2953-12-24 – Tales from the Service: Abarca’s Feast Day Message
This week, the feed ingest falls on the day before Emmanuel Feast. Obviously, Nojus and I are celebrating with the officers and crew of Ashkelon according to the old routine of the Spacers’ Chapel. The sight and smell of actual candles burning aboard a vessel of war has, at least for me, been a strange experience every year of this war, but a welcome one, its value in comfort far in excess of the costs of extra load on the atmospherics and small risk of fires aboard.
Traditions like the candles that glitter throughout the ship on Feast week are fragments of peace that can still be seen in time of war. I pray that peace will return to us soon, but in the interim, may this holiday find you and your family well, be you together or a thousand light-years apart.
This is a portion of Admiral Abarca’s Feast-day message, which is to be pushed out fleet-wide on the twenty-third but as of time of writing has not yet been released. With his permission and encouragement, we have transcribed a small portion of the recording for the benefit of those in other formations and outside the service.
It has been nearly three thousand years since the birth of the Christ, the event which we celebrate with the Emmanuel Feast, which some faiths call Christmas. There is no doubt that more perilous times than these have darkened the solemn waning hours of our ancient calendar, but certainly not in the lifetime of any living today.
This conflict, the bitter shape of whose end which we only now begin to see, has been raging for more than half a decade. With bright spots and dark days, vast heroism and great tragedy, it has marked all our lives and the lives of all of those whose fate hangs in the balance. And it is, without doubt, a conflict for the human soul as much as it is for planets and for stars. Our foes, or at least their leaders, style themselves supermen, beings who will, by combined force of will, wrest control of destiny from the universe and to defeat death. Humanity has seen this idea before. Each time it appears, its victory means a departure from humanity, and each time this departure has been rejected.
The force that moves through history and defeats this idea is that death does not need to be defeated, because it already has been overcome, and not by any act of the willpower of mere men. This is the message we remember in part on this holiday – that all things mortality and material were invaded by the infinite Divine, and that the very power of death was a casualty of this surprise assault.
When we go into battle, we do so, at least in the main, certain that favor awaits us, either on the physical beachhead, or on the next shore beyond the last veil. For our foes, the sacrifices of war are in a sense far greater, because they sacrifice body and spirit, where we sacrifice only our flesh. We should respect them in this – they know it better than we do – but we should also pity them in our certainty that what they hope to gain is not worth what they stand to lose.
I do not doubt that we will win this war. I do not worry that the crews and troops I order into battle will fail to do their duty to the end, if that is required of them. I fear only that in winning it, some of you may lose perspective, may start thinking like our foes, and imagining that a material victory requires spiritual defeat. As we go forward to the end, my comrades, I fear for your souls, and yes, for the reputation of this command. As the Incarnation’s grip fails, it will seek to break us with horrors beyond our current imagination. I am sure of this, not because of any specific intelligence, but because this is what every other adventure into supposed superhumanity has done in its death throes.
When you see great and small evidence of the horrors of a society that has decided to make gods of its leaders, you will be tempted to become calloused, and to think that the virtue of your own actions matters little. Giving in would not materially affect the progress of the war, but it represents a small moral and spiritual victory for our enemy.
I would rob them of even this Pyrrhic triumph, however. In such small victories, they plant the seeds of conflicts our children and grandchildren will face. When we defeat the Incarnation, I would, if possible, see the idea of humanity defeating death and controlling fate itself buried for a thousand T-years.
As you gather with your comrades for the Feast, and listen to your chaplains give the traditional holiday message, hold the truth of this hallowed occasion in your heart. And when the orders come down, and we all go forward toward victory, remember that we only seek small, material triumph. The greater triumph has already been won for us, if we will trust in it and walk in it.
