The First Superhuman: Rebuilding Civilization from the Moon

Three seconds later, the Deep Space finally received the telemetry of the blinding flashes ahead. The entire bridge crew gasped in astonishment.

When the tactical officers confirmed the flashes were localized nuclear detonations, Jason was so furious he cursed out loud. Hadn’t the orbital scans only detected dead, flooded ruins? Where did this massive, coordinated enemy strike come from?

A multi-megaton nuclear warhead had detonated less than 400 kilometers away from a Leviathan frigate. That was a hair’s breadth away from a direct hit!

It was too close!

Observing the telemetry from this distance, it looked as though the ICBM had exploded right on top of the ship’s hull. If it hadn’t been for the overwhelming processing speed of the Federation’s artificial intelligence, which successfully calculated a firing solution and intercepted the warhead early, the missile would have struck the frigate dead on!

"Where does a primitive civilization get the audacity to launch a preemptive strike like this?!" Jason roared.

"It has to be submarine-launched ballistic missiles! The enemy forces must be hiding deep within the global ocean, which is why our initial surface scans didn’t detect them!" a tactical officer suddenly deduced.

"Furthermore, they deliberately used the dense, perennial cloud cover over the oceans to mask their missile launches from our optical satellites."

"Find them!" Jason immediately ordered.

However, the Deep Space was currently parked 900,000 kilometers away from the battle. Even if they fired their main heavy laser batteries, the beams would take a full three seconds to reach the planet. All the mothership could do was process incoming data; the actual battlefield was entirely in the hands of the vanguard fleet.

The ship’s massive array of image recognition software pushed its computational limits to the absolute maximum, desperately trying to pinpoint the enemy’s exact launch coordinates...

Countless combat simulations over the years had proven one undeniable truth: in the brutal reality of space warfare, where life and death are measured in fractions of a second, human reflexes were absolutely no match for artificial intelligence.

Even with a neural implant directly linking the brain to the ship’s systems, a human still couldn’t keep up!

Especially in a sudden ambush, human operators would simply be brutally slaughtered before they could even blink.

During this sudden ambush, less than ninety seconds elapsed between the AI detecting the thermal blooms and the automated laser grids intercepting the warheads. That timeframe included the brief moments where human operators hesitated or tried to intervene. If the entire defense protocol had been fully automated from the start without requiring human authorization, the response time would have been slashed to mere tens of seconds.

Human reaction speeds simply couldn’t keep pace with the terrifying velocity of modern weaponry. This was a biological limitation. The propagation speed of electrical signals through human neurons maxed out at roughly 100 meters per second, bound by the physical structure of dendrites and axons. With current genetic technology, this fundamental limit was incredibly difficult to bypass.

For a human, simple reflexive thinking like a sprinter reacting to a starting pistol took around 150 milliseconds. Complex cognitive tasks like safely changing lanes in heavy traffic or calculating a math problem, required anywhere from several seconds to a full minute.

Expecting a human soldier to correctly assess a rapidly evolving threat, calculate a firing solution, and authorize an interception in just a few seconds was nearly impossible.

But for a combat computer?

A simple binary 0-1 calculation traveled at the speed of light!

How could 100 meters per second ever hope to compete with the speed of light?

Unless humanity decided to fully digitize their consciousness and replace their organic brain cells with silicon microcircuits, they would never be able to challenge a computer in terms of raw reaction speed.

But if human reflexes were so hopelessly outmatched, shouldn’t the fleet just surrender total control to the automated AI?

Absolutely not!

Due to deeply ingrained cultural fears and strict safety protocols, humans remained the ultimate arbiters of the fleet. Relying entirely on autonomous artificial intelligence was deemed far too risky; a highly advanced electronic virus could paralyze the fleet or cause the AI to malfunction and turn on its creators. Furthermore, the Federation’s "weak" AI systems were deliberately programmed without true sentience or independent agency. They legally required a human officer’s direct authorization to seize control of any critical ship functions.

This was especially true for the weapon and reactor systems! Handing total, autonomous control of a spaceship’s heavy weapons directly to a machine was considered a recipe for disaster.

This protocol was a massive mistake. Humans will never be faster than an AI! We should have engaged the fully automated defense grids the moment we entered orbit! Austin thought viciously from the bridge of the Titan-Z.

He was practically vibrating with rage as he watched the four remaining Leviathan frigates fumble their evasion. Instead of fleeing, their rookie captains were manually firing point-defense lasers and randomly launching their own tactical nukes into the atmosphere, spawning massive electromagnetic pulses that blinded their own sensors. Austin wanted nothing more than to use the spaceship’s heavy cannons to blow the idiots out of the sky himself.

Although barely a dozen seconds had passed since the first nuclear interception, a fleeting moment in real-time Austin was already livid. He could easily picture the terrified, panicked expressions on the faces of those rookie captains.

Their reaction times were embarrassingly slow. Judging from the frigates’ sluggish trajectories, the ships were merely executing the basic, automated evasive maneuvers they had received from the Titan-Z’s sub-routines before the EMPs hit.

This meant the rookie captains hadn’t actually issued any comprehensive tactical orders of their own... aside from blindly mashing the launch button on their own nuclear stockpiles...

This level of incompetence was completely unacceptable!

"Switch to direct laser-line communication!" Austin finally roared.

Lasers weren’t just weapons; they could also transmit massive packets of data. Laser-line communication required incredibly precise point-to-point targeting between the sender and receiver. The Federation had heavily invested in this technology for one specific reason: a solid beam of light was entirely immune to the electromagnetic interference caused by nuclear detonations!

Upon his command, the Titan-Z rapidly deployed a swarm of miniature communication lasers. Due to the extreme targeting precision required, several of the intense beams physically struck the hulls of the frigates below, instantly leaving shallow, scorched dents in their armor plating.

Fortunately, the energy output of the communication lasers was carefully calibrated, so they wouldn’t actually melt through the hull and destroy the internal equipment.

"Captain, the Titan-Z has forced a direct laser-line transmission!"

Inside one of the panicking frigates, a communications officer practically screamed the report.

At that exact moment, another blinding flash of light erupted outside the viewport another intercepted native nuke, causing the officer to violently flinch in terror.

"What... what are the orders?"

The rookie captain stared blankly, slowly snapping out of his terrified daze.

For the past dozen seconds, his mind had gone completely blank. Staring death in the face, he had totally frozen up.

Every time a nuclear warhead detonated just a few hundred kilometers away, a single, horrifying thought looped in his mind: If the next one gets just a little bit closer, is it going to instantly vaporize my ship...?

It wasn’t just him; the vast majority of his crew was paralyzed by the exact same fear!

This wasn’t some sterile simulation in the academy; this was real combat, and people could actually die! No matter how realistic a VR simulation felt, the psychological weight of true, impending death couldn’t be replicated. This was the ultimate limitation of their sheltered training...

"Run! Minister Austin is ordering us to run!" the communications officer shouted, his face flushed with adrenaline.

This time, the order was executed swiftly and faithfully. In unison, the four remaining escort frigates pushed their main ion engines to maximum thrust and violently accelerated, breaking orbit to flee the combat zone.

Mach 30 might be terrifyingly fast for a primitive civilization, but for a Federation warship in a vacuum, it was nothing. As long as they could outpace the missiles, they could easily evade the nuclear barrage!

Seeing the frigates finally pulling away to safety, Austin let out a heavy sigh of relief.

But instantly, his relief was replaced by a surging, white-hot fury.

Down in the thick, global cloud cover, hundreds of new thermal blooms suddenly ignited!

"Damn you... don’t you primitive savages know how to respect your betters? You really think your crude little firecrackers can scratch us?!" Austin snarled.

He unleashed a rapid-fire barrage of tactical commands. With the fragile frigates finally out of the crossfire, the Titan-Z no longer had to hold back. It was time for a furious counterattack.

The spaceship’s central computer usage spiked to nearly 90%. The massive, spherical war fortress unleashed its full arsenal, firing thousands of interceptor lasers and electromagnetic railgun slugs per second. The number of miniature nuclear suns blooming in the upper atmosphere rapidly multiplied.

If viewed from deep space, the rapid string of detonations looked like a dazzling, deadly fireworks display.

But a moment later, the tactical officers noticed a new problem: their low-orbit reconnaissance satellites were being systematically destroyed one by one by ground-based anti-satellite weaponry. The natives were deliberately blinding the Federation’s eyes...

"Have you locked onto their launch coordinates yet?!" Austin bellowed. The veins on his forehead were visibly bulging; he was in a state of absolute, unbridled rage.

Despite the intense firefight, they still hadn’t found a single trace of the actual enemy. How could he not be furious?!

Sure, the Titan-Z could just break orbit and easily escape unharmed. The enemy’s primitive arsenal was vastly inferior to the Federation’s, and the chances of an ICBM actually penetrating the spaceship’s point-defense grid were astronomically low... It was essentially just a bluff.

But Austin’s logic was brutally simple: an eye for an eye. He was determined to vent his fury. If he just tucked his tail and ran from a primitive Level-1 civilization, he would be completely disgraced, and he would have brought shame upon the entire Federation Navy.

"Reporting, Captain... Based on the trajectory of the latest volley, we suspect the enemy’s primary missile silos are hidden directly beneath these massive, perennial storm systems. They are almost certainly submerged in the ocean!"

A dozen massive, swirling cloud formations appeared on the main viewscreen. The planet’s hyper-humid climate generated these permanent storm systems, making it incredibly difficult for the optical satellites to pierce the cover.

"Blow them all to hell!" Austin ordered coldly.

With a single keystroke, twelve heavy orbital-strike nuclear warheads, each boasting a yield of 10 megatons were launched from the spaceship’s silos!

Trailing long, blindingly bright tails of ionized plasma, the heavy warheads plunged toward the massive storm clouds of Planet Digg-114 at a terrifying speed of nearly 100 kilometers per second.

Due to their extreme velocity, the friction against the atmospheric molecules instantly superheated the warheads, turning them into streaks of brilliant red fire. However, the Federation’s munitions were forged from advanced, heat-resistant superalloys explicitly designed to withstand orbital reentry, so this thermal stress was well within operational parameters.

A few seconds later, twelve apocalyptic fireballs, each measuring exactly 30 kilometers in diameter, erupted simultaneously across the sky.

Each localized blast completely vaporized 713 square kilometers of the atmosphere. The sheer, blinding intensity of the thermal flashes instantly evaporated the massive storm systems, swallowing the clouds whole!

From orbit, it looked as though a dozen massive balls of cotton candy had suddenly burst into glorious, golden flowers of absolute destruction.

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