Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 03_ Tyrant's Test - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [106]
As Leia rose from the bench where she had been waiting, something unexpected happened—a slow-growing, defiant-sounding ovation. In scattered twos and threes, then pockets of ten and twenty, seated senators rose to their feet clapping and calling out the traditional affirmation of “Ho, huzzah!” By the time Leia reached the podium, half of the left aisle and nearly all of the right had joined the impromptu demonstration.
There was less enthusiasm from the center aisle, where representatives from most of the human worlds were seated, but even there nearly half were on their feet, with stragglers still swelling that number. Noisiest of all was the public gallery, the occupants of which were ignoring the warnings of the protocol officers and the architects both and stamping in unison. Taken aback, Leia looked to Behn-Kihl-Nahm for a cue or an explanation, only to find him applauding her as well, with equal measures of determination and dignity.
Leia turned back to the chamber and raised her right hand, asking for silence. “Please,” she said. “Please. I’m grateful for your support, so spontaneously and genuinely offered. I accept it as a deeply felt expression of your concern for Han—mirroring the concern that so many people from all over the New Republic have taken the trouble to share with our family. I am gratified to learn that his welfare matters to so many of you. We love him dearly, and it’s unimaginably hard for us to see him suffering.
“But I did not come here today to speak of Han, or to presume on your sympathy,” Leia said. “I have come here to make an announcement in a matter of great gravity. I’m glad that so many of you are here to hear it firsthand.
“At thirteen-thirty today, in the presence of the chairman of the Defense Council, the first administrator, the minister of state, the admiral of the fleet, and the director of the Intelligence Ministry, I invoked the emergency-powers provisions of Article Five with respect to the crisis in Farlax Sector.”
A startled gasp from thousands of throats tore the silence. “That is the formal language required by the Charter,” Leia went on. “But it can be said more simply—we have declared war on the Duskhan League.
“I have taken this step for one reason, and one reason only—because it is the right thing to do.
“This is not a personal crusade or a political maneuver. It is a campaign for justice—justice for the victims, and justice for the criminals.
“The crimes of the Yevetha are not as well known to you as they should be, nor as they will be. You have seen the faces of two of Nil Spaar’s victims: Han and Plat Mallar. But what the Yevetha have done to these two—as much as it hurts those who love them—is among the least of their offenses.
“The Duskhan League is led by an absolute dictator whose bloody amorality is the equal of any enemy the Republics have known. They have exterminated, without the slightest provocation, the populations of more than a dozen peaceful worlds. They have murdered innocents by the tens of thousands, without the slightest justification.
“Humans, Morath, H’kig, Kubaz, Brigians—no one who stood in their way was spared. Not the women. Not even the children. Their bodies were incinerated. Their homes were leveled. Their cities were bombed back to atoms.
“And the last memories of those children, those cities, are now held by the few who the Yevetha spared—spared so that the Yevetha could use their living bodies as shields in battle.
“The possibility that the Yevetha may not be finished with their murderous expansion, the prospect that they might next fall on Wehttam or Galantos or another more familiar world, is unnecessary to our response.
“If these horrors do not demand our answer, then shame on us. If these tragedies do not enrage your conscience, then shame on you. If we cannot stand together against such a predator, the New Republic stands for nothing of value.”
Leia paused to drink