In an instant, with a heavy thud, Jason and Marcus crashed violently into a thick pit of mud, the impact knocking the wind completely out of them.
Jason struggled to sit up, realizing he had sunk half a ter into the sludge. His sleek, silver-white power armor was caked in gray-black muck, and his head swam with a dizzying concussion.
A few seconds later, he regained his bearings and aggressively wiped the mud from his helt visor. Looking down, he noticed his armor was speckled with tiny patches of bioluminescent blue fungus.
He tasted copper, blood from a bitten lip or bleeding gums. His muscles and bones ached fiercely, but amazingly, nothing was broken.
He didn't feel the sharp, agonizing pain of major internal bleeding; it was mostly just a sprained wrist, nothing critical.
The power armor's biotric monitoring system flashed to life, displaying his heart rate, blood pressure, and other vitals. While it wasn't a full dical bay scan, it gave a clear picture of his overall condition.
During the intense reverse thrust, they had endured a brutal deceleration of 50 ters per second squared, lasting just under two seconds. Coupled with the shock of the final landing, the biggest threat wasn't a bone fracture—it was acute internal hemorrhaging. Massive internal bleeding could kill a man in minutes.
A broken bone was painful but manageable. They had gotten incredibly lucky! The cavern floor was coated in a deep layer of soft, wet mud, which significantly cushioned the spacecraft's impact.
Glancing at the outpost spacecraft, Jason saw absolute devastation. The port side of the hull had been struck by massive falling boulders, buckling the heavy steel plating inward. The structural fra was still groaning under the imnse weight of the debris.
Fortunately, the Federation's advanced tallurgy proved its worth. The spacecraft hadn't been completely crushed; it had mostly retained its structural integrity.
Inside the cabin, the crew lay sprawled across the deck, dazed and disoriented. Thankfully, everyone had been securely strapped into their power armor, which likely saved them from the worst of the blunt force trauma.
"Is everyone alive?" Jason forced himself to his feet, hauled Marcus out of the mud, and climbed through the warped airlock into the spacecraft.
He barked orders over the internal comms, "Check your biotrics! Monitor your blood pressure for drops! dics! Where are our field dics? Front and center!"
"Here, sir!" two combat dics responded reflexively, limping forward.
"We need to triage everyone imdiately. Check for internal hemorrhaging and bone fractures!" Jason ordered.
Many of the scientists were still in deep shock, staring blankly at the warped bulkheads. A heavy, stunned silence filled the cabin. Slowly, the survivors gathered in the central staging area, allowing the dics to perform rapid triage assessnts on each person.
These checks didn't require removing the power armor; the dics simply linked their datapads to the suits' teletry to asure blood pressure and rule out internal bleeding.
The colonists deployed to Nyx weren't a random lottery draft like the early days on Mars. Every single person here had undergone grueling physical conditioning. They were significantly tougher than the average civilian, and their overall condition reflected that preparation.
Finally catching his breath, Marcus scrambled to his feet. He was about to storm the cockpit and unleash a barrage of curses at the pilot, Carter, but Jason quickly stepped in his path.
"Stand down, Marcus. Not another word."
Jason raised his voice for the room. "Everyone perford admirably. We have no critical casualties. Right now, the count is five fractured arms and three fractured legs. Given the circumstances, that's a miracle. We didn't lose a single person..."
Jason knew exactly what was needed in this mont: morale and stability, not a witch hunt. Besides, Carter had done an exceptional job under impossible pressure. He had saved all their lives. A lesser pilot would have frozen completely.
At that mont, several of the scientists finally snapped out of their shock. Peering out the reinforced viewports at the alien landscape, they gasped in astonishnt.
"The entire outpost collapsed?!"
"Is this an entirely subterranean ecosystem? It's massive... absolutely breathtaking! I never imagined a cavern network of this magnitude could exist right beneath our outpost. It's simply unbelievable!"
"We need to transmit an ergency SOS imdiately! We have to warn Central Command to halt all heavy mining operations! The other sectors might cave in just like this!"
Hearing that grim reality, a new wave of fear washed over the crew. They had barely survived one localized collapse. If the other outposts caved in, those crews might not be so lucky.
Several comms officers imdiately grabbed the encrypted satellite uplinks, frantically trying to establish a connection with Central Command.
Hopefully, the orbital satellite grid had already detected the massive sinkhole at Sector B11. The smartest tactical decision was to secure the periter and await rescue. Wandering blindly into the dark was suicide; the armored spacecraft offered the best protection. Furthermore, the cargo bays held enough ergency rations, water, and munitions to last for months.
"Atmospheric humidity is spiking at 80 percent. The air down here is saturated with water vapor," one of the geologists noted, checking a datapad. "Ambient temperature is stable at a balmy 6 degrees Celsius. This is incredibly hospitable for biological life. Is it being regulated by subterranean geothermal vents?"
"Look over there! Are those arthropods? Or so kind of reptilian life form?!" a biologist shouted, pressing his helt against the glass. "I've never seen a morphology like that... They seem to be swarming toward the hull. Are they attracted to our thermal signature or the floodlights?"
The scientists were shouting over one another, completely ignoring the danger as they frantically aid their caras out the windows, snapping hundreds of photos. Despite nearly dying minutes ago, their academic curiosity overpowered their survival instincts. They desperately wanted to know how this colossal subterranean void had ford.
Under standard planetary geological models, it was virtually impossible for nature to carve out a cavern of this magnitude on its own. It simply didn't make logical sense.
The landslide outside was far from over. The initial collapse had destabilized the surrounding bedrock, triggering a secondary cascade of debris. Torrents of jagged rock and frozen sand rained down from the ceiling, forcing the crew to remain securely barricaded inside the spacecraft.
The first drop only lasted a second or two. The second plunge took about seven or eight seconds before the thrusters kicked in... Jason ntally ran the kinematic equations. He estimated they were currently buried roughly 500 ters beneath the surface!
However, peering into the gloom, it was terrifyingly obvious that they still hadn't hit the true bottom. The cavern floor was riddled with massive sinkholes and honeycomb-like fractures leading even deeper. He could vaguely make out the yawning maws of abyssal tunnels plunging further into the dark.
What a truly bizarre, alien labyrinth. A profound, inescapable sense of dread washed over Jason.
As the avalanche of debris piled up above them, the jagged sinkhole they had fallen through was slowly choked off by rubble. The satellite teletry began to degrade, the signal flickering erratically. Whispers of panic began to spread among the crew—what if they were buried alive down here?
"Mayday, Mayday! Central Command, this is Sector B11 Outpost! Do you copy?"
"This is Nyx Central Command..." an automated female voice crackled through the static as the uplink finally connected.
Before the automated prompt could finish, the channel was violently overridden. A frantic, commanding male voice blasted through the comms, it was Austin, the Head of Security up on the mothership.
"This is Orbital Command! Our satellites just registered a massive geological collapse at your coordinates in Sector B11. Give a sit-rep! What's your casualty count? And where is Jason? Is the Commander safe?!"
A comms officer imdiately shoved the heavy radio receiver into Jason's hands.
"Austin, this is Jason. I'm alive. Zero fatalities to report so far..."
He gave a rapid, terse update over the comms. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw pilot Carter sprinting out of the cockpit. The man looked absolutely terrified, his words tumbling out in a frantic rush.
"Commander! The thruster core temperatures are redlining! The... the thermal coolant system is completely shot! The reactor is going to detonate!"
"What?!" In a split second, ice-cold sweat broke out across Jason's forehead!
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