Blog in Exile (Prologue): IT'S A TRAP!!!

I get to recycle that title. You'd almost think I did that deliberately.

One of David Weber's foibles is that he sometimes doesn't immediately make it clear whose side a new POV character is on. This gets to be more problematic in the later novels, when some easy identifiers go out the window after a regime change.

But here's the first sentence of the novel:

Admiral of the Green Hamish Alexander, Thirteenth Earl of White Haven, sat on HMS Queen Caitrin's flag deck and gazed into his display.

If you're new to the Honorverse this isn't a great deal of help. But there are actually no less than four clues - not counting the words "Hamish Alexander" - which can help an alert reader identify which side this guy's on.

First, "Admiral of the Green." Only one side splits up their flag ranks into "Red" and "Green" - and the other side starts adding "Citizen" before "Admiral" and all other ranks in this novel. Second, "Thirteenth Earl of White Haven." Only one side has nobility. Third, "HMS." The other side uses "PNS" - no, don't laugh. And fourth, "Queen Caitrin." Only one side has royalty. So this guy's in the RMN - Royal Manticoran Navy - and that makes him one of the good guys.

Admiral White Haven - that's the proper styling, not "Admiral Alexander" - is leading an assault on the Nightingale System. We shortly learn that this is somewhere between Manticore and Trevor's Star. Trevor's Star is not the capital of the People's Republic of Haven, but it is, aside from Haven itself, the single most vital military objective. Here's why: there's a wormhole connecting Manticore with Trevor's Star. Until the Trevor's Star terminus of the wormhole is taken, Manticore has to devote a significant chunk of its equipment and manpower guarding the other end of it.

I should explain who Hamish Alexander is, other than being a highly-ranked military officer and an earl. He's one of Manticore's best flag officers. In book 2, he led a mop-up force (offscreen) in between the last two chapters after Honor won the battle. I don't believe he did anything noteworthy in book 3, but in book 4, he took over from the late Admiral Raoul Courvosier (KIA in book 2) as Honor's political patron, trying to keep her from throwing her career away. (It didn't work.)

So to recap: the Star Kingdom of Manticore (the good guys) is at war with the People's Republic of Haven (the bad guys). Manticore is pushing into Peep (People's Republic) space, because Manticore has a huge tech advantage. (White Haven is outnumbered four to three in hulls here, but he seriously outguns the Peep force.) Resistance has been "spotty for months," but it looks like there's an actual formation over there. The system defense commander apparently knows what he's doing.

The two walls of battle (not "lines of battle," as it would be on an ocean, because space has three dimensions) begin shooting missile salvos at each other, and Admiral White Haven's apprehension grows. He knocks one Peep superdreadnought out of formation, but he notes that, given the fire he's poured on them, more than one of them should be wavering.

The enemy has finally rediscovered its resolve.

This is the first proper space battle we've seen since the end of The Short Victorious War, an entire novel ago; the novel in between, Field of Dishonor, dealt entirely with groundside politics. That battle had Honor Harrington defeat a Peep force, and it's been hinted in Field and confirmed here, that momentum has been on Manticore's side since then. But now the momentum is beginning to shift.

A few more losses rack up, and White Haven wonders what possible reason the enemy could have for not breaking off. After all, even though Manticore's force is taking losses, the Peeps are taking more, too many more for their superior numbers to offset.

And then the trap is sprung. A second Peep force lights off their drives. (The way the propulsion systems work in this 'verse, you basically can't detect a ship if it's coasting, but it also doesn't have its best defenses - an impenetrable "impeller wedge" that stretches above and below - but not to the sides or in front of - the ship in question.)

White Haven realizes he's been suckered, so he turns and runs. Of course he can't just turn around because he's built up all that momentum charging in-system. He has to plot a course that will take him into the jaws of Bogey One's energy weapons, but that at least will prevent Bogey Two from catching and destroying him. He takes some small solace in the fact that Bogey Two sprung the trap too soon, before the laws of physics would require him to engage both forces, and then settles down to see how bad the damage is going to be.

It's a way of showing without telling that a) Manticore's drive towards Trevor's Star is in serious trouble, and b) the Peeps are getting better, but they still have some huge kinks to work out.

(By the way, we're not going to get to Our Heroine until Chapter 2. If you think that's a long wait, check out A Rising Thunder, later in this series.)