The First Superhuman: Rebuilding Civilization from the Moon

The sweep operation targeted over 150 specific locations. Any structure flagged as suspicious, government administrative buildings, public libraries, military installations, or research laboratories was subject to a heavily armed, manual breach and clear.

The most dangerous objective on the map was a large body of water situated right next to the ruined city.

This would be humanity’s first direct contact with a potential Gaia entity! The lake was roughly the size of Lake Superior, with a maximum depth of eighty meters. Orbital scans had detected sparse clusters of algae in the water exhibiting highly complex, unnatural movement patterns.

"Could this be an isolated nerve cluster of the Gaia network?" the researchers theorized.

Countless sensors, both orbital and ground-based, were trained relentlessly on the lake’s surface.

"It’s strange. Sonar sweeps confirm there are no submerged military installations, but we still need to maintain maximum vigilance. Keep an eye out for aggressive biological lifeforms," command broadcasted.

"All combat hardsuits are forged from high-density, radiation-proof composites. Furthermore, every operator will undergo mandatory, rigorous psychological evaluations upon returning to the fleet."

These stringent safety protocols were established long before deployment and were personally overseen by Shane and the other veteran commanders. Dozens of Senior Scientists, clad in heavy hazmat gear, were preparing to extract water samples under heavy military guard to gather first-hand data.

Naturally, the scientific expedition was strictly limited to shore-based observation. Launching aquatic drones or taking a boat out onto the lake was absolutely forbidden.

But the science team was soon left disappointed. Their extreme precautions were entirely unnecessary; the lake remained deathly still, completely unresponsive to the military activity on the shore. The algae clusters seemed completely devoid of any higher intelligence.

However, what they lost on the biological front, they gained on the tactical one. Over in Sector 4, Marcus’s team had made a major breakthrough. Their assigned objective appeared to be a hardened survival bunker.

The primary entrance was sealed by a massive steel blast door, preventing the drones from gaining entry. The entire facility was shrouded in mystery.

"For a sealed vault like this, the odds of finding living natives are extremely high. Everyone, stay sharp and check your corners!" Marcus barked over the tactical net.

Moments later, the twenty-man squad parked their two armored rovers at the base of a blasted hillside.

The mountain face showed obvious signs of artificial excavation. Set right into the center of the rock face was a colossal blast door, angled slightly at eighty degrees to the ground.

The gate was a structural behemoth, easily fifteen meters tall, roughly the height of a four-story building and twenty meters wide. The surrounding approach was littered with twisted metal debris and the rusted husks of military vehicles.

The steel door itself was scarred with craters and heavy artillery impacts, indicating it had weathered a sustained siege. The deepest crater was a full twenty centimeters deep. Yet, despite the massive bombardment, the primary seal hadn’t suffered critical structural failure.

To the side of the door was a heavy-duty electronic keypad, which appeared to be in relatively intact condition.

"Judging by the reinforced exterior and the blast angle, this has to be a fallout shelter designed to survive a nuclear exchange," Marcus noted, gripping his assault rifle, his expression deadly serious. "If any of the locals are still breathing, they’re down there. Keep your heads on the trigger, people!"

A small utility drone rolled forward, quickly scanning the immediate area. It deployed a diamond-tipped drill, scraped off some debris from the door, and deposited the sample into a scout’s analysis kit.

While the new recruits might lack combat experience, their technical and academic training was world-class. A twenty-man squad practically covered every major military discipline, including metallurgical analysis and cyber-warfare.

"Captain, scans indicate it’s standard carbon steel. A common alloy, but poured extremely thick. Acoustic resonance puts the door at a minimum of 1.5 meters of solid metal!" the scout reported after a few minutes of analysis, sounding slightly annoyed. "If we use thermite saws or standard breaching charges, it’s going to take hours to cut through... and we’ll definitely alert whoever is inside."

Marcus frowned. The blast door was simply too thick. There was no way to breach it quickly without resorting to a tactical nuke or bunker-busting munitions. But if he called in an orbital strike, the concussive force would likely liquefy the organs of the natives trapped inside. That defeated the entire purpose of the mission.

He licked his dry lips and signaled for his cyber-warfare specialist to step up. "See that electronic keypad? Can you bypass the lock?"

"I can definitely try, sir!" The young soldier, a highly skilled military hacker, eagerly stepped forward.

He reached for his toolkit, but Marcus grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him back.

"Hold your horses, kid. You see those small recessed holes flanking the door? Those are likely automated sentry ports. And that camera housing above the keypad... wait... looks like the lens is shattered."

Marcus glared at the recruit. "If you trip a failsafe or enter the wrong bypass code, you might trigger an automated defense grid. Even power armor won’t save you from point-blank heavy munitions. You need to slice into the system via the camera feed first, then physically block those firing ports."

The young hacker froze. He had learned all of this during VR simulation training, but the adrenaline and sheer nerves of a live op had completely wiped his memory. Out here, a single mistake meant coming home in a body bag. He swallowed hard, suddenly terrified. This was the chasm between raw technical skill and actual combat experience.

Under Marcus’s orders, several heavy riot-shield drones were deployed to physically block the suspected firing ports. Meanwhile, other specialists ran a full electromagnetic sweep of the area. Only after the perimeter was completely sterilized did the hacker step up to attempt a breach.

After several tense minutes of running diagnostics, he stepped back, looking completely defeated. "Captain, the keypad is dead. There’s zero power running to the external interface. The primary locks can only be disengaged manually from the inside. The security camera’s internal wiring is fried too; there’s nothing for me to slice into."

Marcus’s expression darkened, but he kept his temper in check. If the locking mechanism had no power, there was no digital backdoor. No hacker, no matter how skilled, could bypass a dead circuit.

He huddled with his squad leaders to discuss their options. They could either plant shaped high-explosive charges or spend hours grinding through the door with plasma saws. Both methods were a massive tactical headache.

Damn it. Are they just cowering in the dark down there? The blast door controls are fried and no one bothered to fix them? Marcus cursed internally. I should just call up the armor division. If a tank shell turns them into paste, that’s their own damn fault.

The Federation tanks utilized heavy railguns. A single armor-piercing sabot or micro-nuclear warhead would punch right through the door. But Marcus was deeply concerned that the resulting spalling and overpressure would instantly kill everyone in the immediate corridor.

Suddenly, one of the squad leaders had an idea and relayed it over the tactical net.

Marcus’s eyes lit up. He jogged back to the armored rover and grabbed the heavy satellite comms. "Command, this is Marcus, ID JKH0343. Requesting pinpoint orbital laser strike. Target: stationary blast door. Target incline: 79.36 degrees. Transmitting firing coordinates now..."

After a tense silence, the orbital command relayed: "Coordinates confirmed. Firing solution locked. Orbital strike authorized. Time to impact: three minutes."

Marcus took a deep breath. "Alright, listen up! Mount up, right now!"

The squad piled back into the rovers and gunned the engines, speeding away from the bunker. They only hit the brakes once they had cleared a two-kilometer safe zone.

Instantly, a blinding pillar of pure white light punched down from the heavens. It was the Titan-Z’s heavy orbital laser.

In the vacuum of space, the highly concentrated beam was completely invisible. You wouldn’t even know it was there until it vaporized you. But once it hit the atmosphere, the sheer thermal energy ionized the surrounding air molecules, transforming the beam into a blinding, searing column of light.

To the naked eye, the strike looked like a sustained bolt of lightning, burning afterimages into their retinas. Unlike a kinetic bombardment, the laser strike was completely silent, producing no explosive shockwave.

Marcus knew the job was done.

He gave the signal, and the rovers sped back toward the bunker.

As they approached, the troops noticed a thick cloud of acrid, grayish-white smoke hanging in the air, the result of vaporized carbon steel.

Upon closer inspection, the orbital laser had cleanly melted right through the center of the blast door, creating a massive, perfectly circular breach. Molten slag was still dripping onto the ground in thick, glowing clumps, like hot candle wax.

The squad cheered. The breach hole was large enough to drive a compact car through, and that was after the laser’s intensity had been diffused by the atmosphere.

Marcus was the first out of the rover. Through the heavy ringing in his ears, he could faintly make out the frantic, panicked shouting of some kind of intelligent lifeform echoing from deep inside the tunnel!

Realizing what was happening, he quickly activated his armor’s audio-recording suite, but the shouting abruptly ceased.

He knew he hadn’t imagined it. "Get the weapons ready , soldiers!" he shouted into the communicator. "There are hostile enemy inside, and there might be a dug in. Send the drones in first!"

Under the operators’ commands, a swarm of small reconnaissance drones scuttled forward, leaping through the glowing breach hole...

Instantly, the dark tunnel erupted in deafening gunfire and a massive explosion. Several drones were instantly blown to pieces, their mangled, sparking chassis skidding across the concrete floor.

"...That was a rocket-propelled grenade!"

"Suppressing fire! Keep them pinned in the tunnel!"

Destruction was always infinitely easier than creation. Even primitive, low-tech weaponry could do severe damage. A century ago, humanity had managed to shoot down a highly advanced Martian dropship with crude missiles. It stood to reason that native heavy weapons could easily scrap unarmored Federation drones.

Furthermore, these recon drones were cheap, mass-produced models, completely devoid of advanced armor plating. A direct hit from an RPG would absolutely shred them.

But Marcus was thrilled.

Natives! We actually found surviving natives!

Gotcha.

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