October 23, 2020.
Year One of the New Era.
07:30 hours.
Jason and the senior command staff, along with hundreds of selected scientists, engineers, and technical specialists, were seated at their respective stations, ready for the go-order.
In the Captain's quarters, which now served as the bridge, Jason gathered with the key project leaders to issue the final commands. Security teams were stationed throughout the ship's various sectors to maintain order.
The remaining citizens were confined to their quarters, restricted from moving freely during the launch window. Fortunately, every room was equipped with a monitor, allowing the population to witness the historic moment live.
Time marched on, second by agonizing second. The tension in the air thickened. People whispered words of encouragement to one another or offered silent prayers. This day would determine the future of their entire species. Human effort had done all it could; what remained was now left to fate.
Beep.
The timer hit the mark. Jason spoke into the communicator, his voice decisive. "Command to Ground: Retract the boarding gantries."
"Captain's order received: Retracting gantries."
"Retracting..."
The Noah was a behemoth; high-speed elevators and massive gantries were required just to board it. With a series of mechanical groans, the heavy machinery alongside the ship slowly pulled back. Because this procedure had been tested dozens of times during drills, there was no applause yet. People simply held their breath, waiting for the next step.
"Command to Ground: Disengage structural support frames!"
"Captain's order: Disengage supports!"
The Noah shuddered slightly as the locking mechanisms released. The final steel cradles holding the massive sphere were removed. Now, the ship rested on a single fulcrum: the massive, inverted parabolic engine at its base. Despite the precarious look of it, the ship remained perfectly stable; the physicists had calculated the center of mass to the millimeter. It would not tip.
"All teams, stand by for final sequence! Launch in T-minus ten minutes!"
"Observation, Maintenance, Engine, Inspection—all teams standing by..."
A heavy silence fell over the ship. Heartbeats hammered against ribs. Eyes were glued to the screens, terrified to blink lest they miss a single frame of history.
The moment of truth had arrived. Six months of blood, sweat, and tears came down to this.
"Command to Systems: Prime the nuclear pulse propulsion drive. Authorize ignition sequence."
"Captain's order: Priming nuclear drive. Countdown initiated..."
After the input of a sixty-four-character encryption key, the numbers began to scroll on the main screen.
"Ten... nine... eight..."
Even Jason felt his nerves fraying. In a few seconds, the space program would either be their salvation or their tomb.
"Five... four... three... two... one..."
The passengers counted down silently in their cabins, staring at the monitors.
As the counter hit zero, a blinding white light erupted from beneath the spaceship. Initially just a slit, it expanded instantly, swallowing the darkness.
It was an unprecedented sunrise.
Never in human history had such a light been kindled on the surface of a world, as if a thousand suns had been born simultaneously. The light carried a brilliant, terrifying blue hue, the signature of temperatures reaching hundreds of millions of degrees. A massive wall of gray-black lunar dust surged outward, carried by the thermal expansion.
The one-billion-ton Helium-3 nuclear device had detonated.
A compressed mushroom cloud formed beneath the ship. In a microsecond, the nuclear explosion released a staggering 4.184 x 10^18 joules of energy. It was a force of nature, restrained for eons in the atom, suddenly unleashed.
This energy release was equivalent in scale to the 9.3 magnitude Indian Ocean earthquake of the Old Era. But while an earthquake disperses its energy over thousands of kilometers, the *Noah's* engine concentrated it into a confined space. It was like trapping a stellar beast in a cage.
The energy struggled, it resisted, it wanted to be free. It wanted to break the engine apart.
The parabolic drive chamber was instantly flooded with shockwaves, thermal radiation, and hard radiation. The visual distortion caused by the extreme heat made the space around the ship ripple and warp.
In the labs, data streams went wild. Estimated temperatures at the core exceeded two billion degrees. It was only an estimate; no instrument known to man could survive inside that inferno to take a measurement.
An unparalleled shockwave slammed into the pusher plate at the bottom of the ship. The infinite power of that instant caused the entire vessel to shudder violently. The "inverted basin" of the engine, which had used its massive weight to suppress the pressurized gas, could no longer hold it back.
The beast had broken its cage.
With the fury of a god, a colossal hand made of plasma lifted the spaceship effortlessly.
A million tons of mass meant nothing; it was as light as a feather in the face of this divine power. In an instant, the *Noah* was violently propelled upward.
The electromagnetic pulse and intense radiation caused static on every screen in the ship. For a moment, people saw only white. The EMP was so strong that satellite uplinks were severed; only the hardened, wired observation cameras mounted on the hull managed to keep transmitting.
"Satellite link lost! Lunar rovers are offline! Hardline feeds from the hull cameras are holding!"
"...Switch to hardline! Get the picture back up!"
People held their breath. The static cleared, and the image sharpened. The magnificent, terrifying scene filled the screens.
It brought to mind the words from the Hindu Mythology, famously recalled by Oppenheimer: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one... Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
The quote was perfectly suited to the violence of nuclear fusion. Facing this destructive power, the sacrificial layers of the engine were instantly vaporized. The lunar soil below was compressed into a crystalline plate by the shockwave, the sand melted instantly into glass by the heat and pressure.
"That is the power of a sun," someone whispered.
Many witnessing a nuclear explosion for the first time were struck by awe, followed immediately by terror. Could the ship actually withstand this?
Professor Hao Yu sat in the command center, his hands clenched so tight his knuckles were white, his palms bruised. He had designed the bomb. The engine structure had been a joint effort between him, Felix, and other top minds. He believed in himself, and he believed in his colleagues, but the fear was primal.
"First-stage ablative layer vaporized!" The telemetry officers shouted over the roar.
"Second-stage layer burned through! Separation confirmed!"
"Third-stage pusher plate... integrity holding! It withstood the pressure! The ship is accelerating!"
An explosion of cheers erupted in the command center. Felix leaped from his seat and grabbed Professor Hao Yu in a bear hug.
The engine held and they were flying.