"Engineering Corps, ready your heavy equipment. Once this briefing concludes, the Gateway opens. The first wave of three thousand will deploy with me."
Ethan's voice was as cold as the steel surrounding them. "Our priority upon planet-fall is the establishment of Entity Harvesting Arrays and fully automated resource sectors. History teaches that logistics win wars. We will transform that world into an impregnable, self-sustaining strategic rear."
He turned to the screen, his eyes burning with a predatory focus as he pointed to the shifting tide of the undead.
"Only once our foundation is set—once our specialized Block-Ordnance is in the hands of our men—will the Federation Vanguard descend. That will be the hour of the Great Harvest."
He snapped a crisp, sharp salute. "The future of the Federation is in your hands. Move out!"
"SIR, YES SIR!"
The roar of three thousand throats shook the foundations of the hall, the vibration humming through the floorboards. The long-dormant machine of the state had finally awakened, its engine a thunderous growl that echoed into the deep.
The mobilization didn't end with the meeting; it was merely the spark. Thousands of experts swarmed out of the hall like hungry wolves, clutching the data Ethan had provided. They debated in the corridors, over coffee in the mess hall, and even in the transit lifts.
Ethan watched them go, a sense of relief washing over him. Thank god I cataloged the Kinetic Logic blueprints and biological profiles before I got here. These people are obsessed. If I hadn't come prepared, they would have picked my brain clean in an hour.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the Tactical Staff Wing was reaching a boiling point. Senior officers huddled around a holographic display of an Enderman's biological profile, their eyes wide.
"Teleportation? It ignores physical terrain? And the jump distance is variable?" One colonel slammed his fist onto the table. "Marcus, imagine this thing behind the glass of a heavy anti-material sniper rifle."
The veteran officer beside him adjusted his spectacles, his voice hushed with awe. "He wouldn't need a nest. He wouldn't need a spotter. He fires a .50 caliber round, then instantly blinks five hundred meters to a new vector. The enemy won't even see the muzzle flash before the next round is coming from behind them."
"That's not a sniper," the colonel whispered. "That's a ghost. A reaper."
In another sector, the heavy assault specialists were staring at the Iron Golem schematics, questioning their very understanding of physics.
"Three meters tall, two meters wide... ten tons of high-purity iron?" An officer gestured wildly. "It has no pain receptors. It has the hydraulic strength of a forging press. If this thing charges at fifty miles per hour..."
"It's not a soldier," his peer replied. "It's a sentient main battle tank with arms. It'll walk through light armor like it's made of wet paper."
Deep on the third subterranean level, Ethan and General Marcus stood before a football-field-sized chamber. Three thousand specialized hibernation pods sat in silent, glowing rows.
"Commander." A project lead, his eyes bloodshot and a hard hat tucked under his arm, ran up and saluted. "The first wave of Combat Engineers is prepped. Three thousand men. We've broken down your blueprints for the Iron Golem forges and the High-Efficiency Timber Sectors into thirty task forces."
He paused, looking a bit perplexed. "The logic is... unconventional. Using 'scare mechanics' to manifest Iron Golems out of thin air violates every law of conservation we know. But the men have the schematics memorized."
"Good," Ethan said. "They don't need to understand the physics of Sector Persistence or Hostility Vectors. They just need to place the blocks exactly as the blueprints dictate. Think of it as a high-stakes LEGO assembly."
He turned to Marcus. "Uncle Marcus, let's begin. This phase is about infrastructure, not blood. Traditional scaffolding is too slow for what we need. That's why I'm assigning all three thousand engineers to Endermen 'shells'."
"Endermen?" Marcus raised an eyebrow. "The lanky ones?"
"Exactly. They can teleport, they have an incredible reach, and they can manipulate blocks directly with their hands. An Enderman construction crew is ten times more efficient than a human one."
Ethan picked up the comms-mic, his voice echoing through the hibernation hall.
"Attention. Your consciousness is about to be bridged into the Astra Dimension. You will be inhabiting Endermen. Be advised: the initial teleportation jump may cause severe vertigo. Adapt quickly. Connecting now."
Buzz.
The control room threw the master switch. Three thousand lights flickered from standby red to active green. A massive surge of neural data spiked through the base's transmission tower, piercing the veil of reality and pouring into the blocky world.
Ethan's consciousness descended first. He hovered over a vast, silent plain. Suddenly, the air fractured. Purple particle storms began to swirl across the grass.
Vwoop. Vwoop. Vwoop.
The sound of space tearing echoed through the valley. Slender, pitch-black silhouettes flickered into existence. They stood three meters tall, their limbs impossibly long, their glowing purple eyes shimmering in the digital sunlight. Within seconds, an army of three thousand Endermen stood in perfect formation across the plain.
"Whoa... why is my FOV so high?"
"Look at my legs. I'm a giant."
"Is this the other world? Everything is... cubes?"
The radio channel exploded into a chaotic mess of soldier chatter.
"Silence," Ethan's voice boomed directly into their minds. "Test your innate abilities. Focus on the mountain peak ahead. Visualize the space, and jump."
Swish!
A daring engineer focused his intent. In a cloud of purple sparks, he vanished from the grass and reappeared instantly on a jagged ledge a hundred meters above.
"Incredible!" he shouted over the link. "No more climbing! I'm already at the top!"
Suddenly, the mountainside was alive with flickering purple light. Three thousand Endermen blinks moved like lightning between the plains, the canopy of the forests, and the peaks. Some were even blinking into the sky to test the thrill of freefall, only to teleport safely to the ground a split second before impact.
"Reporting, Commander!" an excited voice crackled through. "Alpha Company is ready to break ground!"
What would you like Ethan to build first—the massive Iron Golem Forge or the automated food sectors?