He's on his feet before he's even thought about it, like a reflex in a futile attempt to vent the wash of anger and self-loathing that swells, threatening to overcome him.

Nietzschean legends call him the Angel of Death for what he did that day. For what she made him do. Oh, she didn't tell him. They'd worked it all out themselves. What happened if those ships stayed in the skies. What happened if the helped the Commonwealth. Which way the Long Night could get even worse. The hard mathematics of how many people he had to kill to stop a Nietzschean Empire or a total overrunning of the galaxies with Magog.

He leans forward, his hands on the table, barely controlling his anger enough to keep his voice level, though it's still just as full of cold fury as it was.

"There were a hundred thousand people on those ships."