The prow of the transport peels away like the galaxy’s biggest slice of layer cake, shorn edges still white-hot from the touch of my laser. A dragon’s haul of cosmic junk is revealed: corridors lined with zero-G seats and computer displays; outer hull compartments packed with relay boxes and fat, juicy cannisters of coolant. I set to work with a will, snipping at connecting struts and using my electromagnetic grapple to whip freed components into the hoppers along the flanks of my salvaging bay.
Aluminium decking goes into the furnace, nanocarbon panels into the processor for freezing and shattering. Some pieces are too massy for me to drag around by myself: I attach these to the bay walls with elastic tethers, tugging out giant satsuma segments of hull. More intricate objects such as thruster cores are flung down into a wireframe energy palette, suspended like an enormous sifting pan hundreds of miles above the waters of a ravaged Earth. As the transport disintegrates under my hand, a corp AI tracks the weight and dollar value of each item of salvage, while my foreman, aka “Weaver”, reminds me of the time left in my shift.
Not everything can be harvested from outside – I’ll need to breach those hull compartments and melt hidden joists before I can carve up parts of the exterior. Venturing into a decommissioned spacecraft has its perils, needless to say. I’ve already completed the all-important first step: decompressing the vessel in a controlled fashion, so that it doesn’t burst like a rotten stomach when you crack the lid, flinging precious scrap (and yourself) into deep space. When it comes to smaller ships, that means entering via the airlock, providing it still has power, then locating an atmospheric control unit to vent the stagnant air. Larger ship classes are trickier to break into, but after only a few hours with my Early Access build of Hardspace: Shipbreaker, I don’t have the clearance for them yet.
Hardspace: ShipbreakerDeveloper: Blackbird InteractivePublisher: Focus Home InteractivePlatform: PCAvailability: Out now on Steam Early Access
The darkness within the transport is full of dust and debris, recalling the inside of Ripley’s escape pod at the start of Aliens. Old food packets bounce off my visor as I fire my jetpack inexpertly, holding control key to reset my momentum after each clumsy manoeuvre. I switch to my helmet scanner, which reduces the ship to a ghostly tracery of passages with valuable objects colour-coded by type and material. It’s wise to pause and scan regularly, even when stripping down ship types you’re familiar with. Smaller vessels house circuit boxes that may shoot lightning in all directions when meddled with. Bulkier craft are threaded with volatile fuel lines, and may also harbour pockets of radiation.
There’s equal incentive to hurry, however. After all, I’m on the clock here. Every second of caution is a second I’ll regret if I can’t recoup the shift’s expenses, and find myself adding to the billion dollar debt that got me into orbit. I have around a minute to salvage the greatest trophy of all: the reactor. Nestled above the transport’s engines, it’ll earn me a cool half million. Providing, that is, I can ferry the item from its housing to the palette before it explodes.