(Photo by Pixabay)

The lunar colony was everything Chester expected it to be. Unfortunately, his expectation was for it to be cramped, dirty, and overpopulated. Most of the first generation to resettle the moon were laborers, too poor to have much say in where they got shipped off to for work. Then, still too poor to afford a trip away from the moon, they had to retire and live out the remainder of their lives in a colony that wasn’t built to support an aging population. Their children and now grandchildren had no choice but to become the next generation of workers on the moon. It worked out extremely well for the Solar King and his lunar manufacturing efforts since he had a captive working population. All he had to do was make sure they didn’t die of starvation or some environmental hazard, and doing the bare minimum was economical for the Solar King, to say the least.

There were, of course, more working age people living in the colony than there were available jobs so competition was fierce for every position. Nearly everywhere Chester looked there were starving, maimed, or otherwise struggling people begging for help from a people who were themselves not much better off.

As Chester and the others made their way through the colony, eyes followed them, no doubt noticing the finer clothing and lack of any obvious sores or illness.

“Where’s this contact we’re supposed to meet?” Chester asked the drones.

“It’s the colony’s quartermaster, a woman named Mirana Cosa.”

Jezah had been the groups spokesperson up until now so it was a man who appeared to be in his late forties that answered Chester.

“I’m Sigurd, by the way,” he added.

“How far is it to the quartermaster?” Chester asked.

“Not far,” another of the drones replied before adding, “My name is Siffronia.”

“Now’s not exactly the time for introductions,” Chester said with impatience.

The longer they were out in public, the more uncomfortable and anxious Chester was getting. The fire at the port was drawing a fair amount of attention and it wouldn’t take long for the security forces to begin their search for Chester and his group. The sooner they got out of sight, the better.

“My name is Eugene,” another drone said.

“And I’m Vinay.”

“Call me Tsukasa.”

Something was wrong with the drones. Chester could feel it in the neural connection, a sort of feedback building each time another one of them told him their name.

“Be quiet,” he ordered them all.

They obeyed, but then he began to hear them over the neural connection.

“I’m Xerc.”

“Pald here.”

“I go by–

“No!” Chester cut them all off.

The feedback was beginning to hurt now, it was so strong, and he was having a difficult time getting his commands through.

“No more names or anything else until after we’ve spoken to Mirana.”

The feedback didn’t go away but neither did it get worse as they continued on through the colony.

It was originally built out of old lava tubes and other subterranean voids but there were newer excavations and even some modules here and there that poked above ground. The deeper into the colony they went, the more Chester began to understand the structure of it all. The winding thoroughfares they moved through were the original lava tubes. The mining pits opened right up into the passageway like any other branching doorway, and the refineries, manufacturing plants, and even a few shops were obviously purpose built by digging away the lunar soil and bedrock. It became apparent right away which places were more favored or financially supported since those were the ones that didn’t have the bare rock as their walls and ceiling. The nicest places had ceramic walls with metal ceilings and tiled floors.

Regardless of the quality of the spaces, every single one had an emergency hatch that would shut automatically in case of decompression. The passageway had similar hatches every few hundred meters as well. It was both comforting and off putting to Chester as the same time. On the one hand, it was nice to know that if there were a breach, it would be sealed off right away. On the other hand, though, the hatches were a constant reminder of the possibility that the deadly vacuum of outer space was not that far away.

At last, Chester saw a sign proclaiming they had reached the office of Quartermaster Mirana Cosa. His head hurt from the ongoing feedback but he refused to let it distract him as he had Sigurd place his hand on the scanning pad inset into the wall beside the quartermaster’s door. A moment later, the door opened and their group moved inside.

The office was larger than Chester was expecting, and much nicer than even the best places he’d seen on his way here. There were images of the lunar colony, taken from above, as well as a few images of other colonies throughout the solar system. Each one was accompanied by a series of dates, presumably to show when and where this quartermaster had served.

“Come in,” Quartermaster Cosa said from behind her desk and motioned towards the chairs set along the walls of the room.

She was old. That was the first thing that struck Chester. He’d seen old people before, of course, but those were always people who either couldn’t afford genetic repairs or they were denied them as some form of punishment. Judging from what Chester had been told about the lunar colony, he assumed it was the latter reason for her expressed age.

“You’ve all had quite the trip,” she said. “Sit down and tell me about it.”

There was nothing conversational about her tone of voice. Rather she sounded like she was threatening them. Chester almost began to speak when he remembered he was suppose to be a nobody in all of this so instead he had Sigurd give the synopsis of their trip, along with the cover story for why they were all here, together, in this mismatched group.

As Sigurd spoke, the quartermaster kept looking around the room, examining each person one by one. Chester tried to look as unassuming and inconsequential as possible. At the same time, Chester began fixing his neural connections with the drones. Singling them out one by one was difficult, but by focusing on them he could tell which ones were causing him issues. Then it was a matter of resetting his instructions to them and making sure those instructions stuck. He couldn’t help but notice the similarities between their behavior and that of Jezah’s. Perhaps she’d activated the secondary implants in them without his noticing, though he’d never found out where that other implant was located or how it functioned so even if it was the case that she’d activated them he didn’t know how to go about deactivating them.

“So you made it here, figured out the trap, had almost talked your way out of it, and then decided to blow up your ship?” Quartermaster Cosa asked when Sigurd had finished.

“I don’t know why our ship exploded,” Sigurd told her at Chester’s instruction. “It caught us all by surprise.”

“Not Jezah, though,” Vinay said and Chester had to keep himself from glaring at the man for speaking.

He hadn’t gotten to Vinay yet to fix their connection and had to take full control of him in order to make Vinay look embarrassed and then keep silent but the damage had been done and the feedback in Chester’s head increased yet again.

“What about Jezah?” Quartermaster Cosa asked.

Chester let Sigurd explain what had happened while he went back to resetting neural connections.

“And where is she now?” Quartermaster Cosa asked.

“She didn’t make it through the fire doors,” Sigurd said. “She tripped and the doors caught her.”

“I see.” She got up from behind her desk and began to pace behind it, deep in thought.

Was she actually considering their story? Chester didn’t know the details about how she was connected with the saboteurs but the longer they were here the more he suspected she was more in line with the fringe leadership and didn’t condone the violence that had been taking place.

“You know,” she finally broke her silent contemplation, “when Jezah contacted me about your arrival, she ended her message oddly.”

Chester immediately felt himself grow cold. He thought he’d checked the message before Jezah sent it, but looking back now he knew it would have been all too easy for her make a small change without him noticing.

“She said ‘there are no coincidences and there are no nameless people in the capitol’.”

She turned and looked directly at Chester. Only now that he’d corrected the majority of his neural connections did he become aware of the faint tingling associated with a bio scan. Quartermaster Cosa held his gaze.

“The ship explodes, only Jezah fails to make it passed the fire doors, and you have no name.” She said. “In fact, there are no records on you at all. No birth, no family, no education, no work, not even a single video clip with your face in it until you showed up at the capitol space port.”

“Jezah wasn’t the only one who didn’t make it,” Chester had Sigurd say. “There was a woman from nanotech with us too, but she just froze up. We were already running before any of us noticed and it was too late to go back for her.”

The quartermaster barely flicked her eyes to Sigurd when he spoke before looking back at Chester.

“Well?” she asked Chester, ignoring Sigurd. “Who are you?”

“I, uh…I’m no one, really,” Chester began to say but Quartermaster Cosa slammed her hand down on the desk, silencing him.

“Don’t lie to me,” she said with ice in every word. “The only way for you to seemingly pop into existence at the space port would be if you deleted every record of yourself prior to that moment, which means you must have had access to the Solar King’s data archives, which would be impossible for a nobody to have. So try again. You get one more chance to tell me who you are or I’m throwing you back into that fire you started on our port.”

Chester clenched and unclenched his fists, thinking and not knowing what else he could do. He was such an idiot. Of course he should have created a fake identity for himself, or just stolen one from one of the countless menial laborers that lived near the capitol. It was too late now. Without his connection to the Solar King he could do nothing to correct his mistake.

“I can tell you some things, but not everything,” Chester finally said. “You’re right that I had access to the Solar King’s archives, but not anymore. He wanted me to help him in his war against the fringe but I wanted peace instead and had to run for it. I’m not part of this group,” he waved at the saboteurs around him, “but I’d found out about their group and it worked out for us all to try and leave together. H’lay, the woman from nanotech also wanted out of the Solar King’s reach and I thought her skills would be useful to us. Sadly, she didn’t make it. We also lost a bunch of our people during our escape from the capitol space port.”

“Your name,” quartermaster Cosa said flatly, raising a finger, “and your occupation.”

“Why do they matter?” he was almost in tears by this point. “I refused to help the Solar King and now his sons are hunting me down. Isn’t that enough? All I want is peace. Peace and quiet.”

The quartermaster considered him for a moment, then a smile he did not like began to spread across her face.

“You know,” she said, “there’s nothing quieter or more peaceful than the empty void of space.”

“I’m not interested in a trip to an airlock, if that’s what you mean,” Chester muttered.

He began sending instructions to the drones to be ready for a fight. If it came to it, he’d have them cover his escape. The local security would be more than enough to take them all down, but in the commotion, Chester could slip away and mix in with the rest of the population. It would be harder to find a way off world, but he’d seen a chemical processor on their way here. If he could get access to that plant then he could mix up a new batch of neural gel and then it would only be a matter of getting a few moments alone with the right people.

“I have given you every opportunity to tell me who you are and still you refuse,” quartermaster Cosa said. “But you have given me some interesting things to think about. So, I will provide lodging for you all for one week. During that time you will be expected to work and earn your keep here. If I don’t have a full name and work history for all of you by the end of the week, then I will notify the interested parties about your whereabouts and turn you over to them.”

She motioned for them to leave and the door to the office opened, revealing a small escort, presumably there to show them to their temporary lodgings. Chester and the rest of his drones all stood up and followed the escort out of the office. Chester noted how the quartermaster hadn’t said anything about their belongings, probably because she knew they were armed and outnumbered her by a wide margin in the office. Putting them all to work, however, would split them up and make for easier targets, if that was her plan. Though, Chester thought it more likely that she really was waiting to see if she could find out who he was. Well, he had a week. In that time he needed to figure out how to fix his drones and then, if possible, see about setting up a secret necrology lab. After all, he already had an excuse to have a private meeting with the quartermaster. He just needed to keep quiet and find out how to access the chemicals he needed, if they even had them on the moon.