This is a collection of 3 longish shorts and technical paper on armor design.
"Ruthless" follows the story of Michael, Judith and Ruth that started in "Promised Land". The characters are very nicely done and the plot interesting. The ability of the villains of the piece to successfully pull of their deception is rather a stretch and their motive isn't convincingly stated. Although the weakest of the stories, still a very good read.
In "An Act of War" Charles--a con man--has gone back to the Peeps for a second try. If we consider what we found out about the "Mesian Alignment" in Mission of Honor (Honor Harrington, Book 12) his actions and access to advanced tech. as well as intelligence make sense if he is acting as their agent or at least cat's paw. Interesting story, Honor is uninvolved except that her image appears. Intricate plot nicely written not as strong as it could be.
"Lets Dance" involves Honor (commander of the destroyer Hawkwing) in a convoluted plot by the central Silesian government, the sector governor, the Ballroom, and a Mesian/Manpower operation. The plot is well done and I like the way that Honor was rewarded under the table. An excellent story.
The last section "An Introduction to Modern Starship Armor Design" is of interest to tech. inclined fans of the series. Well thought out but for most of us padding. It does offer a nice overview of weapons development--you can't talk about armor without talking about what your armoring against. The article is marred by failure to distinguish between ions and plasma. Ordinary sunlight is ionizing radiation, you simply knock off an electron from a atom or molecule resulting in a positive or negative charge. It doesn't change the state of matter and usually isn't a big deal. Plasma on the other hand is the forth state of matter and doesn't consist of atoms any more. The nuclei are striped of their electrons and the electron/nuclei gas (using gas loosely) is plasma. Its properties are very different from ionized mater and it interacts strongly and differently with magnetic fields. Leading me to speculate that using a magnetic field to push the plasma away from the ship could both limit damage and provide additional shielding by the plasma itself.