“In Fire Forged” is the fifth anthology in the Honorverse, containing three short stories and another technical writing.  We see the return of two favorite co-authors:  Jane Lindskold bringing us the short story “Ruthless” and Timothy Zahn who hits us hard with his short story “An Act of War”.  David Weber brings us the third short story entitled “Let’s Dance”, which is really a novella disguised as a short story.  Then he brings us home with the technical essay “An Introduction to Modern Starship Armor Design”, brought to us through the character Hegel DiLutorio, a retired officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy.

This 311-page collection was first published by Baen in February 2011.

The first story is Ruthless by Jane Lindskold.

Jane brings us back to the story of Judith, a Masadan refugee rescued by Michael Winton when he was a midshipman.  We promised you’d see more of Judith in the future, and here the promise is delivered.  Time has passed, Michael is now a young commissioned officer in the RMN, he and Judith are married and have a young daughter named Ruth.  There’s a plot afoot by George and Alice Ramsbottom, staunch Manticoran isolationists who object to the alliance Manticore formed with Grayson.  In an attempt to disrupt this new alliance, they kidnap Ruth with the intent to return her to her Masadan father.  They hope that Grayson will question their decision to enter an alliance with Manticore based on an assumption that if Manticore can’t even protect one child, they’re not a Star Kingdom worth allying with for broader and more significant defense issues.  As a bonus, if Michael will act rashly, this may also embarrass the Star Kingdom’s reputation broadly.  The events in this story take place in 1889 PD, two to three years after the events captured in Jane Lindskold’s short story “Promised Land”.

Your hosts all gave this one a “thumbs-up”.

Next we discussed Timothy Zahn’s short story An Act of War.  

This story takes place around the time as Honor escapes from Hades (approximately 1914 PD).  We saw those events in the novel “Ashes of Victory”.  When Honor’s escape becomes known, this story gives us a glimpse into an arms dealer named Charles who at the same time was trying to sell cloaking technology to Haven.  Events unfold when Oscar St. Just is convinced to install this equipment on a ship and for that ship to be used in an unorthodox manner to hopefully fuel a war between Manticore and the Andermani Empire.  This would be a good thing from the Havenite perspective.  Risky deeds are attempted and things get pretty tense, pretty fast!

This one received three “thumbs-up” from your hosts as well!

The third story is Let’s Dance, written by David Weber.  

As mentioned, this is more of a novella than a short story.  It takes us back to Commander Honor Harrington’s first hyper-capable command as she captains the destroyer HMS Hawking (sometime prior to 1900 PD).  We see events related to the Manticoran efforts to normalize relationships with Silesia, which have been somewhat tense.  She’s conducting anti-piracy operations in Silesian territory, intervenes and captures a vessel conducting piracy and in a good-faith gesture, turns the ship and crew over to the local Silesian system governor.  

A short time later she learns two unsavory things.  First, the ship and crew she handed to the Silesians has mysteriously disappeared.  Honor has no doubt they were released rather than prosecuted.  Second, she learns about a significant Mesan (Manpower, Inc.) slave-trading station through an interesting and unproven source.  That source quickly builds credibility by revealing a knowledge of Honor’s Beowulfian family and a shared hatred of the slave trade.  He quietly discloses he's also a member of the Audubon Ballroom, an entity formally designated as a terrorist organization.  Honor doesn’t reveal her source, but brings the information of the possible slave trade operation to the Silesian government.  She offers to lend her assistance by stopping by the suspected location on her way out of the system.  When that offer is all but dismissed, Honor takes the opportunity to ally with the Ballroom and visit the location anyway.  The outcome is violent.  This results in her RMN superiors learning of her decision to ally with a terrorist organization to conduct anti-slavery operations in a location that violated her orders and the Silesian government’s desires.  The story ends when we see just how the RMN leadership deals with her decision.

It was easy for us to give three more “thumbs-up” for this story!

The final “story” is a technical essay, written by the fictional character Captain Hegel DiLotorio (David Weber) and published in 1906 PD:  An Introduction to Modern Starship Armor Design.

It provides a level of detail related to deep space warfare (we’d know it as “blue water” naval warfare on Earth) from the mid 1200s PD until the time the essay was published.  This gives us a historical context to place the technology discussion within.  The essay is fascinating even though every reader has probably already gleaned much of what’s covered simply by reading the Honorverse books.  The essay focuses on the Star Knight-class heavy cruiser, confirms some of what we all have already gleaned, provides info that supplants incorrect assumptions we may have, and finally, provides a lot of interesting details as to how naval combat and the ships that fight are actually built.  The focus is on armor, although to understand that requires some awesome explanations of the weapons the armor is designed to defend against.  Even though it’s not a story, don’t skip this incredible technical explanation.  Treat this essay as a companion to an earlier technical digest we saw in the “More Than Honor” called The Universe of Honor Harrington.

Three more “thumbs-up” from your hosts to wrap up the final story in this anthology.

Overall, we rated “The Service of the Sword” with three 5s (out of 5) for an overall rating of 5.

Next time we’ll discuss “A Beautiful Friendship”, the first novel in the Star Kingdom story arc.  If the title sounds familiar, it is.  The first part of this novel was told in a previous short story we discussed a while back.  That story appears again here as the beginning part of the novel, followed by a bunch of new and exciting events.  If you haven’t read the novel already (or the short story), you have a little extra time to catch up.

As always, please keep those likes and comments coming.  If you’re enjoying this podcast, be sure to tell a friend.  Remember, two of your hosts are new readers, so new readers are just as welcome as those of you who are recent or long-time fans.

You can find us, and all our episodes at http://honorverse.net, and email us at honorverse@tpenetwork.com.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Now, let’s be about it!