The greatest heist in the history of the universe took about a year to pull off, and when it was finished, things were never quite the same again. There was corporate espionage on an epic scale, a co-ordinated attack that saw nimble, ruthless spies infiltrate every nook of a bloated corporation led by a CEO whose paranoia, arising from a string of bitter personal rivalries, turned out to be not nearly neurotic enough. After months of preparation, the leader of the cryptically named Guiding Hand Social Club gave a signal, and the goods in every single one of the target organisation’s warehouses were swiftly loaded up and taken away. The corporate coffers were instantly emptied. And that twitchy Chief Executive was murdered. No more ruthlessly effective con had ever been executed. The losses ran to billions.

If the details of this impossibly ambitious swindle are unfamiliar, that is possibly because those billions are not in pounds or dollars, but in a currency with the moderately silly name of Interstellar Kredit. This was an intergalactic heist, carried out within the limitations of an online fantasy