A Beautiful Friendship (novel)

A Beautiful Friendship, a young adult science fiction novel by American author David Weber, was published in 2011. It is set in the fictional Honorverse and acts as a prequel to Weber's main Honor Harrington series, occurring centuries earlier in that timeline. The story centers on Stephanie Harrington, an ancestor of the series' protagonist Honor Harrington, who had been referenced in earlier books.

Plot summary

The plot begins in the early 37th century, when the Harrington family relocates from the planet Meyerdahl to the newly established Star Kingdom of Manticore. Their eleven-year-old daughter, Stephanie, is unhappy with the move, finding little of interest on the planet Sphinx, especially with its much longer seasons. Her outlook changes when she investigates a mysterious thief stealing celery from colonists' greenhouses. She encounters a new sentient species: a six-limbed, arboreal mammal called a treecat, known to itself as Climbs Quickly.

The two form an involuntary, nearly instantaneous psychic bond—what future generations will call "bonding"—similar to love at first sight. Climbs Quickly flees to his forest clan, which is revealed to be a telepathic, sentient society at a hunter-gatherer level, with only basic agriculture and no advanced technology. The treecats are wary of revealing themselves to humans, whom they recognize as far more advanced but unable to communicate telepathically. Days later, Stephanie goes hang gliding without her parents' knowledge to scout the forest where she believes Climbs Quickly lives.

Through their bond, they sense each other, and Climbs Quickly runs from his clan's home to prevent its discovery. Stephanie crash-lands in a storm, and Climbs Quickly, compelled by their bond to protect her, fights a native six-legged hexapuma that approaches them. He is stunned, but Stephanie rises to defend him despite her injuries, buying time for the clan to arrive and tear the hexapuma apart. Her father, tracking her wristband, arrives and takes both to recover.

Two years later, the bond between Stephanie and Climbs Quickly—now named Lionheart by humans—has deepened, allowing them to share emotions and general meanings without clear language. Scientists have arrived to study the sentient treecats and constantly pester Stephanie for information.