He had dreamt, too. Vivid, lucid dreams. He had seen the young woman in the cove. There was something about her that he could not put his finger on. It wasn’t an attraction on his part, it wasn’t that, but she had been interesting. Her calmness. Her eyes. Something about her that was repellent but also magnetic. He didn’t know why he hadn’t walked down into the cove. He had trusted her. Taken her word, and as an officer that was something he would never usually do. You couldn’t be advised by others unquestioningly, it went against the very nature of what he was trained to do. He thought it odd – perhaps that was it – that he had complied so willingly with her suggestion.

He ran his fingers over his stubble and reached for the soap. As he lathered his face, he thought of how the UADs were being shipped to Portsmouth. How it was being done on a Saturday. It would draw less attention, but they were loaded and ready. As he scraped the blade down his jawline, he thought too of how the Captain would profit from this success, and as he did so, the tension in his hand made it falter, nicking a cut on his face. He swore and pulled the skin tighter, tried to ignore the blood leaking into the white lather. He couldn’t let that happen. He’d worked too hard. Something other than suicide had happened to that soldier, he was sure of it, and when he found out what it was, he would be reinstated, the fact of the forged paperwork forgiven under the circumstances. The Captain put back in his place.