Honor Harrington/Awesome

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On Basilisk Station

• Honor's light cruiser as sole protection for an entire star system, with an crippled armament mix, creates and maintains order in the system anyway, and finally fights off a Q ship that outguns her ship by a ridiculous margin.
  • In the later novel, Admiral Hemphill finally finds an opportunity to discuss its armament mix with Honor. Her comments boil down to 'That ship was intended solely as a testbed! What colossal idiot actually deployed you to a potential combat zone with it?!?' Which means that Honor pulled off the events of the first novel with an untested prototype that wasn't remotely combat-ready for solo action and wasn't ever intended to be.
• Part of Honor's overwhelming duties at Basilisk Station is to hold customs inspections. The NPA, the local police organization, is mainly ex-Army and ex-Marines and so they have almost no experience finding smuggling compartments or the like. (Which is why its supposed to be the Navy's job to handle customs in the first place, a duty the previous Basilisk Station commander had been ignoring.) During the meeting with the head of the NPA, she calls in the Bosun.

"I'm not going to ask you to betray any secrets, Bosun, but what I'm looking for are people who--from their own experience, let us say--would be intimately familiar with the best way to hide contraband aboard a shuttle or a starship.

• • After the Bosun leaves, Major Isvarian, the head of the NPA customs, intrudes on the conversation:

"Excuse me, Captain, but did I just hear you ask the bosun to find fifteen smugglers to man our customs flights?" "Of course not, Major. This is a Queen's ship. What would we be doing with smugglers on board?"

• When Klaus Hauptman is meeting with Honor and Mc Keon, Mc Keon responds to Hauptman's egotistical behavior with a several paragraph explanation on how it could easily be considered treason.

For the Honor of the Queen

• Nimitz shows his deadliness for the first time when he goes utterly berserk on a false security guard, and thereby provides enough warning for himself, Honor, and the real security men to keep Protector Benjamin and his family alive through a very determined assassination attempt.
• Wiping out the assassination squad sent against the Protector, and then charging straight into a massively more powerful ship though she knows her ship is too crippled to do really much of anything, just because it's the only chance the planet has... with her favourite music playing over the bridge.

The Short Victorious War

• The first Manticoran Missle Massacre of the series is unleashed upon an unsuspecting squadron of Havenite Dreadnoughts that thought they had the jump on a helpless squadron of Battlecruisers.

Field of Dishonor

• After her lover, Paul Tankersley is murdered, Honor kills the expert duelist who was hired to do the job while he mocks her inexperience in duels. Then she kills the guy who hired him, longtime enemy Pavel Young, with one shot in a duel, even though he broke the law to fire on (and hit) her first.

Flag in Exile

• Honor has: been called a whore for most of the book, blamed herself for an industrial accident which killed a group of schoolchildren, learned that the "accident" was sabotage, had her aircar shot down, and saved from a point-blank assassination when Grayson's spiritual leader threw himself in front of her, and generally suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. She finally gets to the Council Chamber, battered, bruised, limping and exhausted, presents her evidence, and names the man who's been orchestrating all of this... who promptly claims a traditional form of justice and demands to face the Protector's Champion in trial by sword combat. And guess who that is? The Protector, seeing that she's in no shape to fight, begins to back off from his proclamation (which will undermine his authority for all time), but she cuts him off:

Honor: Your Grace, I have only one question. Do you wish this man crippled, or dead?

• • If that wasn't enough, as soon as she's done with that, she has to defend the system from an invasion fleet which outnumbers and outguns hers... again.
  • Hell, that's most of her entire career.
• Adam Gerrick. "We...are...engineers!" A dome he was building for a local middle school collapsed and killed a number of children who would have attended it. He doesn't know how that's possible, but he's bloody well going to build a mathematically sound computer model and find out. Made me mighty Proud to Be a Geek reading that.
  • Made even better when Clinkscales finally believes he can do it. "You are engineers. I was a policeman. [...] Find me the what and how and I'll give you the who and why." - and this is believed to be the worst crime ever committed in the history of their world.
• Protector Benjamin verbally rips apart the Conclave of Steadholders (An upper chamber of Grayson's Parliament), and makes them feel about 3 microns tall for the way they treated Honor.

Honor Among Enemies

• Citizen Commander Caslet, Citizen Commissioner Jourdain, Shannon Foraker and the entire crew of the PNS Vaubon in Honor Among Enemies. During an operation against Manticore, they run across a Ghost Ship containing the Nightmare Fuel handiwork of some vaguely Reaver-esque pirates. In spite of being the "bad guys" the Peeps are generally nice people, and as such the Vaubon goes after the pirates, tracks their ship to the next star system and engages them. The Vaubon ruins the pirate ship with one laser salvo (it wasn't even a full strength salvo either). It's incredibly satisfying
• Aubrey Wandermann spends the beginning of the book being bullied and getting a beating, which makes his Curb Stomp Battle of the bully after Chief Harkness mentors him to be so sweet.

In Enemy Hands

• Honor again: she recommends a huge shift in tactical and R&D thinking in coalition with the Jeune Ecole, then gets captured and apparently killed before it can be implemented. When it is implemented, it turns out she was right about pretty much everything. And until she comes back about half of it gets named after her.
• Horace Harkness betrays the Star Kingdom of Manticore by defecting to the side of his Peep captors. Only he's really planning an escape operation for his crewmates all along. When he finally springs the trap, he has single handedly reprogrammed every computer on board his captors' ship to do his bidding.

Echoes of Honor

• Allison Chou-Harrington gets a small one when she explains her Beowulfian heritage and training, hence justifying her fixing the entire genetic problem with the Grayson population.
  • It says something about the series as a whole when someone's announcement that they are the direct descendant of the two most famous medical families in the galaxy's history - people who quadrupled human lifespan and cured virtually every disease known to man, and that she is at least that skilled a doctor, rates a single sentence at the bottom of a CMOA page.
• The subverted To Absent Friends speech delivered by Yanakov: "Your grace, my lords and ladies, ladies and gentlemen all, I give you Steadholder Harrington...and damnation to the Peeps!"

Ashes of Victory

• Publicly executed on video, Honor reappears with a fleet of stolen warships filled with jury-rigged crews from the prison planet she just broke out of.
  • Of course Horance Harkness must get credit for much of that, as he refuses the Parliament Metal of Valor and direct commission for his role. But he does take knighthood for going above and beyond the duty in rescuing Honor from State Sec, outfighting and out thinking an entire captial ship worth of personnel when he was free and in no personal danger.
    • He does get the PMV, Honor is the one who refuses, and threatens to resign if the issue is forced.
• Shannon Foraker in Ashes of Victory: Her Admiral, Lester Tourville, has just gotten a message from the State Security commander which is essentially his death sentence. He gets half way through his message when State Security commander's ship, and the two full squadrons of ships with it spontaneously explode...because of an innocent little data packet Foraker sent over the com net as he was talking. And what does she have to say about this? "Oops!"
• Admiral Thomas Theisman puts an end to the tyranny of State Security with two simple sentences: "I think we've had quite enough of those sort of trials. Goodbye, Citizen Chairman." Made even more awesome by the fact that those are the last words in the book.

At All Costs

• Everyone on both sides who was involved in the titanic battle at the end of At All Costs, especially Honor's entry into the fight.

Mission of Honor

• Queen Elizabeth and President Pritchart, when they not only sign a peace treaty but a military alliance against the Solarian League. With hundreds of Havenite Superdreadnaughts ready to defend Manticore from an imminent Solarian attack. All you can think of is: Mesa and the SLN are so FUCKED.
  • Hell. Considering the ship numbers thrown in in At All Cost about the Haven Navy, considering that Haven kept it's production capabilities, considering the Andermani numbers and production capabilities and whatever the Graysons and Manticorans manged to save, it's pretty safe to assume that, even with the disastrous losses in the en of At All Cost, the SLN navy, "the biggest, baddest navy in human space", is pretty much outgunned, outteched and probably outnumbered. Looking forward to the curb stomp battles to follow.
    • Also, according to Honor, because of the events of Mission of Honor, the Mesan Alignment has enraged every single tree-cat in the universe, to the point where the entire species is dedicated to wiping them out.
      • I think that this last bit qualifies the members of the Mesan Alignment as legally dead. Let me remind you: YOU DO NOT MESS WITH TREECATS.
        • They'll cut ya, man!
• Hell, just the scene at Trevor's Star when Honor is woken by her flag captain in the middle of the night. Remember that both star nations are at war during this point in time.

Captain Cardones: Your Grace, we've just picked up a hyper footprint. It's a single ship, about four light-minutes outside the system limit. It's quite near one of the FTL platforms, and it's squawking its transponder code. Admiral Harrington: And? Captain Cardones: And it's a Havenite ship, Ma'am. In fact, according to its transponder, it's Haven One.

• • It was at this moment that Queen Elizabeth became the second most badass queen of space.
• Queen Elizabeth's speech to her fellow Manticorans, in which she outlines all the primary events between At All Costs and Mission of Honor, ending with Operation Oyster Bay and how it took them completely by surprise. She goes into detail about how badly they've been wounded, and how the Solarian League is getting ready to try and pound them. Then she proceeds to assure them they will not succeed in doing so, that Manticore will stand tall, and will show the League that they are not to be trifled with.
  • It's basically a free fusion of the Allies leaders' speeches as their nations joined the World War Two. Somewhat subverted in that the Allies dwarfed Axis in terms of industrial and military might (and it still took them six years and fifty-odd millions dead to win), but even the Grand Alliance is tiny compared to the League.

A Rising Thunder

• The result of the aforementioned meeting between Elizabeth and Pritchart, and how over the next few weeks the result of Honor Harrington commanding the newly formed Grand Fleet, with Lester Tourville as a subordinate, Thomas Theismann sharing her command deck, and the combined forces of Haven, Grayson, and Manticore results in the single greatest complete Curb Stomp Battle in human history. Also a rather tragic one as it should have ended without a shot being fired.
• A small Manticoran task force encounters a much heavier Solarian battlegroup and intentionally causes their first wave of missiles to miss. With the warning that the next round will be "Firing for effect" unless the Sollies get the hell out of Dodge. The Sollies get the hell out of Dodge.
• A group of Memory Singers informs the Alliance that the treecats are officially going to war.

But we will not hide. We will not be children. If you will fight for all this world, for all of us, then we will fight for you.

Victor Cachat

• Havenite secret agent Victor Cachat:
  • In his first appearance he single-handedly obliterates a squad of Havenite State Security troops and genetically-engineered terrorists when deciding he doesn't like the current Havenite government any more. Not only does he get away with it, he cons his superiors so well as to what happened that he gets promoted, even after telling the head of the Havenite State Security that he executed his immediate superior for his involvement in the fiasco.
  • In his second appearance he single-handedly arranges for an entire sector's StateSec forces to be rendered impotent, undermines the local authorities, and gets the loyalty of the regular Navy forces (who don't trust him) so that when a coup takes place on Haven, the entire sector is delivered to the new government lock, stock, and barrel with minimal casualties (only StateSec personnel too stupid to recognize he's simply too awesome for them to comprehend).
  • In his third appearance in the novel Crown of Slaves he manipulates one of Manticore's oldest allies to void their treaty and cease hostilities with Haven, and then is in large part responsible for a successful attack that frees a slave-planet resulting in the creation of a new nation, and despite being an enemy agent, does it with the cooperation of the Manticoran navy. Oh, and he gets to do the horizontal mambo with the Hot Amazon. Victor Cachat, Badass, ladies and gentlemen.
    • At the risk of sounding like I'm trying to dilute his awesome levels of Badass, he's really only able to get away with prying Erewhon from the Manticoran alliance thanks mostly to the gross stupidity of the High Ridge government on Manticore. Cachat even admits that himself. Which is why there's no personal hard feelings between him and Zilwicki, despite both of them being deeply devoted to their nations.
  • And he definitely hikes it up in the sequel, Torch of Freedom, where he takes on the whole world of Mesa to find information necessary to stop the war. Well, he wasn't alone, and it was mostly just an undercover infiltration, but he's just awesome in that TOO.
• In fact, Victor Cachat is so awesome that everyone who associates with him has Crowning Moments of Awesome even before they knew him.
  • His Manticoran opposite, Anton Zilwicki, in the aforementioned first appearance of Victor, goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge when someone has the audacity to kidnap his daughter. Not only does so, but ends up married to a hot aristocrat who is somewhat awesome on her own. She's a self-described liberal, which previously in the Honorverse meant she'd either be duplicitous, incompetent, stupid, or all three at once.
    • Cathy is the effective leader of the opposition as well as being wild enough to have gotten thrown out of the House of Lords. After a few years of living away from Manticore, spending time on Earth and associating with crazy escaped slaves, she gets rid of her nobility and runs for a seat in the House of Commons, and pretty much takes over the Opposition while the various political bad guys are being taken apart.
      • No, Willie Alexander is the leader of the Opposition. Cathy is in fact a Liberal — one of the parties in the High Ridge Government. Her awesomeness was in effectively stealing the Liberals from under New Kiev and turning it from a bunch of self-righteous, gibbering bigots into a coherent, adequate social-democratic party that allied itself with the Willie's Centrists, bringing in the Grantville Government.
  • Zilwicki had previously been best known for being a widower, after his first wife threw her small escort force into the teeth of a much larger enemy fleet to protect the civilian ships they were protecting. (Single biggest tearjerker CMOA this troper has ever seen. We see nothing at all of the battle, just Anton holding his terrified daughter in his arms and whispering, "It's okay, honey. Mommy's gonna make it safe.")
  • Zilwicki's daughter, Helen, at the ripe old age of 14, escaped on her own when kidnapped, casually killing three sewer scumbags who get after her with her bare hands in the process.
  • And while escaping, rescues two sewer urchins named Berry and Lars. Lars hasn't done much yet, but have we mentioned that due to Berry's associating with people of such awesomeness, she's now Queen Berry of the Kingdom of Torch?
    • Well, it's safer to say that Crown of Slaves is a nonstop CMOA from the first to the last line. For frigging everybody. It's hard to point to someone who is not a certified badass in the novel. Except some Mesans.
  • Oh, and Queen Berry of Torch's best friend and confidant (and a new intelligence chief)? Princess Ruth Winton. While so far her awesomeness has been due to her associating with the others on this list, she does come by it naturally. Her mother, Judith, organized an escape of a group of women from the planet Masada after stealing a spaceship, which doesn't sound like much until you know that Masada is a planet of religious nutcases who don't allow their women to even learn how to read. Judith, captured as a child, had spent years keeping this ability a secret. And when she pulls it off, while very pregnant, ends up impressing a young Michael Winton, Crown Prince of Manticore, and brother of Queen Elizabeth III.
  • Queen Berry's head of security, meanwhile, is the Hot Amazon who is Cachat's love interest. She is the leader of an Amazon Brigade of genetically-engineered soldiers/former terrorists.
  • And all of these people are the mortal enemies of Manpower Inc and the planet Mesa. And when you include Mesa's interference to continue the Manticore-Haven War the Official We Are So Going To Stomp Mesa List will include Manticore's queen, who takes such things very personally, Harrington herself, Thomas Theismann (who Honor is afraid of on the battlefield), Eloise Pritchard and the rest of the Haven government who survived in the dictatorship, pulled off their coup, and restored a democracy. You'd think that if they had any Genre Savvy at all, Mesa would realize they were utterly doomed.
    • They do. And try as they might to do anything that could delay the inevitable, they've got only mixed results. Sure, they've got some tactical advantage, but just so happened to completely piss off several most frightening persons in their whole universe. The results are expected to be... impressive.
      • How impressive? At the end of Mission of Honor, as described below, half the people on the above list (Cachat, Zilwicki, Kevin Usher, Pritchard, Theisman, Queen Elizabeth, and Honor herself) are in the same room. And on the same side. Which is precisely the scenario that the Alignment spent capital like water to prevent - with the added bonus that It's Personal for the Manticorans' best naval commander, who's pretty much primed for a Roaring Rampage of Revenge like the galaxy's never seen, backed up by a force that might be the entire Eighth Fleet, or might be the entire Royal Manticoran Navy, and might also include a lot of Havenite heavy metal. Once they figure out where to point it all, odds are the Alignment's going to get disintegrated ... or worse.
      • Considering that Alignment has its own plans upon plans, but does not know of the recent developments on the heroes' side, the whole thing just started sliding into the Gambit Pileup territory really fast. Unless someone on either side is really good at Xanatos Speed Chess (yes, we're all looking at you, Vic) the situation may easily become a perfect illustration to the FUBAR acronym.
    • The Alignment gets in Storm From Shadows, Nearly everything in the last 200 years has been manipulated by Mesa in the Haven Sector. The first Haven revolution was planned by them just to keep the entire sector occupied under an unstable Haven. What's further awesome is the fact they have spent their time building new technology besides genetic modification. Including 2 engine types, one is a much faster FTL that causes everyone to disbelieve they are able to plotting, the other is a slower real space drive that doesn't use gravametrics. The book ends with the cliff hanger of a Massive sneak attack on the shipyards and possibly homeworld of Manticore.
      • As of A Rising Thunder, the Mesan Alignment's leadership suffers a complete Oh Crap moment when news of the preceding events comes out: centuries of absolute secrecy blown apart, the existence of some of their newest technology now known, and their worst enemies now in an alliance.

Short Stories

• Ms Midshipwoman Harrington: takes over command of her ship while not even technically an officer yet because everyone else is dead, unconscious, or out of communication, and stern rakes the attacking ship from ridiculously short range, destroying it.
• The Blue Mountain Dancing Clan of treecats in the short story "A Beautiful Friendship". They come to the aid of Climbs Quickly and Stephanie Harrington, the first human-treecat bonded pair, and puree a hexapuma, whom Climbs Quickly and Stephanie were fighting. As for Climbs Quickly and Stephanie, they took turns fighting it single handedly (first Climbs Quickly due to Stephanie's broken bones, then Stephanie after Climbs Quickly was knocked out), and Stephanie had effectively killed it by the time the clan arrived, it was just able to move long enough to kill them if the clan hadn't arrived just in time.
• Judith Newland leads an escape of Masadan women and children by stealing a spaceship.