(Photo by Ardeshir Etemad)

Mice. The lunar colony was infested with them. For better or worse, though, they tended to stay out of sight of people as much as possible. Everyone knew they were around, but as long as you didn’t see them, you could at least pretend the problem wasn’t that big. With only a week before the port was scheduled to reopen, however, the rodent problem grew suddenly into something that couldn’t just be ignored.

“Three more reports of mice chewing through hab walls and flooding out and into people’s living spaces today,” Pald said. “Quartermaster Cosa’s been getting complaints all day by others who claim to be hearing mice in their walls.”

Chester smiled. He was quite familiar with that sound, though he hadn’t heard it in his own hab for the past few days.

“She’s meeting with the managers of maintenance right now to see what can be done,” Pald went on. “I’ve heard your pseudonym brought up more than once. Seems the night shift supervisor has been impressed by the amount of mice you’ve been able to catch with your bucket traps.”

Chester had been setting them out every night while they worked and he always had dozens of mice in each bucket by the end of the shift. He didn’t need any more for his experiments so he’d been dumping them into the bio haulers for processing.

A moment later, Chester’s comm hummed and a soft voice spoke.

“This is Quartermaster Cosa’s office,” they said, “your presence is requested to discuss your mouse traps.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Chester said.

Chester already had his things packed and ready to go. He’d been waiting for this call ever since the mice began causing so much trouble. If the quartermaster hadn’t called him in today he would have gone to her tomorrow anyway.

He carried a bucket in one hand, held a folding table under the opposite arm, and had a pack slung over his shoulder with the rest of his equipment. He wished he could have miniaturized more but that expertise had been lost when H’lay died.

A small crowd was gathered outside of the administrative offices when Chester arrived. He didn’t like crowds, generally speaking, but the main reason this crowd was unwanted was because they might overhear some of what was about to transpire inside.

“Lyon, I need security to find an excuse to clear away these people,” Chester said over the neural connection. “The traps aren’t that complicated to demonstrate so I don’t know how long I have in there with Cosa.”

“I’ll have security there in five minutes to break them up,” Lyon replied. “I’ll make sure we make enough noise to mask anything inside the office.”

“Treshec,” a voice said, startling Chester.

He’d been distracted by his conversation with Lyon and hadn’t realized he was already standing in the reception area for the quartermaster’s office. The one who’d spoken to him was Pald, sitting in the waiting area.

“I think they’re waiting for you,” Pald said with a nod towards the closed door bearing Quartermaster Cosa’s name.

“Right,” Chester nodded and hurried forward.

He placed his hand on the panel beside the door and waited. He heard a flat voice say “Treshec from maintenance is waiting at the door.”

The door opened a moment later and Chester entered.

“You wanted to see me?” he said, “About the mice?”

“Yes,” Quartermaster Cosa replied.

She was sitting behind her desk, strain evident on her face. There were two other people in the room as well that Chester could only assume were the heads of maintenance. They were an old couple, sitting together and holding hands. They looked tired as well. Tired and frail. Chester hadn’t seen anyone so old as this couple in quite some time. Even the poor and jobless masses of the lunar colony tended towards looking only middle aged. Perhaps this was just a common punishment for the lunar leadership by the Solar King, denying them genetic repairs to reverse their aging.

“Well, uh,” Chester began when no one else in the room spoke, “the traps are simple.”

He set up the folding table and placed the bucket on it. While he assembled the few other parts he explained how they worked, even going so far as to pull a mouse from his bag and have it run up the ramp and into the bucket.

“On a good night I’ve caught anywhere between twenty and thirty mice per bucket,” he said. “Though, that’s only in the port. I haven’t tried setting the traps out in my hab.”

Quartermaster Cosa was, by this time, standing beside the table, inspecting the bucket trap.

“Why’d you decide to start trapping them in the first place?” she asked.

“I had to do something,” he replied. “As soon as I learned there were mice here…I couldn’t believe they were just allowed to be here.”

“How many of these traps do you have?”

“Only three,” Chester said.

“That would never be enough to deal with our problem,” Quartermaster Cosa scoffed.

“It was all I could do,” Chester shrugged.

Outside a pair of loud voices began shouting back and forth. It wasn’t clear enough to understand what was being said, but it was obvious enough to Chester that the security team had arrived and an argument had now broken out.

“There is one other thing,” Chester said, trying to hide the sudden rush of adrenaline. “You two might want to get a better look as well.”

The older couple, who had remained sitting throughout his brief presentation, finally stood and joined the quartermaster by Chester’s table.

“I think someone has been messing with the mice,” Chester said, pointing to the mouse in the bucket.

It was difficult to get a good look at the rodent without leaning over the table, though, so Chester had to step back to make room for the three others to see what he was pointing at.

“What are we supposed to be looking for?” Quartermaster Cosa asked.

Chester activated the bio-electric dampeners he’d installed in the table, just like he and H’lay had done before. All three collapsed onto the table, knocking the bucket and mouse to the floor. With a thought, Chester had the mouse scurry back over the bag and climb inside one of the pouches.

As the mouse settled down for a nap, Chester pulled out the crude neural injector he’d made.

“You first,” he said to Quartermaster Cosa. She was the target anyway. The older couple were just collateral damage. He wasn’t sure if they’d even survive the process, as old as they were.

He inserted the needles into her neck and then activated the pump, flooding her brain with. neural gel. That done, he slid her off the table and removed the injectors. He pushed her beneath the table where he had the reanimator panel installed and while it began the process of bringing her back to life, Chester got to work on the old couple.

He chose the old woman to go second since she looked a bit younger and stronger and therefore more likely to survive the process. By the time he was pulling her off the table, he felt his connection with Quartermaster Cosa coming on line and he had her take over reanimating the other woman. When he turned to the old man, he double checked how much neural gel he had left.

“Barely enough for one more,” he muttered, glancing at the old man, “and I don’t exactly need you.”

He shook his head and put away his equipment rather than take the old man. Even with Quartermaster Cosa under his control he still had to be careful with how many people he turned into drones. The neural load on his mind was a constant concern, as well as the need to avoid arousing suspicions.

The old woman sat up as Chester finished putting away his things and folded his table back up. The connection between Chester and the old woman was weak and he could tell already that there was an unfortunate amount of damage to her brain. For a while she could only sit there, holding her head and groaning in pain. She might not survive after all.

“Have traps placed throughout the colony,” Chester told Quartermaster Cosa. “In addition to locating the nests, I’ll have the mice under my control begin hunting the females. The males will become more and more aggressive as females become rarer. As the population becomes more unbalanced, they’ll be more likely to suffer a collapse and begin dying out on their own.”

Quartermaster Cosa nodded silently and Chester felt her accept the instructions.

“Now then,” he said, sitting himself down and wiping sweat from his forehead as he calmed down from the excitement of the last few minutes, “let’s figure out how to get me and my drones off the moon without Dawnstar knowing.”