Disclaimer: The "Honor Harrington" series is owned by David Weber. This is not intended as copyright infringement, I make no money by publishing this story. I also know that Mr. Weber frowns upon fanfiction, but since this is an AU of enormous proportions, I don't think my humble efforts contradict the reason he gave for his dislike of fans playing in his universe.

AN: Yeah, I'm well aware that "Exterminator" needs a new chapter. A decent chunk of it is done, but this new plot bunny tickled me until I set it free. Don't expect regular updates, I've established that "regularity" is not my style of creative writing.

In addition to the summary, I'd like to inform you that this is not the usual "gun blazing" Harrington yarn, at least not at first. I need to set up the AU in a convincing way, and that's hard to do with retrospective story telling. Later on, our heroine will become more active, even if her enemies will be others than in the original series. This story starts in the year 1872 PD.

AN 2: I had to change the two already posted chapters, because I had forgotten a few facts about the Honorverse. The most important change is Honor's age, which I'd given as thirteen in the first version. That's still correct, but it's thriteen terran years (7.5 manticoran years) and not about 22 terran years (13 manticoran), meaning I will refer to her age as "seven" from here on out. This change doesn't include the dates given in PD, since that calendar reckoning is in T- years.

Summary: There's more to life in the Star Kingdom of Manticore than Fleet Admiral Lady Dame Honor Stephanie Alexander-Harrington, Steadholder Harrington, Duchess Harrington, Countess White Haven, ever learned. A different perspective might've been all she needed to understand, and become Comrade Harrington. Massive!AU.

Man- Eater

Chapter One

Ripped Reality

Again their faces loomed over her, massive human shaped balloons with something hidden behind them, a secret written into their features. They were titans of misery who would drown her in anguish.

The ogre- head of her uncle John opened his enormous mouth, and loud words thundered from it, to fall on her like grey boulders from the Copperwalls.

"Hello Honor, you have grown since I last saw you".

The gargantuan eyes of her daddy's brother were shining, and inexplicably, there was water in their corners.

"Would you like to visit your cousin Devon and Aunt Christine?" he inquired, his voice rumbling like a rock avalanche.

"Where are mommy and daddy?"

She hadn't seen them since morning, and now it was time for dinner.

John Harrington's broad face sagged, his massive jaw clenched together, and the water she had seen in his eyes started to flow down his cheeks. He was crying!

Dread rose up in her and she clutched Tyr, her stuffed Sphinx, to her tiny chest. Time seemed to stop while large drops ran down her uncles pinched face. Finally, he forced himself to speak.

"Your parents have gone on a long voyage, Honor. Now, please come with me."

He stretched his huge arm out to her, but she scrambled back from him, terrified by the strange state of her normally funny uncle and the terrible feelings in her own heart.

"I want daddy!"

Honor gasped and set up in her comfortable bed abruptly, her heart beating a staccato of fright and horror against her ribcage.

She hadn't had that dream for a few months now, but it had returned, as it always did, with a vengeance.

Falling back into her soft cushions, she forced herself to calm down. It was only a dream after all, one she had endured dozens of times in the last years. If she couldn't get rid of it permanently, she could at least try to take part of its devastating power away by not falling apart on her family again, as she had done when she was younger.

When she felt under control, the seven year old girl – she would've been thirteen on Earth, due to the much longer manticoran year - stood up and stretched her lankly body. After her morning wash, she changed into training shorts and a t-shirt, put on her jogging shoes and went outside for her daily run.

It was early morning, but both suns stood in the sky already, painting the widespread city landscape of Yawata Crossing in bright colors. Not many people were around at this hour in the docile suburb her family called home, and she loved the short but intense periods of solitude her calisthenics granted her.

She pushed herself, enjoying the feeling of freedom that came with her speed, deeply satisfied by the way her body reacted to the challenge.

Nothing could touch her while she was in her training mindset, not nightmares like the one torturing her frequently, nor even the argument she had with her guardians the evening before, which had most likely triggered the nasty dream.

When she returned to the house an hour later, her pulse was steady like a clock and there was only a slight sheen of sweat on her forehead.

She'd been doing this for nearly one and a half years now, and the combination of her prolong treatments and the physiology of a heavy worlder were enhancing her body in addition to the exercise.

Honor felt as if at least one part of the tasks she had set herself when she was five was pretty much achieved - she had checked the navy requirements for enlistment and was sure she would be more than ready for the physiological side of the tests when the time came.

She entered the bungalow through the kitchen, saw her cousin Devon sitting at the table and watched with amusement as the thirteen year old graduate history student shoveled cereal into his mouth while reading something – most likely some obscure journal article for his thesis – on the pad in front of him.

The slender young man greeted her presence with a mumbled "Morning!" between spoonfuls of his meal, but didn't give any sign that he wished to talk to her further.

"Typical!" she thought with slightly irritated fondness, as she marched back to her room to take a shower.

Devon's head was always in his books, that had been the case even before she came to live with her uncle's family, and now that he was writing his thesis – on the Gryphon uprising, no less – he was seldomly prepared to exchange more than a few words at a time.

When she came out of the wet cell, she toweled herself down, frowning at her reflection in the mirror. Her chest was still flat as a board, and in combination with her angular face and short hair, her figure made her look like a boy.

She didn't like her looks, but whenever her aunt tried to help her with some light makeup or feminine clothing, she rejected her. If she couldn't have the beginnings of womanly curves like many of the other girls at school (even with prolong!), she wouldn't pretend to be something she wasn't.

Sighing at the familiar course her thoughts were following, Honor slipped into her school uniform, took her bag out of the cabinet beside her bed, and went back to the kitchen to have a light snack.

Devon was nowhere to be seen, he had most likely retreated to his study, and her guardians wouldn't be up for at least an hour or two on a Saturday morning, especially after they'd spend the evening at a society function.

Uncle John and aunt Christine were both lecturers at the Royal University of Yawata Crossing, he in modern lit and she in the math faculty.

Yesterdays' event, the inauguration of a new university president, had also been the topic of Honor's argument with her guardians.

They'd wanted to take her with them, to have her meet their colleagues and superiors, to "modestly" praise her good grades, and to secure her a place as an intern for the coming up vacation period at school.

"You can't start early enough with your academic career" her uncle had declared firmly.

Naturally, she didn't want any part of it.

"Why would I want to meet and greet with dozens of boring bureaucrats?" Honor had asked provocatively, starting a row that escalated to raised voices and red faces.

The question she put to her guardians, at first in reasonable terms, then more and more emotional, was this: Why would she, the daughter of a career soldier, want to become a pen pushing teacher at a dusty university?

Her dad had been in the navy, most of her few memories of him had him in his blindingly white surgeon uniform, and the same was true for dozens of pictures of Alfred Harrington she had collected from the clans secure cloud storage.

She may have lost her parents to a freak aircar accident when she wasn't even two years old, but she would honor their memory by following in her dad's footsteps. No posh university position for Honor Harington, regardless of what her well intentioned, but sometimes stifling guardians thought.

Honor consumed three slices of bread topped with cheese and two apples, then packed a few bananas for lunch – she was a growing girl with a Meyerdahl- beta genetic modification, after all.

She punched a quick message into the family computer station, informing her guardians of her whereabouts, and left the house for the public transport station a few blocks away.

It wasn't a school day, but she had to complete an assignment for her ethics class, and needed the resources of the library to do so. At least that was what she told herself while she walked towards the airbus stop.

She didn't want to admit to herself that she wasn't at all interested in seeing her guardians that soon after an uncommonly fierce quarrel with them. Her aunt always gave the understanding and compassionate part, but her uncle was more pushy and made his expectations very clear.

The fight had ended in tears, only the second time she'd cried in front of anyone since Honor had decided over a year before that she wasn't a child anymore, but a navy officer in waiting.

While John and Christine had been at the event, she'd started with the assignment, although it was only due next week.

Trying to push the whole family situation into the back of her mind by doing her homework hadn't helped for long though, because the topic of her assignment was connected to her problem.

The ethics teacher had tasked them to "Describe a person you judge to be heroic, and justify your selection based on an ethical theory of your choice", and Honor had elected to name her own dad.

He was a military hero after all, a man who had been awarded the Osterman Cross for his gallantry in combat. She knew about that because one day 1 ½ years ago, she had found the medal while going through her parents' jewelry when she wanted to dress herself up as a member of the royal house of Winton.

She'd pestered her uncle, who was oftentimes reluctant to talk of her parents - especially his brother - about the strange decoration, until he told her about it.

Her dad, Alfred Harrington, had been a bearer of the second highest manticoran military award!

His actions in combat had earned him an officer's patent too, and despite that, he had chosen to become a doctor. She couldn't imagine anyone who deserved the title of "hero" more than her daddy.

Honor had known that important fact about her dad for a long time by now, but for her homework, she needed more than her uncles word for it. She had to proof it with a newspaper article or something like that, especially because it was her own father she was writing about.

That necessity had finally converged in the back of her head with the need for some distance from her guardians, and brought on her unusual trip across the city.

She had checked the transport lines that could bring her to her school beforehand - normally, her uncle gave her a lift when he went to work and her aunt picked her up in the afternoon.

Honor didn't have to wait long until an airbus flying in the right direction touched down at the station. Entering, she flicked her money card over a sensor board, and took a place in the middle of the vehicle. The fare would be taken out of her spending account.

Living in a city with 1.5 million people could've been uncomfortable, as she knew from her geography and history lessons about other planets, but there was enough space on Sphinx to spread the urban area out over tens of thousands of square miles.

On the other hand, such a huge cityscape made transfer times longer, which meant that it would take the bus about twenty minutes to reach her school.

Said house of learning was a private institution, with a very long intellectual pedigree, carefully chosen by her uncle to give her the best future chances in academia.

Trying to distract herself from such troubling thoughts, she didn't grab her workpad to read, but peered through the window next to her.

The airbus had left the suburbs behind, and took a very different route than her uncle, flying much lower and landing every few minutes. They were passing over an area she'd never seen before, with very tightly packed apartment blocks which looked rather shabby to her eyes.

Many buildings in this neighborhood had grey, dusty walls, which looked to be in in disrepair, a few had even small holes in them where the plastering had fallen off. The doors to those complexes were massive, as if they'd been constructed to keep burglars out.

Other buildings had chaotic graffiti covering the outside of the ground floor, and some of the defacements could be seen even on the flat roofs of the high rises.

The vehicle landed on a wide place between the blocks, and more than a dozen new passengers entered, most of them in some kind of technician overall, with company logos stitched over their hearts and tool belts around their hips.

One of the men, a muscular guy with a three day beard sat down next to her, and started to read on his battered knockoff pad. A cursory look told her that he was a subscriber of the "CD", or "Crossing Dispatch", a cheap newsfax with a reputation for seedy stories and hack journalism.

Her uncle made no secret of his contempt for this kind of media - and the "CD" in particular. It was infamous for "finding" (or rather, inventing) "sex scandals" and regular bogus articles about spacefaring alien species with hunger for human flesh.

Despite herself, she leaned a few centimeters over to get a better look at the story the man was reading. "Medusan sex ritual filmed!" the headline screamed from the screen.

She felt her face flush and looked away quickly, lest he noticed her peeking.

The airbus launched for the next part of the flight, and she gazed out of the window again, trying not to picture what the three legged aliens from the newly annexed Basilisk system did to procreate.

Honor was shocked when they passed over an especially decrepit tower that had a huge graffiti sprayed onto its top. "Down with the King!" it read in red letters, next to a picture of a huge fist that melted down King Roger's crown into slag with a fiercely burning plasma blowtorch.

She felt disquieted by the whole run down quarter, and disgusted by the traitorous message she'd just read. Better to stick to her workpad, she decided, and took it out for the rest of the ride.

When she arrived at the school campus, which was only minutes on foot from the nearest transport point, Honor was surprised by the amount of students around. Sure, they were mostly from the higher grades, but she spotted some of her peers too.

Maybe others were using the facilities – which were open around the clock – for the same reasons as her, namely to escape their family homes.

After she entered the library, using the school ID code in her pad, she took her time to search a free workstation that was remote, finally finding one hidden behind some potted greenery.

She wasn't interested in small talk with any classmates who might've found their way here today, because she wanted to concentrate on her assignment.

Her uncle and aunt might've mostly forgotten about her parents, besides their death days, when they visited the graves, but she, Honor, would bring her dad to the attention of her teacher and class, would make sure that someone else but her remembered him and his heroism.

She opened a search in the costly full access archive of the Yawata Crossing Times the school provided. It was the more reputable newsfax published in the city, compared to the Crossing Dispatch at least.

Honor typed "Alfred Harrington" + "Osterman Cross" into the mask.

To her surprise, the workstation returned more than 30 hits. Eagerly, she began to pursue the information.

The articles were sorted in chronological order, and the first entries were what she had come for: "Local soldier awarded Osterman Cross", or "Harrington Hero rewarded" read the headlines about

her father's combat medal and subsequent promotion.

She copied everything useful onto her own workpad, and scrolled down the display to take a look at the other articles.

"Osterman Cross bearer marries Beowulfian Beauty" was the title of another report, and she smiled wistfully when she saw the accompanying picture of her parents, smiling happily.

After a short announcement of her own birth, one her parents had paid for themselves, she reached the news stories about the accident.

It was hurting her to read even the headlines, but she needed at least one of those articles to round up the presentation about her father.

"Hero dies in tragedy", and "Terrible air car crash leaves little girl orphaned" were only two of several headlines, and she copied both texts without taking closer looks at them.

Following the reports of her parent's deaths, she had to slog through a number of long articles regarding their burial.

Apparently, her dad had received military honors and a seven shot salute.

She didn't read those texts in detail, just the titles and picture descriptions, then copied them to her pad for later.

After about 30 minutes of work, she reached the last dispatch in the search queue.

At first, she was unable to even process what she was reading. It was like a thunderbolt out of blue sky, a shock that hit her totally unprepared.

Something hot began to burn in her stomach and she felt her pulse quicken. Pure rage boiled up in her heart as she read the headline again and again: "Foul play in Harrington crash?".