Chapter 31

It was not a pretty sight.

Low gravity and no atmosphere make for a very large mess when a person or item is blown up. Some of the stuff even ends up in space for a long time. The surface of Luna caused other issues. For one, it’s bloody dusty in places.

If you disturb the dust layer, which can be very thick and even elevated off the surface, it doesn’t behave like dust in the atmosphere or a heavier gravity. Scientists call the dust or dirt, regolith since it is comprised of only rock and crystal shards and no plant or animal matter.

The dust also sticks to everything due to the particles having a charged state, and they can form clouds many meters above the surface. The particles are also very sharp as they undergo mechanical weathering mostly due to solar winds and huge changes in temperature.

People who work on the surface use the throw-away reflector suits as much to keep the dust off the normal suit as the sun’s rays. We have also been told to avoid a dust cloud as it plays havoc with the suit’s electronics.

Blood doesn’t pool the same either. Being light time, the surface temperatures are up to one hundred and twenty-five degrees Celsius in places. In other places like on the lee of high hills, crater walls and large outcrops, it can still be in the negatives.

The heat also disperses quickly once you are not touching the surface that is heated by the sun as there is little atmosphere to hold it. Lighter volatile elements like nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen will also boil off into space. The joys of being in near-vacuum.

The more dispersed the blood is, the faster it alters, and you are looking for tiny flakes, not pools, which have settled into the dust. While Luna’s surface is not a pure hard vacuum, its atmosphere is so thin it may as well be.

For a forensic investigator, it sure makes life interesting. Not to be macabre but Justin and I were fascinated on a scientific level. We had special body bags that were pressurised to stop the mummification if it was a suit breach and most of the body was intact, so autopsies could be performed.

By the time that we got to the scene, the event was already three hours old. The local MPs in the dome had removed those few who were still alive from the receiving area and had tried not to disturb anything else.

Our first priority was the removal of the dead.

The Arabians had assigned us a small team of medics to assist.

The bodies were to be bagged and sent back to the morgue in Gamma. The Arabian officials were not happy about this. Sigma was a smaller dome designed to house ten thousand people, and their morgue wasn’t big enough to take forty-five dead people in one go.

We did allow for six of the bodies to go to their morgue. They were high ranking officials that were in the receiving area to meet the passengers.

We soon learnt this incident had far-reaching effects as the passengers were a delegation from UNSEC. They had come to discuss the Arabians wish to build a second much larger dome near their current one.

Mineral and mining rights were the primary driver for the new dome as they also wished to expand their mine. The rumour was that they had found industrial-grade diamonds and a massive tungsten deposit.

The wealth the mine could generate was substantial for the people back home on Earth and even for the people here on Luna.

We had to work out who was involved and why.

Oliver was a real surprise to me.

Once away from the others in our so-called team, he became less lethargic and more interesting. This wasn’t his first experience with death in space either, and once we got him talking, he was a trove of information. There is nothing like first-hand knowledge.

He was of slim build and around 178cm tall. He had dark blonde hair that he wore in a crew-cut, and he had the most amazing hazel eyes with long eyelashes. Oliver Le Blanc hailed from Ireland of all places. I later learnt that he was thirty-two and had been living on Luna for six years.

He told us that he didn’t have a permanent girlfriend and liked to play the field since he didn’t consider himself good husband material due to his sperm count being so low. This was a common problem for men these days. With the number of tourists and women who lived here, he didn’t lack for company, just commitment.

Jock was close to 185cm tall. He was a heavyset Scotsman and close to thirty according to him. He had grey speckles in his soft brown curly hair and dark brown eyes. He had been on Luna for nearly fifteen years and had moved here with his parents and never left.

Between Jock and Oliver, Justin and I got a first-class education on Moon forensics.

Cantara was twenty-four and hailed from Jakarta. She was very dark of skin and hair, 161cm tall and I think her boobs were the same measurement around. It amazed me she could do anything with the mass of mammary on her chest. She must have to get her suits custom-made.

She had only been on Luna for four months, and I was sure Jock had, had his head jammed between those mounds of flesh more than once. She didn’t talk a lot and just did whatever Jock told her to do.

I think the fact that Justin and I were asking questions, and paying attention to Oliver’s explanations and then asking more questions was pulling him out of his shell. I got the feeling the others in our team of detectives didn’t have a high opinion of Oliver.

We also learnt not to mention Schneider’s name near these people. Oliver clammed up and the pensive look he got, suggested his dealings with our Super Intendant were not conducive to a long-time friendship even though they had both been in the section for about the same length of time.

Jock had glanced at Cantara when we mentioned Schneider’s name, and the look on her face indicated he was someone she also tried to avoid. She had also rolled her shoulders forward as if to hide her massive tits, and I got the impression that she found them more trouble than just carting them around.