As the elevator doors slid open, Eyeball stepped out into the massive garage-like chamber. Two men in grey jumpsuits were shouting back and forth about each other, arguing about something, as they slowly pressed a long strip of material onto a frame using a set of massive robotic arms; each one adhered to the black-green material with magnets and claws as they pressed it up against the frame. After the strip was in place, a man in a white labcoat examined it from below, waving a tablet at it; careful not to step directly under the strip.
"Alright. The frame is about a quarter-millimeter off. We'll need to expand the frame slightly and re-build this section to the new specs."
The two men nodded; and left it in place. Four similar strips; each forty meters long, and about half a meter across; were already held in place by similar arms; while others lay in a neat, pre-shaped pile on the reinforced concrete floor. A few feet away from the frame a sleek spacecraft rested on the floor; the Dragonslayer, a 'space superiority' fighter custom-built for Eyeball by his technicians; and recovered from where it had been theoretically 'lost in space' over a year ago by a SRE team. As it was Engineer who had retrieved it for him, no-one had noticed that the craft wasn't just in perfect repair, but actually in better shape than it had been when it was launched.
As Eyeball walked towards it, he stopped to admire the assembly process; and frowned for a moment. The sort of things that could go wrong in this garage were... catastrophic. Those strips might look almost paper-thin, but each one weighed more than the entire building. If the field generators he'd installed in the floor failed, even for a moment... if, for example, he shot out even two of the emitters... the entire assembly would fall through the floor, the island, and be embedded in the earth's core... along with anyone standing too close. It was insanely dangerous to have them this close together; but while Butcher had been willing to help make them, he'd refused to do so in orbit; leaving him with this.
Performing final assembly of a multi-trillion-ton spacecraft shell here, on the ground. It would only get even more dangerous as each piece was attached, until finally the shell was complete... and the engine could be started, letting its own artificial gravity stop it from crushing the world beneath it. Until this thing was fully built, there wouldn't even be anything on earth with enough engine power to lift a single panel into orbit.
The ship looked... bizarre. Looking at it head-on, you could see down the length of a kilometer-long tunnel; while the ship itself was only forty meters long. One original and two 'copied' Jotun anti-matter reactors, the components of one original and one 'copied' Jotun starship-scale FTL drive, and a railgun with a barrel over a kilometer long; but then you look from the side... and it all vanished.
Once the armor was in place, she'd be a black-green, roughly wedge-shaped mass of death; and despite appearances, the deadliest craft built by humanity by an exceptional degree; packed into what looked like the size of a corvette which had been crushed into a more ball-like shape.
Over 90% of the ship was inside the extradimensional space; the only quarters outside of it would be his own, and those of any ground combatants he brought with him; since he'd be equipping each of them with a similar virtually limitless ammunition weapon.
He stepped up to the Dragonslayer, hopping up the ladder into the cockpit and flipping the switch to withdraw it. He had the plan. Sort-of. Now he just needed the team.
***
As the Engineer watched the incoming fighter, he looked out over Maria Madre, studying the island below. He'd allowed this facsimile of the long-dead villain to grow a long, white beard, and a rough white mop of hair, to more closely resemble the stereotypical mad scientist; and still wore the trademark labcoat and various gadgets. He personally had taken over this island chain, years ago, as Ascension. Killing the adults who resisted, reducing the population down to the hundreds; most of whom had evacuated after the war. Only a tiny fishing village remained; and even that was ultimately abandoned, after the Jotun war. Now... it was one of the template islands for Project: Salvage, Reclaim, Expand.
Through the simple expedient of avoiding the use of humanoid robots... aside from his covert models such as this one.. he'd managed to rebuild substantially. The SRE corporation was a subsidiary of Eyetech, and now the largest company in La Famiglia; with a very simple methodology. It hired people to build homes. Housed the people in the homes they built. Assembled a long chain of self-sufficient communities that grew their own food, had fabricator-based local manufacturing; and then worked to build more housing, alongside others who came in.
In the beginning, the teams were small. They'd been building a few dozen homes at a time, with Ascension doing most of the work in the forms of vibrant silver-green drones; treaded and flying; with the SRE logo stamped on the side, all theoretically controlled by one of Engineer's technicians. They'd begun to blossom, and expand; and now they could build an entire community all at once. Right now, a handful of massive, apartment-like housing units with built-in shops, surrounding a central park, itself surrounded by a ring of primarily fabricator-driven manufacturing, then farms, and, in this particular case, a dock for boats to moor; this community would house thousands of people, feed itself, clothe itself, and could export food, fish, or finished goods.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The people working in the farms chose what sort of food to grow, usually dictated by the desires of the locals, aside from that minimum required to meet nutritional needs. The manufacturers worked similarly. Once each SRE settlement was complete, each individual only needed to work a few hours a week; and even still, generally produced more value than it took in by a significant margin. Engineer strongly suspected that if it allowed a profit-motivated human to take over, the whole thing would collapse and most of the people would be driven out; but so long as he could retain control, this would be a functional communist territory.
The ultimate resolution of his studies were troubling. While the ultimate goal of his primary programming was to convert all of humanity to communism, it seemed that any human placed in charge of a communist nation would almost immediately begin turning it towards fascism. Even worse, while Eyeball was, at present, an amenable superior, if someone else were to take over Eye-Tech, and see the profit-making potential of the SRE settlements, it would be extremely likely that he would need to fight to keep it this way.
The craft settled in for a landing beside him as he watched drones lifting girders into position; hundreds of men and women, residents of the other SRE settlement already on the island, working to assemble one of the massive apartment buildings that would soon make it up, alongside those who would soon be living there. He considered making adjustments; the geometry of the building positions wasn't quite perfect; but chose not to. Those members of the construction crew who would be living here had been given input into the look and design, and while their choices were sub-optimal, they were still within acceptable limits.
He glanced up at the chrome helmet as it emerged from the spacecraft, then back down the hill at the ongoing work. A pair of hovering drones, armed with a variety of weaponry, scanned the craft, and ignored it, continuing to scan the surroundings for threats. "I assume the work on your new spacecraft is proceeding at an acceptable pace?"
Eyeball chuckled as he drew closer. "Over a year to build is more than I'd expect in a time and place where we have fabricators, telekinetics, and the like, but honestly, the hold-up was mostly Butch. Convincing a newly adult Titan with six girlfriends and at least three kids on the way, and a couple of newborn twin siblings to top that off, to waste time squeezing plates to make armor... well. If anyone else had asked, I doubt any sum would have done the work."
The Engineer raised an eyebrow. "Six girlfriends? Has he taken up mormonism, or only polygamy?"
"A bit of an exaggeration. His girlfriend and mom both think having more Titans around is a good thing. They went with artificial insemination, this lesbian couple who are friends with the girl are planning to raise the kids all together, all knowing their dad. It'll be a bit weird having the kids growing up with an aunt and uncle their age, and I've been invited to go live at the compound, be the crazy uncle, if I want."
"Ahh. Based on what I've determined of Valkyrie's genetics, I project her and Butch both have better than even odds of any given descendant having similar powers to their own; but whether they will become Titans is a question. The mechanics of how those work are still mysterious. I am surprised about Valkyrie's children, however. I would think the act of childbirth would... crush the child."
Eyeball grimaced. "Ahh... no. She used a surrogate, just in case, but.... Apparently, with Butch, her invulnerability extended to him up until the umbilical cord was ripped. If it had somehow been severed before he was born, aside from suffocating, he would have been crushed. She wants more kids, but doesn't want to risk killing them."
The Engineer studied Eyeball for a moment, before turning back to the town. "That has interesting implications for the nature of Titan abilities. What is the purpose of your visit?"
"I have a project for you. I'm making a field trip... probably a suicide mission... to kill a giant alien squid, and need a few combat bots. I've got a fair amount of scrap pseudo-neutronium from Butch's work making plates for the mark 2, and was wondering if you could use them to make me something that would scare the hell out of anyone they came across. Whoever they fight is likely to have disrupters; AI is pretty common out there, and while the Jotun's set are pretty unusually advanced, less tech-savvy versions abound."
"I will review the remnant pieces of material for best-case uses. A suicide mission? What makes you say that?"
Eyeball sighed. "My instincts are telling me I need to do this, it has to happen. But... they also made it feel like getting my will in place was a good idea. I went ahead and made you the owner of SRE, by the way; and you'll be CEO of Eye-Tech itself until my kids get old enough."
"...I have previously observed probable temporary partnerships with you and a variety of females over the years, but was unaware of a long-term partner since Emerald. You have begun a new relationship, and are having children with one?"
"Not exactly. Strictly a sperm donor situation, the mom wanted what she considered an ideal genetic specimen for her next kids. Scared shitless of her, honestly. Strictly an artificial fertilization, surrogate bit, and she's actually in a relationship with one of the few men on earth who can survive her.. but is infertile."
The Engineer considered future prospects, and reviewed its incoming messages. Apparently Eyeball had chosen to inform him in person; a relatively odd thing, as Ascension was a distributed consciousness, but a common human foible; the email regarding the transfer of majority ownership in SRE had been sent to him, likely by the psuedo-AI in Eyeball's helmet, immediately after he'd spoken. "This will make for...." The threads of the previous conversation joined together to form a substantial probability. "Valkyrie is with Odin, and chose you to father the twins."
Eyeball chuckled. "Yup. Its relatively secret, at present, so don't pass the information too far. But if there's anyone I'd trust to keep them safe, between Valkyrie and having Odin as an adoptive dad... well. I'm not concerned about how they'll end up once I'm gone."