POISON 4

Chapter One

Treize sighed, stretched, and pulled the next in the seemingly never-ending stack of folders towards him, twirling his pen between his fingers as he read through page after page of dense statistics, occasionally slashing caustic commentary in red ink against one margin or another, before closing the folder with a snap and tossing it to the floor at his feet.

Turning to his waiting computer, he input the first in a series of passwords and opened his inbox, scanning through titles and sender identifications to separate those he needed to read from those he could delete out of hand.

Without looking up, he reached out with his left hand and brought his coffee cup to his mouth, grimacing when he discovered that the liquid it contained had long since gone cold. For a moment he contemplated ringing for a fresh pot, but as his hand touched the buzzer he changed his mind and instead got to his feet, crossing the room both to stretch out the kinks in his body and to reach his liquor cabinet.

White gloved fingers captured the gilt handle and pulled down the wooden front panel, revealing glittering crystal glasses and matching decanters.

Studying the selection for a moment, he picked up a tumbler and reached past the row of decanters to an array of bottles half hidden at the back of the cabinet. His hand closed around the neck of a bottle and he pulled it into the light, half smiling to himself as he took it and the glass back to his desk and set them both down in place of his coffee cup.

A little over an hour later, a heavy knock echoed through the room and drew his attention from his workload. A warm smile lit his face – there were only two people on base at the moment who would dare to knock directly at his door and even if he hadn't known Zechs's knock for years, Lady Une didn't posses the strength to make the door rattle in its frame in quite that manner.

Putting his current raft of papers to one side, he stood up and crossed the room, noting as he walked that the world was hazy around the edges and seemed to be moving a pace behind him. With more caution than he would normally have employed, he opened the door and then leaned against the frame. "Well, hello, Zechs," he greeted warmly. "What can I do for you this evening?"

"My mission report, sir. About the rebel cell we destroyed this afternoon."

"Oh? I hadn't realised you had command of that particular mission?"

"I wasn't in command – I happened to be in the hangar when the company was preparing to leave and I was invited along."

"You happened to be in the hangar?"

Treize's twitch of a smile told his friend that he wasn't fooled by this seemingly chance encounter.

"Yes, sir," Zechs agreed, his voice revealing no matching humour. "I happened to be. Fortunate, considering…"

The smile vanished. "Considering what?" the general snapped.

"Lieutenant-Colonel Locke is dead, sir. His mobile suit took a direct hit from a 105mm armour-piercing shell… there isn't a great deal of him left."

There was a silence for a space of time whilst Treize appeared to assimilate this news. Then he turned on his heel, walked back to his desk, picked up his beaker and drained it in one go.

"Where would rebels get that kind of hardware?" he demanded.

"I… don't know, sir. We didn't think they had – there was no indication that they should have anything powerful enough to do more than scratch the paint on a Leo. Locke's suit going up was the first warning we had."

"Why am I only learning of this now?"

"We've only been back on base an hour. I had to see to the rest of the company first. I thought you'd prefer to have all the information I could give you to hand… and I didn't want to pass news like this over the radio or by email."

Cinnamon hair flashed blood red in the electric lighting as the older man lifted his head and stared at his friend. "News like this?" He moved one flimsy folder further to one side and picked up his bottle, pouring a generous measure into the glass and then coming back to the younger man's side. "Go on."

Zechs took a deep breath, his jaw tense under his helmet. "More than half of Locke's company were fresh from the Academy – the mission was supposed to be straightforward and quick, a good first experience. When Locke was killed most of them panicked and…" he shrugged, although the gesture wasn't as smooth or as careless as he would have liked. "Three are dead. One more most likely won't see dawn and another two will be off active duty for a fortnight or more whilst they heal. The rest are bruised and bloodied, their nerve shaken."

Treize watched him for a moment, then handed him the tumbler. "Don't argue, just drink it," he ordered.

"I wasn't going to argue."

The senior officer waited for Zechs to finish the Cognac, reclaiming the glass when he was done. "Are you hurt?" Treize asked, concern flashing in his eyes.

"No."

Treize nodded, relieved and took Zechs's arm, trying to lead him to the sofa. Zechs shook his head, resisting.

"I can't, sir. I'm filthy."

The general ran an assessing gaze over the pilot, noting the smudges of oil, smoke and blood on his shirt cuffs and breeches, but his hands, for some reason missing their gloves, and what could be seen of his face, were clean.

He shrugged. "This sofa has seen far worse than a bit of oil."

"No, sir. I'm soaked in blood. I only came to tell you what had happened. I need…"

"There's the odd spot, yes, but…"

Zechs shook his head again. "More than that, sir," he insisted, his voice seeming to tremble a little. "My jacket is red – it hides a lot." He freed his arm and made for the door, pausing only to murmur, "Excuse me," over his shoulder as he left the room.

Treize watched him go and made a sudden decision. Picking up his cloak, he flung it over his shoulder and left his rooms for the hangar bay.

The smell caught his nose before he turned the corner into the last stretch of corridor leading to the hangar area: the unmistakeable, unholy combination of damaged mecha and injured pilot. The aroma was unforgettable and even if Zechs hadn't already told him how wrong the mission had gone, Treize would have had some idea as soon as he picked up the mingled odours of blood, burned flesh and burnt-out wiring.

The scent only got stronger as he approached the hangar doors and Treize forced himself to take shallow, slow breaths until his stomach stopped jumping, regretting now the Cognac he had drunk on an empty stomach as he fought the nausea. Their general throwing up in the doorway would do no-one's morale any good.

The usually immaculate, precisely laid out hangar was a ruin; mobile suit parts were scattered across the white concrete floor, and pools of oil and blood, both separate and commingled, stained the surface. Technicians were darting back and forth, carrying buckets, tools and manuals, attempting to restore order and begin repairs.

Treize shook his head. Clearly, the engineers couldn't cope and that was unacceptable. If they were unable to manage the aftermath of a simple raid-gone-wrong then they would be of no use to him when his plans came to fruition.

Making a mental note to himself to look into finding people who could cope with difficult circumstances, Treize turned his head, looking for the hanger foreman.

From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a row of sheet-draped bodies laid against the wall and changed his mind about speaking to the foreman. Swift paces took him across the expanse of the bay, his boots protecting him from the pools of cooling, condensing fluid.

There were four bodies, as Zechs had told him – Locke and the three pilots – and he realised the recovery teams must have been out and returned already. Understandably, the bodies of the dead had been all but ignored in the chaos – the medical teams were more concerned for those pilots still living and the technicians had to make sure the damaged suits were made safe – but it pleased him that someone had taken the time to place the remains in a relatively clean corner and draw a cover over them.

Going to one knee by the first of the bodies, Treize reached forward and used one hand to pull the sheet down from the still-cooling form.

The face that appeared from under the sheet was young, still boyish, still carrying the roundness of childhood. Treize doubted the boy's skin had ever seen a razor.

There were traces of blood around the edges of a few shallow cuts on the lower right jaw and the neck, but nothing disfiguring, and for that the general was grateful – this child's parents, at least, would have the comfort of seeing his face for one last time and knowing his death had been quick and relatively painless. Slowly, trying not to disturb the body more than he had to, Treize reached white silk gloves around the boy's neck and released the catch on his identification tags, folding the cold metal into his hand for a moment before sliding it into a pouch on his belt. Then, gently, he pulled the sheet back up and moved on.

As the general knelt before the third body, a shadow fell over him, blocking his light, and he looked up in irritation to see the sergeant in charge of the engineering crews watching him, arms folded, from a little way back.

"That one's not so pretty, sir. You might wanna brace yoursel'."

The sergeant's voice was a study in spiteful solicitousness, meant as a deliberate test of his officer's composure, and Treize raised an eyebrow, both annoyed with the man for his callousness and impressed at his courage in speaking so to someone who was, in every way, his superior. "I've been a soldier for half of my life. I doubt this body looks any worse than others I've seen," he replied, his voice deliberately cool.

"If you reckon so, sir, but your fancy young major was looking more than a bit green round the edges by the time we'd cut that one free. The view screen was smashed to smithereens, see – there was blood all over…" The sergeant trailed off, obviously seeing something in his commander's darkening gaze that told him he was going too far.

In truth, Treize already had some idea of what he was going to find when he pulled this sheet back; one of the bodies had bled out enough that Zechs had felt he was soaked with blood – that was why his gloves had been missing, the general realised – and neither of the others he had looked at already had bled much at all.

Still, the staining on the sheet and the foreman's news that the view screen had shattered gave the general a better idea of what he was going to see and he steeled himself mentally before pulling the fabric back.

This pilot's face was almost hidden underneath a mask of dried blood. Deep gashes ran through the smooth tissue and splayed open the flesh of cheek and neck – down to the gleaming ivory bone in places. The cause of death was obvious – the major arteries had been nicked in several places, draining the body of its vital fluids. Slowly, Treize drew the sheet further down, wincing at the jagged shards of the screen that had ripped through the uniform and into the slender, still developing figure.

He paused, glancing back up at the face and then along the line of the body, trying to picture this pilot alive and uninjured. The image came to him slowly and he caught his breath.

What he had taken for a young and particularly petite boy, was in fact a girl. Not much into her adolescence, her form was still childlike, but her blood soaked hair would once have been a cloud of dark curls and the shredded wreck of her face showed the promise of maturing into true beauty had she lived a few more years. Treize swallowed hard – it was no surprise to him now that Zechs had looked so shaken, nor that he had seemed so sickened to the sergeant.

Though Une's high rank and Noin's growing reputation were exceptions to the usual career expectations of a woman in the Specials, the Academy gave no weighting to gender when it made its selections and female pilots did exist, though they were out-numbered almost ten to one by their male counterparts. This girl wasn't the first female Treize had seen killed in action, although he was sure she was the first for his friend, but somehow, it was always harder to take. Some deeply old-fashioned part of his soul, though he would never admit to it aloud, rebelled at the thought of sending women to meet such horrible deaths. It offended his sense of chivalry.

He closed his eyes for a moment, offering up a silent prayer for this girl's soul and for those of all the soldiers killed today, stroked her matted hair back from her forehead, and then freed her tags, slipping them with to the others without looking at her name. It would be on the formal death certificate he would sign later and send to her family – most likely it would be in Zechs's report as well – and he would memorise it then, along with those of her companions, but for now, he didn't want a name associated with the ruin of a human being in front of him. Even he required some tricks to help him retain his mental balance sometimes.

He drew the stained sheet back over her face and moved on to the body of Lieutenant-Colonel Locke.

Once he was finished, he came to his feet and turned to face the hangar sergeant, who was still standing behind him, silently waiting.

There was something in the man's eyes that hadn't been there before – a wariness and a growing respect.

Treize inclined his head. "Forgive me but I don't believe I know your name."

"Simmons, sir. Benjamin Simmons."

"Sergeant Simmons – what state are the mobile suits in?"

Simmons shook his head. "We'll have repaired most of them by the end of the week, but there's a few…. In all honesty, sir, we can fix them, but it'd almost be cheaper to replace them completely – the cockpits will have to be ripped out of some of them. Pilots are superstitious, sir. None of them will be happy if they find out they might be given a machine someone died in." He flicked his glance at the bodies, and sighed. "That young lass there, she made it almost all the way back here before she gave up – the major carried her the rest of the way in. Somethin' like that – it's seen as bad luck."

Treize nodded. "Yes, I do remember. It hasn't been so long since I was a pilot myself. Do whatever you think is best, Mr Simmons." He straightened up and took a step past the foreman.

"Uh, sir…"

The man's voice had taken on a hesitant note and Treize turned his head. "Yes?"

"Uhm, your gloves, sir… they…"

Treize looked down and grimaced. The fragile silk acted as a sponge for blood and he had touched a good deal of it in the last few minutes. The pristine fabric was stained bright red. He smiled at the sergeant, but it wasn't a warm smile.

"Appropriate, don't you think? I always have believed God has a dramatic flair." He looked at the sergeant, saw blank incomprehension and shook his head. "Excuse me."

The sergeant watched the slender figure cross the wide hangar and fade into the shadows of the corridor before nodding his head and looking at the junior mechanic who had come to his side. "Proper officers, see," he commented. "Not like those pompous Alliance bastards we worked for before. I don't care what anyone says about how the Specials dress and how young they are, they know what's expected of them and they ain't afraid to get their hands dirty when it's called for." He paused, and then put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Come on, back to work."