Blue Sulfur Bandits

"It hardly seems fair to pick on these rebels." radioed Kate, the Navigator. "It's not like they have a lot of modern weapons."

"They're lucky the Federals haven't saturated all their major cities with some kind of low yield nuclear weapon by now." remarked Davis, the ship's only psychic, and unfortunately not a very good one, as he climbed into his Fightech. "It's because the Deltans are such agrarian types, and then there's those flowers the Federals want so much."

"Not just any flowers." said Blue 5, a former Cultbot reprogrammed by a Lutheran moral committee and later sold on the black market. The stocky 'bot was already inside his killing machine. The entire seven commando company had now climbed into their 10' tall metal behemoths, which were vaguely humanoid in shape and carried enough munitions to wipe out a small country in the blink of an eye.

"Yah dude, so, like, what's up with all those flowers anyway?" asked Slash, the Elenian headbanger. "Are they some kind of trip, man?"

"Yes. If you consider destructive power on a megascale a trip." said Thelonius, the brainy cadet. "The Amber Blossoms which grow only on Delta 7 somehow photosynthesize the sun's rays into a usable form of gigapsychonuclear energy - with the proper processing, of course. The question is, just what are the Federals gonna do with that much power?"

None of the other commandos said anything. The Commander said "Time for the briefing. We're enacting a hostile takeover of a key rebel command center on the eastern hemisphere. It's a simple exterminate and control, so we're looking at a 48-96 hour shift, beyond which we'll be paid a lot extra."

"Is there even a chance of an early contract here?" Duke sneered. He was the hard-drinking bad boy of the group, whom no one trusted despite his amazing luck.

"You know my policy on that." said the Commander. "Everyone comes back alive."

"I'm not dying till I convert Kate." said Vaughn, the hopeless romantic. "You hear that, baby? When this is all over I'll buy you your own colony, just come over to the winning team!"

"Oh shut up, you jerk!" Kate laughed, followed by the sound of Blue 5's teeth grinding. "Good luck, you guys. Please come back safely!"

1. "Time to party, man!" Slash said, turning on a popthrashmetal tape. Blue 5's teeth began grinding again.

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