Valhalla - excerpt from draft

His uniform was crisp. His posture formal. His appearance immaculate. He was purely a professional military man, devoted to his country to the core, and it showed in his straight-forward, unwavering gaze. In every way, his external demeanor was passive, just as it needed to be in order to represent the steadfast nature of his soul while also reflecting the half-dozen row of ribbons upon his chest.

Internally, however, his thoughts were anything but passive. He, Major Marcus ‘Mack Truck’ Keller, was at his court-martial hearing for a litany of charges, most of them included death in some heinous form. He didn't care about the deaths he’d caused or his repeated charges of insubordination to his superiors. What angered him, what made his internal organs curl in hate like a viper ready to strike, was the fact his government had called upon him and his elite squad to correct a problem as they had done a dozen times before. This time, however, the very same government had the nerve to deem his actions excessive in a time of war.

War.

Unlike congress, Major Keller believed war had no rules of engagement. There was only the mission and in that there was only success or failure. There was never compromise. There was never good enough. There was only one rule he demanded besides perfection; survival of the team. If you were shot at, you returned fire and you didn't care if the enemy hid behind civilians. You didn't care if they were held up in schools. You didn't care if a few of the innocent fell to protect the whole. And in his case the whole was his men, his squad.

His squad!

It was almost a cliché to call them the best of the best of the best or even elite. They were hand-picked by him, trained by him personally, and their missions were chosen by him. They were the one-thousandth of one percent who joined the military, and even then ninety-nine percent of those failed his evaluation. And like him, they sat bolt upright accepting their fate. It was a shame only three of his squad remained. What only these four men know, however, was they were the best four the military had ever created.

Each of them was a trained killer. Each of them spoke at least four languages. Each of them scored an IQ of over 150. Each of them had no family. Each of them had nothing to lose except their honor. And yet each of them accepted their fate with the utmost professionalism, though it was their honor at stake.

Just how they got here was something none of them could forgive. Instead of their government trusting their patriotism, trusting them to come peacefully, they were waylaid during a routine physical after mission completion. Drugged and dragged halfway around the world only to be woken an hour before their trial began.  That was two days ago.

Everything up until this point had been meticulously planned and therefore couldn't be due to the results of their last mission, which had been the hardest yet. It was a mission in which only a quarter of his men survived. No, this had been organized at the highest levels. Acted upon by men far superior to those Major Keller normally dealt with. It all meant their fall was orchestrated at the executive level, but just how high up the chain of command the order had come from was the one thing Major Keller didn't know… yet.

“Major Keller, Captain Sharp, Captain Cummings, Captain Hirsch; do you have anything to say for yourselves before the verdict is given?”

Major Keller stood, coming to rigid attention before the judge. “I only wish to convey that my men and I served our country in a capacity in which we were trained to do, following orders from the highest levels against enemies of the greatest dangers, and we were successful. And despite the outcome of this…trial, we will continue to do so.”

Judge Richard Harrison frowned at the somewhat implied, however subtle, threat, but he couldn't respond. Besides it being unprofessional, this trial had to go off without a hitch. Those were his orders. Though he disliked this farce of a judicious court-martial, his continued career hinged upon this going smoothly. He, however, wished he could respond and call this what it was, a mockery of the justice system, a system he’d served for thirty years. “Do the Major’s words speak for the rest of the defendant’s?” He paused for a second for a response, but there was none. “Very well then, let it be noted none of the other defendants have anything to say.” Then, with practice hands, he opened the piece of paper the jury had placed before him only minutes before.

“Defendants, please rise,” the bailiff announced causing the three other men on trial to stand beside their commander.

“It is the verdict of this court the four defendants; Major Keller, Captain Sharp, Captain Cummings, Captain Hirsch, be sentenced to death on Valhalla. May God have mercy on your souls. Court’s adjourned.”