The Service of the Sword

The Service of the Sword is the fourth anthology of short stories set in David Weber's Honorverse.
It was first published in 2003 and contains the following stories:
==Promised Land==
by Jane Lindskold
:After his graduation from the Royal Manticoran Naval Academy on Saganami Island, Midshipman and Crown Prince Michael Winton is assigned to the superdreadnought HMS Saint Elmo, but requests another assignment because he doesn't want the Navy to shield him from danger. He is eventually assigned to the light cruiser HMS Intransigent, which is sent on a diplomatic mission to Masada.
:On this mission he meets and rescues his future wife Judith. She was a Masadan renegade who was escaping from her tyrannical husband as a member of the secret organization of Masadan women known as the Sisterhood of Barbara.
==With One Stone==
by Timothy Zahn
:Ships are being attacked in the Silesian Confederacy. Pirates are suspected, since the Confederacy is rife with them, but what worries the Bureau of Weapons director Sonja Hemphill is that the guilty party seems to be armed with something even more powerful than her grav lance. A weapon capable of taking down a starship's impeller wedge.
:The Manticoran Office of Naval Intelligence taps Lieutenant Rafael Cardones to embark on a covert fact-finding mission to the Confederacy, to determine the extent of the threat. Meanwhile, Captain Honor Harrington, commanding the newly commissioned heavy cruiser HMS Fearless, is sent to the Confederacy to conduct anti-piracy patrols.
:What neither of them suspect is that the pirates are actually members of the People's Navy, who are using Silesia to test out their new devastating weapon, the Crippler.
==A Ship Named Francis==
by John Ringo and Victor Mitchell
: Sick Berth Attendant Third Class Sean Tyler, formerly of the Royal Manticoran Navy, volunteers for service in the Grayson Space Navy and ends up aboard GNS Francis Mueller, an obsolete old heavy cruiser that is used by the Graysons to shuffle off all personnel that would otherwise be a ballast for the Navy.
:Consequently, the ship is commanded by an irresponsible Captain, with a First Officer who would just love to haul half the crew out into space for "slackness", and a ship's chaplain who suffers from both overimagination and insomnia, thus constantly praying over the loudspeakers for the ship to be delivered from all sorts of horrible occurrences...
==Let's Go To Prague==
by John Ringo
:A pair of Manticoran secret agents discover that a holiday can be even more fun if it involves spoiling the Office of State Security's day.
==Fanatic==
by Eric Flint (Sequel to From the Highlands)
:StateSec Special Investigator Victor Cachat is sent to the La Martine Sector to investigate the death of a People's Commissioner who was a known sadist and rapist. Soon he begins a violent purge of StateSec personnel he considers corrupt, but none of those around him guess his true motives.
 
==The Service of the Sword==
by David Weber
:The heavy cruiser HMS Gauntlet, Captain Michael Oversteegen commanding, is sent to the Tiberian System to investigate the disappearance of a Havenite freighter and an Erewhonese destroyer. Unknown to them, the Mesan slave-trading company, Manpower Inc., has established a stronghold in the system. While Midshipwoman Abigail Hearns, the first Grayson-born female officer in the Grayson Space Navy, finds herself leading a team of Marines against attackers on the planet Refuge, Captain Oversteegen and his crew fight – and win – the decisive Battle of Tiberian.
== External links ==
* Baen Free Library entry for The Service of the Sword
Category:Honorverse material