Flesh

The ride to the surface was uneventful, the moon's surface was a rocky, orange wasteland that showed no signs of life for as far as we could tell from our monitors.

Other than the suits, the company had not given us any other equipment to use for the salvage operation. After logging in myself to the computer after Oscar, I noticed that we had a small fund of 60 credits displayed within the terminal. I eyed the store option that was present in the main terminal's selection.

"Don't touch those, we might need that for food later." Oscar said as he looked over my shoulder.

"Food? We've been given rations, they should be enough." I ask.

"Pfft, you mean the week's supply worth of vitamin tablets and hydration salts? We'll need real food, George. Don't waste it on the crap in the store, we'll do just fine." 

"Besides, this is the first moon. Obviously, it's the easiest and safest. Why wouldn't it be? The company would be stupid if they sent us out to somewhere dangerous right at the start, no?"

"I hate to admit it, but Ozker has a point." Bartek was waiting for us at the ship's port doors. 

"It's Oscar, not Ozker, Bartek." Oscar sighed as he went over to him.

"Tomato, Potato." Bartek laughed.

As I was about to join them, I looked over to where the mute co-worker was. He hadn't moved a single inch from where he was in his cot, it looked he wasn't going to join our first expedition. 

But as I did join Bartek and Oscar, we all heard the sound of someone's boots hitting the ship's floor; it was him standing a half-way distance from us at the port doors.

"Creep." Oscar sighed; he wasn't one to hide how he felt about someone.

I envied that about him.

"We've landed, report said it should be mild weather." Oscar pressed the button to open the doors outside. We were greeted to a towering facility of sorts that dominated the landscape just ahead.

The pressure on the moon was light, I was able to move relatively easily as I stepped down the ship's dock and onto the surface. 

The sand beneath my fit sunk ever so slightly as I applied my weight onto it, but it felt sturdy enough to confidently walk on it. I assumed it would've been so before I had braved my first step, as how else would the surface support the infrastructure's weight? 

Oscar and Bartek followed close behind me. They had similar notes on the planet's pressure and it's surface's density. Lagging behind us was the other co-worker, he had no visible reaction to the moon and instead began splitting off from us to the left.

"Hey, where're you going?" I asked, but he didn't answer as he kept walking further away.

"Don't follow that fool, we're wasting daylight." Bartek said.

"You're right." I replied.

We began heading over to the main building, following the path to its entrance indicated by our mask's scanners.

"Eugh, it's giving me a headache using this scanner." Oscar complained.

"The blue light it emits makes me nauseous." 

"Don't be such baby, Ozker." Bartek quipped.

I ignored their bickering as I trudged through the hot sands, making my way up to a ladder that led up to the building proper.

The main building was a wreck. Rusted away to a shell that looked like it was going to collapse at any moment, it waned and wallowed to the howling of the moon's arid winds. 

I felt a sense of unease as I stared at the entrance to the building within; above it was a dangling screen that looked like it was going to give out at any second. If we were unlucky, we would be trapped within if it were to fall down. 

"Don't think too hard about it, just go in, grab what you see, and we get out; simple as that." Oscar tried reassuring me, but even he sounded not so sure of himself either. 

"We must brave our fears, friends." Bartek put his hand over the door's handle.

He tried opening the door, but it was sluggish and rusted down to its last legs; it took him a few seconds to get himself inside.

Oscar and I followed suit.

---

Once inside the building, we found ourselves within a lobby that had three doorways that led further inside. It was quiet, but I could make out the gentle straining of the ancient steel and iron throughout the innards of the building if I let my ears wander. 

We noticed that one door was barred off, the one directly ahead of us; it looked like a rushed job with it being a simple iron grate soldered to the frames. 

"I wonder what's the story behind that?" Oscar mumbled.

"Ask it's denizen's, Oscar. Maybe they could tell you." Bartek joked, but Oscar didn't laugh.

"I think we should go left and explore as a group first; what do you think?" I asked.

The left doorway had a dimly lit corridor that connected to a closed door at the end, and an adjacent staircase that led to the sub-level. 

"It'd be smart to stay as a group, besides; I wouldn't want to explore alone just yet, and I doubt you too." They both nodded in agreement as they followed me in. 

"Remember, use your scanner to find anything valuable." I said as I enabled mine. 

The dim blue light of the scanner rapidly ran through the environment, but it didn't display anything worth taking as we got to the end of the corridor. 

I opened the door, but it led to a dead-end.

"Nothing." Bartek groaned.

"Let's try the stairs, come on." We followed Oscar over to the staircase to the sub-level.

Heading down the steps, I noticed something appear through my scanner as we got to the sub-level.

"What's that?" I asked, as I walked over to where it was.

"What the hell could this be?" I picked up the object, the scanner identified it, but I didn't understand what it meant. 

"Clown horn?" Oscar scanned the object in my hand.

"What the hell is a clown?" He asked, I didn't know either. 

"A clown? They're an ancient warrior class." Bartek spoke confidently.

"Supposedly many of my ancestors practiced this proud yet extinct profession." Bartek motioned to me to allow him to hold the object, I obliged.

"This is a weapon used by the ancient clowns to traumatize their opponents, a sort of scare tactic to alert them that their death has come." Bartek held it by the bulbous rubber component that was connected to its brass cone.

"Observe." He squeezed down on the bulb with his hand.

A short and unpleasant squawk escaped the brass cone as he squeezed its bulb. 

"Yikes, that's horrifying." Oscar shuddered.

I agreed with him. 

"The scanner is indicating it's worth 50 credits." 

50 credits were already paying for a third of the profit quota we had to fulfill. It was a lucky find to stumble on it so quickly into the building. 

"Maybe there's more of them around here? If we find just a handful more, we'll be done with quota on our first day!" I couldn't hold in my excitement; we were already so close to being done with this salvage trip. 

"He's right let's keep moving. It looks like this sub-level ends here so let's go back to the entrance and try the right doorway." Bartek said as he began heading back up the stairs.

As I began to follow him, I heard something like a pipe strain through the walls. 

"Did you hear that?" I asked the other two, but they shook their heads.

I peeled my eyes trying to catch anything out of the ordinary there in the sub-level, but there was nothing.

I must be imagining things.