The Shadow of Saganami

"The Shadow of Saganami" by David Weber, published in 2004, is a novel set in the Honorverse; it has been billed as the first in the "Saganami Island" series, spun-off from the main Honor Harrington series.

It features Honor herself only in a cameo role: other characters from the novels and several short stories take centre stage. These include Helen Zilwicki, introduced in "From the Highlands" (after a cameo in "The Short Victorious War"), and Abigail Hearns, introduced in "Ashes of Victory" and also seen in "The Service of the Sword".

Plot summary

The events of the novel are simultaneous with those of the novel "At All Costs", which belongs to the main series of Honorverse novels.

The story focuses on the cruise of the "Edward Saganami-C"-class heavy cruiser HMS "Hexapuma" (nicknamed 'Nasty Kitty'), commanded by Captain Aivars Terekhov, a war veteran and former prisoner of war who has only recently been cleared back for naval service. Commander Ginger Lewis, previously seen in "Honor Among Enemies" has an important supporting role, while Aubrey Wanderman, from the same book, appears in the background in a few scenes as a Senior Chief Petty Officer.

The story also deals with five midshipmen -one of them being the aforementioned Helen Zilwicki- fresh out of Saganami Naval Academy, who embark onboard "Hexapuma" for their "snotty cruise" (their first real naval deployment), and their reactions following their encounter with the realities of naval service and combat.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the renewed state of war with Haven, "Hexapuma", one of the Royal Manticoran Navy's most modern and powerful cruisers, is assigned for duty at the Talbott Cluster, an impoverished group of star systems recently incorporated within the Star Kingdom of Manticore. With a brutal war going on, and also embroiled in the annexation of the Silesian Confederacy, Manticore has no choice (and no other available resources) but to assign a small and clearly insufficient naval force to guard the Cluster, while a Constitutional Convention is taking place which will define the terms of the Cluster's formal annexation.

However, powerful interests both within the Solarian League's Office of Frontier Security and corporations (which resents Manticore intervening in its "backyard") and the slaver world of Mesa (wary against the possibility of Manticore being too close to its space) do not want this to go ahead and support indigenous groups violently opposed to annexation. The goal is to launch a terrorist campaign against Manticore, giving the League the excuse to intervene in the Cluster and expel the Star Kingdom.

The annexation is also stalled by the ruling oligarchs of many of the Cluster's systems, who fear that their power, wealth and influence will dilute once their worlds are absorbed within the Star Kingdom. In addition, the annexation is viewed with some distrust by vocal sectors of the Cluster's population, as it was sponsored by a powerful local merchant cartel with a history of strong-arming and abuse for its own purposes.

"Hexapuma" and her crew must patrol the Cluster's many systems to "show the flag" and assist the planetary governments -thus demonstrating Manticore's good will-. In the meantime, some anti-annexation groups launch terrorist campaigns on two of the Cluster's planets, Kornati and Montana. Coupled with the stalling of the Constitutional Convention, the annexation is in danger of derailing as the hard-pressed Manticoran government cannot afford to be entangled in the Cluster while Manticore struggles in the middle of a shooting war.

In the course of "Hexapuma"'s cruises, evidence begins to pile up indicating that the local terrorists are actually (unwitting) pawns of foreign interests, and that the terrorist actions are merely the first step of a larger plan for the Cluster. After dealing with the local terrorist groups by either force or reason, Captain Terekhov and "Hexapuma" assemble an ad hoc "Squadron" with other Manticoran ships in a mission to prevent the next step of the conspirators' plan: the service entry of a fleet of powerful ex-Solarian battlecruisers which have been transferred to a Frontier Security proxy system to be used against Manticore.

The plot bears some similarities to "On Basilisk Station" and can be seen as a homage.