The other ship glowed brightly for a moment, surrounded by phosphorescent fire, then went dark, its running lights deactivating along the length of its hull and engines fading out. The Maree’s Diligence began to drift away from the rest of the convoy, all its systems clearly offline.

Captain Odabba ordered the convoy to raise shields and prepare for battle—but all six ships were freighters, not warships, and in the rush to evacuate the planet, no guard fighters had been arranged. The cargo vessels were all but unarmed, with only a few light laser cannons each.

Another flash from the cloud, then another, and now it was impossible to think of them as anything but lightning strikes—huge blasts of energy at a scale difficult to process. Each of these two last strikes found a target in Garello’s convoy, but by now the shields were up, and while they didn’t cripple the vessels the way the first against the Maree’s Diligence had, both ships’ defenses took a significant hit.

But each flash of light had illuminated the cloud from the inside, and for just a moment, the beings aboard the convoy had seen what was waiting for them. Ships. Many ships.

As if the third and final strike was a signal, the vessels hiding in the strange cloud shot out, a buzzing, whipping swarm. They were ugly, blocky things, with spikes protruding from them in no discernable pattern. They looked like tools designed for beating someone to death. Most were sized for one or two pilots, but some were larger, and in the center of the cloud a much bigger vessel waited. It was at least equal in size to one of the convoy’s freighters, but this was no cargo ship. This was a cruel thing, built for war, for destruction.

All of the ships had two things in common, no matter their size or design—three bright slashes down their sides, like war paint, and a strange attachment to their engines, a metal lattice like a half-moon filled with rippling green fire, of unknown purpose.

Laser bolts began to lance out from the convoy’s freighters, anemic and thin in comparison with the threat they faced. There were…so many.

Word began to spread among the people of Garello Technologies and the convoy’s crews. Hope died, replaced with panic and terror. They had seen the lightning strikes, and the insignia on the ships. They believed they knew who was attacking them.

The Nihil.

Captain Odabba gave the order to run, to turn and race back to Ab Dalis. He knew it was futile, but less so than fighting, and perhaps some of the ships might somehow reach safety.