This is book 3 of the "Honor Harrington" series.

This note does not contain major spoilers for the book.

 

Third in the Honor Harrington sequence. Haven finally attacks, and you see a bit of the internals of that decision. Silly buggers. And they get handed their heads, and it just goes downhill from there. But that's later books.

There's mention of a DuQuesne base. Named after a person prominent in the early creation of the Republic of Haven. I have to see this as a reference to the ending of Skylark DuQuesne (#4), where DuQuesne and Hunky go off to found an empire on what they seem to think are rational principles. So is Weber suggesting it won't work out? There doesn't seem to be much of anything of DuQuesne's ideas left in the empire. But the technology of the Skylark universe is completely unlike the technology of the Honorverse, so more likely it's just throwing the name in for our amusement.