For this one, blame my wife. I think.
Laser Mines (TL[7+3])
Yes, as in ‘big holes in the ground where you dig solid, raw laser light out of the walls.’ Sure, you could make laser beams by collimating light into a focused ray. If you’re living in the 21st century AD, that is. But if you’re a clear-eyed citizen of any number of the modern, technologically mature polities of the 23rd Century’s Solar System, you’d rather get your laser beams from a mine on one of Jupiter or Saturn’s moons. And yes, it’s real laser light, somehow. Still usable, though! …Well, after a certain amount of refining into a crystal form, that is.
But it’s worth it. It turns out that pre-crystallized laser light is much more efficient than the synthetic stuff: a TL[7+3] crystal laser weapon has three times the shots of its TL10 equivalent (or, indeed, a regular, boring TL[7+3] laser weapon). Note that a gun using crystal laser technology cannot use regular power cell ammo, or vice versa.
The laser mines are some of the most protected real estate in the Solar System, naturally: the polities that control the laser mines make quite a lot of money selling their efficient, controllable laser weapons to asteroid miners and comet wranglers, out where there is no law except Newton’s. The polities largely do not sell their wares to space pirates, but the pirates are happy to steal them anyway. So are the other space polities, although they’re more likely to pay somebody (while not asking questions) for a shipment of crystal laser ammo…