Pell Rutledge was one of Nature's early risers. Almost nobody in the barracks got up sooner than he did. He liked that time in the morning, his little slice of solitude: it let him brew caf (nobody else in the platoon could brew worth a damn) and reflect. This morning, it might give him a chance to put his thoughts in order. He wished they'd pushed the execution back a bit. Dawn was nicely symbolic, but it was too early for something like this.

It took him a while to realize that he wasn't the first person to wake up today. His squad had claimed one of the bunkrooms in the constabulary, presumably where officers slept when they had back to back shifts. It was, if anything, more cramped and uncomfortable than the barracks bunkhall had been. In such tight quarters, it was easy to tell when someone's bunk was empty.

"Cara?" he said, blinking blearily as he stumbled into the break room. Maybe she'd decided to get an early caf. He didn't blame her. Firing squad duty was nasty business.

She wasn't here, either. Nor was she in the refresher, or in any of the hallways. By now, other troopers were starting to shift awake, and Pell was getting a little worried. She'd come back the night before, right? Of course she had, but she'd seemed distracted. Not that he could blame her.

He walked past his bed and something caught his eye. It was a note, a little piece of paper. He'd almost missed it because it was the same color as his bedsheet. It had been left under his pillow, by the look of it. He grabbed it and unfolded it.

Pell,

I'm sorry. I wanted to say goodbye, but I didn't want to get you in trouble. You were right. This is a war. It's not the war I signed up for, though, and it's not a war I believe in. I can't do this.

Maybe I'll see you again someday. I hope so. Until then, Pell, don't forget what we fought for. Don't become what we hate. And don't get caught.

Love always,

Cara

Pell read the note twice, blinking in disbelief. "Cara…" he muttered under his breath. He shook his head and jammed the crumpled note into his pocket, then went looking for a working caf machine.

At the spaceport, one of the alarm tripwires buzzed and sparked. It had been cut through neatly, but whoever had done so had taken care to short-circuit it first. The tripwire blared its warning, but the short neatly swallowed it up. At the security booth, Trooper Jarrith put up his feet and sighed obliviously.

And in low orbit, an X-wing continued to climb. Its ascent was unsteady, as though the hand at the stick was less than comfortable, but it leveled out after a moment. Mon Ekidna broadcast an automated query, and the X-wing responded in kind with the day's duty codes. Ekidna, satisfied, turned its attention away from the little snubfighter. There were bigger fish to fry.

In the cockpit, Cara Dune laboriously punched in her destination coordinates, one digit at a time. She'd deployed to Utrium once before and found it a perfectly wretched little mudball, a hive of scum and villainy that made Nar Shaddaa look respectable. That suited her purposes perfectly well. The New Republic would come looking for a missing X-wing, of course, but she had no intention of keeping it. She just needed transport offworld, and she could already think of a dozen ways to scrape up the credits for that.

The rest would be up to her.

THE END