Storm from the Shadows


Name:	Storm from the Shadows
Author:	David Weber
Publisher:	Baen Books
Publication Date:	2009
ISBN:	1439133549
Series:	Saganami Island
Previous:	The Shadow of Saganami
Next:	Shadow of Freedom

Storm from the Shadows is the second book of the Honorverse sub-series Saganami Island, written by David Weber. It was published in late February 2009.

Timeframe: 1921 PD

Cover Summary

Rear Admiral Michelle Henke was commanding one of the ships in a force led by Honor Harrington in an all-out space battle. The odds were against the Star Kingdom forces, and they had to run. But Michelle’s ship was crippled, and had to be destroyed to prevent superior Manticoran technology from falling into Havenite hands, and she and her surviving crew were taken prisoner. Much to her surprise, she was repatriated to Manticore, carrying a request for a summit conference between the leaders of the two sides which might end the war.

But a condition of her return was that she gave her parole not to fight against the forces of the Republic of Haven until she had been officially exchanged for a Havenite prisoner of war, so she was given a command far away from the war’s battle lines. What she didn’t realize was that she would find herself on a collision course, not with a hostile government, but with the interstellar syndicate of criminals known as Manpower. And Manpower had its own plans for eliminating Manticore as a possible threat to its lucrative slave trade, deadly plans which remain hidden in the shadows.

Plot

As Honor Harrington's Eighth Fleet continues its devastating deep-strike raids into the territory of the Republic of Haven, Haven's technical wizard Admiral Shannon Foraker develops a defensive weapons system named Moriarty, essentially a deep space station devoted entirely to missile fire control, enabling Havenite planetary defenses to fire previously unmatched masses of missiles at invading forces.

This system enables even Eighth Fleet with its exceedingly capable anti-missile defenses to be attacked successfully: in the Battle of Solon, three Havenite forces corner the Manticoran force when it arrives. One of Harrington's superdreadnoughts is destroyed outright, and many more are damaged beyond repair. Admiral Michelle Henke's flagship, HMS Ajax, with her hyperdrive offline and her boat bays damaged beyond repair, has her crew trapped aboard. All appears lost, but the crew manages to repair the ship to the point where shuttles can be used to evacuate it. Simultaneously, plans a counter attack using all the ship's remaining offensive capability are made. Henke's flag captain orders her and her staff off just before the attack begins. As the Havenite fleet approaches an apparently evacuated Ajax, the ship fires all remaining missile pods into them, catching them by surprise. Damage comparable to that suffered by Eighth Fleet is sustained, and the Havenites answer by completely destroying Ajax and all other remains of Henke's force.

Henke is presumed dead by the Manticorans, as it is believed she did not make it off Ajax before she was destroyed. In reality, however, she got aboard the last evacuating shuttle with two of her officers, and was heavily injured as her ship exploded around them. They are then picked up by the Havenite fleet and become prisoners of war.

Thomas Theisman has mandated that all prisoners of war in the renewed conflict between Manticore and Haven are to be treated as fairly and humanely as possible. Henke recovers in a comfortable military hospital, during which time she is visited in turn by Theisman and President Eloise Pritchart. After she recovers, Henke takes command as the senior Manticoran Prisoner of War on an island on Haven.

Henke spends the next six months as CO of the Manticoran PoWs. One day she is summoned once again to the company of Theisman and Pritchart, and is informed that she will be paroled. In return, Pritchart asks Henke, a close relative of Queen Elizabeth III, to petition the Manticoran leadership for a peace summit between the Star Kingdom and the Republic. There is one more stipulation: Henke must give her legally binding oath that she will not command a force against the Havenite military, or otherwise act against the interests of Haven. This she does, and is sent back to Manticoran territory.

Henke convinces a reluctant Queen Elizabeth to personally meet with Pritchart in the neutral Kingdom of Torch. In the meantime, Henke and Manticore are put in a dilemma: she cannot go back to war against Haven, or else violate her parole. Yet, she is one of the RMN's finest tacticians, and the Bureau of Personnel recognizes that her talents should not be wasted. Thus, she is assigned to become second in command to Vice Admiral Augustus Khumalo in the distant Talbott Quadrant, which has petitioned via plebiscite to become annexed by the Star Kingdom.

Despite the disastrous Battle of Monica that resulted in Monica becoming a vassal of Manticore, and the public embarrassment of all involved in the plot, including Manpower Incorporated and the Solarian League's Office of Frontier Security, Manpower almost immediately launches another plan to force Manticore from the Quadrant, and cause a conflict between the Star Kingdom and the League to serve its own ends.

Taking advantage of widespread arrogance in the OFS and the Solarian League Navy towards "lesser" nations like Manticore, Manpower manipulates the only star nation of the Talbott Cluster that declined to participate in the annexation, the New Tuscan Republic, to engineer a false conflict between itself and Manticore. Manpower operative Aldona Anisimovna persuades them to support a new plot that she tricks them into believing will help preserve New Tuscan sovereignty. After a series of deliberately provoked incidents between New Tuscan merchant ships and Manticoran forces charged with inspecting them as they enter Manticoran territory, a fleet of ships under the command of Admiral Josef Byng, a viciously anti-Manticoran and incompetent SLN officer, is dispatched to Talbott.

Byng himself is completely oblivious to the plot, and honestly believes that his true purpose for being sent to Talbott is to check Manticoran aggression against New Tuscany. Henke encounters Byng and through a Naval Intelligence dossier on him discovers Byng's nature and arrogant attitude towards all things Manticoran. However, she is powerless to do anything about the Solarian presence in the area.

In the wake of this crisis, the overall leader of Manpower Inc. and Mesa, the enigmatic Albrecht Detweiler, discusses his future plans with various persons, including his several "sons", who are actually clones of himself. The Mesan Alignment, the true power behind the seemingly unpolitical Mesans, plans to finally come out of the shadows and launch a direct attack on the Manticore System with a secret weapon: stealth ships that travel without impeller drives and are thus completely undetectable by conventional means. Manpower is actually just a front for the Alignment, which is run by Detweiler and a cadre of other genetically engineered oligarchs set on domination of all life in the galaxy.

The Mesan plot comes to a head: New Tuscany scuttles one of their own merchant ships as a Manticoran vessel is approaching for an inspection, in an attempt to frame Manticore for its destruction. Even though it is blatantly obvious that the detonations which destroyed the freighter were caused internally, Admiral Byng wastes no time upon hearing of the incident to protect them against further Manticoran "aggression".

Admirals Khumalo and Henke, unaware of Byng's presence in the system, send a small fleet of three destroyers to New Tuscany to officially complain about their actions. As soon as the destroyers arrive, Anisimovna, using a remote controlled nuclear device, destroys the largest New Tuscan space station in orbit around the planet, killing tens of thousands of New Tuscans. Admiral Byng automatically assumes that the Manticoran destroyers are responsible, and orders his forces to open fire upon them in retaliation, destroying them all. Manticore is propelled into a state of armed conflict with the Solarian League.

For Manticore, the events could not have come at a worse time: Lester Tourville's massive attack on the Manticore System itself takes place, prompting the Battle of Manticore and the near-complete elimination of the offensive capabilities of Manticore and Haven. Recognizing his huge opportunity, Albrecht Detweiler orders the deployment of his secret weapon on Manticore far earlier than he had originally intended. Commanded by one of his son-clones, the new Mesan Alignment Navy embarks on the stealth ships for Manticore.

Admiral Henke learns of the massacre at New Tuscany, and immediately assembles all her ships and embarks for the system. Upon her arrival, she orders Byng to stand down, warning him that Manticoran naval capabilities far exceed that of the Solarians on a qualitative basis. Byng, who considers this warning a desperate bluff, refuses. After reiterating her warning several times, and being ignored each time, Henke launches a full salvo of missiles at Byng's flagship from far outside the engagement range of the SLN forces, completely destroying it. Recognizing their complete tactical deficit, Byng's second in command complies with Henke's demands: the Solarian League Navy, the most powerful military force in the known universe, is dealt its first defeat in centuries.

On Manticore, Queen Elizabeth III meets with her inner circle to discuss the events that have taken place. During this meeting, Honor Harrington remarks that she believes conflict with the Solarian League had been inevitable, and the only way Manticore is going to survive is going to be to destroy the League as it is and break it up into several successor star nations which Manticore can deal with individually. Elizabeth initially rejects this new approach, believing that Haven, in the wake of that nation's devastating assault on Manticore, must be dealt with to prevent further assaults of that nature. However, Honor through her status as an empath, reveals that she has discovered via an extensive investigation that the renewed conflict between Haven and Manticore was engineered by Mesa to keep the two sides, both enemies to Mesa, distracted. Using the evidence she has uncovered, Harrington convinces Elizabeth to see things her way and attempt to reconcile with Haven.

Meanwhile, the OFS administrator responsible for his organization's involvement with the Mesans meets with Fleet Admiral Sandra Crandall, CO of Task Force 496, a powerful fleet of capital ships stationed relatively close to the Cluster. Taking advantage of Crandall's prejudices towards "neo-barbarians" like Manticore, and her rage over the destruction of Byng's flagship, he surreptitiously convinces her to prepare to attack Manticore in the Talbott Cluster. Simultaneously, the Mesan Alignment Navy's stealth ships arrive in the Manticore System, and deploy many missile pods before turning to leave. The commander of this force remarks that in a period of weeks, Manticore will be dealt a devastating blow.

Background

Unlike most Honorverse novels, Storm from the Shadows ends with a cliffhanger.

References

Characters

Starships

Stations

Giselle

Planets

Nations

Other

External links

Storm from the Shadows on Wikipedia
Official Release Website

Main Honor Harrington series
HH1	On Basilisk Station	HH8	Echoes of Honor
HH2	The Honor of the Queen	HH9	Ashes of Victory
HH3	The Short Victorious War	HH10	War of Honor
HH4	Field of Dishonor	HH11	At All Costs
HH5	Flag in Exile	HH12	Mission of Honor
HH6	Honor Among Enemies	HH13	A Rising Thunder
HH7	In Enemy Hands	HH14	Uncompromising Honor
Spin off Series
Crown of Slaves		Star Kingdom
CS1	Crown of Slaves	SK1	A Beautiful Friendship
CS2	Torch of Freedom	SK2	Fire Season
CS3	Cauldron of Ghosts	SK3	Treecat Wars
CS4	To End In Fire	SK4	A New Clan
Saganami Island		Manticore Ascendant
SI1	The Shadow of Saganami	MA1	A Call to Duty
SI2	Storm from the Shadows	MA2	A Call to Arms
SI3	Shadow of Freedom	MA3	A Call to Vengeance
SI4	Shadow of Victory	MA4	A Call to Insurrection
Expanded Honorverse
EH1	Toll of Honor
Anthologies
HHA1	More Than Honor	HHA5	In Fire Forged
HHA2	Worlds of Honor	HHA6	Beginnings
HHA3	Changer of Worlds	HHA7	What Price Victory?
HHA4	The Service of the Sword
Tales of Honor Comic Series
TOH1	Tales of Honor #1	TOH4	Tales of Honor #4
TOH2	Tales of Honor #2	TOH5	Tales of Honor #5
TOH3	Tales of Honor #3	TOHV1	Tales of Honor Vol 1

Honorverse Non-Fiction
Book Companions		Ad Astra Companions
HOS	House of Steel Companion	SOTF	Ships of the Fleet Calendars
HOSH	House of Shadows Companion	SITS	Saganami Island Tactical Simulator
HOL	House of Lies Companion
Jayne's Intelligence Review		Jayne's Fighting Ships of the Galaxy
JIR1	The Royal Manticoran Navy	SB1	Ship Book 1: The Havenite Sector
JIR2	The Havenite Republican Navy	SB2	Ship Book 2: The Silesian Confederacy
JIR3	The Silesian Confederate Navy	SB3	Ship Book 3: The Short Victorious War