Back up in orbit and onboard the cruiser V-190 that was currently undergoing repairs, Mac was busy inspecting what was left of the 100 metre long projectile that was now buried in its stern side.
"Hmm."
Mac had seen a lot of different long rod penetrators in his time (no not that kind, get your mind out of the gutter) and this one was very different from the rest.
Having entered V-190's stern side about a third way down from the front of the ship, the projectile had cut through the whipple shield, straight through a hangar and an unfortunate heavy dropship before making its way through 2 bulkheads where it had further fragmented, and now finally the largest remaining fragment laid half buried in a class 4 material fabricator.
"Why would you use pure tungsten anyway?"
Scratching his head as he had an autistic staring contest with the 40 meter long fragment, Mac noted the slightly strange choice of pure metal, as well as the strange runes engraved all over.
(There's no way this is just cultural… So it must be some sort of 'magic'.)
Magic, this was Mac's current achilles heel. Even if he retreated from the surface this second and started going all in on figuring it out, Mac was bad enough of a scientist that he wouldn't crack it without additional resources from home, or personal, but getting her motivated would be an issue.
"I need a subject matter expert to deal with this…"
If he wasn't going to be able to solve this issue alone, Mac figured he needed to delegate this issue. The issue is, Mac was worse at making friends than researching.
"There's nothing to it, I guess… Catalogue this thing, put in cold stowage and keep watch of it."
Blip.
"If it as much as wiggles, then nuke it."
[ORDERS RECEIVED, TRANSFERRING SHARDS OF FOREIGN MUNITION TO COLD STOWAGE IN GRAVEYARD ORBIT #21.]
Leaving that slightly irritating conundrum behind, Mac returned to the bridge of the cruiser V-190 and sank down in the captain's chair thinking about his current situation.
(Any other satellites like the one I vaporised?)
Blip.
(That's great… Or not, I would've loved to study one of those things and figure out blind angles and limitations…)
Blip.
(Yeah I know, shut up for a moment…)
More than ever, Mac felt like he was walking into a situation where he didn't have all angles covered, asking to get shot.
(I guess there's only one way to deal with this for now, unfortunate as it is.)
As much as he hated to admit it, Mac was in a situation now where there were only compromises available, not solutions. Every compromise had several drawbacks, but one appeared to be almost good enough to put into action.
(But how do I expose enough of a surface to catch enough flies… Oh yeah, that'll work. The question is if they'll allow me to do that.)
Circling around a particular compromise he had only thought of after talking with Edda Victoria, Mac figured he couldn't get further with simulation alone and chose to act.
"Back to the surface then, oh and bring a detachment of Lynx's down to the lighthouse, I might need them… Respond please."
Blip~
"That's more like it~"
-
(I wonder what's going to happen today?)
Waking up at first light, Tia went about her morning in a relaxed manner. Although she had been hurriedly dismissed yesterday for some unknown reason, the extra pay she had received for just negotiating with the Victoria family made Tia hum with joy. Boundless wealth she had already accumulated aside, Tia was a simple creature, and obtaining wealth was one of her joys. Eating breakfast together with her dad, Hanna and her little sister Paige, Tia believed the coming day would be a good one, so of course that's when Mac arrived.
"Morning."
"Good morning Mac, what can we do for you today?"
Greeting Mac as he stepped foot into his home, Hank genuinely felt happy seeing him again, his daughter however felt a bit of apprehension as she had to talk him away from a lot of bad ideas.
"I'm here to talk a bit with Tia, and Hanna too, but it can wait until after breakfast. I'll be out back."
Letting the family have their peace for the moment, Mac got busy with fleet movements and repair orders until Hanna and Tia joined him.
"What do you have for us, boss?"
While Hanna expected to be of use to Mac with her physical aptitudes, Mac was here this time for her knowledge.
"Have you done any normal adventurer work before?"
"... Yeah, I have. But that was a long time ago."
Bitter memories surfaced as Hanna thought back to those young and naive days, before the choices she was forced to make and getting blacklisted from the guild just for defending herself.
"And Tia, your experience with the guild is?...-"
"I really fucking hate adventurers, and the entire idea of the guild too… And I am not the only merchant who shares this opinion."
"-... As expected."
Just thinking back to the time a group of adventurers left her for dead made Tia's mood sour, leading to Mac's point.
"What do you girls think the success rate for merchant escorts are? Any rough estimate will be fine."
Faced with quite an unexpected question, Hanna remembered back to her early days in the adventurer's guild, and Tia likewise thought back to her time as a solo peddler.
"Around 90%? It really depends on the area and route."
"Yeah, I agree with Hanna, it is around that rate of success. Success as in you arrive where you need to, in a somewhat good time with all of your goods… A lot of the time you get swarmed by monsters you sacrifice some or all of the goods you transport to escape unharmed."
Agreeing with Hanna, Tia shared her experience as she wondered where Mac was going with all this.
"Then what about the time it takes to get from city to city?"
"That really depends on the route, and the condition of the roads too… But 20 kilometers an hour is the absolute maximum speed."
Getting a nod from Tia, Hanna also started to wonder where Mac was going with all this.
"Then what if another option appeared? One where the merchant's goods always arrived fast, safe and intact… All for 90% of the normal cost of an adventurer escort?"
"... Are you going to start flying merchant's goods around?"
"Who said anything about flying?"
The next week suddenly got busy for Tia, but instead of dealing with trade she was in meetings with nobles and influential merchants, carrying out the will of her boss and presenting a very attractive alternative which drew immediate interest. Before she knew it, it was time for a practical demonstration.
"Are you sure this is okay?"
"Yeah, I'm allowing it, and as the matriarch of this Victoria family I command this dukedom. When it comes down to it there's really nothing the kingdom at large can do about it."
Standing next to the matriarch of the Victoria family, Veronica, Mac found himself ready to demonstrate his toys.
"My husband is the only one who could raise some concerns, but just like I don't interfere in his politicking, he doesn't interfere in my home rule. Besides, things have already leaked, so if there was any pushback to this we would see it already."
Given how many parties Veronica herself had talked with over the past few days, let alone the ones Mac had contacted, she expected the story to leak, and it had, drawing uninvited spectators along with the VIP clientele that Mac (mostly Tia) had attracted.
"I look forward to what kind of dividends this venture will bring. Take it away."
On the surface Veronica acted as a major investor for this venture, but in reality Mac was just greasing her hand to operate within the Victoria dukedom.
(It's not like money is the reason for this little venture.)
With eyes gathering on him, Mac took to his feet with the backdrop of an open field usually used by soldiers to train large scale formations.
"Welcome to this little event. My name is Mac, and I've traveled across an ocean of stars to be here."
Drawing attention to himself with that self introduction, Mac felt the attention shift as he put on his best approximation of a smile.
"I've invited you all here today to bear witness to the start of official cooperation between me and the Victoria dukedom. With permission from the Victoria matriarch I will soon start operating goods and personal transport within the Victoria dukedom, this will be the birth of RED transport service."
As Mac spoke a heavy dropship broke cloudcover behind him without making a sound. The heavy dropship with 4 instead of 2 tilting engines had an even larger cargo capacity than its light dropship counterpart, but instead of a personal compartment, this dropship carried a massive ground vehicle underneath it.
"I am sure you've all noticed the increase in monster activity across the kingdom over this recent week, and I am here to offer a solution to that problem."
Hovering about 10 meters above the ground just behind Mac, the heavy dropship released its payload and returned to orbit and the Lynx armoured transport landed with a thud, aided by its attitude control rocket thrusters.
"This is a Lynx transport, it can carry up to 20 tons of goods in a 20 meter cubed interior compartment and is able to travel at 250 km/h between all major cities within the dukedom. 2096 of them will be available from tomorrow onwards for the previously discussed prices of 1 silver per ton of cargo, or 10 copper per person."
Seeing he at least had their attention, Mac was about to continue when he received his first comment.
"I thought this was a demonstration, don't go spouting numbers without any proof."
(As expected it's Simmons speaking up.)
Of all the people he and Tia had talked with over the past few days, the young upstart Simmons was one of the people he had expected to take offense at the phase of his demonstration.
Simmons was one of the young upstart merchants who saw immense opportunity at the offer Mac was presenting, thus he was particularly sensitive to any deviation from what was promised, and he wasn't naïvely just taking Mac's words for it.
"Of course a demonstration is warranted, that's why I called all of you here, and why I already deployed a few more Lynx transports."
Stepping aside, Mac drew attention to the dust cloud rapidly approaching.
"Wha!-"
"Given the affordance this open terrain allows for, that group is able to reach top speed, though the ground is a bit soft, so braking is slightly compromised."
Rapidly approaching Mac and the other merchants and nobles, the group of 5 Lynx transports made the ground rumble and as they continued getting closer with no signs of slowing down some of the audience members started getting worried.
"Calm down, each Lynx has a synthetic brain of its own, it calculates movement orders, scans the terrain, simulates movements and then executes commands flawlessly. All at top all in real time and without command lag."
As Mac continued talking the group continued charging straight at his back, only starting to break at the very last second. Still, as Mac mentioned the soft terrain somewhat compromised braking power, and if not for the assistance of built in RCS thrusters at least 2 of the Lynx transports would've flipped over and created a long red stain.
"How's that for speed?"
Coming to a complete stop only a hair's breadth away from the parked Lynx transport, the 5 others let out a synchronised sensor growl to gather more information about soil data as their powerplants hummed with energy.
"T-then what about protection? Something moving that fast through the badlands is bound to attract attention, be it monsters or otherwise."
On that point Mac had to agree with Simmons, as the Lynx transports moved they created a cloud of dust that could be seen from some ways off, furthermore they were far from silent or graceful.
"Lynx 1-1, Lynx 1-2; Simulate target."
At Mac's command the addressed Lynx transports let out another sensor growl as they both launched surveillance and target drones to watch the surroundings and acquire target data.
"Range 22, bearing 012. Single burst."
Receiving the command with another sensor growl, the pair of Lynx transports revealed their teeth as a 14.5mm gun turret popped up from their roofs and started shooting at their imaginary target.
"Sustain and encircle; annihilate contact."
Starting to move again with a roar, the pair of Lynx transports started circling their imaginary targets as their stabilised gun turrets continued frying at the particularly offensive piece of dirt in their scopes.
"Is that a good enough demonstration? Okay, then let's move onto payload examples."