COLONEL

STORY : Osmarco Valladão

Art: Manoel Magalhães and Osmarco Valladão SYNOPSIS

In a future where humankind has spread throughout space and wars rage between solar systems, an officer heads towards a research lab to get to know the latest evolution in infantry weapons: the intelligent gun. With the latest generation on artificial intelligence, these weapons would take the place of officers and commanders at the war front. Humans would be no more than privates and corporals.
On an isolated and deserted moon, an accident separates a corporal and his gun (commissioned the rank of Colonel) from the rest of their platoon. Under the rigid orders of the Colonel, the soldier tries to survive while he waits to be rescued. But the Colonel and the soldier are not alone in the planet. A sniper tries to kill the corporal. The colonel and the soldier also meet a group of enemy and unarmed soldiers trying to survive. The first impulse of the soldier is to approach them, since they are all in the same situation, but following its rigid military programming, where an enemy is an enemy under any circumstance, the Colonel opens fire and slaughters the group.
The soldier and the Colonel argue. For the soldier, that was an irrational blood bath. For the Colonel, the attitude of the soldier is cowardice and insubordination. When the soldier tries to leave, the Colonel kills him. Abandoned and left on its own, the Colonel shuts off and waits.
Years later, the war is finished and the great corporations use huge collector ships to recoup metal and other materials spread throughout the conflict area. One of these ships is Industrial Metal Collector T-11, commanded by Captain Witch (a nickname he earned because of his nose). In spite of his unstable brother Lio, the crew is friendly and trustworthy. But for this trip, Witch had to hire a new group of collectors whose brutality and dishonesty created many problems on the ship. And Lio was their constant victim.
During his shift using the crane, Lio finds the Colonel, which had been attracted to the ship, from the moon´s ground, among a great pile of junk. The proximity of a life form activates the weapon. Unaware of the end of the war, it assumes that Lio is a soldier and that they are in a military ship.
The group of new collectors is caught by Witch trying to steal valuable things from the cargo. The Colonel decides, as higher rank of the ship, to take control and to impose order in the ship. That is when the unstable Lio sees the possibility of revenge against the group that pursued him and to assume a position he believes his brother, unjustly, denies him.
Although Witch peacefully attempts to solve everything, a war between renegades and the Colonel starts. Shootouts and deaths take place in the corridors of the ship. Witch is isolated in the command bridge to keep the control of the ship. A patrol-ship approaches the Collector and a party of patrol-men goes up on board to investigate what is happening. Believing they are enemy soldiers, the Colonel opens fire, killing all. Witch watches it all and, desperate, flees with the ship.
Pursued by the patrol-ship, Witch takes his ship to the orbit of a planet covered by an immense ocean. Witch still tries to talk to his brother one last time, but Lio argues that Witch never recognized his true value, that he deserved a higher rank or even the command of the ship. The Colonel feeds the madness on Lio´s mind saying that his brother is a coward and incapable, that he should step out and be jailed.
When he realizes that Lio is actually about to do what the Colonel tells him, Witch draws his gun and points it at his brother. At this moment they hear the patrol-ship on the radio, demanding their surrender.
As no answer is issued, the patrol-ship opens fire. The collector ship falls down to the planet and sinks on the ocean. Minutes later a huge explosion shakes the surface of the sea.
At the bottom of the sea and among the ship´s debris, the Colonel is the only survivor. Suddenly he notices a life form next to him. He starts spiting orders, as usual, but the life form is just a sea-creature, staring at the gun without understanding. END