Free Annihilation (Star Force Series) by B. V. Larson

demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of the situation.”
    I stared at the walls for a second, my eyes unfocussed. I was beginning to get a black, sick headache. When my eyes came back together, I spent a few seconds gazing at the deep blue of Yale’s oceans, covered by swirls of white clouds. My expression shifted into a mask of rage.
    “What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded. “Do you think this is some kind of game? Why did you fire on my ships when you knew we were on a rescue mission?”
    “Because by our estimations, you could not help us. A hostile barbaric fleet in orbit over our dying world represented nothing other than an additional threat.”
    “But you called us out here!”
    “Immaterial. I must warn you, Riggs, you’re dangerously close to losing another half-point.”
    I muted my mic and cursed for a while. Around me, the staff looked nervous. The battle was on hold, but clearly the situation could go bad again at any moment.
    “All right,” I said when I’d calmed down. “You called us out here, but figured we couldn’t really do anything to help you. So, you decided to blow us out of the sky with an ambush at the last moment so we couldn’t cause any harm, either. But it is your logic that I find greatly flawed. Your test results are coming back in, and the tally is woefully low.”
    “Absurd. Our actions were impeccably logical.”
    “I will give you this single opportunity to improve your score,” I said as officiously as I could.
    There was a brief hesitation while they mulled this over.
    “What form will this opportunity take?” Hoon asked finally.
    I smiled. They’d taken the bait.
    “The assessment will take the form of a series of questions,” I said. “Remember, your responses are being carefully judged. Every word is recorded and weighed by our academic panel.”
    “We are prepared. Ask your questions.”
    “Why did you nearly cause me to attack and kill millions of your own population?”
    “Because the population of World Three is doomed.”
    I frowned. “You mean that if they were going to die anyway, you figured it didn’t matter if we killed them all right now?”
    “A follow-up query was not specified, and breaks the format agreed to. Worse, the answer to your follow-up is self-evident and thus unnecessary. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. You’re cognitive score has been lowered by a half-point.”
    I felt like having another round of cursing. I passed on that, but raised my arm to hammer on the chair armrest. I stopped myself with difficulty. Somehow, their nonsense about tests and constant insinuation that we were uneducated rubes—barbarians, really—was getting to me. I didn’t want to prove them right, no matter how irritating they were, so I held back my fist pounding display with difficulty.
    “Fine,” I said. “You’re saying that you decided we couldn’t help, and since we were a possible threat, you ambushed us. You didn’t care if we killed the population of Yale—um, World Three, because they were as good as dead already. I have to ask, however, did you ever consider the possibility that you were wrong? That your actions might have needlessly killed my people and yours?”
    “Certainly not.”
    I thumped my helmeted head back against the headrest. Around the command center the staffers were listening in, and they murmured to one another. No one could believe it. Compared to the risk I’d taken, these people were insane. They were so arrogant, they never seemed to question their own conclusions.
    My anger had faded somewhat during this interchange. After all, they’d been at greater risk than I had from the start. I’d nearly lost a fleet, but they’d nearly lost a world. What mattered most was the fact the disaster had been averted. I told myself I needed to focus on that. Then a new question sprang into my mind.
    “What was it that caused you to change your judgment concerning our capacities to help you?” I