Chapter 24

Derma-masks are designed to aid the healing of facial scars and burns.

However, they are not fun to wear, and after five days, we were relieved to have them removed. We then had to adjust to our new faces and the face our partner now wore. For me, it wasn’t that hard as Justin’s face still had James’s smile and the love in his eyes.

While Justin and I were studying for our new jobs and waiting for our faces to heal, we were measured for our new uniforms that also doubled as our spacesuits. We had to wait a couple of weeks for the new wardrobe to turn up. Fortunately, our personal effects turned up first, so we didn’t have to live in Hospital attire.

We were both glad to have our own clothes to wear again. Most of our civilian clothes were generic, off the rack type clothing, so Major Carmichael had let us keep them. It did feel strange to not wear our police uniforms when we were working. Justin said that since I was now a Detective, I would have to get used to plainclothes anyway.

We had a Detective Ray Carver from the MPs turn up for three hours every morning to run us through standard reporting procedures and variations in the laws as far as working on Luna went. We had to adapt to where International laws differed from Australian laws. He gave us manuals to study and walked us through some dos and don’ts.

He’d come back to his unit in Brisbane three months before, after a two-year stint, so he was well versed on the going’s on, on Luna. James and I both agreed that his information about the people that were there and the places to watch for was invaluable. We listened carefully to everything Ray told us.

Smuggling was one of the major crimes on Luna. They had shuttles from every Nation running back and forth. A lot of items like drugs and weapons were considered serious contraband, so they were the most common things to turn up and that we had to investigate from where, who did it, and how they got to Luna.

Once the derma-masks were removed, we were taken to a special training facility where we were taught about gravity compensators, how to use and care for our suits, airlocks and how to operate the types of vehicles we had available to use on Luna.

We could use Lingers and Hoppers in the domes since they had an atmosphere but had to convert to wheels if we went outside or used the tunnels that connected the domes. Small electric buggies, scooters and bicycles, both pedal power and motorised, were in common use.

Most of the thirty-six domes the population lived and worked in were connected via underground tunnels. Some were connected by Oznglass tunnels on the surface. These were shared by vehicles and Mag-trains. The more isolated domes, depending on the Nation with jurisdiction, were reached by enclosed buggies or shuttle flights.

As MPs, we had authority everywhere on Luna and the Armstrong SS. We were assigned to specific areas but could work wherever our investigation took us. It was, however, courteous to let our co-workers in that area in on what we were doing.

Justin and I were both getting excited about our trip and our new jobs. I hadn’t really thought much about working off Earth, but now it was going to happen; I was looking forward to the adventure.

We had a lot of fun doing zero and low Gee training and learning how to get in and out of our spacesuits. The flexible suits stretched to form fit your body. The helmet that we wore had the integrated functions that were found in any peeper and a few more handy features they didn’t.

It looked a lot like a close-fitting Riot Helmet. It had a wide curved faceplate that went to your ears and could be lifted well clear of your face and slid back over your head when not sealed by the suit.

The front of the suit had a special seal arrangement. One side hooked over the strip on the other side, and you pressed them together up to the top of the collar unless you wanted to leave the collar open.

When the helmet needed to be sealed, the wide collar was pulled up, pressed onto the helmet’s rim that the faceplate sealed onto, and then down the front of the suit to seal it. You then did a pressure check and fixed any leaks.

We were taught how to care for our suits and to run the diagnostics on them. How to change the waste collection bags if we had to use them, the water bottles, feed bags and the thin backpack type air filtration systems. The underlining was part of the thermal insulation and designed to draw off body sweat.

We could get in or out of the suits in less than two minutes. Ray had warned us that we could spend a lot of time on shuttles and in connecting tunnels if we were chasing down leads.

While many of the older tunnels have had air leak into them over time, through the doors opening and closing, the air wasn’t to be relied upon and could be quite stale because it wasn’t filtered.

He’d also told us to get in the habit of wearing our suits everywhere when not in our private lodgings. He even had spares that were not his standard uniform. We had been issued with two outer suits that just needed wiping down and three inners that absorbed our perspiration and were washable.

However, he told us if we had the cash, we should get at least one more outer suit for off-duty and two of the soft inner linings so we could cycle them. He remarked that it seemed to take forever to get them replaced or repaired, so the more we took with us, the better.

After I checked the prices of the suits and stopped gagging, I decided to activate the black card I had gotten from Anne Connors. I had to remind myself to breathe again once I saw the extent of the reward money she had put on the card.

The reward was for stopping the theft of her high-tech probes that had gotten me into this mess in the first place. Apparently, they really were worth a few million dollars each, and I knew there had been twelve crates on that lorry.

For each of us, I ordered two more unmarked and one MP-marked outer suit with five linings, a spare visor and a complete helmet, five pairs of spare gloves, two extra pairs of boots, and a spare set of webbing that we used to carry our equipment. Since I had the money, I wasn’t going to skimp on our safety.