Long-term salvation

Rhode spoke quickly, pulling out a few more flamethrowers and fuel tanks, and instructed the remaining personnel:

"If you don't want to be burned to death by the enemy's flames, leave two people to protect the weapons and supplies. Eat MREs. Even if they're shit, it's better than getting infected by eating other food mixed with monster cells - at least there are enough MREs!"

Throwing down these words, Rhodes ignored the desperate expressions of the United States people in the room and rushed out of the research station with the three selected people.

As soon as he stepped out, he saw a strange light faintly shining through the snowstorm in the distance:

At this moment, a strong wind was howling past, carrying ice and snow, and visibility suddenly dropped to less than ten meters. But in this chaotic world, a faint blue halo suddenly fell from the cracks in the clouds, dyeing the snow curtain into a strange cold neon - no, that light came out from the ground, rushing straight into the sky, causing thousands of flying snow to spin up like a tornado!

The shaking on the ground also became more violent, and cracks in the ice spread from the darkness, making a terrifying creaking and cracking sound.

Without wasting any more time, the four of them quickly boarded the snowmobile and headed into the depths of darkness against the wind and snow.

"Isn't that spaceship unusable?" Kate asked with a hint of doubt. She hugged her flamethrower tightly, as if it was the only thing that could provide her with a greater sense of security. "Is there no damage at all?"

"You need to think differently, Miss Kate—why do you have to go on a space voyage?"

Rhode's expression grew serious. He didn't keep anyone in suspense, but instead revealed the cruelest possibility:

"Land the spacecraft directly in the densely populated areas of this planet to spread the infection, expand the population, collect resources, repair or even rebuild a spacecraft capable of space travel, and finally leave a mess behind and then pat your butt and leave."

The terrifying future in these words was like an invisible giant hand, tightly strangling the throats of the other three people in the car, making them almost suffocate in this extreme cold!

"Then, then you..."

"I'm not a god, everyone," Rhodes said helplessly, looking at the falling snow ahead. "Even a god would inevitably be imprisoned on the throne forever—but we're not completely helpless. You know, I still have a wonderful little tool kindly provided by Einstein and Oppenheimer."

If possible, Rhode still didn't want to detonate a nuclear bomb in Antarctica. That couldn't be explained by building a military base or deploying a fighter jet formation...

"In short, we need to make the spaceship crash completely before it takes off."

The snowcat continued forward, heading towards the faint blue light in the darkness ahead, leaving the faint orange-red flames rising behind it.

Chapter 471: Burning Flames (2/3)

It took Rhodes, Kate and the others more than ten minutes to reach the location where they had discovered the alien spaceship. The journey was unusually peaceful, except for the blizzard and the shaking of the ground.

"Good news," Rhode breathed a sigh of relief. He stretched his body to prevent the cold from slowing him down. "This thing is much smaller than I thought. We'll be able to end this terrible journey soon."

The surroundings had long been illuminated by the light of the alien spacecraft's propulsion engine, allowing Rhodes and others standing next to the ice crack to clearly see below - the black and gray spacecraft was in a classic round shape, and streams of light began to flash rapidly on the surface. At first glance, there were no obvious weapons, close-in artillery, or other small defensive devices - this metal creation that came from across the starry sea was not large, but it was obviously not something that modern humans could create.

Now that I think about it, the Norwegian team was lucky. They just dug up the strange shape that fell outside...

Rhodes and his companions exchanged a glance, hammered down nails into the ground, and slowly descended along the fixed ropes, entering through the gaps on the top floor that opened layer by layer like shutters.

The interior of the spacecraft was not much warmer than the outside. The cabin walls and those protruding devices that seemed to have some function all reflected a cold and hard black luster. With a light touch, one could feel the inhuman smoothness, just like stroking the smooth shell of an insect.

Looking up at the dome of the corridor, Rhodes could see thousands of tubular transparent cables contracting regularly. Every few seconds, a bright stream of energy emerged from nowhere and quickly rushed towards an unknown area.

Although the circular corridor was extremely dark, the dim lights were enough to illuminate the path for Rhodes and his group.

"Where are we going?" Sam asked, swallowing nervously. He aimed the flamethrower at a corner of the corridor, as if some monster might burst out from there. "Honestly, this place reminds me a bit of the Vietnam War... It's terrible. I didn't expect to encounter such a rubbish again after all these years."

"At least you can pull the trigger now without a guilty conscience, man."

"Thank you for your comfort, Adam, but why do I feel like you are scolding me?"

"Shut up! Grab these gas masks and follow me. Be careful."

Rhode didn't say much. He just took out the [Shiting Box] and asked Alona, ​​who was inside, who was carrying a hoe again and wearing a helmet:

"Alona, ​​can you control this spaceship?"

"Well... Sensei, I'm not a wish-granting machine or an AI, and this isn't within the scope of [Him]'s capabilities," Alona's face puffed up. She shook her head, causing the halo to sway a few times. "The most I can do is dig out something from their database, or show you the way—wait, Sensei, something's been opened. Be careful."

Was it opened?

Before Rhodes could figure out what was going on, a guiding line consisting of light blue arrows appeared in the field of vision of his all-seeing eye mask. At the turn, there was a Q-version figurine of Alona holding a sign that read "Go Here", which looked very cute.

But the things released from the life-support cabin of the spacecraft were completely the opposite—dozens of strange shapes of varying sizes with the distorted appearances of the spacecraft's original owners came from all directions!

The strange-looking body in the front was like a ball of half-melted wax, while the other side looked like some kind of arthropod. The compound eyes of an insect, the vertical pupils of a beast, and even the eyeballs that looked like humans were all floating and sinking on the surface of the monster, and spinning wildly with the swaying of its limbs.

The long howls overlapped with each other, turning into waves of sound that seemed to be tangible!

A larger number of small monsters grew sharp limbs and quickly crawled along the floor and dome of the corridor, either falling or jumping up, attacking the four uninvited guests at the same time!

However, humans used the power that led to civilization and wisdom - fire - to weave cruel destruction in the darkness. The blazing fire dragon rushed through the turbid and cold air, instantly engulfing the monsters in an entire fan-shaped area.

The long howl suddenly turned into a shrill scream!

But before the monsters could fully savor this extreme pain, their bodies had already struggled several times before collapsing to the ground, becoming another pile of burnt and smelly flesh! It was obvious that the genes of these carbon-based creatures had not yet reached the level of being able to withstand flames or other attacks.

Rhodes, walking in the middle of the team, quickly passed through the constantly twisting "torches" and constantly replaced the fuel tanks for the other three people, or raised his gun to deal with the lone or smaller monsters, to prevent these brave men from dying on the spot due to negligence - calling these people was indeed a good decision, at least it could help Rhodes save more world pollution points, which would be useful in the next battle.

The number of monsters has decreased a lot. Obviously, they did not collect much "meat" on this not-so-big spaceship, and the frozen time in Antarctica made it even more difficult for them to expand their population.

"Put on your gas masks," Rhodes shouted. He found the distance to their destination wasn't far from the map on the Shiting Box. "If you die of lung disease instead of the monsters, I'll definitely laugh at your funeral."

"Then you'll have to give us a few more oxygen tanks, sir! I can't breathe!"

Kate said wearily that she was already regretting her decision to come here - but if she didn't come, the paleontologist was sure she would regret it every minute of her life.

This made Sam and Adam beside them nod their heads. They looked vigilantly in every direction, while being careful of attacks from the strange remnants hidden in the charcoal.

"When can we get there? And these monsters... have started using metal plates as shields! Wait, is that a gun?!"

Hearing this, Rhodes subconsciously turned his head. At this moment, the hairs on his body stood up and the fear in his heart reached its peak!

Without any hesitation, Rhodes suddenly ducked to avoid a streak of dark blue light. When the buzzing sound reached his ears, he realized that a long, thin wound had been scratched on his forehead by something passing by at high speed. If it was just a little bit, he would have to return to the inner world to revive and read the bar!

At the end of the corridor, inside a twisted object formed by a mass of strange shapes, the muzzle of a slender "gun" was flickering slightly, and milky white steam was rapidly pouring out from the holes on the monster's body, as if it had completed the heat dissipation work after a shooting.

Letting the blood from the wound slowly flow down his forehead, Rhodes raised a flaming sword in his hand and swung it at the monster hidden in the shadows:

The golden flames instantly engulfed it, igniting its flesh and blood and peeling off its bones!

With this strange-shaped body as the center, golden flames erupted like a volcano, and the scattered molten fire once again ignited the monsters' flesh - just like their cells would "infect" and "spread", the golden flames began to jump rapidly between the alien monsters and connect with each other - in just a breath of time, the entire corridor was covered in a sea of ​​fire, completely burning all the filth and filth inside!

It's like a golden sun rising in the darkness!

"Are you all right, Mr. Rhodes?"

Adam helped Rod up, while the remaining two replaced the fuel tank and pulled the trigger again at the residue on the ground.

In the flickering firelight, Rhode took a breath, feeling relieved that he had almost capsized in the gutter.

What to say? Rhodes was indeed thankful that this alien spaceship didn't seem to be a troop transport or warship. Otherwise, he and the other three would have been facing a high-tech army of strange creatures! However, time couldn't be delayed any longer. In the original film (The Thing, 1982), these strange creatures had already demonstrated their immense creativity, building a flying machine out of nothing more than snowmobiles and computer parts!

"Thank you. It was indeed the right decision to call you."

After thanking Adam for his kindness, Rhodes looked around but found no new monsters appearing... They seemed to have chosen to retreat.

"Something's not right, but I don't have many options right now." Rhode didn't dwell on it any further. He suppressed his uneasiness and continued forward, saying as he walked.

"Let's go to the main control room and at least stop the takeoff procedure of this spacecraft."

Chapter 472: For the Clan (3/3)

The flames crackled, but the gold in them had slowly faded, leaving only pure natural fire.

Ignoring the flames behind him, Rhodes led the exhausted trio away quickly and followed the instructions to the central control room. It was not really a control room, but the area was actually empty, with only a constantly changing cylindrical light object standing there.

Square pieces of metal kept floating up from the surface of this thing, then gradually sinking, repeating this over and over again... This reminded Rhodes of the eyes on the surfaces of those monsters.

Taking out the [Shiting Box], Rhodes brought it close to the cylindrical light source. The edge of the tablet flickered slightly, and Alona's dirty little face suddenly appeared on the screen. The girl looked very busy.

Holding her helmet, Alona said helplessly:

"I can't dig through the defenses... Sensei, stop laughing! Ahem, I only managed to intercept some data from the data stream. It seems to be some numerical coordinates, or maybe something else... Hmm? Another new data stream?"

As if confirming Rhode's uneasiness, Alona's expression grew increasingly worse. She turned and disappeared from the screen. After a series of clanging sounds, the girl reappeared and said in a voice that was almost shouting:

"The escape system has been activated! Or maybe it's not an escape, but a weapon launch procedure - in short, something is about to be ejected!"

Ejecting something is one thing, as the surrounding area is the barren ice fields of Antarctica, but what will happen to the spacecraft after the ejection?

They would self-destruct, completely burying all those who knew about the situation, and then scatter the carefully preserved "tribe" around, waiting for the opportunity to revive again in the extremely cold ice - the Haki people were a species that always died from their own curiosity and arrogance.

After thinking of this possibility, Rhode's heart sank and he said aloud:

"Alona, ​​try to record the ejection angle, force, and possible impact coordinates. Once the snowstorm passes, we'll immediately recover it..."

But before he could finish his words, the spaceship began to tremble like a spasm, and the blizzard outside immediately rushed in madly along the corridor, blowing over the still slightly warm charcoal residue.

Not only that, the cylindrical light source in front of Rhodes and his companions also turned into colorful and strange colors, which seemed to be the colors used by their original civilization to express "warning".

"Tsk, that's pretty fast," Rhodes frowned. He looked down at Alona on the screen, who was quickly putting on her helmet and waiting for orders. "Can you buy us some more time? Or abort the self-destruct sequence...Okay, okay, don't be so sad. I get it."

After sensing something approaching, Rhode turned to Kate and the other two who were looking at each other in bewilderment and said:

"Do you remember the way we came? Leave now."

"...Then we'll leave first."

Kate looked at Rhodes with complicated eyes, but the latter just waved his hand, signaling them to leave quickly. Just after Kate and the others disappeared, the shadow behind the cylindrical light object twisted a few times, and a metal monster condensed and glued together by flesh and blood slowly rose up, moving forward slowly like a puddle of mud. Rhodes didn't think that this thing would only be this fast.

Since it is an escape, there must be someone who chooses to stay behind to cover the rear.

Just like Rhodes, just like the metal monster in front of him.

"For the tribe?"

Rhode raised an eyebrow and asked, stuffing the [Box of Shiting] into his pocket. Alona's countdown to the explosion rang in his ears. After hearing Rhode's question, the metal monster replied with a strange overlapping trill:

"For the tribe."

The metal monster's body slowly condensed into a human shape, but it was much taller than Rhodes, and the front of its head slowly stretched forward and squirmed, forming another "gun", and then, fired!

The faint blue light penetrated the cylindrical light object, causing the surroundings to suddenly fall into darkness... Then it would penetrate the darkness again!

But at the target's location, only a few small round objects remained. The crisp sound of the grenade handle popping off immediately turned into a deafening roar - orange-red flames wrapped in the dust of the explosion passed by Rhodes, but he did not relax his vigilance even though he was hiding outside the control room. Instead, he stuck the C4 bomb with the set time on the wall and ran away.

Only a fool would stay where he is and be buried with you!

"Alona, ​​plan a new route. We can't take the same route as Kate and the others," Rhodes said. He glanced sideways at the situation behind him and added, "But it seems that getting out from above won't make any difference. Let's give it a try."

"The route is planned... Sensei, the ship is still ascending, don't forget that."

"of course."

The blast of air behind him surged again, and Rhodes took advantage of the impact to suddenly roll forward, letting the dark blue light pass over his head.

By the way, he fished out the alien weapon that had nearly sent him to the brink of death from the charcoal on the ground. It wasn't seriously damaged and looked like it might still be of some research value.

"Monster, your hardware is pretty average, huh? Haven't you evolved any auto-aiming features?"

After storing his weapons, Rhode laughed loudly, his eyes quickly scanning the shadows on both sides. After ensuring there were no more ambushes, he suddenly leaped upwards, a flaming sword emerging from his hand and stabbing it into the smooth curved wall, then using the momentum to launch himself upwards again.

After climbing out of the shutter-like gap on the top floor, Rhodes stood up and saw the reorganizing metal alien on the slowly rising surface of the spacecraft.

The alien monster showed an unprecedented persistence, protecting its body tightly under the unknown metal, like a twisted medieval knight. Then, the monster stepped forward, step by step, reloading its ammunition and aiming at the target.

"My gene library doesn't hold anything like you," the metal figure said. Its trembling voice, unaffected by the damage to its flesh, remained steady, powerful, and undisguisedly inhuman. "But I know that not all of this species called 'human' possess your might. You are not human and cannot be assimilated. For the sake of 'my' race, you must die here."

A blizzard blew between them, but Rhode, looking sullen, simply raised his arm and made a pistol gesture. Suddenly, his figure began to blur, as if he was drawing a bow and arrow, or preparing to throw a spear.

Just now, when Rhodes realized that he seemed unable to melt the alien metal on the monster's body in a short time, an idea came into his mind.

Iron and Fire

[Additional loadout of Iron and Fire Powers - Deduction of pollution points from the other world begins]

【Concept Attachment】

"I said, it will hit," Rhodes said calmly, his eyes gleaming with golden light, "I said, Golden Flame."

The muzzle of the gun on the metal alien's head began to flicker slightly, but the next second, its steps staggered, and golden flames gushed out from the gaps in the armor made of unknown metal - the divine spear must pierce through the defense and lead the flames in - the gap does not need to be too big, just a little, a little gap is enough!

However, the metal monster still did not stop, even though its body began to melt, even though it could only crawl on the ground... But in the end, it completely stopped in front of Rhodes and turned into charred charcoal.

"..." Rhodes took a deep breath. He now felt waves of weakness in his body, even though he only used [Concept Attachment] for a moment. But it was definitely better than the previous times.

Turning around, Rhodes quickly jumped off the alien spaceship that was rising higher and higher, and plunged into the blizzard.

Behind him, the disc-shaped alien spacecraft suddenly contracted inward, metal squeezing against metal, emitting a piercing scream. This sound lasted for several seconds, then turned into a deafening roar - the light and flames of the spacecraft exploded and spread outward, leaving only scattered metal fragments falling, and nothing else.

Rhodes fell to the snow. He turned over and looked at the light and shadow above that gradually disappeared, allowing the icy snow to completely swallow him up.

+++++++++++

"I am an army without borders... a warrior of humanity..."

Zane Thompson, the helicopter pilot of the Midnight Sun Base, gritted his teeth, endured the strangeness and pain in his body, endured the strange sounds in his mind, and pushed the joystick forward.