Debts Repaid

[Durandal]

.....He stood there, slack-jawed in disbelief. Over two hundred dead at his command, and his sentence was... nothing? "Your... your honor, with all due respect I have taken the lives of over two hundred men, women, and children. Many of them injured or suffering Cardamine withdraw. And you would have me walk away? You would have the Commonwealth give reparation for my actions? I can't ask that of you, or of them. Their blood is on my hands and mine alone, Colonel. The Houses may believe blood can be repaid in credit and steel, but we know better.

Why?"

.....He stood there shaking and felt his dinner rising in his throat. He had prepared himself for this. He had walked into the courtroom and taken the stand ready for.. what would the Maltese custom be for a ranking officer of a foreign nation? Lethal injection? Death by firing squad? He began to shake, his peripheral vision going dark, his whole body feeling as if it had been submerged in freezing water. Why?

"I can't be redeemed... what do you want from me?"

.....His life for what? What else was he good for?