The First Superhuman: Rebuilding Civilization from the Moon

Time slipped by, month after month...

Before they knew it, the crew had been on the planet for two years. In that time, they had harvested over a billion metric tons of helium-3, along with a vast supply of rare minerals.

After much deliberation, the crew decided it was time to leave this resource-rich metal planet.

With the sheer abundance of materials here, humanity could have lived a life of absolute comfort for hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of years. However, staying felt unnecessary. There were already more than enough supplies stored aboard the Noah, and the very first Titan-class vessel had just been completed. Continuing to strip-mine the planet simply didn’t make sense anymore.

Humanity was naturally a greedy species, but that greed felt entirely insignificant when faced with the vastness of the universe. Now, the Senior Scientists were itching to get started; they couldn’t wait to explore the distant horizons and push even further into the unknown.

Settling for comfort was out of the question. If they truly wanted a comfortable, stagnant life, they would have stayed on Nyx. Now that they had evolved into an interstellar civilization capable of traveling between the stars, a new, daring mindset had naturally taken root in everyone’s instincts.

That mindset was the drive to explore the unknown.

The Federation was still incredibly young; not even its first generation had passed away. They possessed boundless energy and enthusiasm to discover new wonders out in the cosmos.

The perspective of an interstellar civilization was fundamentally different from that of a primitive one. The difference was like comparing a supersonic fighter jet to a child’s tricycle. Those flying the jets naturally wanted to soar higher and push further, while someone pedaling a tricycle might never even dream of leaving their hometown.

Now that humanity possessed highly advanced spaceships and the ability to traverse the stars, they naturally hungered to explore the great dark beyond.

The universal laws governing biological life made every planet uniquely vibrant and diverse. Although most alien life forms they had encountered so far were primitive, humanity had only recently climbed out of its own primitive cradle, meaning there was still an endless amount to learn from them.

"Let’s get moving. Staying here might be safer and more comfortable... but we don’t truly belong here."

"Maybe someday, when we have enough power, we can come back and transform this entire metal planet into a massive planetary starship! We could even give Deep Space a complete overhaul!"

Goodbye, Planet GB131!

Standing on the bridge, Jason cleared his mind of a thousand wandering thoughts and issued his final order. "Deep Space! Set sail!"

"Captain’s orders confirmed. Deep Space, initiating launch sequence! ...setting sail!"

Practice made perfect, and the entire crew was already incredibly familiar with the launch protocols.

The space elevator had been retracted a few days prior. Now, the ship’s massive ion engines spewed brilliant blue flames as it rapidly tore free from the planet’s gravitational pull.

Everything proceeded smoothly without a single hitch. A few days later, the warp drives spun up, taking over from the ion engines as a shimmering warp bubble enveloped the entirety of the Deep Space.

This journey was significantly longer than their last. It marked humanity’s very first deep-space voyage across another star system.

After extensive debates and deliberations, the council had officially selected Planet Digg-114 as their next destination, a world located exactly 6.8 light-years away!

Over the past two years, their astronomical telescopes had detected four massive flashes of light on its surface, all occurring within a single month. This was in addition to eleven other fainter, yet highly suspicious, bursts of light...

These orbital flashes served as indirect proof that this Earth-like world was currently tearing itself apart in a devastating global nuclear war!

Curiously, over the following year, they hadn’t detected a single flash. It was as if the brutal conflict had suddenly ended...

"Could it be that they, much like the Nyx civilization, were caught in the middle of a severe energy crisis?" Jason pondered, a deep frown creasing his face.

"But Digg-114 is located relatively close to its host star. It should have an almost inexhaustible supply of solar energy to draw from. It doesn’t make sense for them to suffer the same fate as the Nyx... So, what actually happened?"

Because of this anomaly, Jason had even convened a special council meeting to ask the crew if they wanted to change their destination. Ultimately, they all agreed to press forward and investigate.

Firstly, the planet was incredibly similar to Earth; it could potentially serve as a perfect new home for humanity.

Secondly, even if the world proved uninhabitable, they could still study the ruins to understand what triggered the nuclear holocaust. It was a rare opportunity to advance their understanding of cosmic sociology, not to mention the chance to collect unique alien biological specimens.

According to their alien prisoner, ’Black,’ humanity’s scope of knowledge was still embarrassingly narrow. Their very way of thinking remained chained to the limitations of a primitive civilization.

Advanced disciplines like interstellar sociology and xenobiology required vast sample sizes to make any real progress; working in complete isolation was a dead end.

Over a century of research on Nyx had proven that the sheer complexity of biological life far exceeded their wildest imaginations. The Senior Scientists still couldn’t truly ’create’ a brand new species. Humanity could genetically engineer, improve, and splice traits together, but they couldn’t just play God and fabricate life out of thin air.

This harsh reality was undeniably disheartening. Their Level-4 theories, like Advanced Gene Dynamics, could only map out a fraction of a genome’s properties, nowhere near the complete picture.

The Federation still had an endless amount to learn and verify out in the dark!

"Our maximum warp speed is currently about three times the speed of light, meaning this entire journey will take us roughly two to three years... I want everyone to stay sharp. We cannot afford any mistakes!" Jason announced calmly from the bridge.

However, the Deep Space wasn’t traveling at maximum capacity just yet. They were currently cruising at 0.1 times the speed of light, a pace they would maintain for the next two to three months.

Cruising at sub-light speeds allowed the ship’s central AI to instantly reconstruct real-time imaging of the surrounding space, giving their sensors time to properly scout the path ahead.

This was an absolute necessity because this particular sector was littered with dense asteroid fields, presenting a real risk of a catastrophic hull breach.

Standard micrometeorites could be easily vaporized by the ship’s point-defense lasers or railguns. Even if a few small fragments managed to breach the warp bubble, it wouldn’t pose much of a threat. The Deep Space had thick enough armor plating to comfortably withstand minor impacts from stray space debris.

However, if they stumbled into the path of a rogue planet or a massive asteroid, they had to take immediate evasive action. A direct collision was deadly enough, but more importantly, an object of that massive scale would instantly shatter the delicate warp bubble enveloping the vessel.

Just like popping a fragile soap bubble, the warp field’s membrane would violently collapse if breached by a large volume of mass. The resulting spatial backlash would trigger a catastrophic explosion!

It would be an explosion of such magnitude that the Deep Space would be instantly vaporized.

Therefore, the crew was forced to travel at relatively sluggish speeds to navigate the treacherous asteroid fields safely. If they accelerated any faster, their sensors wouldn’t be able to process the external environment in real-time.

Directly ahead lay a massive, azure gas giant, bearing a striking resemblance to Neptune. Its thick atmosphere was primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, mixed with trace amounts of methane. That specific methane concentration was exactly why the planet glowed with such a brilliant blue hue.

Caught in the gas giant’s orbit were countless fields of shattered meteorites, perfectly aligned to form a breathtakingly beautiful set of planetary rings.

"It looks just like Neptune, but with Saturn’s rings. It’s absolutely gorgeous!"

It was highly probable that Planet GB131 had originally been a moon orbiting this very gas giant. Perhaps it had been struck by a rogue celestial body ages ago, luckily escaping the giant’s gravity well to become a rogue planet of its own.

The pulverized remains of whatever had collided with it were likely trapped in orbit, forming the spectacular rings they saw today.

The Senior Scientists had already calculated the total mass of the orbital debris belt, and the resulting data perfectly matched that exact hypothesis.

The Deep Space’s encounter with the majestic gas giant was fleeting. Even when compared to the vast scale of a planet, traveling at 0.1 times the speed of light was still blisteringly fast.

Before leaving, the crew deployed several nuclear-powered orbital beacons, designed to broadcast a continuous, classical melody into the void for tens of thousands of years.

These beacons served as an interstellar monument, proudly declaring: Humanity was here.

Down on the surface of GB131, they had purposely left behind several decommissioned heavy excavators to firmly establish their territorial sovereignty. It was an undeniable marker that the Federation was the first civilization to discover and claim this world!

If any territorial disputes arose with other interstellar species in the distant future, these relics would serve as undeniable proof of ownership.

In truth, this was mostly just Jason and a few of the Senior Scientists indulging in their quirky sense of humor. They firmly believed that if you visited a place, you had to leave your mark.

Two long months later, the colossal starship finally broke free from the dense inner region of the star system. There was a higher concentration of frozen comets out here in the outer rim, but their orbital trajectories didn’t intersect with the ship’s flight path, making the statistical probability of a collision practically zero.

Now, it was finally time to punch the throttle.

Jason carefully reviewed the latest gravitational wave reconnaissance reports from the ship’s observatory. After double and triple-checking that the path ahead was completely clear of any dangerous celestial bodies, he finally issued the command.

"Initiate faster-than-light warp!"

"Captain’s orders confirmed. Engaging FTL warp drives!"

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!