The Elation of a Maniacal Machine

Written by Adam Mullen, with art by Mike Lombardo, and edited by Ted Kendrick.

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Flames licked at Red-88’s boots as the android stepped into the death filled corridor that led to the bounty target. Red-88 watched with delight as the second smoking corpse of a lowly Skran Imperium soldier hit the metallic floor of the research facility. He pondered how the scorched body in front of him would have charred differently had he used a different explosive rather than the one he had acquired from a black market dealer on Fentril VI. "It doesn't matter what created such a lovely scene of death and destruction," Red-88 thought. "What matters is that I get paid, and have fun while I’m at it."

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Red-88’s artificial senses absorbed his surroundings. His infrared heat sensors alerted him to the squad of soldiers hastily making their way toward him at the opposite end of the corridor. Their shouts were nearly drowned out by the loud, blaring bass of the facility’s warning system. The intruder alert signaled automatically when Red-88 blasted through the wall that had separated him from the secure facility. Upon entering the Zoljat system, where the research facility was located, Red-88 used his vessel, the Death Reaper, to punch several holes into the hull of the structure, which breached into space, and led to the deaths of several soldiers and personnel. Of course, this had put the facility at full alert and blew any chance of a surprise attack by the merciless bounty hunter, but that’s exactly how Red-88 liked it. 

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The smell of the slain soldiers filled the air with the stench of death. As he drew each manufactured breath, Red-88 was filled with satisfaction that he alone had caused so much destruction. Red-88 thought, if his creator was still alive, he would be proud of his creation. After all, he was an 88 series assassination android. He surmised that his creator always thought of the 88 series as perfect. Every model that came before, or after, was inferior. 

Ever since the war had ended ten short years ago, Red-88 never quite received the same level of elation in killing as he had felt on the battlefields of the Great War. As a paid mercenary, he helped the Skran Imperium inch closer and closer to winning the war with the Naams Protectorate. "And look at how that ended. The humans call it a stalemate. I call it a defeat," Red-88 thought. 

 

The cacophony of the soldiers’ shouts, mixed with the rumble from the anti gravity device below his feet, reminded Red-88 of the once cherished days he had shared with his old teammates, the Soul-Eaters, just before they would make the kill. Thoughts of his old comrades soured the moment for Red-88. He tried to forget them as much as possible, but they cropped up in his thoughts more often than he would like to admit. It wasn't that he missed those flepping two-timers. Red-88 was angry for what happened between him and his former friends on Tirgot, but that was a thought for another time. He needed to focus on reaching his target. And besides, the Soul-Eaters-- Yellow-22. Blue-44. Green-66. All of them-- were inferior models.

With his seemingly human eyes and inhuman lust for bloodshed, Red-88 identified his target, a tall, pale human male with no discernible hair, further down the corridor. The target reached out to touch one of the scars in the hull created by Red-88 when firing on the research facility, and gazed out into the void of space that crept into the corridor. If it wasn't for the force fields in place, everyone and everything in the research facility would have been sucked into the vacuum of space to perish-- except for Red-88 who could easily survive due to his superior artificial nature. "Being a highly sophisticated maniacal machine does have its perks."

Finally, the moment arrived. Red-88 had been anticipating it for what seemed like ages. “Remain where you are. If you resist, you leave me no choice but to annihilate you.” The target ran, which gave Red-88 the opportunity he craved.  He fired on the fleeing target known only as inmate Z-IV.

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