All extinct

The gruelling battle continues. The quest for heat is what gives life meaning to these worms. So, for the sake of heat, even death is not an option.

Therefore, Hawke's fire-breathing tactics did not deter them a bit, but only attracted them more.

Another mountain of insect corpses gradually rose higher and higher. One centimetre, two centimetres, one metre, one and a half metres ...

Hawke had to control the robot defences to fall back again.

Time, four days had passed, and there was still a day to go before the missiles caused it.

Because of Titan's small size and the fact that the main base and Base Three were a thousand kilometres apart, a distance that already trapped Base Three below the horizon of the main base, it was necessary to use intercontinental missile technology to launch the hydrogen bomb.

At Base Two, in the nuclear fusion research lab, hundreds of robots were busy at work. One by one, the components are manufactured and immediately transported to the huge factory and assembled on top of a cylindrical behemoth.

Wind God One helicopters were constantly shuttling between the main base and Base Two, bringing in batches of components that Base Two could not manufacture for use in the missile assembly.

The wave of insects, the last five metres from base three.

The number of Hawke's droids lost had reached as many as fifty, which led to a serious shortage of firepower on the front line. Hawke gritted his teeth and replenished those droids that were positioned around the plant to the front line as well.

"The hydrogen bombs will be ready to be fired immediately anyway, so we have to last through this period no matter what!" Hawke secretly resolved.

In the middle of the second base, the intercontinental missile had already been assembled. This ICBM, which was five metres high, had a diameter of about one and a half metres. It would provide enough power for the missile to be sent beyond the atmosphere, and then, after travelling some distance in space, the hydrogen bomb, fitted with a navigator, would enter the atmosphere again and be launched towards Lake Two.

Several robots were busy, doing the final tests. Hawke was also carefully analysing the data coming from the thousands of sensors on the ICBM.

"Eh, pressure chamber normal, combustion chamber normal, navigator normal, separator normal ..." Hawke gave the last command after he finished his analysis.

"Ten seconds countdown, prepare to launch!"

A faint white mist began to emanate from the tail of the missile, Hawke knew that it was the engine warming up and heating the air around it.

"Ten ... nine ... eight ... two ... one ... ignition!"

Immediately, a yellowish flame emerged from the tail of the missile, faint at first, but after five seconds it became powerful, and the huge recoil propelled the rocket to begin its slow ascent.

Hawke had built the missile without a booster and with the same single-stage rocket technology, not the multi-stage rocket technology used on Earth. This is Titan, where gravity is much lower than on Earth, and a single-stage rocket can provide more than enough power.

The rocket rose slowly, gaining speed, and after thirty seconds, it had disappeared from the detectors of Base Two. Hawke then turned his attention to receiving the satellite signals.

The twelve satellites flying through space would take over from Wind God One and navigate the intercontinental missile.

After reaching an altitude of a dozen kilometres, the missile turned and began to follow the direction of Titan's rotation.

Neither ICBMs nor rockets are launched vertically upwards, but follow the direction of the star's rotation in a diagonal line into space, as this saves a lot of fuel by using the speed of the star's rotation.

The speed of the missile quickly increased to 2.2 kilometres per second, and after 50 seconds of flight, it was outside Titan's atmosphere.

Here, one hundred and thirteen kilometres from Titan, it has left Titan's atmosphere. From here, Titan looks like a huge orb, orbiting slowly through space. Behind it is the huge planet Saturn, with its beautiful rings encircling it in splendour.

Hawke really wouldn't have wanted to spoil such a beautiful scene if it wasn't for the preservation of Base Three. The intercontinental missile, the most powerful weapon of mass destruction that mankind had developed so far in its evolution.

"Begin separation." Hawke gave a new order through the nearest War God III satellite to this missile.

Two metres from the rocket's warhead, a sudden burst of fire erupted, a large cloud of smoke erupted, and the missile's body immediately broke in two, one continuing to accelerate towards space, while the second half lost the momentum to continue accelerating and began falling towards Titan.

This speed had not yet reached Titan's first cosmic speed, so it would not have been able to orbit Titan, but would have fallen and then, in the process of rubbing against the atmosphere, destroyed itself.

The warhead continues to accelerate for five seconds before beginning its glide through space. This distance was travelled entirely by inertia. Hawke's remote control of the Battlestar Galactica satellite was closely monitoring the warhead.

The warhead was created by Hawke in the shape of a cone. This shape helped to increase the accuracy and speed of entry into the atmosphere, for maximum impact.

The base of the cone has a number of small holes. At this moment, in these holes, a pale blue flame is constantly emitting, which passes in a flash. This was Hawke manipulating the miniature motors and making some attitude adjustments to the warhead.

Gradually, the rocket warhead turned into one with the bottom pointing upwards and the head facing Titan.

The inertial flight, which lasted a total of three minutes. It had reached its intended position.

Hawke gave the order.

"Initiate re-entry procedures!"

This information was transmitted via satellite to the controller above the warhead. Immediately, at the end of the warhead's conical shape, the engines started to kick in and the huge recoil began to propel the rocket's egghead into a high-speed spin. It began a rapid descent.

Target, Lake Two!

Here, at a vertical altitude of less than a hundred kilometres from Lake Two, the warhead would only take a minute or so to reach its target, and a brutal nuclear strike would follow.

The warhead spun at high speed and plunged straight into the atmosphere. Immediately, the warhead turned red under the tremendous friction, representing a heat of at least a thousand degrees Celsius. Its tail brought out a long white plume of smoke, and the top impacted the air with a loud whistle.

From the ground, it looked like a meteor in the middle of a cosmic odyssey.

This meteor, would bring destruction to all life in Lake Two.

If it were a war on Earth, when launching an intercontinental missile, a large number of dummy warheads, dummy targets, would be launched at this stage to prevent interception. But on Titan there would be no need to do that. Hawke just didn't believe that anyone would intercept his own missiles here.

The nuclear warheads were closing in fast on their targets.

"Fifty kilometres ... twenty kilometres ... one kilometre ... five hundred meters... ...two hundred meters ... detonate!"

Hawke gave the detonation order.

Immediately, inside the warhead, an incredible series of atomic reactions began to unleash.

The first to be detonated was the atomic bomb. In its detonator, a massive amount of ** was detonated, and then the high temperature and pressure environment caused by the ** explosion detonated the atomic bomb.

Countless neutrons were emitted and bombarded towards the uranium atoms in the bomb. The uranium atoms began to fission, and in the process of fissioning, new neutrons were released and began bombarding the remaining uranium atoms. Instantly, a tremendous amount of energy exploded.

** The atomic bomb was detonated, and the atomic bomb detonated the hydrogen bomb!

The energy of the atomic explosion heated the fusion material in the centre of the warhead to a temperature of tens of millions of degrees. In such a high temperature and pressure environment, deuterium and tritium fuse into helium, while a significant part of the mass is converted into energy, and according to the mass-energy formula e=mc^2, the energy exploded was immense.

Ten metres above Lake 2, the hydrogen bomb exploded.

Standing above lake number two, one can see such an incredible phenomenon.

There was a meteor falling from the sky! It trailed a long tail with a glorious glow. In the dim Titan atmosphere, this meteor was very conspicuous. It descended straight down towards Lake Two and exploded a moment before it touched it.

There was an endless explosion of light and heat, a huge mushroom cloud rising into the air, hundreds of millions of degrees of heat instantly vaporising the endless liquid methane, endless white mist, endless flashes of light, endless heat, endless rays.

The surface of the lake lifted up in this instant, a monstrous wave! Then, the moment this huge wave flew into mid-air, it was evaporated without a trace before it had time to fall. The high temperature and pressure created a huge difference in air pressure, and in an instant, huge winds rose out of thin air, carrying huge amounts of heat energy and sweeping in all directions. Its winds were stronger than the most powerful typhoon.

At Base No. 3, the robots stared blankly into the distance at this great power that originally belonged only to heaven and earth.

This one hydrogen bomb had heated the air within a forty kilometre radius, raising it by at least twenty degrees.

The temperature here had temporarily risen to minus one hundred and forty degrees.

One hundred and forty degrees below zero is an unacceptably low temperature for humans, but for these black worms, one hundred and forty degrees below zero represents the liquid methane in their bodies being heated to boiling, representing their bodies being burst by the boiling methane, representing their death.

The blow, which is all-encompassing, has no dead ends.

The endless sea of insects that covered the distance from Lake Two to Base Three, all died in that instant.

The huge Lake Two was vaporised of all its liquid methane by this large yield hydrogen bomb, turning it into an empty crater. All the black bugs hidden in it, no doubt, died.

A single hydrogen bomb, exterminating the black bugs, all of them.