ease with which she does it. Following a failed attempt to assassinate her in a public restaurant, Harrington is determined to exact revenge. Her friends try to dissuade her, as her naval career would be destroyed. Young tries to avoid her until the Navy can assign her to duties off-world, but she finally meets him face-to-face and forces him into accepting a duel. Though he treacherously fires early, she kills him. Because Young is a sitting Member of Parliament, Harrington was beached by the Manticoran Navy, setting the backstory for Flag in Exile. Moving to Harrington Steading, she finds herself at the heart of political dissent, turmoil, discord and conservatives opposing the reforms instituted by Protector Benjamin Mayhew, such as female Steadholders and women officers. The Grayson Space Navy (GSN) eventually recruits her, making her the second ranking admiral in their young, rapidly expanding navy. However, conspirators sabotage a building being constructed by a company she set up, causing the deaths of children. Her Grayson enemies place the blame on Harrington, but the sabotage is uncovered through forensic engineering. The saboteurs then try to assassinate her before she can reveal her findings, only to inadvertently kill the head of Grayson's Church. Though seriously injured, she confronts Steadholder Burdette, one of the head conspirators, and personally kills him in a formal sword duel. She cannot rest, however, as an enemy battle fleet comes calling. Harrington once again saves the planet from invasion, this time by deceiving a Havenite task force into a fatal blunder, earning her the adulation of the nearly all the people. Honor is again offered a command in the RMN, though her political enemies seek to discredit her by making her mission a seemingly impossible one: the suppression of the rampant piracy in the Silesian Confederation with grossly inadequate ships, all that the overstretched RMN can scrape together. Knowing this, her strong sense of duty makes her accept anyway. Rehabilitated by the opposition She is given command of four Q-ships as a de facto commodore and starship captain— four converted merchant ships turned into merchant cruisers. These cruisers are also light carriers, each carrying a dozen new, advanced light attack craft. Her experience with these units results in the militarily revolutionary pod-superdreadnought classes which will come to dominate the new military reality. She rescues a planet from a pirate flotilla, defeats a Havenite commerce raiding fleet and impresses