Chapter 576 What Are You Looking At? Run!
The exploration team hesitated for a moment, but then they remembered how Luke was faster than them, even with Weyland on his back.
They immediately stopped hesitating and threw away their things as they rushed toward the exit of the ruins. Only Weyland and Stafford lagged behind.
None of them dared to dismiss Luke’s warning.
They all knew that the young man had extraordinary courage; there had to be a reason for him to yell so anxiously.
Everybody ran for their lives.
Without their boss Weyland holding them back, the st.u.r.dy team members quickly charged up the remaining steps to get back to the exit.
They activated the lift without pause and quickly returned to the ice surface.
Luke checked the time again. There were still eight minutes left, which should be enough.
Keeping his speed at the fastest possible within a normal range, he went over to Weyland and Stafford, put the old man on his back, and started to run again as he said, “There’s a bomb down below that might blow up the ruins. We have to run.”
Neither Weyland nor Stafford said anything.
Stafford, in particular, was running with all his might. He had no time to talk at all.
Luke wasn’t too panicked. He simply glanced at his fake phone every now and then.
After that major transformation of the ruins just now, there was no longer any signal interference.
He had set up a camera near the black tablet and was monitoring it via his fake phone.
Half of the red dots still remained on the device, which meant that it would explode in five minutes, just like the Predator said.
Luke controlled his speed so that Stafford could keep up with him.
When they ran out of the ruins, the lift in the ice cave was moving.
By the time they reached the cave, the lift had just landed at the bottom again.
They got on the lift. Stafford keyed in the pa.s.sword, and the lift quickly ascended.
As the lift went up, Luke checked his multifunction watch. There were three minutes left.
But he saw many people craning their necks at the top of the pit. Enraged, he shouted, “What are you looking at? Run! The ice is going to collapse! Do you want to be buried?”
His roar was particularly loud because of the echo. The crowd at the top of the pit instantly vanished.
Three minutes later, when the lift was dozens of meters from the top of the pit, there was a sudden explosion at the bottom.
Luke looked at his watch and smiled wryly. “Ten minutes on the dot.”
After the explosion, there was a violent earthquake.
A few seconds later, tumultuous shock waves blasted out from the bottom and pushed the lift up.
The lift practically flew the last ten meters. It shot out of the pit in an arc before coming down toward the snow at an angle.
While they were in the air, Luke grabbed the buckles on Weyland’s and Stafford’s backs and did his best to keep all of them steady. Before they landed, he exerted strength in his hands and threw them up slightly, while he himself crashed into the snow dozens of meters away.
The next moment, he exerted strength in his legs and jumped out of the depression to grab the two men who had landed safely, before he ran off.
Weyland and Stafford were dizzy and didn’t clearly see what just happened.
Luke’s series of movements made them feel as if they were flying; at that moment, both of them saw stars.
The ice behind them cracked in huge chunks and started to sink.
n.o.body could see Luke clearly in the blizzard, so he didn’t need to hide his strength.
Every time he stepped on the ground, the snow under his foot was blown away and the ice exploded. He charged forward through the snow with Weyland and Stafford.
Thirty seconds later, he stopped and turned around for a look.
The ice pit was already two hundred meters away. The three of them were now standing on the edge of the crater where the exploration team’s snowmobiles were.
The ground a hundred meters around the ice pit collapsed, creating an even larger crater.
Seeing a few bright orange spots in the snow below him, Luke felt like a weight had dropped from his shoulders. “Okay, it looks like they’re fine. The two of you rest here for a bit. I’ll help them come up.”
On the wars.h.i.+p in outer s.p.a.ce, a series of announcements rang out in an alien language: “This hunt is over.
“The three partic.i.p.ants are all dead.
“The Alien queen has been eliminated. All the Aliens have been eliminated. All the facehuggers have been eliminated. The mission ground is completely destroyed. Clean-up has been verified as complete.
“The civilization on this planet is more developed than antic.i.p.ated. The partic.i.p.ants in this mission encountered a low-level guardian who was too strong for them.
“This planet is no longer suitable as a mission ground. It has been removed from the selection of mission grounds. “Recall all landing crafts immediately. Prepare to jump to the next mission ground.”
At the same time, several landing crafts with pointed fronts and petal-like tail sections soared into the sky a few kilometers away from the exploration team’s location.
As if he had sensed something, Luke looked at the night sky not far away.
In the darkness, three long streaks of light shot upward.
Luke watched the light disappear, before he turned his attention back to the rescue operation.
Half an hour later, everybody else slowly climbed out of the crater. Luke also brought back four team members one after another who had twisted their ankles during the earthquake.
But they were already very lucky; at least they could go back, and would be up and running again after recuperating for a few days.
There had been more than eighty members of the exploration team at the beginning, but only fifteen of them survived, including Luke, Weyland and Stafford.
The other team members had all been buried deep in the ruins under the collapsed ice.
Stafford had sent some of the survivors to drive the six snowmobiles over.
Two or three people got into each snowmobile, and they made their way back.
When they first arrived, there had been more than twenty snowmobiles and eighty team members, but they were now returning with a pitiful six vehicles.
They had suffered severe losses on this expedition.
Stafford silently drove the snowmobile, and Luke looked at a gloomy-looking Weyland. “Mr. Weyland, you’ll deal with the aftermath?”
Weyland hummed in response. “Yes, I’ll take care of everything.” The vehicle fell back into silence. Luke began to reflect on what had just happened. Those Predators showed humans no mercy; n.o.body on the surface had survived.
When they flew out of the pit earlier, Luke had smelled the intense stench of blood. Clearly, the team members that had been left to guard the cave entrance were dead. That cloaked Predator had seemed friendly toward Luke at the end, but it was clearly more because the Predator respected Luke’s capability, not because it respected human beings.
Luke hadn’t attacked the group of Predators who moved the bodies because he noticed that they were wearing equipment that was clearly more advanced.
Recalling what the cloaked Predator said, he roughly understood that the first three Predators in the ruins were there for some sort of hunting ritual.
The difference between the equipment on the trio and on the later Predators was like the difference between tourists who hunted for sport and a special force.