Chapter 266: Indigenous People Recruitment
Consequently, a massive amount of pressure fell on the excavation teams. Due to the severe manpower shortage, excavation efficiency remained painfully low...
Archaeological excavation was an incredibly delicate process. Artifacts that had been buried for millions of years were fragile and couldn’t withstand any rough handling.
The artifacts were already severely oxidized and dilapidated. A single careless strike with a heavy shovel could reduce a priceless relic to dust! Even if it could be painstakingly pieced back together, it would waste an astronomical amount of the Senior Scientists’ time and energy.
Therefore, archaeology was nothing like standard strip-mining. Once the main streets were cleared of primary debris, the heavy automated excavators had to be shut down. From that point on, the work had to be done manually, inch by inch, with extreme care.
The archaeologists would rather dig at a snail’s pace than risk destroying a piece of history.
In this scenario, automated robots were practically useless.
Imagine uncovering a fossilized quantum computer. Would anyone trust a mindless drone to dig it out automatically? Absolutely not!
The Federation’s current robotics, while highly advanced, were strictly designed for programmed, repetitive tasks. They excelled at automated mining, heavy construction, and perimeter patrols. However, they completely lacked the nuanced cognitive ability required for archaeological excavation. They simply couldn’t distinguish between a regular stone, a genuine biological fossil, an invaluable piece of scrap metal, and useless concrete rubble. Because these alien artifacts didn’t exist in their pre-programmed databases, the A.I. couldn’t differentiate between treasure and trash.
As a result, the agonizingly slow pace of the excavation was the Federation’s greatest frustration.
The entire planet was a literal treasure trove... There were massive metropolises buried in the crust, potentially housing mainframes loaded with scientific archives! Where was the Nyx Civilization’s primary research institute? Where were their universities? Where were their central data hubs and academic servers?
These locations were worth more than their weight in gold... but humanity had no idea where they were!
It was an agonizing, maddening itch they couldn’t scratch!
The archives had to exist on this planet; they just hadn’t found them yet!
In order to exponentially increase their excavation speed, the High Council seriously debated a radical proposal... should they draft and train the reptilian natives for the excavation work?
This wasn’t a joke; it was a highly classified, strategic initiative!
The recruitment of the lizardmen officially commenced. The Senior Scientists treated it as a top-priority operation, meticulously detailing the logistics of the integration protocols.
Over the course of two months, Federation scouts expanded their search grid outward from Cavern B11, mapping the subterranean networks across the globe. They located over 300 distinct native villages, estimating the total localized population of the lizardmen to be over 2.7 million!
Nearly all of them clustered tightly around active geothermal zones.
The populations of these individual settlements typically ranged from three thousand to twenty thousand, with established trade and communication routes between them. This was likely driven by tribal customs like intermarriage alliances to maintain genetic diversity and prevent inbreeding.
The Senior Scientists estimated that the total global population of the lizardmen hovered somewhere between five and ten million. That was a staggering labor force, and the Federation absolutely had to utilize it!
Even mobilizing just one percent of the native population would completely solve their manpower crisis!
Thanks to the fervent, fanatical proselytizing of their initial lizardman recruits, the vast majority of the newly discovered villages immediately fell to their knees, worshiping the humans as "Messengers of the Gods."
To the natives, being a Messenger of the Gods was functionally identical to being a god. In the primitive culture of the lizardmen, true deities were ethereal concepts that never manifested in the physical world. Therefore, the "Messengers of the Gods" were the absolute highest authority they could comprehend...
The Federation Marines paved their diplomatic path with three divine gifts: telescopic metal spears, mechanical lighters, and high-carbon steel knives, effortlessly buying the loyalty of every tribe they encountered.
Having witnessed colossal flying dropships, invincible automated excavators that could split mountains, and fire-breathing Gauss rifles, the lizardmen were utterly terrified. They instinctively dropped to the dirt, exposing their bellies in absolute submission.
However, a handful of isolated villages likely due to deep-seated tribal blood feuds with the newly converted villages, violently rejected the humans, branding them as demons!
The Federation didn’t bother slaughtering these stubborn holdouts. They simply blacklisted those tribes and excluded them from the recruitment program.
If they wanted to continue living in the Stone Age, they were free to do so... The Federation wasn’t in the business of forced assimilation.
Furthermore, the High Council wasn’t petty enough to order a massacre over such a trivial slight... The disparity in military strength was so absolute that the Federation didn’t even need to employ tactical coercion.
And so, after nearly two months, the Federation had mapped the majority of the planet’s native population and secured their absolute fealty. The integration phase proceeded smoothly...
Federation logistics teams first selected the most intelligent and disciplined lizardmen, isolating them for specialized training!
They were going to train them... to be archaeologists!
"Given their current baseline intelligence, complex Federation tasks are still far beyond their comprehension. However, we’ve identified several exceptionally gifted individuals among the natives who are absolutely worth educating..." a lead sociologist reported to Jason.
Jason was currently inspecting the newly constructed native integration camp.
"However, during the integration process, we discovered a rather problematic behavioral hurdle. These lizardmen are still fundamentally wild. Having lived entirely unrestrained in nature, they possess some highly erratic habits. Sometimes they simply refuse to work, or they’ll randomly fall asleep in the middle of a task. Their feral instincts are still incredibly strong."
"To safely execute Federation tasks, they must adhere to a strict standard of discipline. If they lose focus on an archaeological site, the error rate skyrockets, risking the destruction of priceless artifacts. If they can’t focus, it’s better not to use them at all!"
Jason nodded thoughtfully. The sociologist’s assessment was spot on. Excavating an ancient city wasn’t just manual labor; it required extreme precision. If the natives’ error rate was too high, it would be safer to just use the automated drones, even with their blind spots.
Therefore, if they were going to integrate into the Federation workforce, they could no longer eat or sleep on a whim like wild animals.
Their feral instincts had to be broken, their discipline forged in iron, and a strict, military-style management system had to be implemented!
Additionally, they needed to be taught basic operational skills and technical knowledge to perform even the simplest Federation tasks, such as precise digging and operating scanning equipment.
Once the integration protocols were finalized, over five hundred exceptionally intelligent lizardmen. each tested with an IQ roughly equivalent to a baseline human score of 100 were gathered in the camp’s primary lecture hall...
In theory, their cognitive capacity was more than sufficient to handle basic logistical tasks.
Educating the natives was a massive, strategic initiative that could instantly alleviate the Federation’s critical labor shortage. As a result, Jason treated the project with the utmost importance, personally reviewing every single module of the natives’ training curriculum!
Naturally, the syllabus for the reptilian natives was vastly different from the curriculum taught to human children aboard The Ark.
Federation children received an elite, comprehensive education starting from the absolute fundamentals of physics and mathematics.
The natives, on the other hand, were run through a rapid, utilitarian boot camp. All of their education was entirely superficial just enough to make them productive workers. The Federation simply didn’t have the time or resources to give them a proper, well-rounded academic education!
As the lead integration specialist guided Jason through the sprawling training camp, he explained, "...The archaeological excavation of the Nyx Civilization is a monumental undertaking. Unearthing and cataloging a metropolis of that scale could take years, possibly decades. These lizardmen are going to be an invaluable asset."
"They only need to be taught how to operate handheld excavation tools and identify anomalous artifacts... that level of pattern recognition is relatively simple to teach."
Jason nodded thoughtfully. Carefully clearing mud without shattering the structural walls, identifying complex-looking items, and handing them over to the human supervisors—the workflow was indeed quite simple. It was basically the equivalent of an unskilled day laborer...
But the specialist shook his head with a helpless sigh. "Unfortunately, tasks that are completely trivial to us are proving incredibly difficult for them. They have severe attention-deficit issues. They are constantly distracted by their surroundings, constantly checking their perimeter for threats. That lack of focus causes their error rate to spike."
"It’s an ingrained evolutionary survival trait forged by their hyper-lethal environment. Breaking that habit is going to require intensive, long-term conditioning..."
It made perfect biological sense. These lizardmen had spent their entire lives at the bottom of the food chain in a pitch-black, lethal subterranean ecosystem. True safety was a foreign concept to them.
As a result, even while performing mundane tasks, their heads were constantly on a swivel, scanning the shadows to stay alert.
In the wild, hyper-fixating on a single task for too long meant getting eaten by a predator! It was going to take a tremendous amount of time and psychological conditioning to override millions of years of prey instinct...
