The Star Kingdom of Manticore is once again at war with the
Republic of Haven after a stunning sneak attack. The
graduating class from Saganami Island, the Royal Manticoran
Navy's academy, are going straight from the classroom to
the blazing reality of all-out war.
Except for the midshipmen assigned to the heavy cruiser HMS
Hexapuma, that is. They're being assigned to the Talbott
Cluster, an out of the way backwater, far from the battle
front. The most they can look forward to is the capture of
the occasional pirate cruiser and the boring duty of
supporting the Cluster's peaceful integration with the Star
Kingdom at the freely expressed will of eighty percent of
the Cluster's citizens. With a captain who may have seen
too much of war and a station commander who isn't precisely
noted for his brilliant and insightful command style, it
isn't exactly what the students of Honor Harrington,
the "Salamander," expected.
But things aren't as simple -- or tranquil -- as they
appear. The "pirates" they encounter aren't what they seem,
and the "peaceful integration" they expected turns into
something very different. A powerful alliance of corrupt
Solarian League bureaucrats and ruthless interstellar
corporations is determined to prevent the Cluster's
annexation by the Star Kingdom . . . by any means
necessary. Pirates, terrorists, genetic slavers, smuggled
weapons, long-standing personal hatreds, and a vicious
alliance of corporate greed, bureaucratic arrogance, and a
corrupt local star nation with a powerful fleet, are all
coming together, and only Hexapuma, her war-weary captain,
and Honor Harrington's students stand in the path.
They have only one thing to support and guide them: the
tradition of Saganami. The tradition that sometimes a
Queen's officer's duty is to face impossible odds . . . and
die fighting.
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