It began with a routine mission to the surface of AZ337 to collect water samples for analysis.  Sergeant Karen Yamazaki escorted Doctors Hunter Drake and Dimitri Slakov during the run.  All went according to plan.
    Then, a test tube broke.
    The water in the tube was the only sample collected that contained a mutagenic virus that infected Dr. Drake when the tube shattered in her hand.  The virus spread into the arcologies of the station, thus contaminating them, the animals mutating into ferocious beasts.   Many researchers and personnel died in the carnage that followed.
    A treatment option for the virus was discovered jointly by Dr. Jacob Ricdeau and Dimitri Slakov, but the side-effects of the treatment, unproven and untested, have turned out to be worse than what the virus itself could have handed out.  The only infected survivors of the carnage were Dr. Drake and Chelsea Talbeck, a young animal behaviorist working under Dr. Jack Furyk.
    In the chaos, Slakov, a Russian national, abandoned the station and injured comrades to save himself.  In addition, he sealed the fate of the station when he detonated a device that destroyed his quarters and several sets of quarters around his.  Dr. Furyk was injured in the blast.  Slakov managed to escape the station in one of the shuttlecraft.
    The remaining survivors escaped the station -- most of the researchers in one craft, Yamazaki, Talbeck, Ricdeau -- now revealed to in fact be David Jordan, Drake's presumed dead fiancé, Furyk, and Drake in another.  This second shuttle took refuge on station Mirage 7, maintained by the Mirage Corporation.
    At least, they took refuge there for a time.  There was time enough for Talbeck and Drake to be fully cured of the virus and for Furyk and Ricdeau to get some medical attention before Marines invaded the station and attempted to take Drake and the now-missing Talbeck into custody, with the presumed assistance of Yamazaki.  The Marines did not get the assistance they anticipated.
    The small group of fugitives, with Talbeck replaced by Furyk's five-year-old nephew Owen Finian, escaped Mirage 7 without a plan, without an idea where they would go -- lost in the black depths of space, searching for a place to stop, catch their breath, and figure out what to do next.

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