Starbound: A Space Odyssey 19 The Erchius Mining Facility Incident 7

He turned off the computer and the screens, turned around and left the Overseer's office.

He was almost reaching a good position to ambush John and Lenny when he received a message in his PIPS. He looked at it, "New orders. Make sure, whatever it cost, the Human and the Novakid die."

[Well... I was about to do it anyway...] Mouro confusedly looked at his PIPS, [Whatever... I'll just be more careful.]

Mouro retreated to a safer distance and decided to watch for now and wait for an opportunity.

...

John and Lenny reached the Overseer's room. It was empty, there was neither Clark or anyone else. John started to roam through the office, while Lenny stayed by the door.

"Shhh..." Lenny tried to silence John, "There's something there..." Lenny pointed at the end of the corridor.

John glanced at there and soon he was able to see a silhouette of a humanoid being.

It was about the size of a normal adult human, but what was surprising was the fact that its entire body was covered in some kind of pink slimy material that keep dropping from its body and corroding the floor beneath it.

John tried to approach a little more, but the monster soon discovered them.

*Growl!*

It growled toward them and waved its arm, launching a few drops of the pink, slimy liquid.

"Wow" Lenny and John dodged the projectiles.

John aimed with his pistol and swiftly fired two times, one at the head the other in the place where was supposed to be the heart.

*Fisst*

The energy bullet opened holes in the monster's body, but it only made the thing angrier.

*Growl!!!!!

The sound that came of from the monster's mouth reverberated through the claustrophobic hallways, making John's ears ring and making him dizzy.

Lenny, on the other hand, wasn't that affected, he readied his gun.

*Bang*

The energy bullet exploded the monster's head. This time the pink mutant fell on the ground with a thud sound.

"What is this thing." John shook his dizziness away.

"There's no information about them in the Universal Bestiary Codex." S.A.I.L's voice came from his PIPS.

Lenny approached the creature and tried to touch it.

With the touch, a very small part of Lenny's finger was corroded. He immediately retrieved his hand.

"I've seen them before..." Lenny said.

"This things?"

"Yep, when I was mining at a moon a long time ago, I found a Mining Facility, similar to this one, but a lot older. Inside the place, it was completely swarmed with these things. I didn't try to approach I just observed from afar. But I found a crashed s.h.i.+p that was somewhat away from the base. Inside the s.h.i.+p, I found some recordings and notes. I read them and discovered that the Facility was abandoned because of a monster that was awakened deep inside the moon, they called it, Erchius Horror. This creature, pink mutants that we see here, they received the name, Moontants." Lenny explained.

"Strange... If these things are likely common, why there is nothing on the Universal Bestiary Codex...?" John muttered.

"We have a problem..." Lenny interrupted John's thoughts.

"What's it ?" John asked.

"Look at your Retriever..."

John took from his inventory an item that looked like a remote control. He looked at the screen on top of it.

"No signal...?" John looked at the words that appeared there, "But when we have just arrived I checked it and saw that we still had signal."

If the Retriever won't work Lenny and John would be stuck at the Lunar Base.

"It's probably being jammed." Lenny said.

"You mean... Someone is doing it?"

"Probably... Or might be something else...?"

"Erchius... Horror?"

"That too. I think is one or the other."

John frowned his eyebrows in deep thought.

Ever since they teleported to this place John felt like someone was watching them in the dark, and he also felt a foreboding.

"We need to keep going..." John said, "We need those Erchius Crystals, but let's be more careful. We must kill every single Moontan we find."

"Why kill all of them?" Lenny curiously asked.

"There might be survivors in this place... We need to provide help, while we can"

Lenny helplessly sighed, "This personality of your will probably end up killing you, or worse, killing someone important for you."

"There's no way around." John said resolutely, "I'm a Protector after all."

"Alright..."

John looked at his PIPS and checked his Energy Storage. His PIPS' storage together with what the armor provided gave John the amount of 800 UE of storage. When he fired the pistol two times he spent 4 UE, but he had already recovered about 1.6 of the energy he spent because his regeneration was about 0.8 UE per minute.

"Let's go. We need to go to the mine, there might be some Erchius Crystals down there." John called out for Lenny.

The two of them walked deeper into the Base. They were able to hear some discernible growls, coming from the Moontants, over the siren sound.

They reached a bifurcation on their way. John decided to fallow the path where he was able to hear the most amount of growls.

John and Lenny were soon able to see two more Moontants, and before they could get ready, the Moontants saw them and charged toward them.

*Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang..."

While Lenny spent only one bullet to skillfully explode the head of one of them, John had to spend more than 5 pistol energy bullets to do the same, not counting 1 bullet that he missed.

Lenny started to laugh without reservation.

"What are you laughing at?" John angrily rolled his eyes and asked Lenny, "They saw us even before we could get ready because you are simply a walking beacon."

"A walking beacon with better shooting skills than you."

"Shut up."

After they fussed for a while, they moved on.

They were moving by a claustrophobic hallway when John saw an opened door in his right.

He carefully opened while watching every corner.

It was a food storage, but the stands were all empty, there were only empty food boxes and water bottles scattered around the floor.

John saw a humanoid figure sitting on the ground while resting on the wall. John aimed at it with his flashlight and saw that it was a human body.