The First Superhuman: Rebuilding Civilization from the Moon

"We’ve got natives inside!"

Although pleased by the discovery, Marcus maintained a serious expression. "Did anyone bring a translation device? Hook it up to the high-decibel speakers on the rover!"

"And pull all available combat drones to our position!"

It was time to overwhelm the locals with superior numbers. In this era, no one expected human soldiers to charge blindly into a fortified chokepoint. That wasn’t how you trained a modern military.

Precision airstrikes and long-range bombardments had been standard doctrine since the 21st century, let alone now. Deploying drones as the vanguard was the most common and safest tactic in the Federation’s playbook.

Most modern combat drones operated on quantum communication networks, making them virtually unhackable. They were also equipped with advanced combat AIs, allowing them to fight autonomously even if their signals were jammed.

If trapped or captured, they would simply self-destruct, eliminating any risk of the enemy reverse-engineering their systems.

A fresh squad of drones rolled up to the breach hole and began broadcasting in the clunky, tongue-twisting native language.

"Surrender and you will not be harmed!"

Surrender and you will not be harmed!

The Federation’s primary goal was taking live captives, not wiping them out, so pacification was the priority.

"...Do not harm... do not harm..." The synthesized voices echoed from deep within the bunker.

"Listen to that echo. This underground facility must be massive," a scout noted, tilting his head.

The translation software had cobbled together the audio from native hard drives salvaged a few days prior. The resulting voice sounded incredibly stiff, reminiscent of primitive text-to-speech programs from over a century ago. Still, it got the point across; the locals should be able to understand it.

However, the volume of incoming fire didn’t decrease in the slightest. The natives weren’t going to surrender just because a machine yelled a few slogans at them.

The next instant, several drones were blown apart. Shrapnel and flames spewed out of the breach, ricocheting off the armored rovers with loud clangs. The squad reacted instantly, hitting the dirt in unison, proving their rigorous training hadn’t been entirely wasted.

"Damn it!"

Marcus cursed into his communicator and ordered returning fire. The heavy machine guns mounted on the rovers roared to life, unleashing a devastating barrage.

The edges of the blast door were still glowing red-hot. As the heavy caliber rounds slammed into the molten steel, it reacted like wet clay, splattering glowing chunks of metal in every direction and leaving the surface heavily pockmarked.

Marcus swore under his breath. Judging by the depth of the impacts, the door was easily two meters thick. Thank god they had used the orbital laser. Capturing hostiles alive was always a massive headache; it forced them to pull their punches.

Seeing his squad firing blindly into the dark, he shouted, "Suppressing fire! Keep them pinned away from the breach! And send in the incendiary drones!"

Heavy, riot-shield-equipped incendiary drones rolled forward, absorbing a hail of bullets with loud metallic clangs. Reaching the breach, they unleashed massive jets of liquid fire over ten meters long, instantly filling the tunnel with billowing clouds of thick, black smoke!

The defensive fire instantly slackened. Harrowing screams echoed from the darkness as a few unfortunate defenders were caught in the splash zone.

Because alien biologies varied wildly, standard human tear gas or sleeping agents could easily prove lethal to the natives. Thus, chemical weapons were strictly off the table.

Pumping fire and smoke into the bunker was a brutal but effective deterrent. Most intelligent lifeforms had evolved an instinctual fear of fire, but wouldn’t immediately die from moderate smoke inhalation. If they ended up suffocating, there was nothing Marcus could do about it.

Violent coughing and frantic shouting echoed from the tunnel, yet the natives stubbornly held their ground. High-velocity rounds continued to tear through the smoke, shredding the drones. A few more anti-tank rockets streaked out, blowing over a dozen incendiary drones to pieces in the blink of an eye.

"Captain, they’re chewing through our drone reserves. Should I call in reinforcements?" one of the soldiers asked over the din.

"Let’s just shell them with high-explosives and be done with it!" another suggested.

"This bunker is massive. They probably have an active underground ventilation system running," a squad leader hypothesized. "The smoke isn’t thick enough! We need more incendiary units!"

"If they want to do this the hard way, we’ll oblige," Marcus growled. "Update the broadcast: tell them if they don’t surrender, we’re going to level the place! Put a five-minute countdown on the speakers to ramp up the psychological pressure. Start the clock!"

As thicker clouds of smoke flooded the corridor and the ominous countdown ticked away, the incoming fire gradually dwindled. The combination of non-lethal suppression and the impending deadline finally broke their resolve.

After four minutes of relentless smoke, right as the countdown hit the final thirty seconds, the gunfire stopped completely. Marcus raised a fist. "Cease fire!"

"Wah la baka ghre!" A loud, distorted voice echoed from a megaphone inside the bunker.

Marcus lowered his weapon and glanced at the comms specialist beside him. "Did the software catch that? What did they say?"

The specialist stared at his datapad, letting the algorithms crunch the audio. "It translates roughly to... uh... ’surrender, we surrender!’"

"Are you sure?"

The translation matrix was still in its alpha phase, meaning the dictionary was highly incomplete. After double-checking the phonetic wave, the specialist nodded firmly. "I’m sure!"

Marcus breathed a sigh of relief. He signaled the surviving drones, which immediately cut their incendiary streams and rolled back to clear a path.

"Tell them to step outside with their hands behind their heads. No weapons! Every single one of them comes out into the light!"

The communication specialist nervously tapped away at his terminal. Translating such specific tactical commands on the fly was risky; the primitive software might output gibberish.

Sweating under the pressure of delaying the operation, he frantically spliced audio files together. After an agonizing minute, he managed to compile a usable broadcast.

The drone’s external speakers crackled to life with the native dialect: "Surrender! Come outside! Drop your weapons! Hands on your heads!"

To the natives hiding in the bunker, the synthesized voice sounded painfully archaic, like a relic from their early technological era. Some were entirely baffled as to why an invading force wielding such overwhelming firepower would use obsolete voice-synths. However, technological curiosity took a backseat to basic survival.

Frantic arguments broke out inside the vault. The natives still had no idea who was attacking them; they assumed it was a rival faction of their own species that had survived the apocalypse.

It was obvious that the attackers were holding back. If the enemy possessed a weapon capable of melting through two meters of reinforced steel, wiping out the inhabitants of the bunker would have been trivial. But surrendering meant placing their lives entirely at the mercy of strangers.

A few hotheaded young Digmen were unwilling to concede. They gripped their rifles tightly, their eyes burning with defiant rage. They believed they still had a trump card left to play

There was an unexploded nuclear warhead stored deep inside the armory! A couple of the young men even tried to rush the breach, but older members of the group physically tackled and pinned them down.

A middle-aged Digmen, acting as the group’s leader, stepped forward and spouted a harsh reprimand. He pointed furiously toward the back of the corridor, where a large group of elderly civilians and children were hacking and coughing violently from the smoke.

The hotheads deflated. Staring at their suffering families, they reluctantly tossed their weapons to the floor.

If they kept fighting, they would be slaughtered instantly. The attackers had only used smoke, not lethal chemical gas. That meant they intended to take prisoners, right?

Having reached a grim consensus, the Digmen survivors slowly began to file out of the tunnel. They looked thoroughly disheveled, their faces coated in black soot. Although the background radiation outside the bunker was dangerously high, brief exposure wouldn’t kill them immediately...

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