloton sentient combat AI fit into life in an idyllic pastoral society ?

Easily, Unit KNY is a sentient being in armor and there is precedent in Camelot for armored protectors. Sir Kenny will protect Camelot until the last flicker in his survival center goes out.

The Legacy of Leonidas
J. Andrew Keith


Go tell the Spartans, you who read:
We took their orders, and are dead.

The best Bolo stories are told from the Bolo's PoV, this one follows that pattern. As you might have guessed from the title of the story and the opening quote, this is going to be a retelling of Thermopylae from a Bolo's point of view.

This is the good stuff.

The PoV Bolo is deployed by one nation out of two powers on a planet. War is imminent, so it gets orders pretty much straight from the transport. Taking up its position, it bemoans the poor decisions of its human commanders in assigning it to an out of the way location. It does however start to bond with its direct commander. The attack begins, the twist happens treason in the command ranks fucks over the defense against the real axis of attack. The Bolo figures this out from intercepted radio trafic and decides to disobey orders. It advances to the real danger zone, rallying loyal troops, and sacrifices itself to hold the pass. Friendly units take advantage of the opening it created to win the day. The combat unit's final words to its commander, are of loyalty under duress and the finest military traditions. The Dinochrome Brigade in a nutshell.

Ploughshare
Todd Johnson

This is another "recovering from a civilization-level collapse" story, a recurring theme in Bolo stories. The very first story in Laumer's original collection, Night of the Trolls (down in front !) takes place in the aftermath of a limited nuclear war and collapse of American society to the warlord level. The protagonists of Lost Legion in this volume are operating in the same circumstances.

We start on a colony, in one if its nation states (uh oh !) that has just recovered a Mk XVI Bolo, some weaponry, and figured out how to recharge it. And a good thing too, a war is about to pop off. I suppose that the stories of Bolos recovered by archaeologists and carefully restored to life to regale the protagonists wioth stories of lost civilizations just don't end up in anthologies published by Baen. Besides, with war on the horizon you'd favor funding archaeological digs in rumored ancient military depots over looking into theories that there used to be a Paleolithic-level indigenous species when human settlers first arrived.

And apparently these settlers ended up cosplaying Prussia and the Third Republic as a way of hanging onto an identity during the collapse and the long climb back up. Or the author just decided to tell a story about a dastardly French blitzkrieg on a stoutly worthy Prussia. Just to set everything in its place, military technology is WW2-ish but there are civilian nuclear power plants in operation. The two sides are at odds because each blames the other for an engineered pandemic.

We start with a not-Prussian general inspecting the newly uncovered Bolo, and then the Bolo itself boots up. A Bolo startup sequence features in the classic Laumer Bolo stories. Unfortunately, this Bolo is suffering decay of its main processing elements and will soon fail completely.

This is Baen. This is going to happen.

So the Bolo and its new commander get to know each other. The Space Prussians have a Bolo now, so they plan a pre-emptive strike leveraging the Mk XVI's capabilities. The Bolo pwns both sides military networks, analyzes recent history, studies the pandemic, and deduces [/spoiler] the existence of an alien attack force inbound for a followup germ bombing and invasion.[/spoiler] In order to encourage two hostile nations to cooperate, it pretends to be a rogue; "Oh yes sir, the Neufrench would love to help us destroy our Bolo."

The Bolo races around the countryside, dodging bombers and artillery, eventually faking its own destruction. Playing dead, it manages a main battery shot on the alien's command ship, effectively ending the invasion in one salvo. The conventional forces can deal with what's left of the attackers. The humans reconcile in the face of an outside attack and everyone lives happily ever after.

Another really solid story with decent prose. The "let's interrupt WW2 in space" thing is more than a little twee at times, but it doesn't ruin the story. As for being a Bolo story, self-sacrifice, an a wakened Bolo on a lost colony, and a Bolo ignoring orders in favor of fighting the real threat are all classic themes.

Kchama
Jul 25, 2007
Thanks for the round-up! It's nice to hear about decent things being talked about for once, I said hypocritically.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

Khizan posted:

I think one of the major problems Weber ran into in the later books was the old classic "he overpromoted all his characters to the point where they can't do anything". None of his established characters were in a place where it was at all reasonable to have them running around doing adventure things, so the 'main series' books devolved into chapter after chapter of endless lovely politics and meetings. It was bad enough that he tried to write a side series to introduce some characters who would actually be in a position to launch missiles at things, and then he immediately tied those books up in meeting hell as well.

Honestly, what I'd liked to have seen is a variant where Honor never makes flag rank due to her political enemies and social ineptitude, so that she ends up spending the entire war as a heavy cruiser captain out on the fringes, maybe eventually getting up to battlecruiser but stalling out there. It would keep the scale smaller and avoid the missile-bukkake fleet actions, and it would keep the main characters at a rank that's low enough that they can actually go out and do adventure things. It would also allow for the thing where she's constantly involved in small-scale battles that have a vastly disproportionate effect on the overall course of the war.

This kind of thing fascinates me, because I can draw parallels to how the authors of German's main SF-series Perry Rhodan deal with that poo poo. Because they have the combined problems of Weber: See, Perry Rhodan, the main character, is both immortal and morally pure. All his failures have to be personal ones, since to a German audience, a less-then-perfect leader in a leadership position is not palatable. Perry is allowed to be a bad dad, or to be sad when his women leave him, but he can't be allowed to say, give orders which at one point lead to innocents dying somewhere.

He also got to be space president of Earth right at the start, which caused even more problems because how can you write interesting stories about someone who is by definition perfect, is the leader of mankind and gets turned into an immortal with the order from up high to never kill him, no matter what?

Well, they somehow did it and PR is still running strong, from the early 60s up to today. They did it mainly by settling him down with a lot of non-lethal flaws that actually matter in story: Perry will often waffle around even against murderous space aliens, hoping to the last possible second he can come up with a peaceful solution, he'll rather be deselected from his post in a democratic election, even if the other candidate is named Evil McSpaceVillain, he gets his head nearly caved in for trying to lead an exploratory command inside a hostile asteroid base just because he wants to. He'll also (that is, the authors :v: ) come up with more and more ludicrous reasons for why he absolutely has to take the flagship of the fleet to confront whatever space horror of the week is menacing mankind this time.

The authors even managed to turn his immortality around on him, by killing his wives, his children, friends, you name it. Every century or so, the authors kill off one them, just to hurt him and tell their readers "see, the guy is still human, see how we make him suffer"

Apart from the fact that Weber let Honor live for far too long, he also doesn't allow her to lose or suffer enough to to make us care. She wins so often it becomes somehow even more ludicrous then Perry Rhodan just getting up from his space president chair and walking into the next space ship to get a fix for his adrenaline addiction. Especially since Perry is allowed to lose. For every space alien invasion he turns back, there's one where he has to flee while Earth gets occupied. And sometimes the authors let him go off on a far away space expeditions, because it allows the authors to write stories about Perry dealing with the people on his expeditions while other characters get to deal with space bullshit at home.

Perry also eventually became some sort of religious figure, both revered and feared, simply by living for over 3000 years by now, and so decided to stop letting himself elected space president over and over (because in his mind, this is a deeply unhealthy relationship for a politician to have with his constituents), so the authors can now get away with just giving him a single ship to go do exploration in another galaxy to avoid Weber's "meetings, but in space"-problem that always crops up when you have political leaders also be your main characters.

Honor's best novel is still the one where she gets captured, but after that short interlude I think she never ever loses again, ever. Which kills all tension. And then Weber started to do the same thing with Weber's admiral friend and I just dropped out of the series. It even soured me on the earlier novels of his, which I all liked.

At this point I believe Weber must have suffered some kind of accident causing some sort of brain damage, as he is the only author I know of who gets worse the more he writes. Even GRRM just got slower, and that's because he probably of writing about Westeros, not just plain worse

Edit:

Ah, Bolos! Nice to hear about them, especially as I was always interested in their stories, but never managed to have the time to read them myself.

Gnoman
Feb 12, 2014

Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme




Kchama posted:

The math thing isn't even entirely thing because it's basically that she has trouble doing math HOMEWORK but it amazing at tests or doing it practically, and in fact it goes on to specify that she's probably the best in her class at it.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Age Of Sail navigation required taking bearings on stars with tools, then using a lot of complicated trigonometry tables to work out your exact position. A stock character trait I've seen is a captain that is almost totally incapable of doing this, but can navigate expertly just by the sight of the stars and instinct. What Harrington does in the first book is the sci-fi equivalent - not a unique trait at all, and one that is copied with minimal alterations from the source material.


Libluini posted:

Honor's best novel is still the one where she gets captured, but after that short interlude I think she never ever loses again, ever.

The third-to-last battle of the Havenite wars (two battles before she was scheduled to die), sees Harrington completely crushed in a failed attack, losing close to half her fleet (including her best friend's ship, at initial appearance with all hands) with no significant damage on the enemy. Other than that, you're quite correct that most tension drained out of the later books, because Manticore-Haven military tech was so far in advance of anybody else. That's not specific to any character - every Manticoran commander in the later books clowns on anybody that doesn't outnumber them massively, because it is the faction that is too powerful.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

Gnoman posted:

The third-to-last battle of the Havenite wars (two battles before she was scheduled to die), sees Harrington completely crushed in a failed attack, losing close to half her fleet (including her best friend's ship, at initial appearance with all hands) with no significant damage on the enemy. Other than that, you're quite correct that most tension drained out of the later books, because Manticore-Haven military tech was so far in advance of anybody else. That's not specific to any character - every Manticoran commander in the later books clowns on anybody that doesn't outnumber them massively, because it is the faction that is too powerful.

Woops, forgot about that battle!

But seriously, Weber needs to look up how other authors dealt with that problem already, because he is not the first nor will be the last who wrote themselves into a corner.

The most obvious thing that comes to mind would be to give some equally game-changing tech to one of Manticore's enemies. He came this close with the Mesan stealth tech, only to fumble it completely! It's maddening to see Weber doing this to himself.

Gnoman
Feb 12, 2014

Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme




He was on track for that, proliferating the missile pod and some degree of range extender pretty widely. I honestly think this is another case of not handling loss of the timeskip well. It looks very much like he originally intended most powers to come a lot closer (there's frequent mentions that Solarian members' "system defense fleets" are paying way more attention than the SLN, for example), but was trying to set this up as taking years. Years which he suddenly didn't have.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer
That's an excuse, he could have just suddenly revealed the Solarians or Mesa were working on some fancy new techs in deepest secret, putting the years needed to counter Manticore into the past.

It's like when he at first hinted the Andermani were also building podnaughts, only to later reveal that nope, they're poo poo and obsolete already, just as they join Manticore's side. It's like he sees the problem, but when he attempts to solve it (Mesa, Anderman), he sabotages himself. I don't get this! :psyduck:

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Libluini posted:

Woops, forgot about that battle!

But seriously, Weber needs to look up how other authors dealt with that problem already, because he is not the first nor will be the last who wrote themselves into a corner.

The most obvious thing that comes to mind would be to give some equally game-changing tech to one of Manticore's enemies. He came this close with the Mesan stealth tech, only to fumble it completely! It's maddening to see Weber doing this to himself.

Read my fanfic

PupsOfWar
Dec 6, 2013

hmm, I knew Travis S. Taylor had gotten into the TV Fake Science Guy business, but I didn't know he had a permanent gig on one of the history channel's fake UFO shows

the ringo/taylor collab series is probably the least-racist series ringo has written, though granted my metric for that is just "scale of the genocide nonwhite people are subjected to by sci-fi scenario deliberately constructed to facilitate such"

Libluini posted:


At this point I believe Weber must have suffered some kind of accident causing some sort of brain damage, as he is the only author I know of who gets worse the more he writes. Even GRRM just got slower, and that's because he probably of writing about Westeros, not just plain worse


he did suffer that accident that prevents him from using a keyboard normally, perhaps workflow is just that different when you are dictating

one thing that's very much missed through the latter books is just how fun the PRH were as antagonists

with them being based on these well-worn historical tropes, weber was able to extract some fun unpredictable mustache-twirling, I remember feeling some genuine tension at, say, the McQueen subplot

in comparison, the Solarians are just a composite of things that Weber personally finds sinister as a conservative white guy (large bureaucratic systems, sprawling cosmopolitanism), but he clearly didn't have as good an idea of how to have fun with them as he did with the Revolutionary France pastiche.

obviously the League can and should be interesting, as Battuta's fanfic demonstrates, weber just was not the man to do it

then the mesans of course are plenty evil but
1) don't have a ton of personality
2) are limited in the amount of face-time they can get, by virtue of being a shadowy conspiracy

grassy gnoll
Aug 27, 2006

The pawsting business is tough work.

General Battuta posted:

Read my fanfic

Why yes, I'd love more Freespace fanfic.

Kchama
Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Age Of Sail navigation required taking bearings on stars with tools, then using a lot of complicated trigonometry tables to work out your exact position. A stock character trait I've seen is a captain that is almost totally incapable of doing this, but can navigate expertly just by the sight of the stars and instinct. What Harrington does in the first book is the sci-fi equivalent - not a unique trait at all, and one that is copied with minimal alterations from the source material.

I was more getting at that he couldn't even commit to that. Even that very minor flaw was a bridge to far. Because Honor CAN do all of that work and is in fact one of the best ever seen at the work. She just couldn't do it by hand when it wasn't important to for whatever reason, because Weber goes out of his way to point out that she aced all of the tests in school doing it by hand, but was only kept from being valedictorian because she just couldn't do it when it was on regular homework or something like that.

TheGreatEvilKing
Mar 28, 2016





I really do get the idea that the lack of dramatic tension is the point and you are supposed to be reassured by the politicial rightmans winning over the political badmans. Honor's warcrime tendencies aren't so much a flaw as a sop to juvenile power fantasies.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

mllaneza posted:

Camelot
S.N. Lewitt

Lewitt is a pretty obscure author, but she's done work. We'll see her again when I pick up my review of The Fleet.

Camelot is a peaceful planet, they're basically cosplaying a golden age. New settlers take on names that are setting appropriate. Our PoV character, "Jazz for Jasper" takes the name Geoffrey and marries a local girl. Things go well, life is good, then pirates land in a wheat field, zap a few locals with plasma guns and demand all the portable wealth. The get it. Then they say they'll be back for the harvest and maybe a few of the prettier boys and girls.

The locals form a militia, but they've got nothing by way of weapons. They scrape up all their foreign exchange and send a delegation offworld to purchase weapons. naturally, since this is a Bolo story, Jazz-for-Geoffrey and a buddy take the trip and they're veterans of the Dinochrome Brigade. Geoffrey commanded Bolos in the field and Frederick was a top-flight mechanic. They end up purchasing a decommissioned Mk. XXIV Bolo (they served with XXXs, so this one is obsolete and demilitarized).

Unit KNY of the Line makes short work of the pirates, but then the story's main dilemma rars it's ugly head. How does a ten kiloton sentient combat AI fit into life in an idyllic pastoral society ?

Easily, Unit KNY is a sentient being in armor and there is precedent in Camelot for armored protectors. Sir Kenny will protect Camelot until the last flicker in his survival center goes out.

pops head into thread

oh hey! I really love SN Lewitt's novels, her Cyberstealth/Dancing Vac trilogy is a real solid sci-fi fusion with Top Gun. Finding out that she wrote a cool bolo story makes me excited to go find and read it, thanks!

PupsOfWar
Dec 6, 2013

i feel a little bad for the number of "wow, you're just as good a writer as david weber!" compliments battuta has gotten for his fanfic on SV, since presumably most people who are writers (much less writers who have already produced much better books than anything in weber's bibliography) are presumably striving to be better at it than david weber

otoh he did deliberately emulate weber's style pretty closely

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




StrixNebulosa posted:

pops head into thread

oh hey! I really love SN Lewitt's novels, her Cyberstealth/Dancing Vac trilogy is a real solid sci-fi fusion with Top Gun. Finding out that she wrote a cool bolo story makes me excited to go find and read it, thanks!

Good news ! That, and Lost Legion, are the two sample stories from this volume ! It's a good story, enjoy ! The link will go to Lost Legion, hit the Contents link to get the ToC.
https://www.baen.com/Chapters/0671721844/0671721844.htm

PupsOfWar posted:

i feel a little bad for the number of "wow, you're just as good a writer as david weber!" compliments battuta has gotten for his fanfic on SV, since presumably most people who are writers (much less writers who have already produced much better books than anything in weber's bibliography) are presumably striving to be better at it than david weber

otoh he did deliberately emulate weber's style pretty closely

Most of the comments I read were rating Battuta as a better Weber than Weber. And he is. There's some good prose, good characterizations, amazing drama in space battles, and some good one-liners. It's a much better novel than the original that he's re-writing. All the recovering Weber fans should check it out.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

mllaneza posted:

Good news ! That, and Lost Legion, are the two sample stories from this volume ! It's a good story, enjoy ! The link will go to Lost Legion, hit the Contents link to get the ToC.
https://www.baen.com/Chapters/0671721844/0671721844.htm

This is sweet, but I am the lucky owner of Bolo v1-4! Apparently SN Lewitt wrote TWO bolo stories and I have them both. I'm so happy, I was able to find the books.

... I also found my old Man-Kzin Wars collection. Despite owning like five of them, I haven't read any of them. Has anyone in here read 'em?

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

Jack2142 posted:

I think my biggest problem with this series is it just makes me want to read Hornblower or Aubrey-Maturin.

David Drake's RCN series is a direct homage to O'Brien, far more than HH is. I like it a lot more.

Blaze Ward wrote a nine book strong female mary-sue starship captain becomes the greatest series and i like that a lot more too - i think it's better characterisation that makes the difference though YMMV.

Poldarn
Feb 18, 2011

StrixNebulosa posted:

... I also found my old Man-Kzin Wars collection. Despite owning like five of them, I haven't read any of them. Has anyone in here read 'em?

I did a Known Space marathon a few years back, including the MKWs. The quality is hit or miss throughout, there were some gems in the earlier ones and a gradual drop-off in quality as the series went on. The only one I put down was Treasure Planet as that was a re-skinned Treasure Island and also terrible.

Wikipedia is telling me there are two new ones since then so I might check those out in the future.

Farmer Crack-Ass
Jan 2, 2001

this is me posting irl

mllaneza posted:

I occasionally deliver on stuff I said I might do.

And you did! Very much looking forward to reading your following installments.

PupsOfWar
Dec 6, 2013

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

I really do get the idea that the lack of dramatic tension is the point and you are supposed to be reassured by the politicial rightmans winning over the political badmans. Honor's warcrime tendencies aren't so much a flaw as a sop to juvenile power fantasies.

I got to thinking about this notion recently and something weird occured to me

Obviously, the whole "the bad guys are inexplicably incompetent because only morons could possibly disagree with me or my self-insert characters" thing is a well-worn trope in this type of fiction, deployed by Weber many times and probably peaking in that one Kratman series wherein the forces of the U.N.-derived Earth Government have somehow forgotten how to maintain their own spaceships due to Liberalism.

The weird thing is that in the Safehold books (written concurrently with the latter half of the Honorverse) the bad guys are competent more often than not.

Considerable pagecount is dedicated to various bad guys' decision-making, and, given the information they have access to, their plans are typically pretty sound, foiled only by the good guys' access to superior information via out-of-context supertechnology, the intrinsic difficulty of managing a huge planet-wide coalition with premodern communications, and incompatible agendas within said coalition. Within the large ensemble of bad guys introduced over the numerous books, there are only 3-4 real strawman morons that I can think of.

Bad guys quickly copy and even iterate upon the good guys' superior weapons, attempt to reform the obvious weaknesses in their own political and military systems, and respond to the good guys' military advantage using asymmetric approaches - that is to say, espionage, sabotage, fomenting internal political dissent and political violence, and generally leveraging the soft power they possess as the clergy of a world-wide religion. All stuff the Havenites and Solarians in the Honorverse either don't think to do or aren't considered capable of doing effectively, despite the vast soft power the Solarian League would presumably possess by dint of representing ~75% of the population of the universe. As a result, the good guys are stymied a number of times, and the good guys' biggest allies (who have a huge elite army but lack access to either out-of-context supertechnology or the weberverse superpower known as Monarchy) get pretty much obliterated. There's still plenty of strawmanning and plenty of one-sided battles to go around, but overall it's a much more even sort of conflict than we usually encounter in this thread.

The Safehold books are very much not good. They share all of the stylistic weaknesses of the Honorverse books, and are perhaps even more of a thematic void. But their existence does suggest Weber had the interest and willingness to do a proper treatment of the type of conflict we see in the latter Honorverse books - a huge complex hegemonic system disintegrating messily as its institutional inertia creates irreconcilable dilemmas.

Seems to me that Weber may have simply gotten bored with the Honorverse and invented the unstoppable Apollo missile just to wrap things up as quickly as possible.

Alternatively, due to Weber's own quite intense religous beliefs, he may in some sense respect the antagonists of Safehold more than the antagonists of his other work, and be willing to grant a sort of intrinsic competence and dignity to "men fighting for a religious order I disagree with" that he does not grant to "men fighting for a political/economic system I disagree with"

mllaneza posted:

I occasionally deliver on stuff I said I might do.


smdh

PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jun 5, 2020

Kchama
Jul 25, 2007
I'd say that it's largely because the enemies in Safehold are of a kind that Weber respects and likes a lot more. The complete idiots in the villains are largely mockeries of (real-life) left-wing people. Like, they're Christians and not weird Jewish Muslims like the Masadans, so they're not ALL evil fat murder-rapists like Inquisitor Bill Clinton.

Also I guess he feels he can present them with competence because the good guys are just staggeringly superior to them in every single way to begin with and it's all they can to do even have a book series continue.

PupsOfWar
Dec 6, 2013

how come there are so many mil-SF retellings of Xenophon's March, but no mil-SF retellings of the voyage of the Russian Imperial Navy's 2nd Pacific Squadron

TheGreatEvilKing
Mar 28, 2016





Maybe you could mention it in your Ringo thing.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




PupsOfWar posted:

how come there are so many mil-SF retellings of Xenophon's March, but no mil-SF retellings of the voyage of the Russian Imperial Navy's 2nd Pacific Squadron

Fiction, unlike real life, has to be plausible.

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

PupsOfWar posted:

how come there are so many mil-SF retellings of Xenophon's March, but no mil-SF retellings of the voyage of the Russian Imperial Navy's 2nd Pacific Squadron

Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, link includes him complaining about David Weber, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Sky#History

90s Cringe Rock
Nov 29, 2006
:gay:

Safety Biscuits posted:

Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, link includes him complaining about David Weber, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Sky#History
In 2010 David Betz, a senior lecturer in war studies at King's College, London, cited Singularity Sky as a model for a proposal to undermine the Taliban's hold over Afghanistan, and strengthen the country's legitimate government, by giving every resident of the country a free mobile phone. He said it would "create a real communications space and 'let ideas find their own levels'". In Stross's novel, he noted, "the contact of the lesser developed culture with the advanced one is utterly devastating for the status quo of the former. The parallels are pretty obvious."

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer
I love the inherent assumption that in 2010, no-one in Afghanistan knew what a mobile phone was. :allears:


In other words, David Betz should be strangled with his own hands for claiming all this bullshit.

Kchama
Jul 25, 2007
HONOR OF THE QUEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sorry for the delay. I just haven't felt good and absolutely haven't felt good enough to read this book.


quote:

"How bad is it, Alistair?"

"Bad enough, Ma'am." Alistair McKeon's face was grim. "We've lost Missile Two and Radar Three. That leaves point defense wide open on the starboard beam. The same hit carried through into the forward impellers—Alpha Four's gone, and so is Beta Eight. The second hit came in right on Frame Twenty and carried clear back through sickbay. It took out the master control runs to Laser Three and Missile Four and breached Magazine Two. The magazine's a total write-off; Laser Three and Missile Four are on line in local control, and we're repressurizing and rigging new runs to them now, but we lost thirty-one people, including Dr. McFee and two sick berth attendants, and we've got wounded."

His voice was harsh with pain, and Honor's eyes were dark as she nodded, but for all that, they both knew Troubadour had been incredibly lucky. The loss of one of her forward missile tubes and an entire magazine had hurt her offensive capability, and Radar Three's destruction left a dangerous chink in her anti-missile defenses. But her combat power was far less impaired than it might have been, and the casualties could have been much, much worse. She'd been lamed, and until the alpha node was replaced she couldn't generate a forward Warshawski sail, but she could still maneuver and fight.

"I came in too fat and stupid," McKeon went on bitterly. "If I'd only had my sidewalls up, maybe—"

"Not your fault," Honor interrupted. "We didn't have any reason to expect Grayson to open fire on us, and even if we had, it was my responsibility to go to a higher readiness state."

McKeon's lips tightened, but he said no more, and Honor was glad. Whatever was happening, one thing they didn't need was for both of them to blame themselves for it.

So despite getting a basically point-blank direct hit on the Troubadour, the Troubadour's combat capability is only minorly impaired and only a minimal amount of sacrific--- I mean crew were lost. You know, I wonder if the actual reason why ships in these books have such over-bloated crews is because he was replicating how Age of Sail ships had massive crews because they were more or less expected to lose them (and with how the crew were constantly dicked over, probably were intended to be lost).

quote:

"I'll have Fritz Montoya over there in five minutes," Honor went on when she was certain he'd dropped it. "We'll transfer your wounded to our sickbay once he's sure they're stabilized."

"Thank you, Ma'am." There was less self-blame in McKeon's voice, but no less anger.

"But why in God's name did they fire?" Alice Truman asked from her quadrant of the split screen, green eyes baffled as she voiced the question for them all. "It's crazy!"

"Agreed." Honor leaned back, her own eyes hard, but Alice was right. Even if negotiations had broken down completely, the Graysons must be insane to fire on her. They were already worried over the Masadans—surely they must realize what the Fleet would do to them for this!

"It seems crazy to me, too," she went on after a moment, her voice grim, "but as of right now, this squadron is on a war footing. I intend to enter attack range of Grayson and demand an explanation and the stand-down of their fleet. I also intend to demand to speak to our people planet-side. If any of my demands is refused, or if our delegation has been harmed in any way, we will engage and destroy the Grayson Navy. Is that understood?"

Her subordinates nodded.

"Commander Truman, your ship will take point. Commander McKeon, I want you tucked in astern. Stay tight and tie into Fearless's radar to cover the gap in your own coverage. Clear?"

"Yes, Ma'am," her captains replied in unison.

"Very well, then, people. Let's be about it."

Pushing that lame catchphrase, I see. I don't even know how Weber fans came to love it, as it's just so bland. Anyways, the tension of whether or not Honor might do something rash and perhaps attack innocent Graysons unwittingly is nice and high! Let's see if he does something with it!

quote:


"Captain? I have a transmission from Grayson," Lieutenant Metzinger said, and the tension on Fearless's bridge redoubled. Barely five minutes had passed since the ambush, and unless the Graysons were stupid as well as crazy, they couldn't possibly expect to talk their way out of this with a message sent before their ships had even opened fire!

But Metzinger wasn't finished.

"It's from Ambassador Langtry," she added, and Honor's eyebrows rose.

Nope. Not even a page later it's compeltely defanged and basically everything gets explained immediately. Oh well.

quote:

"From Sir Anthony?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Put it on my screen."

Honor felt a surge of relief as Sir Anthony's face appeared before her, for the wall of his embassy office was clearly visible behind him, and Reginald Houseman stood beside the ambassador's chair. She'd been afraid the entire diplomatic staff was in Grayson custody; if they were still in the safety of their own embassy, the situation might not be totally out of control after all. But then the ambassador's grim, almost frightened expression registered. And where was Admiral Courvosier?

"Captain Harrington." The ambassador's voice was taut. "Grayson Command Central has just picked up a hyper footprint which I assume—hope—is your squadron. Be advised Masadan warships are patrolling the Yeltsin System." Honor stiffened. Could it be those LACs hadn't been Grayson ships? Only, if they weren't, then how had they gotten here, and why had they—?

But the prerecorded message was still playing, and the ambassador's next words shattered her train of thought like a hammer on crystal.

"Assume any ship encountered is hostile, Captain, and be advised there are at least two—I repeat, at least two—modern warships in the Masadan order of battle. Our best estimate is that they're a pair of cruisers, probably Haven-built." The ambassador swallowed, but he'd been a highly decorated Marine officer, and he carried through grimly. "No one realized the Masadans had them, and Admiral Yanakov and Admiral Courvosier took the Grayson fleet out to engage the enemy four days ago. I'm . . . afraid Madrigal and Austin Grayson were lost with all hands—including Admirals Courvosier and Yanakov."

Decorated Marine Officer... so that must be why he's a good guy and not a snivelling coward or Just Plain Wrong.

Also do Marine officers usually become ambassadors?

quote:

Every drop of blood drained from Honor's face. No! The Admiral couldn't be dead—not the Admiral!

"We're in serious trouble down here, Captain," Langtry's recorded voice went on. "I don't know why they've held off this long, but nothing Grayson has left can possibly stop them. Please advise me of your intentions as soon as possible. Langtry clear."

The screen blanked, and she stared at it, frozen in her command chair. It was a lie. A cruel, vicious lie! The Admiral was alive. He was alive, drat it! He wouldn't die. He couldn't die—he wouldn't do that to her!

But Ambassador Langtry had no reason to lie.
They've held off because they're incredible idiots and this book required them to be for Honor to win. It's not any fun when the motivation for why the villains did something is so plainly "the plot required it".


quote:

She closed her eyes, feeling Nimitz at her shoulder, and remembered Courvosier as she'd left him. Remembered that impish face, the twinkle in those blue eyes. And behind those newer memories were others, twenty-seven years of memories, each cutting more deeply and cruelly than the last, as she realized at last—when it was too late—that she'd never told him she loved him.

Honor just has a thing for old men who mentor her, huh? This is definately a running theme with her.

quote:

And behind the loss, honing the agony, was her guilt. She'd run out on him. He'd wanted her to stay and let her go only because she insisted, and because Fearless hadn't been there—because she hadn't been there—he'd taken a single destroyer into battle and died.

It was her fault. He'd needed her, and she hadn't been there . . . and that had killed him. She'd killed him, as surely as if she'd sent a pulser dart through his brain with her own hand.

Like the last sentence isn't correct, but the rest sure is. She hosed off and left him alone and he died. He might not have if she hadn't. It is that simple. It does sound like you're meant to disagree with her and say it's just 'survivor's guilt' making her believe something so wrong but no, it's pretty much correct.

quote:

Silence enfolded Fearless's bridge crew as all eyes turned to the woman in the captain's chair. Her face was stunned as even the total surprise of the LACs' attack had not left it, and the light had gone out of her treecat's eyes. He crouched on her chair back, tail tucked in tight, prick ears flat, and the soft, heartrending keen of his lament was the only sound as tears rolled silently down her cheeks.

Okay, I'm issuing a firm 'settle down' here. Weber cannot write this at all with any sort of grace or skill.

quote:

"Orders, Captain?" Andreas Venizelos broke the crew's silence at last, and more than one person flinched as his quiet voice intruded upon their captain's grief.

Honor's nostrils flared. The sound of her indrawn breath was harsh, and the heel of her hand scrubbed angrily, brutally, at her wet face as she squared her shoulders.

"Record for transmission, Lieutenant Metzinger," she said in a hammered-iron voice none of them had ever heard, and the communications officer swallowed.

"Recording, Ma'am," she said softly.

"Ambassador Langtry," Honor said in that same, deadly voice. "Your message is received and understood. Be advised that my squadron has already been engaged by and destroyed three LACs I now presume to have been Masadan. We've suffered casualties and damage, but my combat power is unimpaired."

She inhaled again, feeling her officers' and ratings' eyes on her.

"I will continue to Grayson at my best speed. Expect my arrival in Grayson orbit in—" she checked her astrogation readout "—approximately four hours twenty-eight minutes from now."

She stared into the pickup, and the corner of her mouth twitched. There was steel in her brown eyes, smoking from anger's forge and tempered by grief and guilt, and her voice was colder than space.

Good old mixed metaphors. Hot and cold at the same time, instead of just super cold (and smug).

quote:

"Until I have complete information, it will be impossible to formulate detailed plans, but you may inform the Grayson government that I intend to defend this system in accordance with Admiral Courvosier's apparent intentions. Please have a complete background brief waiting for me. In particular, I require an immediate assessment of Grayson's remaining military capabilities and assignment of a liaison officer to my squadron. I will meet with you and the senior Grayson military officer in the Embassy within ten minutes of entering Grayson orbit. Harrington clear."

She sat back, her strong-boned face unyielding, and her own determination filled her bridge crew. They knew as well as she that the entire Grayson Navy, even if it had suffered no losses at all, would have been useless against the weight of metal she'd just committed them to face. The odds were very good that some of them, or some of their friends on the other ships of the squadron, were going to die, and none of them were eager for death. But other friends had already died, and they themselves had been attacked.

None of Honor's other officers had been Admiral Courvosier's protégée, but many had been his students, and he'd been one of the most respected officers in their service even to those who'd never known him personally. If they could get a piece of the people who'd killed him, they wanted it.

"On the chip, Captain," Lieutenant Metzinger said.

"Send it. Then set up another conference link with Apollo and Troubadour. Make certain Commander Truman and Commander McKeon have copies of Sir Anthony's transmission and tie their coms to my briefing room terminal."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Metzinger said, and Honor stood. She looked across the bridge at Andreas Venizelos as she started for the briefing room hatch.

"Mr. DuMorne, you have the watch. Andy, come with me." Her voice was still hard, her face frozen. Grief and guilt hammered at the back of her brain, but she refused to listen to them. There would be time enough to face those things after the killing.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. I have the watch," Lieutenant Commander DuMorne said quietly to her back as the hatch opened before her.

She never heard him at all.

Short chapter. Nothing offensive besides some incredibly clumsy writing.

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Anshu
Jan 9, 2019


Kchama posted:

Honor just has a thing for old men who mentor her, huh? This is definately a running theme with her.

I'm pretty sure she means a filial sort of love.

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