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You inspect the steel-lined corridors

of a wrecked inter-system hulk.

Each plate and rivet, silent and cold.

A shredded engine

lies dormant under sizzling wires.

Your multi-layered yellow hardsuit,

pitted with dents and carbon burns,

is your only protection – tissue

in comparison

to the reinforced hull beneath you.

Transmitted echoes of distress still

ping your comm, repeating, frantic.

Nothing looks wrong from the outside, but

two dozen punctures

shredded the inside without finesse.

“Scrap the remains in twenty-four hours.

Eighteen for a bonus, copy?”

Says the orbital yard boss, his voice

the only sound heard

above your oxygen rebreather.

Untracked micrometeorites.

What a way for a spacer to go.

Disconnect power systems, then on

to biological hazards.

Nothing you haven’t performed before.

Just divert your gaze.

Don’t focus too hard on their eyes.

Each job makes you yearn for authentic

gravity. A home of your own.

You refuse to let their fate be yours.

This poor wrecked corvette

was never meant to be a coffin.

A hundred thousand credits per hour

transfers to the waiting vessel.

“Funny,” says the yard boss, through static.

“All this scrap’ll be

spacebound again by this time next month.”

He’s got a point. Breakers waste nothing.

One man’s wreck is another man’s

hyper-luxurious star-liner.

What is creation

but the bright terminus of ruin?

You will carve out your own future

with a fusion cutter and a dream.