I think the ship should deffinatly be both the major critical point and the first Asset.
Secondly you could have a 'salvagers/Pirates/repossesors' license wich generally allows you to take anything not currently supervised and [i]probably[/i] get around the law for doing so. (At worst we have to return it.)

Ooh, could of somehow snagged or accidentally created a large teleport device that remains on the ragged ship.
Maybe it has a fun flaw and never gets people close together or randomly pulls them back before they are ready.

As for other assets maybe an item choice like
Slim atmo suit with oxygen field
Those jump boots/ grappling gloves.
Things that will generally make pirating easier...

Just ideas :)