2954-11-11 – Tales from the Service: A Brother's Sacrifice
This feed item should appear some hours after the findings of the Admiralty investigation into the handling of the first battle of Håkøya has been released to the public. While the report does not explicitly find fault with Admiral Zahariev, he nevertheless is expected to resign from Navy service entirely. We here in this embed team were given a few days' advance notice through back channels, in case we needed time to prepare our statements on the matter.
Admiral Zahariev's command of Fifth Fleet up to the loss of Håkøya has been much maligned in civilian media throughout this conflict, but we hold the opinion that much of this is unfair. Yes, he presided over numerous failures. Yes, he has always been a naturally a careful and risk-averse commander. But he always struck us as a deeply self-critical man, and he attempted at every stage to select of more hot-blooded staff and subordinates. This, too, he was criticized for, often by the same people who considered him over-cautious. The report of the commission confirms and endorses his staff selections, up to (but notably not including) Boszi Kirke-Moore.
With the liberation of Håkøya, Zahariev's ultimate failure to protect that planet has been reversed. It is likely the relative brevity of the occupation there was considered during the final weeks of the inquiry.
Admiral Abarca and his staff at Seventh Fleet did not offer a comment on this matter, and I am not aware of any comment from Admiral Venturi. I would guess neither will discuss the matter much for the remainder of their current assignments.
Sergeant Devon Barker took off his pack and knelt down on the brow of the hill, with the sweet tang of a Håkøya ocean breeze blowing through his longer-than-regulation hair. His hand wandered to the scar interrupting the stubble on his chin, a scar he'd told the med-techs not to erase, but his mind was wandering far into the past, to a time before scar or stubble.
"This the place?"
Devon turned to look at his traveling companion. "I think so." Without rising to his feet, he pointed down toward the gray-green breakers on the shore, about three klicks away. "His cottage was down there."
Out in the open water of Klimenos Bay beyond, a hover-ferry threw up a shock-white wake as it sped across from the big resort complex at Balacay to the tiny town of Janaster's Post. The Klimenos Bay Devon remembered from his childhood had always been dotted with pleasure-craft of every description. Now, only about six weeks removed from final liberation, with most of its inhabitants still yet to return, most of Håkøya's population centers and tourist traps were ghost towns, barely starting the process of resuming the vibrant life yearsof occupation had interrupted.
"I don't see anything down there." Marcela Brandt shielded her eyes from the wind with her hand. "Certainly no cottages. Just some dunes and a marsh behind them."
"Five storm seasons without maintenance." Devon shrugged. "Dig around in those dunes and you'll probably find what's left of the houses. Not that there'll be too much left worth the trouble. Everyone who lived here packed up and got out before the trap closed, including Maya."
They'd talked to Maya back on Maribel before shipping off with a rear-echelon detachment bound for Håkøya, but she'd had little to offer in the way of assistance or encouragement. She and Devon's brother Herman had split nearly ten years ago, before the War, and somehow, she'd ended up in possession of the Barker family vacation cottage, Herman's since the death of their father. The brothers had rambled through those hills behind the coast – a rare landscape of rolling, open, grassy meadows on a world mainly dominated by forests and mangrove-like salt marshes - on uncountable days as teenagers.
"This does seem like... his sort of place." Marcela turned a circle, looking in all directions, gaze lingered on the direction where their aircar lay. She'd served with Herman in the F.V.D.A., and had been there on Mereena the day he'd bought his plot.
Maybe she'd been more than a comrade to Herman. Devon hadn't asked, and didn't want to know. She had spoken to him enough to have heard of his desire to come back to these hills on more than one occasion. And when his remains had been returned to the closest living family he had – Devon – she had reached out to offer her help in seeing that he made it back after all. That was enough for Devon. And he hoped that it was enough for Herman.
"His, and mine." Devon stood up and gestured down the hill toward the shore. "Everywhere you go on Håkøya, there's a blazing-white beach, or a tranquil forest. But up here was our alien landscape to explore." That idyllic adolescence was nearly twenty years gone. Twenty years of loss, of heartbreak, of missed opportunities, in which they'd lost first their mother, then their father, while still barely adults themselves. In which they'd both found love, and failed to keep it. In which they'd both become soldiers, and left their blood on the soil of other worlds on the Coreward Frontier.
Devon opened his pack and removed the spherical metal capsule he'd been carrying. Tiny letters stamped around its equator spelled out Herman's full name, birth date, and the date of his death on Mereena. Though the container was incredibly rugged, he set it down carefully on the hilltop next to his feet. "We made it back, Herman." He struggled to keep his voice from breaking. "We should never have left."