Not a Fun Time
Mike looked at the compass in his hand and adjusted his goggles before he continued pulling his cart.
He'd decided to take Big Joe on his offer, but he went the next day as he was, understandably, pretty tired after the last trip. Moreover, this was gonna be the farthest he'd ever gone out to scavenge for sellable scrap.
He'd set out pretty early in the morning to make sure that he got there before the sun got too high. Part of the reason why the air was so acrid was due to the nature of the moon and its positioning.
The mining planet it orbited was quite close to the star of this solar system which was a white dwarf. Klein 4 happened to be on a wider orbit compared to its sibling moons. As such, when it faced the star, it got quite hot.
Moreover, the surface was filled with minerals that had a pretty low melting point. Hence, the heat caused them to gradually evaporate and fill the atmosphere, creating the acrid air.
It was at its least potency during the night and early mornings, though, which was a main contributor to why he'd set out so early.
As he walked, he whistled a tune to himself as he admired the early morning sights. Not that he could see that far. Years of having his eyes exposed to the volatile dust of this place made his vision below average. But he could fill in the gaps with his imagination, so it worked just fine in his opinion.
While walking, he came across several heaps of scrap that looked like small hills, but he ignored those, both because they weren't his true goal, and because he knew they had nothing good to offer. He'd spent years traversing this place and knew quite a number of the scrap heaps like they were the back of his hand. He knew the ones with and without value.
As for why there were hills worth of scrap parts in the first place? Well as mentioned before, this Klein 4 was the moon of a Mining Planet. One that had been in operation for a little under a century.
As such, equipment and machinery tended to get burned through and become unusable, meaning they needed to be thrown away.
However, they couldn't just throw it away on the planet they were mining on. After all, that would get in the way of what they were trying to do. But they still needed to dispose of it somehow.
This made the existence of the moons extremely beneficial.
The settlements of these moons often complained about the dumping of trash and why they couldn't just repurpose the materials, but these often fell on deaf ears.
Mike, though, didn't see this as a bad thing. In fact, it's because of the scraps that he had been able to survive for so long. They were how he made his money, he didn't know what to do if he didn't have scraps to sell.
Scraps were good.
While he marched on, he subconsciously marked the different scrap heaps and made sure to keep track of his steps. By now, he was already approaching the edges of where he was used to looking for scraps. Venturing further out was always a tedious ordeal as he wasn't familiar with the scrap heaps out there, and farther away didn't necessarily mean better stuff. Hence, it usually wasn't worth the risk, and he'd only consider venturing outwards even more when he had exhausted all the valuable stuff from the scrap heaps he was familiar with.
The place was also devoid of other scrappers. Naturally, Mike wasn't the only one who went out scavenging for scraps, but the number of fellow scrappers was few with how early it was.
Moreover, just like him, the notion of venturing far out to find scraps wasn't appealing, so the farther he went, the fewer people he saw.
Eventually, he was the only one moving as he crossed the farthest scrap heaps he'd taken time to properly investigate. It was one of the better ones, but was also quite small, so the 'good' scraps he could get from it were also limited.
He took a mental note of it as he went past it and went into the distance.
Walking, Mike had nothing but his own thoughts, and sometimes, they were quite annoying. Hence, he muted them.
Completely muted them.
It was something he could do for as long as he remembered. It was widely considered to be impossible to fully eliminate thoughts, but Mike could do just that with ease, the only things remaining being subconscious actions like breathing and walking. He was also vaguely aware of the fact that he was in such a strange state, and could turn it off at a moment's notice.
He walked for a while, his endurance barely taking a hit as he'd long become accustomed to walking long distances while pulling his cart.
He only stopped when he felt himself get thirsty or hungry, and even then, he only ate small amounts just to keep his energy up. Another contributor to his small stature was a lack of proper food growing up...
After nearly 4 hours of walking and checking his compass, he finally saw something in the distance. He didn't stop walking, nor did he get excited immediately as he'd long become accustomed to being tricked by mirages. Hence, he simply kept walking and got closer and closer to what he saw.
Eventually, he could properly make out the thing, and he couldn't help but be surprised as he stopped suppressing his thoughts. Surprise quickly turned into shock when he understood what he was looking at.
When Big Joe had said the scrap site potentially contained some rare stuff, Mike was expecting to see something like machinery that was mostly intact, maybe a drill that had some of its parts in good condition.
What he didn't expect was an entire ship. Moreover, it wasn't a small ship either.
The vessel looked like it had crashed, which was evident due to the long scar that was left in its wake and the less than sightly condition it was in as several thrusters had been damaged heavily, with its hull dented and breached in many places.
The thing looked like it had been in a fight, moreover, it didn't look that old either...
Mike suddenly felt a surge of greed, followed by a surge of caution.
On one hand, a find like this was huge. Even in its condition, something like this could easily fetch a huge amount of money. Forget just buying a ticket, Mike could set himself up for years if he managed to sell this.
But that begged the question. How COULD he sell it?
Moving the thing was out of the question, and there was no way he could pick it apart within a reasonable period. If even at all.
That left one more option. Selling information.
Even if he couldn't move it, the people in the settlement, the main settlement, would pay a hefty buck for something like this. Who knows? Maybe someone was looking for this ship.
'Actually, are its inhabitants okay?' The question suddenly struck him and he felt a wave of worry. The crash looked like it had been pretty bad, and while spaceships had measures in place to ensure that crashes didn't immediately kill the passengers, it was bound to hurt.
He took a step forward, but then he paused.
'Why do I care?' He frowned. Hurt or not, he didn't know those people. He didn't know who they were, and he didn't know if they were good people or not either. Why should he needlessly risk himself? He'd gotten what he had gone there for anyway.
'Also. Why IS there a crashed ship anyway? It looks like it got attacked. How sure am I that what attacked it won't come after it?' The more he thought about it, the more he realized just how suspicious this entire situation was.
He gave the vessel a one-over before noticing something else. Upon closer inspection, it seemed like the impact from the crash had broken into the ground, and what was revealed sort of looked like...
"A ravine?" He muttered aloud, surprised. Ravines weren't rare, he'd passed by a few when he'd walked over here. But an underground one was quite interesting.
"Hm." He hesitated and looked at the ship.
'I need pictures before I can sell it anyway, so might as well get a little closer.' With that thought, he left his cart behind and carefully moved towards the vessel. He stopped when he was about a dozen meters away, and the thing was truly large.
He couldn't help but feel a bit intimidated, but regardless, he held up his watch and aimed it at the ship.
He started taking pictures of it, making sure to walk around it and getting in different angles to ensure that when he got back to sell the information, he wouldn't be accused of lying or using edited photos.
He kept at it for a few minutes and took over 40 photos before nodding to himself.
"This should be enough." He muttered to himself, satisfied with the results.
He gave the ship one last look before turning to leave.
However, unknown to him, he happened to stand in the line of sight of one of the remaining working external cameras the ship had at the end, and the thing had locked on to him.
There was a faint metallic whir and Mike paused before turning to see...
A large barrel aimed right at him.
He jumped to the side without thinking.
A moment later, a powerful concussive force slammed into him followed by a wave of heat. His entire body immediately protested as he felt like his insides were getting crushed by an invisible pressure while his skin felt like someone had activated a blowtorch on it.
He cried out as he was thrown into the air, conveniently towards the ravine that had been revealed by the ship.
He hit the edge, but his momentum carried him over.
What came next was a very painful fall as he smacked against the sides of the ravine and tumbled down, scraping against sharp rocks and fortunately, though, the tumbling had managed to break his fall, no matter how painfully, hence, when he hit the ground, he 'only' broke a few bones.
"Agh... ugh..." Mike groaned, tears falling from his eyes as his entire body screamed in pain. His mind spun and his vision was blurry. His ears were ringing and his nose was filled with the smell of smoke.
He lay there, battered and broken as he tried to regain his senses, but it all hurt so much.
He didn't try to move and closed his eyes as he waited for the pain to subside. He couldn't be bothered to think about what just happened. As soon as he shut his eyes, he lost consciousness.
***
The attack was abrupt.
One moment, the mining planet and all the moons surrounding it were going about their business.
The next moment, an entire Lizardman fleet reached the orbit of the planet.
The human fleet that was on standby immediately responded fiercely, and a large battle broke out in outer space.
However, the planet and the moons weren't spared from this conflict, and orbital bombardments still reached their surfaces and caused widespread devastation.
The ship Mike had seen had come from the battle in its early stages. He hadn't noticed the flashing lights in the sky as the part of Klein 4 he was on had been facing away from the conflict at that moment. But such a thing wouldn't last...
Just like that, chaos ensued.