sentences:  This story starts in the year 2303, when Captain Irravel Veda of the lighthugger "Hirondelle", her second-in-command Markarian, and some fraction of their Ultranaut crew are ambushed by pirates while engaged in an unexpected repair stopover in a cloud of rocks and cometary matter in the charted but uninhabited star system Luyten 726-8.She briefly considers activating the "Greenfly" terraforming Von Neumann machines being transported onboard, which she believes would easily be able to swarm and dismantle the pirate vessel and probably aid in repair as well.She rejects this option, however, and their ship is captured by the infamous terroristic pirate Run Seven.