The Nihil. A year ago, neither Larence Garello nor anyone in his employ had even heard the name. But in the past months, the word had taken on an almost talismanic quality across the Outer Rim, like a plague, or a hunting beast that could not be escaped or fought.

The Nihil were raiders, thieves, murderers, kidnappers. They could be anywhere, at any time, appearing from nothing. They worked in space, on planets, in cities, in the wilderness. They moved like spirits and killed like devils. Whether they were actually monsters or just acted with monstrous savagery was unclear. What was known about them was dwarfed by what was not.

The most important things known about the Nihil were these: They took what they wanted and destroyed what they didn’t, and while occasionally you heard a story about someone surviving an encounter with the Nihil, you never heard a story about someone fighting themoff.

A large segment of the enemy ships surrounded the disabled Maree’s Diligence, swirling around it in a manner chaotic but somehow aware, like winged insects swarming a corpse but never colliding with one another.

Projectiles fired from each of the Nihil attack ships. Not laser blasts or missiles. These were something like harpoons, and each dug deep into the hull of the unshielded, defenseless freighter.

As one, the Nihil vessels rotated 180 degrees, so their engines faced the Maree’s Diligence, and then those engines fired. Long tendrils of flame shot out from each ship, and the Nihil vessels strained at the cables attaching them to the freighter.

From the bridge of the Arbitrage, Larence Garello watched in horror, thinking of the people on that ship, the thousands of people on that ship.

Their families. He had told them to bring their families, that he would keep them safe.

The Maree’s Diligence ripped apart.

It did not explode, other than a few flickers of flame here and there. Presumably this was due to the fact that the ship’s systems were largely inert after the Nihil’s first strike. Whatever the cause, it shattered and tore, its inner passageways and compartments venting to space. Smaller objects and bits of debris came spiraling out into the void, and Larence Garello, chief executive of Garello Technologies, knew that some of those objects were his people.

“Keep firing!” Captain Odabba shouted to his bridge crew. “I’ve called for assistance from Ab Dalis, and they’ll send what they can. We just need to hold on.”

Larence was not a military man, but even he knew these words rang hollow. Ab Dalis was consumed with a planetwide catastrophe. Their government was corrupt and ineffective after generations of catering to all those oligarchs and trillionaires, and might not send anyone to help even if they could.