(Photo by I Love Pixel)

The next few days were like a game of cat and mouse, except that only Chester and his drones knew that the game was happening. It wasn’t an easy thing, predicting where the newcomers would go and in small enough numbers that he could safely convert them into drones without risk of being caught. All it would take would be one witness to send out a distress signal and the game would be over.

Chester also didn’t have an unlimited supply of neural gel so he had to weigh carefully the benefits of having all these drones versus the potentiality of running out of neural gel later on. There was no telling if he’d ever be able to make any more once he left the moon so he had to assume this was all he’d have going forward.

Besides the one drone hiding in the security office, there weren’t any other drones in the administrative building that Chester could use to eavesdrop. There were only four administrators that Chester particularly wanted to make into drones: the quartermaster, the port master, and the heads of bio and security. With them, Chester could maintain control of pretty much everything he might need here. Captain Gek and his crew were potentially targets as well, but Chester wasn’t certain of them yet. He’d need to be in control of whatever ship he eventually left on, but the medical frigate didn’t seem all that likely to be sent to the fringe. So far, Chester had managed to get mostly lower level workers, which made sense. Those were the ones who got sent out to search the colony and do the messy work of conveying the remaining bodies to bio for processing.

“Where’s Captain Gek?” Chester asked his drones.

“He’s in the administrative offices with the new lunar administration.”

Captain Gek spent a fair amount of time in there, which seemed odd to Chester. The rest of the medical frigate’s crew stayed on their ship now that the initial search was done. Chester had a few of them under his control but this crew was relatively new so none of them knew much about Captain Gek.

“Find out what you can about him,” Chester commanded, and then asked, “How many people are in the administration building right now?”

A few drones had been assigned the task of keeping track of such things and they immediately responded.

“Fifteen people. Ten are the new administrators, three security, Captain Gek, and one other person.”

“Who’s the last one?” Chester asked.

“We’re not sure.”

“What’s their job?”

“We’re not sure. They were sent as part of the clean up crew but so far they haven’t done much of that. Most of their time is spent in the administrative offices.”

“Try to get a good look at them next time they come out,” Chester said. “I want to see if Siecha recognizes them.”

“There are hundreds, possibly thousands of covert operatives working for the Solar King,” Siecha said. “The chance it’s someone I know is minuscule.”

“Still worth checking,” Chester said.

“Even if I do know them, I doubt that will help.”

“Why’s that?”

“They haven’t come to see me,” she replied. “All they’ve done is sent me food and water to keep me from dying. If they thought I was a traitor I would have been interrogated by now and if they thought I wasn’t compromised they would have let me out by now.”

“Do you think they suspect you of being a drone?”

“I can’t say for certain what they suspect, only that they are treating me with suspicion.” Siecha replied. “It might be that they have orders not to harm me but don’t know anything else.”

In the mean time, Chester’s other drones caught another cleaning crew and added them to Chester’s growing pool of drones.

“I’m going to be out of food after today,” the drone hiding in the security office informed Chester.

“Is there a night shift set up yet?”

“Not that I’ve seen.”

“I’ll have some supplies sent to you tonight, then.”

He searched among his new drones and found a couple who were romantically involved with one another. If anyone caught them, they would claim to be out on a date or sorts, looking for a place to have a private meal together.

Once those instructions were sent, Chester turned his thoughts back to the administrators and Captain Gek. Why were they spending so much time together and who was that other person in there with them?

“It could be a trap,” he muttered to himself.

Maybe there wasn’t any real significance to it besides Dawnstar trying to draw Chester out into the open and reveal himself.

“How do I get them alone?” Chester asked his drones.

“The administrators never go anywhere by themselves,” a drone replied.

“I know, that’s why I need a way to separate them. It doesn’t even have to be for that long. A few minutes would be enough.”

“Modify the toilet in the administration offices into a Bednir, then,” a drone said.

Chester almost choked as his body tried to gasp and laugh all at the same time. It was a ridiculous idea, but also a genius one at the same time. Once the initial surprise wore off and he began to think through the actual steps he’d need to take in order to realize that plan, the more problems he found. For one thing, the modifications wouldn’t be limited to just the toilet. There would need to be components hidden in the walls and floor as well and that sort of construction wasn’t the kind of job Chester’s drones could do in one night.

“The basic idea’s good,” Chester finally said, “but there’s no chance we can install it in the administration building. The habs, however, might be just what we need. Administrators are the only ones with permanently assigned quarters so we already know where they’ll be living once the colony’s been fully decontaminated.”

“My team and I are assigned to begin cleaning those habs in a couple days,” a drone said. “We could do the installation at the same time.”

“How long before they plan on moving into their habs?” Chester asked.

“Not until the rest of the bodies have been processed and the colony’s been fully decontaminated.”

“And what’s the timetable for all of that?”

“A week, maybe a week and a half. It depends on how quickly they reopen the port. Once shipments are coming through some of us will be assigned port duty rather than clean up.”

“I’ll need more supplies here, then,” Chester said.

His own stores of food and water would run out in another few days, and without control of the new quartermaster, rations on the moon would be difficult to secure in the quantities he needed without being noticed.

“I’m going to need all the drones being issued rations to begin saving one meal per day for me and the hidden drones.”

It wouldn’t be enough to keep them all well fed, but it would keep them from starving or becoming dehydrated. Besides, it would only be for another week or so. He’d gone for longer without regular meals. He’d be fine. Patience was the key to getting away safely.