It finally worked! I had been working on this for a long time, but only now did it start to seem like more than a pipe dream. After the Breen attack, everyone on Chu'thul was more eager to host a facility that would be brimming with weapons capable of tearing a hunk out of a Breen cruiser, and that is exactly what I offered them, along with a business that would allow the colonists themselves to buy and assemble refurbished weapons, both ship scale and personal. Still, dropping scrap from orbit, accurately, and making sure it has a soft enough landing as to neither destroy the scrap nor kick up a dangerously large dust cloud took some work, a lot of power, and pretty much all the tractor emitters and magnetic inductors I had to create the net/slingshot. Smaller test pieces had been caught successfully, but this was different. Suddenly, a meteor blazed bright enough to be seen by daylight. It was an aging D4, or at least part of it. The nose had been blown off, the nacelles had long since been ripped off and sold. All that remained was a big, gutted, duranium shell with over a century of wear and tear, probably worth less than the metal it would smelt into, but perfect for my purposes.
"engage tractor net! Full power to mag cushioning!"
The crew of the Fortune knew their stuff. They had been salvaging with me for years, and they were a good team. If there was a problem, it would be the aging parts. Still, I would need a whole new staff unless I wanted to leave the Fortune here, and that was no kind of long term solution.
As the meteor came roaring in, the tractor beams locked onto it, working to slow it, the glow on the front of the hull dimming as it is slowed, a perfect cat... *boom*
Boom, boom, three of the twelve generators blew out as the mag cushion engaged, the D4 hulk veering slightly, embedding itself at a 45 degree angle, embedded too far into the ground to be easily dislodged.
"at least it's lodged in sturdy", I thought, as I inspected the hulk, "and structurally intact. It will do"
... and so it was that the first wall of Alyss' scrap, repairs, and refurbished parts emporium, AKA Alyss' scrap wonderland, was laid.
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