David Weber - Hell's Gate

mul Gurthak drew in several breaths, then, finally, looked back down at the chained shakira on his office floor.

"All right, there may be one way out of this mess you've made. Listen closely, do you understand me? Because if you bungle this, I will personally hunt you down, put the rankadi knife in your hands, and watch you cut your own throat with it. Have I made myself perfectly clear on that point?"

"Y-yes, Mightiest Lord."

"Good. See that you remember, because you're not going to enjoy this process. I don't give a rat's ass about that, either, do you understand me? You'll do exactly what I tell you. You'll swallow the stigma, the shame, and the punishments you've earned, and in the end, you may well fail anyway. But if you succeed, I won't issue the order to commit rankadi. That's the only bargain you'll get; is it one you can live with, or shall I hand you the knife right now?"

vos Hoven lay trembling under the two thousand's cold, implacable stare for a small eternity. Then, finally, he gulped and nodded convulsively.

"Yes, Mightiest Lord," he whispered. "I understand."

"Good!" mul Gurthak repeated. "Now shut up, and for once in your worthless life, listen!"

Zindel chan Calirath's head ached.

So did his back. And after twelve murderous hours in the instrument of torture some sadistic furniture joiner had managed to pass off as a chair, his backside had gone from aching to screaming to numb, with occasional needles and pins that ran down the backs of both thighs.

Whoever designed these chairs should be shot, he groused. Or chained to one of them for a month or two.

His mood, he thought, wouldn't have been quite so sour if his fellow world rulers hadn't been so utterly, pigheadedly, invincibly, blissfully parochial. All their insufferable demands, excuses, obstructionist arguments, and refusals to simply get the job done were driving him rapidly mad. They needed to suck down their petty personal concerns and vote in a government?even a temporary one?so they could get on with the urgent business of preparing Sharona for war.

Didn't anyone see the dire risks they all faced?

It took time to gear up for a military campaign?especially one of this magnitude. No Sharonian nation had ever fought a war that stretched across multiple universes. The logistics problems alone would be the stuff of nightmares. This Conclave needed to be thrashing through that, not arguing over who would have the right to install traffic signs and draw school zones in local towns and villages.

When the Limathian Prince Regent stood up and started demanding that any planetary governing authority must have the power to grant guarantees on deep-sea fishing rights, something snapped inside Zindel. It jerked him to his feet. Sent his fists crashing down upon his delegation's table in the vast Emperor Garim Chancellery which had been chosen as the Conclave's initial meeting site.

"Mr. Director! Ternathia lodges a formal protest!"

The Prince Regent's mouth fell open. Every head in the chamber swiveled, like so many marionettes on strings, as their owners stared at him. Orrin Limana, visibly drooping against the presiding officer's lectern after twelve hours on his feet, straightened abruptly.

"Emperor Zindel," he said crisply, "what is the nature of your protest?"

"Mr. Director, I protest the utter waste of our time into which shortsighted members of this Conclave are forcing us! This is the second day we've met. We sat here for fourteen hours yesterday. We've been sitting here for twelve and a half more hours today, and we've decided exactly nothing. Not one, solitary, blessed thing! The troop movements arranged unilaterally by Emperor Chava and myself, with your cooperation, are the only military preparations anyone outside the Portal Authority has managed to carry out, even though three weeks have passed since the attack on our survey crew."

He glowered around the huge, marble chancellery's gorgeous precincts, as if daring any person present to dispute what he'd just said.

"This Conclave has one purpose. Just one. We aren't here to decide where to put traffic signs. We aren't here to decide which school our children should attend. While we sit here bickering over inconsequential trivia, Sharonian men and women?Sharonian children?are in mortal danger.

"We have colonies?not just forts with garrisons of soldiers, but colonies?within four transits of New Uromath, and by my conservative count, there are no fewer than twenty-three survey crews in that region. The Chalgyn Consortium crew was less than two days away from a portal fort, yet every member of it was massacred. Ternathia's Third Dragoons are en route to Fort Salby, but they won't arrive there for more than another full month, although Uromathia's cavalry regiments, fortunately, will reach Salby in two weeks, and the remaining divisions of Fifth Corps will entrain over the next several weeks.

"I'm sure we're all relieved to know troops are moving towards the front. But those troops are all we have moving towards the threat, and it's another five thousand miles from Salby to New Uromath," he said grimly. "It will take them almost a month and a half just to reach Salby, and then another two and a half months to reach the front, and we have no idea what sort of attacks they may face along the way. No way of knowing what numbers of troops we'll need at the front. And still we haven't taken a single step towards organizing our planet for the sort of war we may face. Not one … single … step."

His voice echoed in a dead silence.

"It's obvious the other side knows about multiple universes and portals, since Company-Captain chan Tesh found them camped right in the middle of one. I shouldn't have to point out that we have no idea how large their territory is, how many universes they've already occupied. How long have these people known about portals? How many universes have they explored? How many have they colonized?

"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 Channel to the Janu River three thousand years ago. Does anyone in this chamber wish to suggest that we haven't fought wars?terrible, destructive wars?over greater march distances and despite far greater logistical challenges than that?

"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?