The alarm blared—a grating, repetitive noise Heph had once thought clever. It was modeled after the call of some extinct Earth bird, an attempt at irony or nostalgia. Now it was just obnoxious.

  “Shut up,” he groaned, rolling over in his bunk and slapping the control panel harder than necessary. The noise cut off, leaving the deafening silence of the station in its wake.

  Another day, another solar array to fix.

  Heph sat up, rubbing his face. The sleeping quarters, once lively with chatter, arguments, and the occasional snore, were oppressively still. He glanced at the bunks where his crewmates used to sleep. Some part of him expected to see Bruna glaring at him for hogging the coffee maker, or Malik cracking a joke about his perpetual five o’clock shadow. But they weren’t there. They never would be.

  Not that Amazing Solutions, Inc. cared. As far as the corpo was concerned, Heph was “back online” and therefore “ready for duty.” No compensation, no grief counseling, not even a courtesy call. Just a terse message: “Get back to work. Productivity metrics are lagging.”

  He let out a long sigh and grabbed a protein bar from the storage locker. It tasted like cardboard dipped in motor oil but boasted the nutritional value of three full meals—according to the wrapper, anyway. Heph wolfed it down in a few bites, chased it with a mouthful of water from the station’s increasingly finicky purifier, and made his way to the shuttle bay.

  The craft waiting for him was a beat-up workhorse, the kind that looked like it had been dragged out of a scrapyard and hastily patched together. Its hull was scarred from micrometeoroids and God knows what else, but it still flew. Mostly.

  “Alright, let’s see what’s still holding together today,” he muttered as he climbed into the cockpit and began the pre-flight checks.

  “Engines… green. Power systems… green. Navigation… yellow.” He paused. “Yellow’s basically green if you squint.”

  The shuttle hummed to life, and Heph guided it out of the docking bay. The vast expanse of Deneb’s Dyson swarm stretched before him like a glittering spiderweb, trillions of solar arrays orbiting the star in precise formation. Each one was larger than a small country and older than humanity’s recorded history. Together, they beamed enough power to the Daneb antimatter facility to keep the entire Guilgy Empire running.

  Heph wasn’t sure whether to be awed or depressed by it. On one hand, it was a marvel of engineering. On the other, it was falling apart faster than a budget shuttle. And his job? Patch it up. Piece by piece.

  A notification blinked on his console, directing him to Array #204987-731F. The problem was flagged as “urgent,” which meant something critical was broken. Again. He’d barely finished fixing Array #204987-731E yesterday.

  “Figures,” he muttered, setting a course. The shuttle shuddered as it adjusted trajectory, but it held steady. Heph settled back in his seat, staring out at the endless expanse of solar panels. Each array had its own set of support drones, but they were older than most civilizations and just as temperamental. When the drones couldn’t handle something—and that was happening more often these days—someone like Heph had to step in.

  The job was supposed to be a team effort, of course. Each station was designed for 24 engineers and 4 shuttles to handle the workload. But Station 517/D had one engineer left. Him. The others? Dead. Sucked out into the void five weeks ago when a supply shuttle decided to reenact a physics experiment by crashing into the station.

  Heph had barely managed to bring the place back to functionality. He’d sealed the ruptured bulkhead, rerouted power, and reactivated life support. Amazing Solutions hadn’t even sent condolences. Just the same cold directive: “Resume operations.”

  As the shuttle approached the designated array, Heph checked the diagnostics report. A power relay was down, causing the entire array to lose alignment. Simple enough to fix—if the relay hadn’t been mounted on the outermost edge of the array, where the solar panels were most exposed to microdebris and radiation. He sighed.

  “Alright, you stubborn piece of crap. Let’s see what broke this time.”

  The shuttle docked with a jarring clunk, and Heph suited up. As he stepped into the airlock, the station’s silence gave way to the faint hum of his suit’s life support systems. He secured his tools, cycled the airlock, and stepped out onto the array’s surface.

  Deneb loomed in the distance, a blazing blue giant that lit up the panels in harsh, brilliant light. It was beautiful, in a way, but Heph had stopped appreciating the view years ago. The star would go supernova in 100,000 years, give or take. If the arrays didn’t collapse under their own weight first.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  He sighed again. Another day, another piece of dying technology to keep on life support.

  “Just another glorious morning in paradise,” he muttered, trudging toward the damaged relay.

  As Heph trudged across the array’s surface, his comm unit crackled to life, breaking the silence with a burst of static.

  “Hey, Heph! You alive over there, or should I file a missing persons report?” The voice was light, tinged with the faint drawl of someone who clearly didn’t care much for authority. Erika. Engineer from 314/B. Her station wasn’t far by galactic standards—just a few light-seconds away—but it might as well have been another universe for how often they could actually help each other.

  “Alive and kicking,” Heph replied, glancing at the diagnostic panel on his suit. The array was a mess. Of course it was. “If you’re offering help, I accept cash, whiskey, or replacement drones. In that order.”

  “Funny. I’d offer to send a shuttle, but you know how it is. Amazing Solutions says our budget for emergency assistance is ‘currently under review.’ Translation: We’re broke.”

  Heph snorted. “They’ve been ‘under review’ since I got here five years ago. I’m starting to think they just like saying it.”

  “Five years? I’m coming up on seven.” Erika’s voice softened, turning almost conspiratorial. “Let me guess: they sold you on the ‘adventure of a lifetime’ pitch, too? ‘Come work in the Daneb system! Cutting-edge technology, competitive pay, exciting opportunities!’”

  “Yeah, and they forgot to mention the part about the constant backlog, deteriorating infrastructure, and complete disregard for basic safety protocols.”

  “Oh, but don’t forget the generous life insurance policy,” Erika added, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Only valid if your next of kin can prove you died. And since your crew went MIA instead of KIA—well, guess their families are out of luck.”

  “Good old ASI,” Heph muttered, reaching the damaged relay. It looked like it had been blasted by a micrometeoroid storm. “You know, I think they set the corporate standard for ‘doing the bare minimum.’”

  “Hey, give them some credit,” Erika shot back. “They’re experts at cutting corners. Remember that time they repurposed old supply drones as emergency rescue units? Never mind that the drones were programmed to prioritize cargo over passengers.”

  “Classic.” Heph activated his suit’s interface and sent a fabrication request to the array’s local system. The fabricator was slow to respond—probably because it was sorting through its dwindling supply of raw materials. “And you know what makes it worse? The fabricators. They’re supposed to make this easier, but I’m betting the bots will tell me there’s no tungsten left. Again.”

  “Oh, tungsten’s the first thing to go,” Erika agreed. “Try nickel. We’re down to scavenging parts from dead drones to keep our arrays running.”

  A moment later, a message flashed across Heph’s HUD: Component in production. Delivery via drone pending. Estimated time: 4 minutes. He let out a small breath of relief. At least something was working today.

  “Well, good news,” he said. “This array still has a working fabricator and enough raw material to make my part. And a drone to deliver it. For once, the universe didn’t decide to screw me.”

  “Small miracles,” Erika said. “Meanwhile, over here, I’m patching a heat sink with what I think is recycled aluminum foil.”

  “High-tech solutions for high-tech problems.”

  Heph leaned against the array’s frame, watching the vast expanse of the Dyson swarm around him. Trillions of panels glinted in the harsh light of Deneb, an ancient system held together by a mix of human ingenuity and sheer desperation. Somewhere beyond the swarm, the Daneb antimatter facility loomed—a monstrous structure orbiting the system’s outermost planet. It produced a billion tons of antimatter every second, enough to power the entire Guilgy Empire and beyond.

  “You ever think about what happens if the swarm goes down?” Heph asked.

  Erika hesitated. “You mean aside from the obvious chain reaction of exploding antimatter tanks and wiping out half the sector? Nope, haven’t thought about it at all. Why? Losing sleep over it?”

  “Let’s just say it’s crossed my mind.”

  “You’re such an optimist, Heph. No wonder you’re so fun at parties.”

  A distant hum caught his attention, and he turned to see the delivery drone approaching. It looked like a metal spider, its eight legs clutching the replacement component as it maneuvered through the array’s lattice. The drone hovered briefly before depositing the part on a magnetic platform Heph had extended.

  “Part’s here,” he said, grabbing the component and walking back to the damaged relay.

  “Lucky you,” Erika said. “Meanwhile, I’ve got no drones left on my end. I’m going to have to go fetch the next part myself.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Heph muttered, slotting the replacement into the relay housing. He ran a quick diagnostic, and the panel’s lights blinked green. The array realigned itself, humming back to life as it resumed collecting and transmitting energy.

  “Another day, another patched-up relic,” Heph said, climbing back into his shuttle.

  “Until it breaks again tomorrow,” Erika replied.

  “Of course.”

  As he secured the shuttle for departure, Erika’s voice came through one last time.

  “Hey, Heph. For what it’s worth… I know it’s been rough since the crash. If you ever want to talk—like, really talk—I’m here.”

  Heph paused, staring at the console. He could brush her off with a joke or a snarky comment, but he didn’t. Instead, he just said, “Thanks, Erika. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  The comm went silent, leaving only the faint hum of the shuttle’s systems. Heph set a course back to the station, watching the endless sprawl of the swarm fade into the distance.

  “Another glorious day in paradise,” he muttered, shaking his head.