From the Delta Front

The return address had been struck through by the censors, but she knew where the package was from. At least… she knew who it was from. His handwriting on the address label was enough to tell her that. Her brother, fighting somewhere out in the asteroids, had somehow managed to find time to buy a gift and mail it. Obviously, that would have been more than a year ago, but there it was. Proof that Jacob had been alive a year ago.

The package was just as battered as anything else that came from the asteroids, but she carried it into the house carefully.

“There’s a package from Jacob! Mom?” She knew how much her mother dreaded the mail. There was always a chance that she would receive one of the military’s infamous black envelopes, or that the letter they got from the front would be from one of Jacob’s friends, instead of from Jacob, himself. “Jacob sent us something!”

Her mother emerged from the kitchen cautiously, wiping her hands on her apron as she did. “Did he, now?” She took the package, and inspected it, as if Elsie might not remember what her brother’s writing looked like. When she was satisfied, she relaxed. “We’ll wait til your father gets home,” she said.

Elsie nodded. It was only fair. Her father would want to see it—all of it—to experience the thing from beginning to end. It might be another year or two before they heard from Jacob again. She wanted to make the experience linger, as much as her mother did. A package. For an hour or two, they could pretend they really knew Jacob was alive and well. That they believed he’d gotten enough leave to eat a hot meal. There might be a letter in the package, but that could wait. They should read whatever Jacob had to say together as a family.

When her father got home from work, he handed Elsie a knife. “You open it, kiddo. My hands are dirty.”

Her mother nodded.

Her hands shook just a little, as she cut through the brown paper tape. They would read the letter and open their gifts, but afterward, they’d go back to wondering. Nothing in the package could tell them where Jacob was right now.

But in the end, they’d know a little more than they had before. The package would tell them where he’d been. What he’d done. It would give them one more thing to share with the soldier who was so far away.

She opened the outside box, and then, she opened the letter.

“I had a few days leave, so I thought I’d send you some things.”

She’d gotten good at reading between the lines. A few days leave. That meant there had been a battle, and that it was big enough that Jacob’s commanding officers decided the men needed time to recover. They were lucky. Somewhere else, other families would be getting black letters, but Jacob was on leave, and he was telling them he’d survived.

The gifts were wrapped in newspaper, which meant that he was somewhere too remote to get any real wrapping paper. The gifts would be something exciting, at least. The newspapers, themselves, told her nothing. The same ones were distributed to every military base in the galaxy.

She tore through the newspaper wrapping, and then stopped.

She was holding a skull.

A real Cephian skull.

Some of the flesh was still there, freeze-dried by its time in space. Dead. Somewhere between a skull and a mummy. She’d heard of soldiers sending trophies home to their families, but Jacob—

She’d been expecting a pretty box, or a necklace, not a man’s head.

It was the Enemy. She’d never seen one, before. The face was sharper than she’d expected, the nose ridge was nearly a blade, and just as tall as the face, itself. She’d never really believed that a Cephian could split a man’s rib cage by head-butting him, but she did, now. The thing seemed almost designed for the purpose.

“Well, that’s really something,” her father said. He took the artifact from her, and turned it over in his hands, inspecting it, as if he were looking at a sea shell or a part of a machine he didn’t quite understand. A Cephian skull. He was fascinated.

“What do I do with it?” Elsie asked.

“We’ll get you a case for it,” he said. Wasn’t that what you did with beetles and stuffed birds? “You can put it on the mantle, if you don’t want it in your room.”

***

On Cephia, Mareki rubbed her nose ridge.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” The postman gave her a sympathetic smile, and waited for her to sign the receipt.

She took the package. “A little more than a year,” she said.

He nodded. “Used to run to meet me at the door,” he said.

She smiled back at him. “He’s a soldier, now.”

“Yes, I know.” Maybe, if the military didn’t insist on a return receipt for packages from the front, he would already have fled. “Thank you,” he said. “For your son’s service.”

She hesitated. That was it. The tone she dreaded. This time, the man was thanking her for the boy’s service. Next time, he might be thanking her for his sacrifice.

The postman said something else just as awkward, and excused himself.

She went inside, and set the box on the kitchen table. Whatever the boy had sent, it should wait until his father got home.