I have thought many times since the severance that it was strange that I had become a rider in the service. I was far more likely, essentially, to have been a rogue. Could I have been so wrong about myself? Indeed there were those who had asserted this and had always been suspicious of my acts and motives and I assumed had oiled the machinery and greased the palms of my dismissal.
        If so it could be called.
        In certain polite quarters it was likely referred to in this way. Likely it had been forgotten having been washed over by more recent incidents. Except by me whose life was torn apart.
        I did not forget.
        I believed certain things were right and just and certain things were not irregardless of who performed them upon whom. This mindset whether defined as principled or stubbornly obtuse contributed to my silence and my disappearance. 
 

        Vanishing was not a kind thing, not a compassionate thing. They should not have expected that from me. They knew me, my people upon the ship Rachella. They had known me for cycles, read my stance and hands, brows and eyes as well as my words and the gaps and the silences between. I had been formidable. I had become less so to them.
        And this knowledge which they then possessed required further of me. Required, nearly, more than I could provide. It was my duty to provide it. It was my last duty to they who had served me in their commitment to the service equal to my own and so I fulfilled that duty to them despite what I had come to know, and feel, and owe to the service.
        I informed them that I was departing the service. I left. They remained. And the Rachella continued with the least possible disruption in time or quality of service rendered.