[OOC: I'm gonna go ahead and warn everyone that the following story is about the terraforming of a moon and that's it. No action, no adventure, just how the job gets done. A real snoozer. You have been warned.]
Ice and snow billowed across the moon's surface, obscuring everything past 20 meters. Not that there was much to see in the first place, since the entire moon was nothing but a ball of ice that had no purpose other than to monitor shipping through this normally blind region of space. The readings from far away were difficult to make out, due to the proximity of a nearby neutron star, casting out electromagnetic interference as it slowly began to burn off the last of it's heavy metals.
Stationed on the frozen moon was a small outpost that monitored hyperspace traffic through the region. Most if it was uninteresting, though the occasional pirate or smuggler traveled through here. The outpost was due to be decommissioned, and then the moon was being turned over to some settlement plan, probably to move some of the larger populations around and thus keep the planets dependent on one another and thus keep the Imperial credits floating around without most of it ending up in one place or the other.
Finally it came time to leave, and the officers and crew packed up and left. The base was destroyed by a proton torpedo from the supply ship ferrying them to their next assignment, so that no one else could use the base. Standard Imperial procedure.
* * *
The modified Imperator II Star Destroyer
Sifter hung above the frozen ball of ice, turned over so that she hung with her bridge angled at the planet instead of the normal configuration. It was a little unsettling, since most star ships traveled according to the galactic plane, so that all ships tended to be oriented up or down.
The
Sifter wasn't alone on this assignment, for an old Imperial Interdictor, the
Entrapment half destroyed during the invasion of Imperial Center, hung nearby, her own hull perpendicular to the galactic plane, with all four of her gravity well generators angled toward the planet.
The Imperial Office of Exploration and Settlement had bought the ships for transforming dead or dying worlds into ones suitable for housing colonies, instead of having to purchase expensive domes that limited expansion. The
Entrapment and
Sifter usually worked alone, but because of the unique timetable on this project, they were working together.
The
Sifter carried a large gas collector inside what had once served as her hangar bay, the collector collecting the stray particles that were steadily discharged by the system's star, which traveled along on the solar winds. It would dump these gasses into the atmosphere, usually a large portion of greenhouse gasses that would counteract the distance from a star. But this time, it was collecting pulverized asteroids.
The
Entrapment was using it's gravity well generators to pull the nearby asteroids toward the planet. Since the star naturally pulled on them and kept them in orbit, the focus of all 4 gravity generators served to pull them out of orbit, toward the planet, where they were destroyed, and the large content of iron inside collected by the
Sifter. It made more sense to haul them several at a time with the gravity generators than try and grab each one with a tractor beam.
Once enough iron was collected, the iron was smelted together, until one giant piece was ready to be deployed. Then the ball was carefully gripped in the tractor beams of the
Sifter and lowered into the atmosphere. The heat that radiated off of it as it passed through the atmosphere heated it up, and the spin given to it by the tractor beams meant it built up a magnetic charge.
When it was low enough in the atmosphere, the giant ball was basically a large magnet. A huge electrical storm traveled behind it as pieces of iron scattered in the upper atmosphere, no doubt left over from either the moon's creation or an ancient space battle. The pieces stuck to it, and then with one final orbit, the ball was released. It flew down and impacted into one of the poles, punching through it and letting some water up from underneath.
Then, a large section from
Entrapment detached, and lowered through the atmosphere, landing over the hole in the ice. It lowered large pipes, and began pumping it over and around large pipes containing super heated gasses, thus taking the frigid waters and gradually heating them.
Several more arrived over the next few weeks, having a hole punched in the ice by a turbo-laser blast from either the
Entrapment or the
Sifter. The planet's oceans began to warm, slowly, until finally it began receding from the equator. It receded until the heater ships no longer could stay perched on the ice, and they lifted off to land on the continents.
On the continents, they deployed drills, which dug down and extracted carbon and other materials, combining them with the now large volumes of water vapor in the air to form carbon dioxide and hydrogen, which was burned to generate yet more heat. This continued until the planet was sufficiently warm.
Finally the ships departed, and modified TIE bombers descended into the atmosphere, dropping not bombs, but tons of seeds all over the continents, releasing quick growing grasses and plants. Once enough grass was spread and growing, large herd ships arrived, bearing large herbivores to settle the planet. They released the herds, and for every 50 or so of the beasts, it released one predator.
And so the first wildlife was established. While this had been going on, Imperial coordinators began collecting settlers, who moved to the planet as soon as it was possible, and thus a new planet was forged out of the ice, into the newest planet in the Empire.
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FM/SCR Linda_Irris/Kaph 10 (3-2)/Phoenix Wing/SSD Atrus/DEF/VEN/VE (=*A*=)