Chapter 68 Rescue_1

This news, like a bolt from the blue, plunged Kupa, Brand, and Luomi's emotions into the abyss in an instant.

The three of them couldn't accept such an outcome, because just a second ago, they were still immersed in the joy of finding a new home, and now it had turned into the tragic result that they would be the last humans in the universe.

All their efforts were in vain; they couldn't change the fact that the human race on Earth was on the brink of extinction.

This left the three of them, whose highest goal was to save all of humanity, directionless all at once.

They wandered aimlessly, like the living dead, on the spaceship, across the frozen tundra of the planet, and within the valleys, watching the wind whip past, carrying snowflakes with it.

They looked up at the massive black hole, at the silent planet before them, at the calm universe above.

In their hearts, they wondered if there really was no way out.

Could it be true that they would really be the last five people in this world?

They wallowed in this despair for a long time, languishing on the spaceship for days on end.

It was finally an end-of-life video message from Old Brand, transmitted from the other side of the wormhole, that released Brand from her grief.

In the video, Old Brand detailed the cause and effect, as well as the true nature of the Jerusalem Plan, which was for the few of them to take the three hundred thousand pairs of fertilized eggs in the space station and start a new human civilization on a habitable planet.

After seeing the message from her father, Brand wept bitterly, and then her emotions slowly healed. She stopped dwelling on the fact that Earth's humanity could not be saved. She wanted to throw herself into her work to forget the pain.

In such a state, her scientific thinking gradually took precedence again, and the sense of responsibility in her heart shifted from saving all of humanity to perpetuating human civilization.

Luomi, who was nearly fifty years old, came to terms with the situation even faster. As Brand wiped away her tears, ready to continue working, Luomi had already begun sorting through the heap of debris on the spaceship, hoping to organize Mann's fabricated planetary data more intuitively.

However, soon he found himself immersed in doubt, as he discovered that much of the data lacked critical supporting details.

............

Apart from the two on the spaceship, Kupa and Mann flew the Space Shuttle to the cave indicated by Dr. Mann.

This was a group of caves ten kilometers away from their station, with an uneven surface and winding hill slopes, resembling a honeycombed terrain.

"Dr. Mann, where are the caves you mentioned?" Kupa, dressed in an outdoor work space suit, stood on a ridge and asked, looking at the countless caves in front of him.

"Right there in front." Dr. Mann pointed to the largest cave ahead.

"This one?" Kupa looked back at Mann and then followed the direction he pointed.

It was a massive pit more than twenty meters in diameter, extremely steep and bottomless, with the depths invisible from the edge of the cliff.

"Dr. Mann, how do we get down there?" Kupa stood at the edge of the cliff and glanced down, then turned around to ask.

Behind him, Dr. Mann suddenly reached out and pulled off Kupa's remote communication device from his back, and then kicked Kupa in the back.

Kupa, his balance upset, could only watch helplessly as his body fell forward.

However, Kupa reacted quickly, pressing a button between his legs to deploy the ice blades on his boots, then swung his legs fiercely and drove the ice blades into the frozen ground, finally managing to stabilize his body halfway down the slope.

"Mann, what are you doing?" On the steep, almost seventy-degree slope, Kupa clung to the wall, looked up at Mann, and shouted angrily.

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After saying that, he continued to climb upwards relentlessly, using the ice axes on his boots to puncture the surface for leverage. He quickly neared the top of the slope, but Mann, intent on killing him, wouldn't let him reach the top easily. He grabbed the ice sledge and smashed it down on Kupa's helmet.

"I'm sorry, but I have no choice," Mann said with a helpless expression.

Though Kupa tried to dodge, his range of movement was extremely limited due to the steep slope, and Mann managed to hit him repeatedly, causing cracks to form on Kupa's helmet visor.

"Oxygen leak, oxygen leak!!!"

The moment the helmet cracked, the spacesuit's detection computer sounded an alarm.

Because of this, Kupa was struck hard by Mann and fell down the slope, rolling to the valley floor. However, unlike what Mann had anticipated, Kupa didn't fall into a bottomless pit but stopped at the bottom of the slope, where a small piece of flat land about a meter wide was situated between the slope and the actual abyss. Relying on his remarkable physical condition, Kupa managed to halt himself there.

He then got up awkwardly, quickly took out a roll of space-grade duct tape from the tool pouch on his waist, and started patching up his helmet.

"Oxygen leak, oxygen leak!!!"

Oxygen continued to escape from the spacesuit, but as Kupa applied the tape, the rate of leakage decreased. Finally, after the third strip of duct tape was in place, the computer stopped the alarm.

Only then did Kupa have the time to catch his breath and look up at Mann at the top of the slope.

Seeing that Kupa hadn't been killed, Mann started to panic.

He immediately stopped tangling with Kupa. After giving Kupa one last look from the bottom of the slope, he turned and ran toward the space shuttle parked in the distance without looking back.

Before long, Dr. Mann climbed into the space shuttle and pressed the launch button. Along with a loud "boom," the space shuttle lifted off and flew towards the clouds above.

Kupa, cursing through the communication headset, saw the space shuttle heading into space, and at that moment he realized why Mann had tried to kill him.

All the talk about rising temperatures and dissipating chlorine gas was fake, all lies fabricated by Mann, with the purpose of luring them here so that he could survive.

And Mann heading for the Space Station was surely to take control of it.

Because with the Space Station in his hands, he would have the initiative. What remained was a matter of negotiation.

As Kupa figured all this out, he tried to contact Brand and the others in the spacesuit, who were twenty kilometers away; but Mann had taken away the long-range communication equipment, so no matter how loudly he shouted, there was no response.

Seeing that no one was responding to his calls, Kupa could only speed up his climb.

.........

Meanwhile, Cao Ge was outside the outpost watching the distant space shuttle soaring into space.

He quickly opened the spaceship's hatch door, ready to warn Brand and the others that there might be trouble with Kupa's side. Luomi, holding a tablet, approached him first, and looking at the data on the screen, she said, "Dr. Miller, come look at this. Dr. Mann's research on Planet 12 seems inconsistent with our actual surveys."

"Never mind that for now; there might be a problem with Kupa. I just saw their space shuttle head toward the Space Station. Hurry up, start the ship, let's go check it out," Cao Ge shouted loudly.

Without waiting for a response from the others, he quickly took his seat in the pilot's chair and steered the ship towards Kupa's crash site.

Cao Ge decided to rescue Kupa first instead of chasing the space shuttle, considering the problem of retrieving the spinning Space Station after its explosion.

Among them, only Kupa was a pilot, and such a difficult job might only be manageable by him.

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