allonlinenovel Chapter 239 239: The Shadow of Death
Chapter 239 239: The Shadow of Death
"Hold the line!"
Marcus and several other Special Forces operatives reacted instantly, dragging heavy flamethrowers from the tracked rovers and unleashing torrents of liquid fire into the writhing swarm of insects.
Fortunately, the alien bugs ignited instantly upon contact with the burning fuel, rapidly turning into a mountain of charred husks. However, as their bodies ruptured, they released a dense cloud of acidic white mist that mingled with the thick, black smoke.
In the chaos, even Jason was engulfed in flames!
A cascade of red critical warnings flashed across his helmet's HUD, but he ignored them completely.
The three fallen men were only a dozen meters away. Gritting his teeth, Jason charged through the inferno. It took him less than two seconds to reach them, but the sheer physical mass of the insects clinging to his armor was staggering. It felt as though several heavy men were actively pushing against him, trying to drag him down. It was no wonder the fallen personnel couldn't stand back up!
With a feral grunt, Jason pushed the power armor's servos to maximum output, violently shaking off the swarm.
He grabbed two of the fallen men by their harnesses, one in each hand and hauled the third over his shoulder. Spinning on his heel, he kicked up a shower of dirt and sprinted madly toward the armored rovers.
What chilled him to the bone was the sight behind the flames: even after the incendiary bombardment, an endless, terrifying tide of black insects continued to pour out from the tunnel!
This living, black desert threatened to completely flood the cavern! The mere thought of being buried alive beneath a suffocating layer of corrosive insects sent a violent shudder down Jason's spine.
The swarm grew increasingly frenzied, hurling themselves into the roaring flames like suicidal moths. More and more poured from the shadows, new breach points were opening up in every direction!
The flamethrowers simply couldn't burn them as fast as they were multiplying!
In the blink of an eye, Marcus and the vanguard squad were completely overrun. Buried beneath a blanket of biting, hissing bugs, they were forced to turn their flamethrowers on themselves just to burn the swarm off their armor.
"Get inside! Fall back! Cut the fire and get the hell inside!"
Jason roared at the rearguard, physically shoving the last few operatives through the airlock before slamming the rover's heavy steel door shut.
"Clear the cabin!" A quick-thinking operative grabbed a dry-ice fire extinguisher and sprayed it wildly, dousing the flames still clinging to several men.
The interior of the rover was rapidly filling with toxic smoke, but thankfully, everyone was sealed inside their power armor, so asphyxiation wasn't an immediate threat.
A few stray insects had managed to slip inside the cabin. The crew swiftly crushed them under their armored boots. As the tiny corpses ruptured against the metal floor, the highly corrosive acid hissed violently, melting straight into the deck plating.
To cut manufacturing costs, these non-combat transport rovers were constructed from standard stainless steel. They were entirely unequipped to handle such extreme chemical corrosion; the floorboards were slowly dissolving, releasing faint wisps of hydrogen gas.
"Commander, my visor is compromised! It's cracked and corroding! I smell rotten eggs... I've been exposed to the alien atmosphere!" an operative suddenly shouted in pure panic. He was one of the vanguard troops who had narrowly escaped the swarm outside.
His terrified scream sent a jolt of panic through the cramped cabin.
"Anyone with a compromised helmet, cycle to a fresh one immediately, then administer a dose of the broad-spectrum immune booster. You will undergo strict decontamination and isolation protocols the second we reach a secure outpost! Everyone else, run a full diagnostic on your armor seals!"
Jason spoke with absolute, icy calm. He knew he couldn't show a single ounce of panic right now; the crew needed an anchor.
He gently laid down the three men he had dragged from the fire, kneeling to inspect them. As he wiped the soot from their visors, his stomach dropped.
They were all dead.
Two Special Forces operatives and one civilian scientist. They had perished in that brief, chaotic window without making a sound.
Jason had risked his life charging into the inferno, only to recover three corpses.
"Gordon, Locke, James..."
Human life was so terrifyingly fragile in the deep void.
A microscopic breach in a pressurized suit or a hairline fracture in a helmet was all it took to kill a man.
All three had died the exact same way: their helmet visors had cracked under the blunt force of the swarm, allowing the hyper-corrosive acid to flood in.
Their Superalloy Z power armor remained largely intact, but the reinforced acrylic glass of their visors couldn't withstand the chemical assault. The acid had melted massive, gaping holes straight through the glass!
Inside, their faces and skulls had been gruesomely dissolved by the acid. It looked as though they had been dipped in a vat of industrial sulfuric acid. There wasn't a trace of life left.
Jason remained silent for a long time, his jaw clenched tight. Finally, he let out a heavy sigh and turned away.
He quickly inspected his own gear. The superalloy chassis offered significant resistance to the acid, buying him time, but the visor was a glaring weak point.
In just those few seconds of exposure, his helmet had developed melted, pitted craters. The previously crystal-clear glass now looked as if it had been aggressively sanded down with heavy grit.
Panic began to take root among the survivors as they stared at the gruesome reality of death.
These three men had been their brothers-in-arms, their colleagues. Just minutes ago, they had been joking and talking... now they were gone forever.
But there was no time for grief. The crisis was rapidly escalating. These tracked rovers were merely temporary shelters; they had thick steel plating, but they were not heavily armored combat vehicles!
Worse yet, the rovers were fitted with large, panoramic glass windows to allow for civilian surveying.
If that glass succumbed to the acid...
Outside, the insect swarm continued to multiply exponentially, blotting out the cavern like a localized sandstorm. No one had ever seen such a terrifying concentration of biomass.
They threw themselves blindly into the dying fires!
As the flames finally guttered out, a new, bizarre element entered the fray. Larger alien creatures began scuttling out of the dark. They ranged in size from large rats to small monkeys. Unfazed by the pools of hissing acid, they aggressively pounced on the black insects, tearing them apart and gorging themselves.
Then, ignoring the rovers entirely, the scavengers turned and bolted down the tunnel in the opposite direction... sprinting straight toward the crashed spacecraft!
Is this an entire subterranean food chain? The crew exchanged bewildered glances.
No one knew how long the insect swarm would persist, but they couldn't stay trapped in the rovers forever! And what if the spacecraft's nuclear reactor finally went critical?!
"...Commander! They're hitting the convoy! They're swarming the vehicles!" a Private First Class shouted, breaking the tense silence.
Jason snapped his head toward the reinforced window. The survivors had split into the three transport rovers. The middle vehicle was entirely engulfed by the black swarm, looking exactly like a massive, writhing cocoon!
Damn it! If the hull of that rover was breached, all thirty people inside would be liquefied!
Acting on pure instinct, Jason cracked the rover's heavy door just enough to hurl a lit Molotov cocktail into the cavern.
With a violent boom, a localized patch of fire erupted. The insects swarming the middle rover immediately detached, turning their frenzied attention toward the new heat source.
They threw themselves into the burning fuel with reckless abandon, significantly reducing the pressure on the middle vehicle.
"They... they're completely drawn to the fire!"
One of the operatives connected the dots and shouted over the comms, "Should we drop a barrage of incendiaries to pull them off?!"
Before anyone could act, a biologist screamed back over the network, "No! It's not the light of the fire... it's the thermal signature! The heat is drawing them in! Commander, tell the middle rover to cut their engine!"
Jason froze, the realization hitting him like a freight train. It made perfect sense. The lead and rear rovers were relatively clear of the swarm, but the middle rover was being buried... because its heavy diesel engine was still running, blasting a massive thermal signature into the cold cavern!
He keyed his comms, his voice urgent. "Kill the engine! Middle rover, shut down your engine right now!"
As he shouted the order, he grabbed another incendiary grenade and primed it...