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The lunar colony was both strangely quiet and abnormally busy all at the same time. The reason for this was the fact that no one was talking even as they all worked in unison. It wasn’t that unlike watching a colony of ants. The comparison wasn’t lost on Chester as he orchestrated it all. He didn’t have to micromanage the work, thankfully, but he did need to keep a metaphorical eye on things to ensure everything was getting done properly and in a timely manner. He only had a few more days, after all, before the port was scheduled to be reopened.

With over a hundred drones under his control now, the neural load was immense. Were it not for the six people he’d turned into nodes to share that load, there would have been no way that Chester could have managed this many drones. Even with the help he spent most of his time sitting in his hab, shifting his focus between the different drone groups and checking on their progress.

The team working on the port repairs required the least amount of concentration because they already knew what needed to be done and could more or less carry on without much input from Chester. The only real issue with them was making sure they didn’t complete their repairs too quickly. Next was the team mixing up the different neural gels Chester needed. The multiple stages of purifying, mixing, and purifying again required a level of attention to detail that was not common for the lunar workers. It was the last team, however, that was not only the biggest but was also doing the more complicated work of manufacturing the tools and other equipment he would need.

With so many delicate parts, and there being only a few people in the colony with experience in fabricating such things, that left them all needing to rely primarily on Chester and his knowledge. The constant hum of dozens of minds reaching out to him over the neural connection and tapping into his expertise was draining, to say the least. It didn’t help either that the lunar colony was not set up to be a manufacturing hub. They were, as he’d been told before, a port that did a bit of mining and refining on the side. Their purpose here wasn’t to be profitable as a colony but rather to allow for easy transport around the Solar King’s capitol planet.

Well, Chester had changed that, for now at least. There weren’t any more unemployed now that Chester was in charge. Everyone was working to make sure that everything Chester needed would be ready in time for the resupply ship’s arrival. If everything went according to plan, he would have enough neural gel for hundreds of more drones and dozens of more nodes.

The most critical invention the drones were working on was a chair of sorts. It housed the bio-electric dampeners, neural injectors, and the reanimator. All Chester would have to do is put his subject into the seat and then activate the machine. From there it would automatically do the rest. The trick would be getting people to sit in the chair since it wasn’t designed with concealment in mind. This was a prototype, though, so Chester didn’t worry about it for now. He could work on making it less obvious later. Besides, with the entire colony under his control, it would be simple to overwhelm the crew of the resupply ship and force them into the seat.

“How are the mice?” Chester asked the node he’d placed in charge of the rodents.

“Still searching for any remaining nests, but we’ve finished the residential sections of the colony. All that’s left now is some ducting in the mines.”

“Make sure all the corpses get taken to bio for processing,” Chester instructed.

“Why are you bothering with the dead mice?” Lyon cut in over the neural connection.

“I don’t want them rotting and making the place stink,” Chester replied.

“You’ll be off the moon before that’s an issue,” Lyon pointed out. “And aren’t you planning on wiping out the colony anyway?”

Chester hesitated. It was these sorts of questions that made him wonder if something was wrong with his drones. Yes, they were supposed to be able to still have the ability to think for themselves, as long as it didn’t interfere with commands from Chester, but this sort of questioning seemed a bit too far at times.

“I changed my mind,” Chester said. “It could be good to have a connection close to the capitol.”

“Won’t it be difficult to manage me and the others from that far away,” Quartermaster Cosa asked. “Our neural gel didn’t work as well as you’d hoped.”

“It’ll be fine as long as I have a high functioning node here to work through.”

“That’s a lot of drones in one place,” Lyon said. “If anyone starts getting suspicious of the lunar colony it won’t take them long to figure things out.”

“I doubt it,” Chester replied. “For one thing, necrology isn’t well known or understood by most people so I doubt they’d be looking for it. Second, unless you’re running specific brain scans, there’s no other way to identify a drone. And third, I’m going to have people here begin filing for a transfer off of the moon. The fire in the port is as good an excuse as any for them to want off this colony. That way I can begin seeding drones and nodes throughout the solar system. The more eyes and ears I can have out there, the better.”

He waited a moment but no one responded any further and the conversation ended. That was a relief, but at the same time he did appreciate having people that he could bounce his ideas off of. He knew all too well the danger of only having himself to talk to when it came to coming up with ideas and making plans.

A notification arrived just then, informing him that the first chair was finished. Chester closed his own eyes and concentrated on the drone handling the chair. After a moment he saw what the drone saw. The chair was a nightmare, as he’d expected. There were clamps for the arms and legs and a large strap for the chest. The neural injectors were splayed out on either side of the headrest, reminding him of spider legs, and the large neural gel tanks at the base made the whole thing seem far more industrial than high tech.

It was times like this that he missed H’lay. She’d know how best to conceal everything, finding all the wasted space and inefficiencies. Perhaps he could get one of his many drones to begin studying nanotechnology. In fact, it would be a good idea to get as many different specialties covered as he could.

“Don’t answer right now,” Chester said to all of his drones and nodes, “but I want you all thinking about whether or not you’d be interested in retraining into nanotechnology, biotechnology, or any other field of study.”

It would be far from an easy transition for any of them to make, especially since the lunar colony tended to be a place people were sent as punishment, but even if he could get a handful of them off the moon and into retraining, that could be a huge boon for him. It also gave him something else to think about and look forward to besides the approaching resupply ship.

He tried not to think about the struggle the crew would put up, much in the same way he tried not to think about the struggle it had been to convert the entirety of the lunar colony. The fear, the screaming, the crying and pleading, were not things Chester enjoyed. He had known other necrologists in the past who viewed that part of the process as a bit of fun but he’d never understood that. He’d personally experienced enough fear and terror to last himself a lifetime and he didn’t like causing such things in others.

“Let’s try and get the crew by surprise if we can,” Chester said to himself. “I wish there was a sedative that didn’t interfere with the neural gel. Maybe we could set up a kill box in the corridor leading away from the port. We activate it once they’re all inside, then move them onto the chairs for the neural gel injections and reanimation. It could work. But we won’t have enough chairs for them all and some of them would be dead for too long.”

The problem was that the crew weren’t planning on staying at the colony for very long. They were going to come in, unload, and leave. For now, it seemed, there wasn’t much Chester could do besides go forward with his original plan of just capturing them and then running them through the chairs as quickly as possible.

“I should give them a name,” Chester thought, referring to the chairs.

“How about BEDNIR?”

Chester wasn’t sure which of his drones had said that. It was certainly someone originally from the colony and not one of his older drones.

“Bednir,” Chester tried the name out. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Bio-electric-dampening-neural-injecting-reanimator.”

It wasn’t exactly a great name, but it wasn’t bad either. At least it was a name that could be used around others without giving away what exactly it was that they were talking about.

“Good enough,” Chester shrugged. “Install the Bednirs into the port waiting rooms.”

The drones acknowledged the instructions and carried on working. Just a few more days to go and then he could finally get off of the moon.