Ursa Major

[Alternative link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EUxNpa61k8d6rttSAz5XJ34Fo67AN6kdGOivp4g0N7o/edit?usp=sharing]
Under normal circumstances, Freddy would have regarded his crewmates with suspicion. He would have seen them as potential threats, or perhaps mere prey. It was due to the sedatives that he could only stare, and drool. A snake-like tube emerged inside his helmet and collected the saliva, circulating it into the suit for recycling.

Freddy continued to ignore the other animals as they exited the lander, and found themselves on the surface of the Moon. Such a sight might have sparked a primitive rage from the monkeys, or given the rabbits a heart attack, but the drugged beasts walked, crawled, or slithered away from the ramp, as ignorant of each other as Freddy was of them.

Freddy chose to sit in front of the capsule, instead of joining the others in their wandering. The grizzly bear stared at the capsule in slackjaw fascination, ignoring the labels he couldn’t read and focusing instead on its conical shape. Something about it intrigued him.

Several minutes had passed before Freddy’s stomach began to grumble. Freddy’s suit was already administering a protein gruel, but his desire for real food refused to wane. His instincts prodded into action, Freddy moved onto all four of his limbs and walked away from the capsule in search of something to eat.

Along his route, he found a spacesuit that was similar to his, but fitted for a canine. The suit’s shattered helmet revealed the frozen head of a wolf, whose eyes gazed at Freddy as he nuzzled its body and and sniffed. He was unaware that outside smells could not penetrate his helmet, nor did he notice that the wolf’s head had been bashed in. All he cared about was whether or not the meat was good, and as he had no way of discerning that, Freddy growled and moved on.

The path he took was littered with more bodies, all of which were equally inaccessible. An eviscerated chicken, a mangled fox, and a headless pig were only a small portion of the deceased. Undeterred, Freddy plodded forward in his search for food. Walking became easier to him as the sedatives wore off, until the lunar surface was as comfortable for him to walk on as the moist soil of his habitat in the Pacific Northwest.

About an hour after he began his trek, Freddy saw a figure in the distance--a faint, moving blob. Made curious by this new stimuli, Freddy rushed at it, kicking up moondust behind him in his eagerness.

As he approached, the shape came into focus as a humanoid entity, wearing a suit like Freddy’s. It was holding a bloody rock, which it smashed down onto a crocodile’s severed head. The crocodile had already been killed, but the monkey didn’t seem to care.

The simian turned around to face Freddy; its white spacesuit stained by the blood of several different species. Freddy roared as he collided with the creature, and bludgeoned it with his paws. Though he had been declawed before he was suited up for the mission, a bear was still a deadly threat to the likes of a chimpanzee.
The chimp struggled, screeching and slapping its assailant with bloody hands, but its protest was smothered as it felt the weight of a five-hundred-pound bear upon its chest. Ribs and organs were crushed under Freddy’s leg, as he stood up on his hind legs and roared at the cosmos.

Freddy’s triumph was disrupted when he heard a low hissing noise. The bear only had a few seconds to notice the hiss before he passed out. He never noticed that the monkey had made a tear in his suit’s leg, in its final seconds of life. Nor did he die in pain. Freddy went to sleep peacefully as the last survivor of Project Ark. He had also become the first bear on the moon.

On Earth, the mission was branded a failure and Afton Astronautics was shut down within a year.