Then I should be dead. [He says bluntly.]

The standards of the Commonwealth that I agreed to serve had a death policy attached to mutiny and crimes against the Commonwealth. As a High Guard officer, I was to uphold its ideals. If I were to go to trial, I would be killed for betraying my oaths as an example. Nietzschean or not, at the time I was also a citizen who made a formalized agreement.

[He frowns and rounds the desk.] The executioner wears a mask in most societies and is a party indifferent to the situation. For executions that are not based in military dismissal, the perpetrator is often given chances to prove their innocence, appeals to higher powers for a stay of execution, and their death must be both a safety assurance and seen as true justice and peace of mind to the victim.

There are other forms of punishment. Lobotomies. Mental erasure and personality reconstruction. Isolationist colonies.

Most people don't want to see someone die, Ben. Because most people don't want to die themselves. [But Ben does, he knows. It's his escape.

What a welcome home speech this is. He changes the subject.] In any case, I know Dylan said he would be willing to fill in at the kitchen when I was detained, but I know he wasn't here for the flood.

[Ben seems content to listen through most of it, patiently waiting to explain what Dylan had told him, that he himself had made no comment on the actual rightness or wrongness of a death penalty so much as the distaste with which most who chose to opin at all dealt with it.

But then Rhade gets to the part about other forms of punishment and most of the shine of Ben is wiped off abruptly, jaw tensing and looking sharply down at where he'd been considering zipping up the jacket. His voice is flat.]

Death is preferable.

[He's glad to let Rhade change the subject, taking in a deeper breath, grasping mentally for that calm, happy place he'd found for a time, shaken loose at being reminded forcibly of PsyOps and how he likely would have ended up there, still might.]

Riddick and myself are fully capable of working cooperatively; we had only to request to be let in, and to account for all potential weapons upon leaving.