Let There Be Carnage

They send me in alone. I'm the elite. The best of my kind. A titanium behemoth built with one job in mind. In war you need someone like me - somebody who can get the dirty jobs done, the jobs nobody else can take. They know I'm the only one who can handle the psychological trauma, the stench, the stain of conflict.

I crack open the triple sealed bulkhead door. The outpost still has power. I have my own thermonuclear back-up generator but I'll make use of whatever erg-source I can find. An operative like me has to take what we can find. Improvise. Adapt. Survive.

Get in and get out. When I've gone there will be no trace that I was ever there.

There are scorch marks on the walls. Plasma bolts have charred the concrete. I track the line of fine and asses the damage. The wall is secure but the damage is structural - not my field. I've got bigger worries.

The enemy hit the outpost hard. A breach into the gymnasium near the where the bunker interfaces with the living wrong. Smart. Sealant foam around the breach to stop pressure loss.

I scan for life signs. Nothing. This place is a tomb. Doesn't matter. They don't send my kind to mourn the dead. There will be enough time for weeping widows later. I have to focus on mission priorities.

I follow the schematics. The officer's quarters are past the secondary bulk heads.

In the vestibule before the Base Commander's office I find the bodies. A Squirm - the green, gelatinous inhabitants of the Borealis Nebula. An inverter grenade sucked it inside out, blew it apart and baked the remains. The walls and floor are covered in it. I know what I have to do.

"Sergeant Atomic - sit rep asap copy over."

"Its bad captain" I reply, my eyes narrowing as I assess the damage.

"Grue dammit Atomic, you knew what you were getting yourself into."

"Captain, this carpet…it's silk, Grue dammit. Silk!"

Silk. When will HQ learn? Didn't I warn them? A synthetic fibre or even wool - that I could clean just with the careful application of a detergent, warm water and some methodical scrubbing. But silk? In what grue damn upper-echelon puke's mind did silk carpet sound like a smart idea?

I extrude the diamond tip needle effectors onto my forelimbs. I'll need to pick off each fragment of Squirm remains from that carpet - piece by grue-dammit piece.

I'm the elite. The best. The enemy whispers my name - they call me THE CLEANER.

Behold the Valiants

Introduction by Timothy the Talking Cat. Flappypants wrote this. I checked it for suspicious stuff but it looked safe. Lots of shooting and manly heroes, just like I asked for.

Behold the Valiants

By Camouflage Flappypants (ha ha, I changed his name!)

There were only six of us left in the foxhole. Our mortar attack on the Citadel of Evil had gone rapidly pear-shaped when we were caught in RPG crossfire from the Citadel. The psychoactive deception shielding prevented us from perceiving the true structure of the Citadel - it shimmered in our vision, taking on the appearance of a normal office building.

I could see my comrades were becoming disheartened. They had begun to doubt their vision, themselves, their trust in our leader and their faith in the mission. Was I strong enough? Did I have it in me to lead? Somebody would need to take charge and sarge had bought it back when the dropship had collided into a gun emplacement disguised as a florist.

I closed my eyes and prayed. I prayed not for victory and not for salvation but for hope.

I looked up and it was if God had sent us an angel.

An angel framed in light and carrying forty pounds of XM312 heavy machine gun like a lesser man might carry a satchel of beatnik inspired poetry books. For this man the point five-oh Browning Machine Gun cartridge was his Ginsberg and forty rounds per minute in five to seven round bursts was his Kerouac.

He looked down at us, his expression caught between pity and contempt.

"You let the enemy double-down. Have you forgotten my teachings?" he asked but we could not answer because the weight of his disappointment fell on us like brooding thunder clouds approaching a desolate beach of moral betrayal. We knew we had failed him and we knew we would sacrifice anything to regain his esteem. But we also knew hope had come and salvation and the promise of victory - in the form of Field Marshal Vax Doy Phd, MBE, Grande Maitre Légion d'honneur and Nobel prize recipient three times over.

His shirt had been torn away by the blast of the rocket propelled grenade attacks from the citadel of evil, exposing his rippling muscles, that rippled as he stretched his arms southwards pointing us to safety. The muscles in his arms rippled as he showed us the way - yes, a retreat but one with honour and one made knowing that we would be back to fight again. As we left he turned his head scowling at the citadel, the muscles at the back of his head also rippling as his mighty brow flexed in anger at his mortal and cowardly enemies.

We headed south towards our extraction point. Behind Field Marshall Vax kept up covering fire, accurately picking off enemy snipers with his precision machine gun technique. With his spare hand he lit a cigar as the muscles in that little spot between his ear and his jaw rippled in the light of the setting sun

Safely in the belly of the specially customised Boeing CH-47 Chinook, its twin engine tandem rotors purring like a benevolent but angry mother lioness that is pulling its cubs away from a pack of hyenas by their scrawny knocks, we sat shame faced as Field Marshal Vax looked out at the field of our defeat.

"Now listen men, we are heading back east to take out a secondary target." said Vax, his voice rippling with authority in the same manner as his thigh muscles rippled through his tight uniform.

"East, sir?" queried the roookie recruit timorously, "By the position of the sun we appear to be heading South?"

We all shook our head knowingly. Classic rookie error.

"Are you going all gamma on me private?" glared Vax, his eyes pinning the rocky to his seat like iron pilling pressed home by a pile driver.

Vas turned and addressed us all: "Platoon! What mistake did this here private make?"

"Sir!" we all replied in unison "He treated your description of our direction as dialectic sir!"

"And what should he have done?" asked Vax, his commanding voice booming out over the drone of the Chinook's powerful motors.

"Sir! He should have recognised that it was rhetoric sir!"

"That's right. Only a gamma confuses rhetoric with dialectic son." He said turning to the rocky with a more conciliatory tone. "If you ever want to be anything more than a gamma then you've got to learn that damn quick."

The Chinook dropped into high-stealth mode as we descended to land into Sea Girt, Monmouth County, New Jersey. We spread out in a delta-N assault landing formation, as the helicopter lifted off behind us. Just ahead was a sign saying "Mitchelville, Iowa" but we knew that sign was just Rhetoric and not Dialectic. Vas had taught us well. He'd translated the works of Humbert Echo the noted Italian Signologist.