David Weber - Hell's Gate

"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 cannot possibly meet unilaterally, out of our own national resources.

"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 cannot seek justice by herself. We must act together, we must act as one, and above all, we must act."

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 spanning half the globe. Governed diverse peoples from dozens of different cultures and languages, and done it justly and well. A government which has fought more successful wars than all the other nations of Sharona combined, and yet one which has never embraced militarism for its own sake. One whose subjects enjoy great personal freedom, and perhaps the highest average standard of living in the world.

"Sharona has no better model for a world government. Indeed, Sharona cannot have a better model. Rather than thrash around creating something new and untested, something whose strength we cannot know and whose stability we cannot trust, let us turn to one all of us know, most from our own history. There is too much at stake for us to settle for anything less. And, perhaps most important of all, its current ruler has already demonstrated the ability to see very clearly the most important tasks ahead of us. The nature and magnitude of the risks we face, and what must be accomplished to meet them."

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

Zindel's jaw tried to drop, but before he could do more than draw breath to protest, another voice called out.

"Farnalia seconds the motion, provided that we also adopt the current Ternathian Emperor, Zindel chan Calirath, as the new Emperor of Sharona!"

"The Queens of Bolakin second the motion as amended!"

Zindel stared hard at his longtime allies, who merely gazed back at him as if the motion?and its amendment?were truly spontaneous. And, despite his own sudden suspicion, he knew he would never be able to prove they hadn't been.

But if it was a put up job, the well-organized steamroller wasn't allowed to proceed to its destination unchallenged.

"Uromathia protests!" Chava Busar, Emperor of Uromathia, was on his feet, his face livid, and another uproar swept the chamber.

It took several minutes for Orem Limana to gavel the chaos back to order once again. He managed it in the end, not without a bit of shouting of his own, then looked very formally at the Uromathian ruler.

"What protest do you wish to lodge, Emperor Chava?"

"I protest the unseemly and improper haste with which certain parties wish to call for a vote on two critical issues at once, without open debate or formal nominations for each separate issue!"

"Those two issues being??"

"The first being the motion to adopt the Ternathian Empire as the model for a world government, as if Ternathia's were the only great empire in Sharonian history," Chava bit out. "And the second being the question of who would head this proposed Empire of Sharona. They are separate issues. They must be voted on separately!"

"They are not separate issues!" the Emperor of Farnalia bellowed, surging to his feet in furious disregard of the formal rules of parliamentary procedure. Ronnel Karone, a bigger man even than Zindel, towered two feet and more taller than the Emperor of Uromathia, and his expression was not pleasant. "We're not adopting Ternathia as a model. We're adopting Ternathia as our government, and Ternathia has a ruler. A capable, intelligent, honest ruler."

Zindel winced; Chava went purple; Karone didn't even pause.

"We're voting to place all of Sharona under the rule of the Ternathian Empire, so we don't need a separate nomination and vote, because there is no separate issue. Ternathia has an Emperor; Sharona will have the same one!"

"Uromathia will never tolerate you, or anyone else, shoving an emperor we don't trust down our throats without so much as the courtesy of open debate, let alone open and honest nominations!" Chava bellowed back, and pandemonium erupted once more.