Marsden Neighbourhood, Silesia, Solaris VII...
"Mail Call"-it has a special meaning for soldiers on a long deployment. It means someone back home knows you're here, and hopes you're still alive. Company "H", 2nd Bde, 2nd Marine Division ("The Inarcs Jaegers") were light-years from home, practically on the other side of the universe, holding down a civil war on behalf of a foreign state, in exchange for economic assistance back in their homeworlds.
Getting Post, even weeks or months out of date, is the highlight of their days-days filled with shouting crowds, or armed enemies shooting at them, days filled with being spat on, dealing with rock-throwers, gunmen, and rogue 'mechjocks in high-end prototype equipment.
stale cookies become better than porterhouse steak under those conditions-they come from home, so they MATTER.
It's the little things that keep us human.
"Smoke." Lance-Corporal Doug "Bone Tree" Heller lowered the field glasses, "Seventh and Porter, looks like...mo-gas and something else."
the radio chattered, and word circulated.
The Solaris rebels had just ambushed the mail truck.
It's the littlest things that matter most-Men that had been shrugging off for months the accusations of being 'traitors' and 'mercenaries', who'd managed to ignore accusations of war criminal status, and worse, who'd held their fire when demonstrators threw rocks, bottles, even molotov cocktails...
Hotel Company wasn't going to put up with someone messing with their mail. Someone would pay...
