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Drones never lost their sense of self preservation. None of them wanted to die for Chester any more now than they would have before he turned them into his drones. The difference now, however, was the fact that they didn’t get get a choice in the matter. Still, he had to force the group of people forward, practically taking complete control over them.

“Opening the Sea Star’s main door,” captain Joachim said.

Nearly every drone in the colony tensed as his voice spoke over the intercom. Most of them were struggling against Chester’s control but none could stop what was happening.

“We’re beginning to unload the cargo now,” captain Joachim went on as he and his crew got to work. A few dozen members of the colony were there as well, helping to unload the cargo as though nothing was the matter. As though they weren’t exposing themselves to the deadly virus they all knew was inside. Most of the other people in the colony were still working at getting the colony ready for it’s next set of inhabitants, though that work was almost all done. The rest of them, the ones Chester had selected to keep alive, were with him, hiding in the back of a mine. They had food and other supplies to last them a week or so but for now they all sat quietly wearing full body bio-hazard suits to keep them from contracting the virus.

The first distress signal was sent that afternoon, noting that captain Joachim and some of his crew were beginning to feel sick. As per standard procedure, the crew were isolated and the orbiting vessels around the colony were instructed not to land until further notice. It was nothing serious, just a precaution since sicknesses were too easy to spread in the small confines of colonies and ships. A couple hours later, another announcement was sent out, informing the orbiting craft as well as the capitol that the unidentified illness was spreading rapidly through the colony and that they would be enacting a quarantine until further notice. The last message, sent only to the capitol, was issued that evening. Quartermaster Cosa, dressed in her uniform and sitting behind her desk, struggled to maintain her composure even as the illness raged inside of her. As she spoke she had to constantly dab at her lips with a cloth. Each time it came away with a little more red on it that it had had before.

“The colony is lost,” she said. “The Sea Star arrived carrying a rebel from the fringe posing as an engineer. They assumed she was carrying some sort of explosive device and thought they had disarmed it. Instead, it was a virus and all they did was expose themselves to it. From them it spread to the colony and now eighty percent of our population has died. I don’t expect any of us to survive the night. The woman responsible for this appears to be immune to the disease and is currently being held in the airlock. I considered following through with her execution but given the severity of this virus I thought it would be better to keep her alive so she may be questioned later. Perhaps more lives will be saved if we can avoid another catastrophe like this one.”

A series of tearing coughs wracked her for the next few moments and she held the cloth to her mouth. When she could finally stop coughing, the cloth was soaked in her blood.

“Someone will contact you in the morning if any of us are still alive. Quartermaster Cosa, ending transmission.”

There was no message in the morning.

Another day passed before the medical frigate arrived. Chester had a drone in the security office watching the camera feeds and letting him know where they were and what they were doing. Just as Siecha had said, they were not actually a medical team. The first ones to disembark all came out with weapons raised and ready for a fight. They moved through the port, checking everywhere before letting the rest of the passengers out of the ship. Even though more than enough time had passed for the virus to have run its course and died, they all wore full body containment suits.

As they made their way out of the port and into the colony they began to split up into groups of three or four people, searching each area before progressing further. Every time they found a corpse they shot it in the head and then added its location to a map.

“They’re counting the bodies,” Siecha said. “They’ll check their final count against the registered number of colonists, the crew of the Sea Star, and the number of people you brought with you.”

“That’s why we put a bunch of people into bio-reclamation already,” Chester said. “It’ll make it harder for them to have an accurate count. Siffronia also tweaked the numbers to make it seem like there were more people sent in.”

“If they check the biomass they’ll figure out the discrepancy,” Siecha said.

“Then we don’t let them do that.”

Just then, a group of people began nearing the first of Chester’s kill boxes.

“Scanning bio signatures,” the drone said, then watched and waited until the group were all inside before activating the kill box. Like marionettes who had their strings cut, the people collapsed. At the same time, the drone began broadcasting a copy of their bio signatures just in case. It would be too much of a giveaway to have them die and then suddenly come back alive as though nothing had happened. This way, anyone monitoring the different teams would still see them as alive and well.

The drone deactivated the kill box and a pair of drones who’d been hiding in a side room hurried out and began pulling them inside where a few Bednirs were stored. A few minutes late, the team exited the room and resumed their search, now fully under Chester’s control.

It would be too much to risk getting everyone this way, but it would be a start. He had two other such kill boxes set up and was able to get a few more new drones and nodes with them.

“We’re moving into the residential sections,” one of the new drones said over their comm.

The three groups Chester was now in control of were all near the mine where he was hiding in and made sure they marked his mine as empty. It would be a while before anyone would be coming down here to resume work so it was currently the best place for Chester to hide.

The rest of the searching was uneventful. He made sure to leave a few of his well known drones like Lyon in easy to find locations with the hope that their corpses would lend credence to his own supposed death. Having so many of his best drones die to the virus was a real loss but it had to be done. The only original drones he had now were Tsukasa and Siffronia. The rest were primarily unemployed colonists who were less likely to be missed when they weren’t found in the initial search. Chester wasn’t even certain that they were included in the official colony population count since he hadn’t thought to ask Quartermaster Cosa before she died.

“They’re moving in to clear out the administrative offices,” Chester’s drone in the security office said.

“Get back to your hiding spot,” Chester commanded him.

The drone obeyed and climbed behind the modified wall panel in the room where there was just enough space for him to sit or lie down. There were also enough supplies to last him a couple of days. Chester didn’t think the drone would really need that much but he wanted to make sure, just in case.

That night, as the new arrivals finished their first day of work on the moon, they made their way back to their ship. The colony wasn’t suitable for them to live in yet so they would continue to use their ship as their hab.

“This is captain Gek,” Chester’s drones heard the captain reporting in. “Quartermaster Cosa followed procedure and sent as many of the dead as possible to bio while she still had people capable to doing the work. After that the dead were left where they fell, mostly in their habs. Those who weren’t housed in the habs were among the first to die so there aren’t too many of them still out in the streets. We’ve finished our preliminary search and have found most of the bodies of interest. Those we didn’t find are listed among those who were sent to bio. We’ll begin our assessment of the colony tomorrow, as well as begin processing the dead.”

While the captain sent the report, everyone else was busy cleaning off their containment suits and getting them ready for the next day. Outside the ship in the colony, Chester’s drones got to work, moving the kill boxes and preparing for the next series of ambushes. He’d briefly considered attacking the new colonists while they were asleep in their ship but the risk was too great that they’d get a distress signal sent out before Chester could incapacitate them all.