Hell's Gate

"How big are they?"

He paused again, sweeping them with his eyes before he resumed.

"We've been exploring for eighty years. That seems a long time, my friends, but it isn't. Not really. It certainly hasn't been long enough for us to build a large population base out there. Most of our colonies have been established in the last thirty or forty years, directly from Sharona. That leaves our out-universe populations stretched thin. We're strung out, like beads on a broken necklace, and none of our colonies have the manpower, out of their own resources, to hold against a powerful attack. None of them is capable of self-defense, yet there are far too many people living in them for evacuation to be a practical option even if we decided to pull them all back to Sharona.

"Our enemies might have just discovered portals in their backyard, but it's just as likely they've been exploring and colonizing for centuries. We could be facing a population two, or ten, or even a hundred times our size. Yes, the point of contact is forty thousand miles from here. Yes, the thought of someone being able to successfully project military power along an invasion route that long boggles the mind. But think about the troop movements rail lines and steamships make possible. We can get troops from here to Fort Salby, even allowing for water crossings, in less than two months. That's how long it took Captain of the Army chan Baraeg to march an infantry army from the Bernith Cha

"With modern transport, wars can be fought at distances that great. Never think they can't! I pray that we can avoid fighting any war at all, that diplomacy and sanity can still stop this situation from lurching into an all out military confrontation with someone we know nothing about. But what if they can't? If diplomacy fails, we do have a war to fight, and however long it might take for that fighting to reach Sharona itself, it will sweep over our colonies far, far sooner unless we prevent that. Are we going to sit here, secure in the safe insulation of distance, and try to use this Conclave to settle long-standing, purely Sharonian problems while combat marches towards those colonies? Are the people who live there somehow less important than where we put our traffic signs?

"We have lives to save, godsdamn it! Do you honestly believe the mothers in the colonies closest to the people who've massacred an entire survey crew of civilians give a single solitary damn about who catches fish off the coast of Limathia? They're too busy wondering when their children will be shot down before their eyes, or burned to death in a fireball!"

He glared at them, and all of his frustration, anger, and driving need to save Sharonian lives, boiled up in a bullthroated challenge roar.

"We don't have time to argue about the godsdamned fish!"

Somebody in a high gallery behind him cheered. An instant later, what seemed like every gallery in the chancellery?and at least a third of the delegates on the chamber floor itself?had broken into thunderous applause. The Prince Regent of Limathia had gone crimson. Reporters were snapping photographs so fast the flash powder half-blinded Zindel, and Orem Limana wasn't even trying to gavel the crowd of spectators to order. He just stood there, watching it roar its approval, while a strange half-smile flickered across his face.

The tumult eventually wound down, and when Limana finally raised his hands for silence, the last of the applause died away. People settled back into their seats at last, but Zindel remained standing. Not only could he not abide the thought of sitting back down in that hateful chair, but he intended to finish this business.

"Emperor Zindel," the Portal Authority's First Director said into the restored silence, "thank you for lodging your protest. It is well taken?very well taken, indeed. If more Sharonian lives are lost because we fail to act swiftly enough, their blood will be on our hands, and no one else's."

"Will the Emperor yield?" another voice asked, half-lost in the enormous chamber, yet firm. Zindel turned his head until he saw the speaker, standing in the midst of the Shurkhali delegation.

"Master Chairman," the Emperor said to Limana, "Ternathia yields temporarily, and without prejudice, to the Honorable Parliamentary Representative from Shurkhal."

"Representative Kinshe, you have the floor," Limana said, and actually managed to sound as if he had absolutely no idea what Halidar Kinshe was about to say.

"Your Majesty, I thank you," Kinshe said simply, then turned to face the rest of the assembled delegates.

"As Emperor Zindel has just so … eloquently pointed out, we've sat here today for twelve and a half hours?over twenty-six hours, in all?listening to what amounts to no more than opening remarks," he said into the ringing silence. "I suppose that's inevitable, to some extent. This is the greatest gathering of heads of state in Sharona's history. Of course every nation represented here has some problem, some dispute, some need which it wishes to place upon the record, and for which it wishes to seek resolution.

"Yet the fact is, that those very desires, and the very fact that they are so natural, so inevitable, underscore the true nature of the challenge we all face. We are gathered here as representatives of scores of independent nations, yet we face a menace?a danger?to all of our citizens. One which we ca

"Every person in this chamber knows of Shurkhal's loss." Kinshe's voice was suddenly harsh, his expression bleak. "Thousands of Shurkhali men have already flocked to the colors, already sworn themselves to blood vengeance for Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband. Yet Shurkhal recognizes that she ca

He paused, and silence hovered, unbroken by so much as the rustle of feet or a single cough.

"My friends," he said finally, "we need a system of world governance, and we have no time to thresh out all the details of some new and splendid system with which we will all be content. And since we have too little time for that task, it seems to me most fortunate that we don't have to undertake it."

He paused once more, and this time the silence was so intense it seemed to hurt his audience's ears.

"We already have a working model of governance to draw upon," he said quietly. "A model which has endured the test of time, war, natural disaster, and adversity of every kind. The model of a government which has administered a region spa

"Sharona has no better model for a world government. Indeed, Sharona ca

"I move that we create a united Empire of Sharona, based on the model and institutions of the Ternathian Empire."