“Hamish Alexander-Harrington knew his wife as only two humans who had both been adopted by a pair
of mated treecats ever could. He'd seen her deal with joy and with sorrow, with happiness and with fury,
with fear, and even with despair. Yet in all the years since their very first meeting at Yeltsin's Star, he
suddenly realized, he had never actually met the woman the newsies called "the Salamander." It wasn't his
fault, a corner of his brain told him, because he'd never been in the right place to meet her. Never at the
right time. He'd never had the chance to stand by her side as she took a wounded heavy cruiser on an
unflinching deathride into the broadside of the battlecruiser waiting to kill it, sailing to her own death, and
her crew's, to protect a planet full of strangers while the rich beauty of Hammerwell's "Salute to Spring"
spilled from her ship's com system. He hadn't stood beside her on the dew-soaked grass of the Landing
City duelling grounds, with a pistol in her hand and vengeance in her heart as she faced the man who'd
bought the murder of her first great love. Just as he hadn't stood on the floor of Steadholders' Hall when
she faced a man with thirty times her fencing experience across the razor-edged steel of their swords,
with the ghosts of Reverend Julius Hanks, the butchered children of Mueller Steading, and her own
murdered steaders at her back.
But now, as he looked into the unyielding flint of his wife's beloved, almond eyes, he knew he'd met the
Salamander at last. And he recognized her as only another warrior could. Yet he also knew in that
moment that for all his own imposing record of victory in battle, he was not and never had been her
equal. As a tactician and a strategist, yes. Even as a fleet commander. But not as the very embodiment of
devastation. Not as the Salamander. Because for all the compassion and gentleness which were so much
a part of her, there was something else inside Honor Alexander-Harrington, as well. Something he himself
had never had. She'd told him, once, that her own temper frightened her. That she sometimes thought she
could have been a monster under the wrong set of circumstances.
And now, as he realized he'd finally met the monster, his heart twisted with sympathy and love, for at last
he understood what she'd been trying to tell him. Understood why she'd bound it with the chains of duty,
and love, of compassion and honor, of pity, because, in a way, she'd been right. Under the wrong
circumstances, she could have been the most terrifying person he had ever met.
In fact, at this moment, she was .
It was a merciless something, her "monster"—something that went far beyond military talent, or skills, or
even courage. Those things, he knew without conceit, he, too, possessed in plenty. But not that deeply
personal something at the core of her, as unstoppable as Juggernaut, merciless and colder than space
itself, that no sane human being would ever willingly rouse. In that instant her husband knew, with an icy
shiver which somehow, perversely, only made him love her even more deeply, that as he gazed into those
agate-hard eyes, he looked into the gates of Hell itself. And whatever anyone else might think, he knew
now that there was no fire in Hell. There was only the handmaiden of death, and ice, and purpose, and a
determination which would not— couldnot—relent or rest.
"I'll miss them," she told him again, still with that dreadful softness, "but I won't forget. I'll never forget,
and one day— oneday, Hamish—we're going to find the people who did this, you and I. And when we
do, the only thing I'll ask of God is that He let them live long enough to know who's killing them.”
―
David Weber,
Mission of Honor
