(Photo by Magda Ehlers)

Chester sat on the edge of his bed, his eyes closed and his breathing slow. Elsewhere, Chester watched through another’s eyes as they made their way down a corridor that few in the colony were permitted to enter. At the end of the corridor was a locked door, requiring an ID scan to get through. The scan took only a moment and the door unlocked. Beyond the door was a cavernous room filled with storage tanks. Each tank bore symbols informing Chester of which ones were under high pressure, held flammable liquids or gases, and so forth. He wasn’t interested in most things in here. It was the three tanks of the far side of the room that he wanted.

Each of the three tanks were a few inches taller than an average person, but significantly wider. A dozen or so pipes ran from the top of each tank and a pair of gauges on their sides displayed both the pressure and remaining volume.

“They’re not using digital displays,” Chester muttered. “Good. They won’t notice a few missing kilograms.”

Vinay was the person Chester was monitoring everything through and he set down a tool bag and got to work. This wasn’t something Vinay was trained in doing but that didn’t matter as long as Chester maintained this high level of control, sharing his knowledge and experience with Vinay as needed. Tapping a pipe that was still under pressure was not impossible or messy as long as you knew what you were doing.

A couple weeks of machining work, a few drones requesting different parts and tools, and then just waiting for Vinay to be sent in on the regular rotation to check on the tanks was all Chester needed. Fifteen minutes later and the first tank had a new valve, just out of sight but still accessible by someone who knew where it was. Vinay used it to fill one of the chemical jars he’d brought.

“Any alarms?” Chester asked while Vinay worked.

It was possible that the gauges weren’t the only way these tanks were monitored and Chester wanted to make sure before taking any of the other chemicals.

“Nothing here,” Lyon said.

“No new activity from Quartermaster Cosa,” Pald said, who was ostensibly waiting just outside her office for a meeting.

“Good, let me know if anything changes,” Chester told them.

Vinay, installed the other valves but didn’t draw from them. Instead, he began to inspect the tanks as he had been sent here to do once the valves were all installed. Chester wanted to give as much time as he could to make sure there were no other sensors before he took anything else. The first chemical was innocent enough on its own, but in combination with the others it would be all to obvious what was going on. So he waited while Vinay did his rounds.

About halfway through, Pald spoke up.

“Maintenance just contacted the quartermaster,” he said. “They’re talking about a potential chemical leak.”

Chester nodded.

“You need to make a leak in that pipe,” he told Vinay. “Make sure it’s away from the main tank so no one goes poking around there.”

Vinay did just that, following the piping along the ceiling for a ways and then poking a small hole in it to allow a slow drip. He poured out the amount he’d already collected beneath the pipe and then called in the leak.

“Yeah, it looked like something hit it, maybe during the last delivery,” he told his supervisor over the comm, “I was checking the dent when it popped a hole and started leaking. I’m almost done with the patch now.”

A crew arrived shortly afterward to clean up the spill while Vinay finished his inspection.

Chester left Vinay and returned to himself. So there were sensors inside the tanks keeping a closer watch on things. It was telling that it took almost half an hour for them to have noticed, though. That could be due to a slow human response, but Chester suspected it was more likely that it was the sensors that were slow to notice and report the changes. Was there a way to exploit that?

“Work on this, everyone,” Chester told his drones. “We have a delay of roughly thirty minutes before the sensors can let anyone know what’s happened.”

He could activate the newly installed valve remotely, so he’d just need to have Vinay connect it to a container to fill. Same for the other tanks once those were tapped. But then it would be a matter of getting the containers once they were filled.

“What about when someone else is drawing from the tanks?” Vinay asked as he left the storage room and began walking towards the main warehouse. “If we pulled a little each time someone else was, then they might not notice.”

That was a good idea. It was a little tricky since there was no real set schedule for how often each chemical was used, but over time Chester would be guaranteed a slow but steady supply of each chemical.

“We need a way to know when the vat’s are being drawn from,” Chester told them all. “See what our options are for figuring that out.”

The drones all signaled their acceptance of his instructions and the neural connection went quiet. He didn’t expect any of them to have the answer right away so he turned instead to his other project.

The wall panel beside his bed was currently lying on the floor, exposing the inner supports, wiring, and plumbing. It also now housed some four dozen mice. He’d been able to source a few sheets of clear plastic and secured that in place like a giant window and boxing the rats into the wall cavity. He had a few hinged sections that he could open to give them food, water, and the odd bit of debris to chew on or make their nests out of. He’d sealed off the other ways in or out of this section of wall as well so the mice couldn’t get into any other part of the hab, and he’d boxed out the wiring and piping to make sure the mice didn’t cause any problems there either.

The mice scurried about, the first few litters of mice already past their pink phase with their fur beginning to really grow in now. Every few days he’d open the whole wall and clean out their droppings to keep the smell from becoming noticeable but mostly he just let them do their thing.

“You’ve got an inspection coming,” Lyon warned him and Chester replaced the original wall panel.

He didn’t have anything else he could really work on, for the time being. He’d done all he could to construct a few sets of neural injectors, at both mouse and human scale. He had the mixing vats ready for the neural gel once he could get the right chemicals, and he had a few bio-electric dampeners. It was just a waiting game now. Keep playing the role of the good little worker, stay out of trouble, and be ready and able to get off the moon the instant the port was ready to reopen, which wasn’t far off now.

They’d cleared out all of the organic debris and were almost finished removing the rest of the recyclable materials. Then the repair crews could go in and get to work. At most, Chester figured they had a couple more weeks before the port reopened.

It was amazing to think that the main port for the capitol would be inoperable for the better part of a month. Surely the number or orbiting ships was getting pretty large now, but what else could they do? Most ships weren’t designed to handle a landing through such a dense atmosphere. So they just had to wait. At least they weren’t in any danger of starving or running out of necessities. The resupply ship that had been intended for the lunar colony instead distributed what it could among the other ships and then left to return to it’s home port. By the time the port would be back open, the next resupply ship would be arriving anyway.