Endecott Engineering - Market Layer

[Thexare]

Today saw the Endecotts' Camara removed from the hangar to make room for two Voyager-type freighters, brought over by the request of an independent Octavarian entrepreneur and opportunist, GIsela Ayers. The tanned redhead stood as a stark contrast to the sisters, especially Colleen, who looked like she may not have ever seen any light outside of her workshop.

"So you said you had a big job for us. Tell me about it," Shay said while her sister was checking inventory.

"Gas giants are a good potential source of helium-3 and deuterium. I want to break into that market. So I sunk some of my old free trading profits into a pair of Voyagers and a batch of drones."

"Drones," Shay repeated flatly, clearly displeased with where this was going.

"Well I'm not flying myself into the atmosphere, screw that. Got you some planet surveying drones and some excavation drones, figured between those you'd be able to cobble something together."

Shay closed her eyes and took a slow breath. "The surveyors might be durable enough to survive the atmosphere, but there's nothing of use in the mining drones. That's all drills, grinders, and grabbers. You want a gas harvester, that's going to be a total custom build, unless the GMG's selling, and we don't have the parts. That'll be an Aquila special order. Now, the freighters, you want those to be drone carriers, right?"

The redhead was caught off guard by the blunt refusal, but quickly recovered, "Yeah, that's the idea."

"That's gonna be another Aquila thing." Seeing her prospective client's dismay, Shay quickly continued, "Don't get me wrong, the main modifications? We can do most of it. But you're gonna want gas tanks with valves that match the harvesters, so the harvesters can dock to the tank and fill it up. Precision fab work, and you need a bunch of them - it'd take us way too long. Everything but the tanks, we can do here."

Colleen walked over to the client with a small card, and cleared her throat. "I've already forwarded the harvester and tank request. Just bring this card over so they know it's you. Are you scouting Malakka?"

"Gonna try it, but there's something weird about the scans there."

"I thought so too," Colleen replied, nodding. "There's another, more normal gas giant we can get to, but it's further out. I've been hearing rumors of a base being established nearby, if you can get some interested people together I can put in a good word. We could use some organized miners. You also might want to look into some Kusari transports, they've been involved in gas harvesting for ages." After their client left, Colleen looked over at her sister. "Guess your little Gitano project's on hold, huh?"

"Eh, it's fine, there's some parts for that I'd rather buy new."