The First Superhuman: Rebuilding Civilization from the Moon

Chapter 245 245: Trap

The eight heavily armored Marines sped off at a tactical sprint, rushing toward the cavern tunnel where the reptilian native had disappeared.

As they advanced, Sergeant Will opened a private comms channel to Private Leo, who was covering the rear. "We only have four hours of coolant gas left to mask our thermal signatures. We can dedicate a maximum of two hours to this pursuit. If we don't find anything by then, we fall back!"

"Also... whatever happens, do not expose our reliance on the coolant to the natives. Frost up everyone's armor beforehand, and do not pull the canisters out in front of those lizards. Understood?"

Private Leo immediately replied, "Don't worry, Sarge! I've got it covered!"

In truth, the strict time limit made Leo incredibly anxious. Four hours was practically nothing! He wasn't entirely sure why the squad was suddenly acting so bold. Under normal protocols, they would have hunkered down, dug into the rock, and waited for extraction.

After all, they were relatively green Marines who had yet to see real combat or execute an independent first-contact mission. Waiting for a rescue team would have been the standard operating procedure...

But they were Marines of the Federation. They were driven by an undeniable curiosity and a passion for exploration. If they stumbled upon a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity like discovering intelligent alien life and walked away out of fear, they would never forgive themselves.

Leo took a deep breath, heightened his situational awareness, and quietly pumped himself up.

The fireteam pressed on cautiously, maintaining a brisk tactical pace.

In the damp subterranean soil, the three-toed footprints of the native creature were exceptionally clear, making it incredibly easy for the squad to track their target.

After a forty-minute pursuit, the tracks indicated the lizardman had slowed its pace. As they rounded the next bend, they finally spotted it!

"Target dead ahead!" Sergeant Will signaled over the comms. "Push the pace, Marines! It's slowing down!"

Breaking through into another sprawling cavern, the team spotted a series of strange, artificial mounds in the distance. Even from afar, the crude structures carried the distinct, undeniable mark of early civilization!

Sergeant Will was panting heavily. Sprinting in powered armor was incredibly taxing. The gravity on Nyx was 1.3 times that of Earth. Even with the mechanical servos assisting their movements, their bodies still had to endure the increased physical strain, draining their stamina much faster than normal.

Closer... almost there!

The scaly, meter-tall reptilian native was only twenty meters away, sprinting with every ounce of strength it had.

Suddenly, the creature began shrieking wildly: "Ya ha ma ta gai! Ya ha ma ta gai!"

The high-pitched, piercing sounds startled the eight-man team, but realization quickly dawned on them. It was a language! These indigenous creatures possessed a spoken language!

They had no idea what the frantic phrase meant, but the lizardman's speed suddenly surged. It dove forward, executed a practiced roll, and grabbed hold of what looked like a thick, woven vine.

"Damn it!" Sergeant Will's heart skipped a beat. Even without a universal translator, he recognized the tactical maneuver. A terrible realization washed over him. He slammed on his mechanized brakes and roared, "Fall back! Everyone, fall back immediately!"

But he was a second too late.

The cavern floor beneath them suddenly gave way, opening into a massive pit ten meters across and over five meters deep!

In the blink of an eye, the vanguard plunged into the abyss. Only Private Leo, trailing at the very rear, managed to halt his momentum at the edge.

It was an ambush—a massive pit trap lined with thick, sharpened wooden stakes!

With a chorus of loud, splintering cracks, the seven heavily armored Marines crashed into the bottom, completely flattening the primitive spikes beneath their steel boots.

In truth, wooden stakes were completely useless against military-grade powered armor, but the sudden five-meter drop had rattled the men, leaving them momentarily dazed and struggling to stand.

"Gara-tak! Gara-tak!"

Over thirty lizardmen suddenly sprang from concealed positions on the far side of the pit, shrieking in excitement at the sight of their trapped prey. They brandished crude spears and immediately began hurling them into the pit and at Leo, who was still exposed on the opposite ledge.

Panic surged through Leo, and his finger tightened on his rifle's trigger. But he forced himself to hold his fire. He quickly realized that the primitive wooden spears were helplessly bouncing off the reinforced ceramic plating of his armor without leaving a single scratch.

"Sarge, are you guys okay?" Leo called out anxiously.

"Son of a bitch!" A barrage of colorful curses echoed up from the bottom of the pit. Hearing the sheer volume and energy in Will's voice instantly put Leo at ease.

"Teach these little bastards a lesson! Knock them around, but do not use lethal force!" Sergeant Will roared in frustration. A squad of elite Federation Marines had actually fallen for a Stone Age pitfall trap; if the rest of the battalion ever found out, they would never live it down.

Meanwhile, topside at the Ark Command Center.

"Report! What's the status of the rescue operation? Don't tell me we're still sitting on our hands!"

Austin roared urgently across the command deck, looking ready to strap into a drop pod and dig the men out himself.

Behind him stood a platoon of heavily armed Marines, their faces grim and their posture radiating a lethal intensity. They were on high alert, waiting for immediate deployment via dropship to assist in the extraction.

The fact that Captain Jason and his team were trapped underground was currently classified. The brass feared that leaking the news of the Captain's disappearance would trigger widespread panic among the civilian populace. However, concealing a mobilization of this scale wouldn't last long...

"Sir, the downed reactor went critical a few minutes ago, triggering a massive, secondary seismic collapse in the cave network," a communications officer reported, his face pale. He was genuinely terrified that Austin might lose his temper and chew him out in front of the entire deck.

"Based on their last known trajectory, the Captain and his unit should have cleared the primary blast zone... but the seismic activity completely buried the exit to Cavern B11."

Hearing this, Austin fell silent, a dark cloud settling over his features.

After a long, agonizing pause, he growled, "What about the emergency beacons? Still no signal? Don't tell me we've been doing nothing but blindly moving dirt this whole time!"

"The entire grid sector caved in! Even with powered armor, how long can they survive a crush like that? What's their oxygen reserve looking like? We need a viable extraction plan, now!"

The officer frantically tried to explain, "Sir, engineering teams are actively clearing the rubble at Cavern B11..."

Suddenly, his console chirped with an urgent incoming transmission. He quickly scanned the data feed and his face lit up. "Director Austin! We just received a breakthrough! The bio-enhanced canine unit, Shadow has successfully tracked the main group's scent profile! Excavation teams are converging on the coordinates now!"

"Is that so?" Austin's eyes widened, and he instantly shot out of his chair.

Down at the sealed entrance of Cavern B11, a specialized search team and a massive black dog were working frantically. The structural integrity of the tunnel was highly compromised and could cave in again at any moment, but no one cared. They were out of time.

The large black dog sniffed the ground intensely, zeroing in on the exact coordinates where Jason and the survivors were buried. It suddenly stopped, let out two sharp barks, and began furiously digging at the rock with its front paws.

"Good boy, Shadow! Is this it?" The handler was a veteran Marine, and the massive canine pulling at the leash was none other than the Federation's experimental Super-Dog.

Shadow was outfitted in custom canine body armor. His snout was fitted with a specialized, partial-filtration gas mask, which gave him a rather comical, sci-fi appearance.

However, he was proving to be the most vital asset in the entire rescue operation! With subterranean interference blocking all emergency telemetry and the exact location of the survivors unknown, the Super-Dog's hyper-enhanced olfactory senses were the only reliable tracking method they had.

Over the past two months, the dog's biology had almost completely adapted to Nyx's hostile microbial environment, allowing him to safely breathe trace amounts of the alien atmosphere without full filtration.

The evolutionary gap between ordinary animals and bio-engineered super-species was staggering. Thanks to the unique antibodies isolated from this dog's immune system, the Senior Scientists back at the lab were making rapid breakthroughs in alien pathogen resistance.

"We've got a lock! They're buried right beneath us!" the Marine handler shouted into his comms, relaying the exact coordinates to the command deck.