"Hmm."
Glancing at the handmade metal mirror, Mac submerged it in water again and scrubbed before drying it off, making sure the last traces of blood were gone from it. Standing back up from the pond when he was sure Tia's mirror was clean, Mac stood surrounded by mat black automatons, Mac's obedient replacement for an army of people with morals. These menial soldiers were covered in blood, with their hands particularly soiled as Mac had taken the opportunity to extract additional information from the adventures.
Mac currently found himself inside the borders of a constitutional monarchy called Roseland, it was ruled by a monarch, a queen currently, and a small concentration of politically powerful families referred to as nobles. Mac figured these were the people in control of restricting the trade of certain goods, as Tia had talked about, so to intertwine himself in the kingdom's trade he would need to cosy up to, blackmail or replace one of those noble houses.
(For now I'll just establish myself with coal, but I ought to look into fabrication of luxury goods like spices, alcohol, jewelry and gemstones for backroom dealings…)
Listing the metal mirror out of the water, Mac blew on it for a bit to get the water off, that's when he noticed yet more blood stuck in the corners and notches of the fine metalwork, so he submerged it yet again.
There was also the question of military power he needed to prepare in case things went sideways, but estimating anything appropriate was made drastically harder due to the presence of 'magic'.
As he had learned from his (unwilling) informants just now was that most people in this world could use magic to create strange phenomena like shooting fireballs or strengthening their bodies to an absurd degree. Of course, there was a range of differences in abilities, some people could level a town by themselves, but most could only light a candle.
(It's like 1 in some unknown number of people are carrying around a hand grenade with no way for me to detect it… I guess I need to work on that.)
Bringing the mirror up from the water, Mac started inspecting it again.
"Clean as a whistle, now for the next issue."
Mac had committed to selling coal together with Tia, and with that came the issue of what kind of specific product he would produce.
(Now I just need to figure out how to skin this problem… heh. Skin.)
While there were potentially a million different ways to print coal to sell, Mac needed something that was fast, with high yields and didn't contain any insanely toxic byproducts when burned.
Stepping onto his dropship still deep in through, Mac's machine soldiers quietly followed him as the dropship left for orbit without making a sound. Finally settled on a series of designs when he reached low orbit, Mac quietly parsed through exobytes more data than his detachment of drones could ever handle. With designs done, multiple orbital assets started rapidly prototyping.
The biological fabricator plants or 'farms' started sequencing RNA and DNA for enzymes, bacteria and fungi while microgravity 3d fabrication plants the sizes of buildings started building Mac's design one molecule at a time. By the time Mac had returned to the cruiser Just Call Home, 4 candidate designs that were hybrids between biochemical and inorganic processes were starting final limited scale production as surveillance assets started working on covert insertion routes that would work with heavy landing craft.
(Protective 14 should be starting stellar egress about now, so I can pick up the samples and make it to my new business partner in a little over 2 hours.)
Struck with the idea of meeting Tia 'face to face', Mac was suddenly a bit hesitant, he was very well aware that his somewhat off handed comments had already created a few issues, but he found it hard not being at least a little excited over his prospects.
After so many years things were finally looking up.
Still, the further he moved away from rock bottom, the more he had to lose.
Travel between the 3 major cruisers Mac had in orbit of his target planet and its star was no big deal thanks to recent breakthroughs that allowed even the light dropships to travel at high fractions of light speed. The only restriction on travel would be when the cruisers were refueling inside the system's star, but thankfully Protective 14 had just left the star's upper atmosphere when Mac's dropship arrived for docking.
Tia looked exactly like the day he had spotted her running for her life in the surveillance footage, large rabbit-like ears that blended in with her shoulder-length curly hair, bright green eyes, freckles and a slight tan that seemed to radiate her go-getter attitude.
"It's nice to finally meet you, I'm Mac."
Giving her new employer a look over, Tia found Mac to be a somewhat unassuming guy with straight cut blond hair and dull blue eyes; he reminded her of a veteran guard captain, even in spite of the fact that he was wearing strange dull black clothing.
(If anything he's a bit too pale, but perhaps he just doesn't tan?)
"Thank you again, for saving my life, I am Tia, daughter of Hank and independent pedler by trade."
It was only when Tia shook Mac's hand she noticed something strange, although it looked like normal skin, Mac's hands felt like some kind of strangely flexible metal. That's when it dawned on her, Mac's smile and dull eyes, it was like something was trying its best to appear human, despite no idea how.
"Okay then, just to confirm; do you want to work for me? If not I will still pay you for the half day's work you did at the previously discussed rate and return you to any town you wish, no strings attached."
"No that's fine, I would love to continue working for you Mac, in fact I'm looking forward to a long and fruitful business relationship."
While Tia still didn't trust Mac in the slightest, she didn't let it show in her attitude or expression. Although an inexperienced one, Tia was still a merchant and this deal Mac was presenting looked far too good to be true. Even as her beastkin senses screamed at her not to trust or even be near the thing in front of her, the allure of coin was too strong for Tia to ignore.
"In that case I've brought some prototypes with me, and would like your input."
Although Mac could see that Tia didn't really trust him for the moment he nevertheless went ahead and showed Tia the prototype 'coal' he had fabricated.
"... What is this?"
After being handed what she was told would be coal, Tia stared for a moment in confusion as she examined the strange dark rock with a sort of rubbery surface.
"Coal, the kind that doesn't poison people with the dust, it also burns cleaner and for longer."
"Okay… I won't be able to sell this anywhere."
Even squeezing the lump of 'coal' slightly, Tia found it slightly bouncy. There's absolutely no way anyone would ever buy this strange thing, the moment Tia would explain that it was coal they would laugh at her.
"Why not?"
"To trade in coal is an exercise in trust, a single piece of bad coal can kill someone or even blow up a furnace, and you're asking me to sell this thing from an unknown source proclaiming it to be the best thing since sliced bread? I'll get laughed out of town."
Realising her new employer had absolutely no idea how to conduct business, Tia's already diminishing trust in Mac and his competency were rapidly deteriorating.
"Then what about handing out free samples?"
"No one is willing to risk their furnace or own life for something like this."
"Then what about a demonstration of some kind? I can personally guarantee its effectiveness. Perhaps seeing it in action will change things?"
"How would you create a trial for a product like this? I understand trying on a dress or inspecting a sword before buying, but don't know how you would do something like that for coal without risking a furnace."
Seeing that Mac at least knew a bit of what he was talking about, Tia started showing a bit of interest as her ears lifted a bit to pay increased attention.
"... I guess there aren't that many ways to show the reliability of usage. Then I guess we have to rely on positive word or mouth from some sort of trustworthy individual… The real question is how much money I'll have to throw after such a person."
"You mean my dad, right? We already talked about this."
(What is this? It's like I'm talking to one of those monsters that can mimic speech.)
(correctly) assuming that Mac wasn't all there, Tia was starting to get annoyed.
"Right, sorry I've learned all the languages spoken in your world since we last talked, as well as absorbing the entirety of the world's map, so my synapses are a bit fried."
Taking a deep breath as he pushed the other matters he had on his mind to the back, Mac tried again.
"Right, so how much do you think I'll need to pay your dad for him to test and recommend this coal?"
Mac and Tia both knew she had the opportunity to fuck over Mac here, but while Tia estimated this was a judge of character for her, Mac really didn't give a fuck about how much she would possibly rip him off here. It didn't matter if it was 10 or 100.000 kilos of gold, he had already mined plenty.
"You would need to pay him enough to rebuild a furnace from scratch… So around 10 kilos of copper."
Deciding to play it straight, Tia chose an amount that was as close to the correct estimation she knew, though Mac didn't really pay as much attention to the amount as the material.
"Copper? You don't want anything more valuable like gold or platinum?"
"Gold is a restricted good, and I don't even know what the other one is. Copper is also good for my payment as well, it is easy to exchange for coin or other goods."
Although there were ways to offload gold, Tia had only heard rumors of the highly illegal black market, and she wasn't stupid enough to get into it when the amount of safe to trade copper was so enormous and mostly unrestricted.
"Okay then, I have your first payment ready."
As Mac spoke, an automaton walked in with 10 copper bars weighing a combined redacted fixed together in faux leather strips with straps for carrying.
"W-what is that?"
Reacting sharply not to her payment, but what was carrying it Tia took a few steps back. The mat black, clearly not alive figure stood at almost 2 metres tall, it had no face, and its arms and legs looked like a mechanical skeleton.
"That's an automaton, more precisely a human-type drone. It is what I use when I need to be at multiple places at the same time, fight a larger scale conflict or as you can see, just for carrying things. These human-types are also what will be protecting you from monsters and bandits when you travel around, either from a distance or up close."
"You don't have any subordinates that can do that? I really don't like that thing."
Taking a step further away from the drone as it took one towards her, Tia's ears were down flat as she prepared to run if the thing came any closer to her.
"Nope, I'm the only person sent to this world, so get used to dealing with me and these drones, or I'll find someone that will."
Mac was alone on this excursion, sure he had another coworker that he worked closely with and a mostly insane scientist he had picked up along the way, but they weren't around at the moment, so it was just him and drones for the moment. If Tia couldn't deal with that, Mac simply needed to find someone who could.
Faced with an ultimatum, Tia glanced back at the drone thing, then at the copper bars it was carrying like a purse, then back at the drone.
"... Fine, I'll endeavor to get used to them."
"Good, but make sure to tell me if you can't, I'll provide a severance package and drop you off wherever you need."
Extending his hand to urge Tia to follow him, Mac started walking towards the Protective 14's bridge hangar.
The hangar contained a bit of a mix of newly refitted vehicles with upgraded level 8 armour protection. There were some light dropships and a few heavy dropships and gunships of varying loadouts.
"The smaller ones are light dropships, crafts that go from this cruiser to the surface and back up again, the larger are heavy dropships that do the same but with more stuff at a time, they can also carry smaller vehicles and the coal you'll be selling."
"I see."
Glancing at the strange craft, Tia didn't really have anything to comment about what Mac was saying, everything since she had woken up had been so incomprehensibly alien that she just accepted what he was saying.
"Oh right."
Stopping in front of a light dropship that would take Tia and Mac down to the surface, Mac realised he had forgotten to give a safety presentation.
"Time for some ground rules. You think there's a possibility of encountering monsters the following day, I want you to report in and request backup, that backup will shadow you for the following day and if anything threatening comes close they'll engage."
"Engage?"
"Kill."
Dumbing down his speech, Mac made Tia realise she would now be protected way better than she was used to.
"If that backup starts taking damage, a RRF, or rapid response force will respond. A RRF is not one to use discretion or silent weaponry, they will arrive within 20 minutes, wipe out all opposition, recover damaged or disabled equipment then sanitise the area. Thirdly and most importantly is this."
Handing Tia a small necklace, Mac's voice turned cold.
"If everything fails and you're about to be overrun by monsters or are ambushed by bandits that somehow get past the protective detail, you press this from both sides twice and it will vibrate. Following that you will have 5 seconds to audibly cancel your request before a kill team will be summoned to your location."
"A K-kill team?"
"Yeah, arrival will be anywhere from 20 to 45 seconds, usually with precision artillery arriving first. The drones that will arrive as part of the kill team will not be fucking around, and as their name implies they will kill everything that isn't you within 500 metres with no regards for anything else. If you want anyone on location to survive then immediately get in contact with me. You can also contact me by speaking to this necklace, try it."
Examining the necklace, Tia found it to be made out of small interlocking metal rings, the centerpiece was a small, rectangle metal plate. Pressing the plate twice like Mac had instructed she felt it vibrate.
"Okay, I think I got it, let's go meet my dad?"
"That is the plan, after you.. Oh wait, before I forget."
It had completely slipped his mind, but Mac managed to remember he was still holding onto Tia's mirror, so he pulled it out and handed it to her.
"Thanks, I thought I lost this."
Genuinely surprised that Mac had made the effort to recover her mirror, Tia controlled her expression well so Mac didn't pick up on the fact that she could smell blood from it.