The more things change, the more they remain the same. Three thousand years after Sun Tszu wrote those words, in the time of the Fourth Interstellar War, the ancient advice still holds true. The "Bugs" have overwhelming numbers, implacable purpose, and a strategy that's mind-numbingly alien. They can't be reasoned or negotiated with. They can't even be communicated with. But what they want is terrifyingly clear. The sentient species in their path aren't enemies to be conquered; they're food sources to be consumed.Totally oblivious to their own losses, rumbling onward like some invincible force of nature, their enormous fleets are as unstoppable as Juggernaut. Yet for the desperate Federation Navy and its enemies-turned-allies, the Orions, there is nowhere to go. Their battered, outnumbered ships are all that stand between the billions upon billions of defenseless civilians on the worlds behind them and an enemy from the darkest depths of nightmare, and there can be no retreat. But at least their options are clear.As Sun Tzu said, in death ground, there is only one strategy:

Unleash the Fury!Zhikotse. Shallingsport. Louvain. Sacred fields of battle on far-flung worlds where warriors of the Imperial Cadre spent blood and lives defending human civilization. Alicia DeVries was there; she led the charge. Her reward? Betrayal by a deceitful empire. Retirement to obscurity.Now Alicia is the only survivor of a brutal attack on her frontier-world family. Not since the mighty Achilles has the ancient spirit of the Fury Tisiphone taken up residence inside a human being. But not since Achilles has a warrior so skilled, so implacable, and possessing so much battle sense sprung up among the mass of humankind. Hero of the Empire. Holder of the Banner of Terra.

And peace isn’t always wonderful. Once the enemy was defeated, the central governments of the Inner Worlds were anything but willing to relinquish their wartime powers. To insure that their grip on the reins of power remained firm, the establishment plans to allow the non-human beings of the Khanate to join the Federation, thus reducing the Fringe Worlds voting bloc to impotent minority status. The ruthless bureaucrats of the Corporate Worlds are smugly confident that this power play will keep the colonial upstarts in their place. But the Fringers have only one answer to that: Insurrection

Trzeci tom cyklu o Honor Harrington. Dwa lata po bitwie o Yeltsin bohaterka obejmuje dowództwo krążownika HMS Nike, najsłynniejszej jednostki w całej Królewskiej Marynarce. Okręt ten zostaje wysłany do ważnego strategicznie systemu Hancock. Tymczasem władze targanej wewnętrznymi problemami Ludowej Republiki Haven postanawiają posłużyć się starym, sprawdzonym sposobem na zmniejszenie niezadowolenia społecznego — prowokują wybuch lokalnego konfliktu zbrojnego, czyli ”krótkiej, zwycięskiej wojenki”. Kolejny raz okazuje się jednak, że nawet najdoskonalsze plany nie wytrzymują konfrontacji z rzeczywistością, zwłaszcza gdy mamy do czynienia z waleczną, zakochaną i gotową na wszystko kobietą…

Akcja książki zaczyna się w momencie, w którym kończy się Krótka, zwycięska wojenka. Jest kontynuacją wątków w niej rozpoczętych, z nieco większym naciskiem położonym na kwestie polityczne — wojna między Gwiezdnym Królestwem Manticore a Ludową Republiką Haven stała się w końcu rzeczywistością — oraz na osobiste sprawy Honor Harrington. Wracają znane i lubiane postacie z pierwszych tomów. Jednak gdy Honor udaje się na planetę Grayson, by stać się rzeczywistym patronem, dają o sobie znać także starzy wrogowie. Nie do nich należy jednak ostatnie posunięcie…

The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington's entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she's achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.She's prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor's worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality.But Manticore's enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won't be going alone.

CONTENTSA Beautiful Friendship, David WeberA Grand Tour, David DrakeA Whiff of Grapeshot, S. M. StirlingThe Universe of Honor Harrington, David Weber

Whom the gods would recruit, they first tick off...Our Hero: The unlikely Paladin, Bahzell Bahnakson of the Horse Stealer Hradani. He's no knight in shining armor. He's a hradani, a race known for their uncontrollable rages, bloodthirsty tendencies, and inability to maintain civilized conduct. None of the other Five Races of man like the hradani. Besides his ethnic burden, Bahzell has problems of his own to deal with: a violated hostage bond, a vengeful prince, a price on his head. He doesn't want to mess with anybody else's problems, let alone a god's. Let alone the War God's! So how does he end up a thousand leagues from home, neck-deep in political intrigue, assassins, demons, psionicists, evil sorcery, white sorcery, dark gods, good gods, bad poets, greedy landlords, and most of Bortalik Bay? Well, it's all the War God's fault....

VENGEANCE IS A DISH BEST SERVED HOT.Imperial Intelligence couldn't find them, the Imperial Fleet couldn't catch them, and local defenses couldn't stop them. It seemed the planet-wrecking pirates were invincible. But the pirates made a big mistake when they raided ex-commando leader Alicia DeVries' quiet home world, tortured and murdered her family, and then left her for dead.Since the Imperial forces seem hog-tied, Alicia decides to turn "pirate" herself, and steals a cutting-edge AI ship from the Empire to start her vendetta. Her fellow veterans think she's crazy, the Imperial Fleet has shoot-on-sight orders. And of course the pirates want her dead, too. But Alicia DeVries has two allies nobody knows about, allies as implacable as she is: a self-aware computer, and a creature from the mists of Old Earth's most ancient legends. And this trio of furies won't rest until vengeance is served.

Honor Harrington obejmuje dowództwo wiekowego krążownika HMS Fearless, uzbrojonego w eksperymentalną, niezbyt skuteczną broń. Mimo to w czasie dorocznych manewrów floty udaje się jej zniszczyć flagową jednostkę „Agresorów”, za co zostaje oddelegowana do układu planetarnego Basilisk, miejsca zsyłki dla najgorszych oficerów. To jednak dopiero początek kłopotów. W układzie tym kwitnie przemyt, tubylcy z jedynej z zamieszkanych planet zażywają narkotyk wywołujący atak furii, a pobliska Ludowa Republika Haven knuje coś paskudnego. Harrington ma do dyspozycji tylko niesprawny krążownik i buntującą się, zdemoralizowaną załogę, a przełożeni wymagają od niej zaprowadzenia porządku w całym układzie. Wszyscy przeciwnicy Harrington popełnili jednak poważny błąd. Rozwścieczyli ją…

DEFEAT WAS NOT AN OPTION. The war wasn't going well. The mind-numbingly alien Arachnids were an enemy whose like no civilized race had ever confronted. Like some carnivorous cancer, the "Bugs" had overrun planet after planet . . . and they regarded any competing sentient species as only one more protein source. They couldn't be reasoned with, or even talked to, because no one had the least idea of how to communicate with a telepathic species with no recognizable language . . . and whose response to any communication attempt was a missile salvo. No one knew how large their civilization-if it could be called a "civilization"-actually was, or how it was organized, but the huge fleets they threw against their opponents suggested that it was enormous. The Grand Alliance of Humans, Orions, Ophiuchi, and Gorm, united in desperate self-defense, have been driven to the wall. Billions of their civilians have been slaughtered. Their most powerful offensive operation has ended in shattering defeat and the deaths of their most experienced and revered military commanders. The edge in technology with which they began the war is eroding out from under them and whatever they do, the Bugs just keep coming. But the warriors of the Grand Alliance know what stands behind them and they will surrender no more civilians to the oncoming juggernaut. They will die first . . . and they will also reactivate General Directive 18, however horrible it may be. Because when the only possible outcomes are victory or racial extermination, only one option is acceptable. The Shiva Option