A convoy of six freighters made its way through the system, away from the ravaged planet. They held the entire workforce, along with their families, of Garello Technologies, a midlevel materials research and manufacturing concern based in the Keftia district. Beyond the people, the freighters’ holds also contained much of the company’s most important research, databases, machinery, and financial resources. All of it had been loaded aboard the six starships to bring it offworld for safety while the disaster unfolded on Ab Dalis, a massive effort that consumed all of the day and night that had passed since the impact.

The company’s chief executive, Larence Garello, had made the company’s other starships available to the Ab Dalisian government for relief efforts, but he had chosen to take care of his people and his business first. Many people relied on Garello Technologies, and he wanted to ensure that when the crisis abated, every person who put his trust in him would be safe and sound, and would still be working for a company that could continue producing the ideas and products that supported so many.

Many Ab Dalisian business owners at Larence’s level scoffed at him for going to such great expense to temporarily pack up his operation and move it offplanet, but he didn’t care. The oligarchs and trillionaires cared more for a single durasteel beam in their factories than the people who worked in them. Larence was wealthy, yes, but that was because good people in his employ gave him their all. He was damn well going to take care of every last one.

The convoy was headed to the system’s outer edge, where it would stop to wait to see how the situation developed.

But before the ships could reach their destination, they encountered something strange.

It looked like a storm, or a storm cloud, perhaps. A massive, blue-gray swirl of vapor out in space, dense and threatening, and directly in the convoy’s path. Faint lights flickered from deep within it, like sparkflies at dusk above the Ab Dalisian swamps.

The lead ship in the convoy was the Arbitrage, captained by a dark-furred Shistavanen named Odabba, a good, steady hand who had worked for Garello Technologies for over a decade. He scanned the cloud, but the sensors could not provide any information. He gave the order for all ships to divert course, to go around the thing, whatever it was. Better safe than sorry.

But there was no safety—not anymore.

The storm cloud lit up. A massive, jagged spike of energy shot out from the middle of the cloud, lashing out past the Arbitrage to impact one of the other ships in the convoy, the Maree’s Diligence, named after Larence Garello’s mother.