The Luna Budget Shuttle trembled. Lieutenant Weaver of Intra-stellar Customs and Enforcement dug her fingernails into the armrest. They should have retired these reusables decades ago. She shouldn’t be here, but after botching her last assignment, she had to prove herself.

 

The empty seat next to the air marshal gave him away. She wondered if he was in on it or just incompetent. They should have retired him decades ago.

 

As the shuttle’s trajectory smoothed, Weaver pulled out her terminal. Pretending to read, she watched the pregnant couple. Weaver had more respect for meat smugglers than breeders that tried to bring unborn children to the colonies. Resources were tight, citizens could die.

 

The woman was younger than Weaver, her spouse younger still, despite his beard. She reached for him, and he took her hand. Weaver bristled, but they were the symptom. The real problem was the network helping them.

 

S. Carre was the name on the manifests; extra O2 canisters, requisitions, and custom declarations. Without the person at the top of the network, the couple wouldn’t be able to smuggle their unborn child to Mars. Weaver pulled herself along the ceiling to the air marshal.

 

Elbowing him as she strapped in, she gave him a second to catch the drool floating toward his eyeball. Incompetent or in on it? She didn’t know who she could trust on Luna.

 

“Miss, you really shouldn’t move about the cabin,” he said, securing the spittle with his sleeve.

 

“You’re the air marshal,” Weaver said.

 

The large man’s face grew red, incredulous she’d pegged him. His size and oxygen consumption, the empty seat beside him. Incompetent, she decided.

 

Weaver tilted her terminal so he could see the manifests. “I’m on the job,” she said. “Same breeders you’re watching.”

 

His eyes darted about the cabin and located the couple. He hadn’t been watching them. Definitely incompetent.

 

“Do you know S. Carre?” Weaver asked. Maybe he could help, even if he was incompetent.

 

“I may have heard the name,” he answered. “What’s your interest?”

 

“You can tell as well as I. She’s carrying.”

 

He grunted.

 

“I’m interested in who’s making up the oxygen on the other end.”

 

“So, you want me to do what?”

 

Incompetent and lazy, she thought. “Nothing. Let them through customs and the bio-scan. I want to see who helps them.”

 

He nodded.

 

Weaver closed one eye, keeping the other on the couple.

 

* * *

 

Stillness woke Weaver from a dream of moon rats. She hated moon rats. Unhooking her harness, she rocketed out of the seat, hitting her head on the ceiling. Incompetent, lazy, and spiteful; she’d give the air marshal an earful for not waking her up.

 

Pushing past the last passengers exiting the shuttle, Weaver located the couple queuing up at customs. She exhaled. Her career was hanging on this case.

 

Rubbing the waxy sweat of sleep from her face, Weaver scanned her chip and went through the diplomatic kiosk to wait for the couple.

 

“Welcome to Luna, lieutenant,” the clerk said. “Remember, our gravity is 16% of...” His voice trailed off as Weaver rushed past.

 

When the couple emerged from border control, Weaver was sucking on a coffee bulb. She followed them into the labyrinth of tenement and commerce tunnels under the moon’s dark zone. It’d been a while since she’d been in the field.

 

The corridor sloped under a basaltic lava flow too dense to drill through. Light tubes buzzed and blinked as the couple’s footsteps echoed back at her. They disappeared past the pitch black at the nadir of the slope.

 

Looking at the darkness, all Weaver could think of was moon rats. Their cat-like size made them a staple of the black-market trade with Earth. Some cultures considered their low-g meat a delicacy. Weaver hated moon rats.

 

Weaver rushed under the basalt, past the darkness at the nadir of the tunnel. On the other side, light tubes blinked and flashed. The couple was gone.

 

Continuing along a hundred meters of hallway, Weaver found a door. S. Carre: Quartermaster. The obsolete intercom glowed in green LEDs.

 

Executing a simple hack with her terminal, the whooshing pressure change popped her ears and filled her nostrils with moon dust.

 

“Nobody move,” Weaver said to the grey-haired woman at the desk and the couple from the shuttle seated in front.

 

“You must be Lieutenant Weaver,” S. Carre said. “Please, let’s discuss an arrangement.” She gestured at a third chair. The couple looked back at Weaver.

 

Something was off about the room; the woman, the smell of dust...

 

“You’ll all need to come with me,” Weaver said, drawing her stun baton.

 

“We just want a better li-” the man stopped when S. Carre put her hand up.

 

“Certainly, there are more important crimes for you to pursue. If credits aren’t of interest, perhaps some low-g meat?” The grey-haired woman said as the air marshal stepped out of the shadows.

 

Weaver spun toward him, the baton crackling dust in the air.

 

“Lieutenant, there’s no need for violence. We are businesspeople,” S. Carre said. “Their child won’t be born until they get to Mars."

 

The air marshal lunged at Weaver.

 

Weaver’s baton arced through him; his translucent body flashed blue static, then settled. Weaver realized what was wrong. He was a hologram.

 

Weaver flew through the old woman behind the desk and crashed to the floor. She was a hologram too. Tiny red beads blinked at Weaver from the shadows.

 

S. Carre’s hologram reconstituted still facing the couple. “Lieutenant, this will not end how you want,” she said. “Please be calm. You’re going to wake the rats.”

 

Weaver was many things, calm was not one of them. Leaping over the desk, chairs, and holograms, Weaver banged into the ceiling. 16% of earth’s gravity, she thought, one hand struggling with her terminal; the other pointing the baton at the scurrying claws in the shadows.

 

Fumbling with her terminal to hack the door, Weaver felt the first bite on her neck.