Meteorite Storm

Early in their history the Toba polluted their home world, Quantum Prime, during their industrial revolution. Smoke, grit, and pollution choked the air, and rivers and streams ran thick with industrial waste… but with increasing technology and increasing wealth, the Toba moved from dirty coal to much cleaner fission power, and then eventually more advanced supplies of energy. Likewise, they moved from dumping chemical waste into streams to neutralizing and processing it. Finally, they moved from strip mining to lower impact forms of resource extraction…and then eventually moved mining off planet. For centuries now the Toba have gotten their metals and other bulk materials by mining the moons and asteroids of the Aluza system. Sometimes all the minerals they want are conveniently located on one asteroid, but other times the deposits are scattered across many small asteroids (some as small as baseballs.) Because it’s easier to bring a lot of asteroids to one location than to send miners out on a grand tour of a dozen locations, the Toba developed grappler field technology, to bring the exotic elements to mining ships.

The Meteorite Storm weapon is a miniaturized version of this time-tested Toba mining technology. Instead of reaching out across thousands of miles to draw in large asteroids, the pocket-sized version of the grappler field generator draws in dozens of small fist-sized meteors …but instead of slowing them down for convenient collection, it lights up the sky with blazing colors, distracting the dogs like fireworks.