The First Superhuman: Rebuilding Civilization from the Moon

Chapter 241 241: Liquid Nitrogen Freezing

The realization hit Jason like a bolt of lightning, and he sprang to his feet.

He shouted into his communicator, "Liquid nitrogen! Everyone, check your vehicle stores for liquid nitrogen! Dry ice, regular ice, anything that drops the temperature. These bugs are repelled by the cold!"

"We've got it!" several quick-thinking crew members shouted, dragging out pressurized liquid nitrogen canisters from a storage compartment. "There's also a ton of ice in the mess hall freezers!"

A voice cracked over the radio from one of the other transports. "Will a CO2 fire extinguisher work?"

"Yes! Anything sub-zero!" Jason fired back instantly.

Liquid nitrogen and dry ice were standard laboratory materials, often used for rapid food preservation or chemical fire suppression, meaning the convoy had a modest supply.

Two minutes later, Jason took a quick inventory and felt a sinking in his gut.

Is this really all we have?

But beggars couldn't be choosers. When they evacuated the crash site, no one knew exactly what they would face. Supplies had been grabbed in a panic, so their stockpiles were naturally thin.

Pushing down his frustration, Jason accepted the situation and raised his voice. "Alright, listen up! Drop your armor's power output to the absolute minimum. Douse your outer plating in water, then hit it with the nitrogen or fire extinguishers to flash-freeze the surface."

"Grab what you need and prep for immediate exfil! We are out of time!"

"Captain, let me test it first!" Marcus volunteered, his jaw clenched tight.

He couldn't let Jason take all the risks. As far as Marcus was concerned, the Captain's survival was worth more than the rest of the squad combined.

Jason hesitated for a fraction of a second before giving a solemn nod. He hosed Marcus's armor down with water, followed immediately by a blast from a nitrogen canister. At -196°C, the liquid nitrogen reacted violently, boiling into a thick white vapor and flash-freezing the water into a dense layer of frost and ice.

"Watch your six. If they swarm, you get back in here immediately," Jason ordered.

"Yes, sir!"

Marcus hit the door release and stepped out into the cavern.

Facing that writhing, endless sea of black bugs, his heart hammered furiously against his ribs, adrenaline flooding his veins. A thick carpet of insects covered the ground where he was about to step, but miraculously, they scattered into the air before his boots even touched down.

Staring death in the face was terrifying, especially after witnessing what the swarm had done to his squadmates...

Their visors had melted, and their skulls had been dissolved like they'd been dipped in industrial solvent. Only a madman wouldn't be afraid.

But duty outranked fear. He was a Federation soldier; his job was to bite down on the panic and walk straight into the fire. Anything less was cowardice.

Having taken that first step, there was no turning back. Marcus steeled his nerves and strode forward.

The results were immediate and undeniable. The black swarm visibly recoiled from the localized cold front surrounding him, frantically parting like the red sea to avoid the frost-covered soldier.

Jason's face lit up with a fierce grin. "Did you see that? The cold drives them back! Everyone, gear up! Flash-freeze your outer plating right now!"

"We move out in two minutes!"

"And... grab every incendiary grenade and fuel canister we have left!"

The unknown breeds terror, and human imagination is exceptionally good at conjuring nightmares out of the dark. But once a threat is quantified and understood, the panic recedes.

This swarm wasn't some supernatural horror or a coordinated alien bioweapon—it was just a product of brutal, natural evolution.

Watching Marcus stand completely untouched amidst the teeming horde shattered the remaining panic in the cabin. The others cautiously stepped out of the transports, letting out massive sighs of relief as the insects actively avoided them.

Jason furrowed his brow, crunching the numbers in his head. Even with strict rationing, their cooling supplies would only last between four and six hours—well before the crashed reactor hit critical mass.

They had exactly four hours to navigate this subterranean maze and find an exit, or they were dead.

"Keep a tight formation! Double-time it!"

Before falling out, they cranked the engines on all three transport vehicles to maximum output. Predictably, a massive wave of insects swarmed the overheating chassis.

They dropped a final incendiary charge among their fallen comrades, leaving them to their final rest... Carrying three casualties out of this hellhole was an agonizing impossibility.

Using the burning transports as a distraction, the hundred-man unit—encased in layers of artificial frost—slipped away into the cavern's depths. Jason took point, while Marcus and a handful of veteran sergeants secured the rear to prevent stragglers.

In the center of the formation, squads rotated stretcher duty. Several injured personnel, immobilized by leg fractures and heavy doses of broad-spectrum immunotherapies, had to be carried. Thankfully, the powered armor's servo-motors made the heavy lifting trivial.

As for their heading...

First, they relied on magnetic compasses to maintain a general vector. Second, the expedition's geologists ran continuous topographical scans. Their portable mainframes processed the data, generating a real-time 3D map of the cavern network as they marched! Third... they put their faith in Jason's gut instinct.

While they had narrowly escaped a gruesome end, morale was at rock bottom. They had just lost three of their own—men they ate with, trained with, and bled with. It was a heavy burden to carry.

But the crisis was far from over, and mourning would have to wait. Furthermore, the alien beauty of the subterranean landscape was so utterly bizarre that it forced their minds off the tragedy.

The biodiversity thriving beneath the crust of Nyx defied all logic!

Beyond the horrifying acid-bugs, the caves teemed with alien fauna ranging from the size of a fist to the size of a large chimpanzee!

Most were pack-hunters, armored in thick, acid-resistant scales. By Earth standards, they were hideous—grotesque, pale, and deeply unsettling, looking exactly like the nightmare creatures of pulp sci-fi.

Agitated by the swarming insects, these predators had emerged from the shadows, indiscriminately hunting the stragglers of the hive.

It was a terrifying realization: the very same bugs capable of melting through reinforced combat helmets were sitting at the absolute bottom of this ecosystem's food chain!

At one point, a pack of pale, rat-like scavengers stalked the formation. However, after the soldiers tossed a few chunks of dry ice their way, the sudden, biting cold sent them scurrying back into the dark.

Thermal radiation was the ultimate currency in this sunless world!

To these creatures, the heavily frosted, freezing steel suits looked like walking blocks of dead, worthless ice. Not a single predator was willing to risk a fight for zero thermal payoff.

"Ambient temperature has already hit 11 degrees Celsius," one of the biologists marveled, checking his wrist-monitor. "It'll only get warmer the deeper we go. That's more than enough to sustain complex, macro-cellular life. It's an absolute miracle! A thriving ecosystem powered entirely by the planetary core."

Unfortunately, this wasn't the time for a safari; no one was stopping to collect samples. Because of the two-hour delay during the ambush, the column was moving at a grueling pace.

Jason had issued a strict, zero-engagement order. Firing their plasma rifles or kinetic weapons would generate massive thermal spikes, practically ringing a dinner bell for every apex predator in the sector.

Capturing alien specimens could wait. Survival was the only priority, and that meant clearing the blast radius before the downed reactor turned this entire cavern system into a radioactive oven!