30 Ways to Conquer Mars
#019 赤
A.C. 197, August 11, 14:38:「Corpus Delicti」
Gundam Wing © SOTSU AGENCY - SUNRISE - ANB
This is a work of derivative Fanfiction. No claims are made towards the ownership of intellectual rights pertaining to the metaseries.
...
The first body was a floater in Reservoir D, identified as Williams, one of the assistants to the Chief of Staff of Engineering.
It was his blood being pumped into the bathrooms and the Mess Hall in Sector B that gave him away. If whoever had slit his throat had thought to drain him properly before throwing him into the water-tank, it might have been several days before he was found.
The biggest casualty from this incident, asides from Mr. Williams himself, was Polly Hickory, a physicist whose thought to identify the thread of scarlet in her water was to taste it. To her credit, she had not screamed at all, instead, turning to her horrified colleagues, muttered. "Hn, I think it's blood."
She developed a minor staph infection that cleared up in days.
The second man's face was mangled beyond recognition, crushed into the back of his skull like most of the rest of him. That's what happens when a Mobile Suit stomps on you. The question is who are you, and what did you say to the Suit?
"Security, stand clear," the tall blond announced coolly to bystanders around the Aries' Mechanic's Pit, and vaulted himself easily over the protective railing, landing on his feet at the end of the forty-feet drop. His partner, the Marsprojekt's security teams always move in twos, took the cage-lift.
She does not admonish him as usual for attempting to break his ankle. Her attention was captured fully by the octagonal band glinting on a severed finger at her feet. It appeared to have ricocheted off the side of the cage after the initial… propulsion was not quite the right word, but it was the one that came to mind.
Zechs read everything he needed to know from Noin's face. She looked as though she had found half a worm in her apple. Any lesser woman would have thrown up or passed out. It was a Space Guild ring, similar to the one she was expecting in the mail, issued exclusively to members of the First-Class.
"Are you sure?" He asked gently.
She poked at the pulpy appendage with a pen and an iron stomach.
"No, not without further verification. He was the only First-Class member onboard before this morning, though," she answered, referring to her own induction into the Space Guild as a member of the First-Class hours ago. There were thirty-seven engineers and mechanics affiliated directly with the Space Guild registered to the Megmillion Corporation's Mars expedition, of which seventeen were full members of the Second-Class and nineteen were Guild-sponsored Journeymen— talented young men and women apprenticed to the Guild and groomed as potential Second- or First-Class members— and, until very recently, one member of the First-Class, excluding Lucrezia Noin.
Zechs grimaced at the mess. Loose teeth, ground meat, "that may be the only identifiable thing we've got." Something's not right here, though he couldn't quite put a finger to it.
The ship's scheduled dock at the Central Hub was cancelled, curfew announced, and a taskforce assembled, all within the hour. Noin was upset that the Chief of Security ordered them off the case, Zechs was unsurprised. The print had confirmed the identity of Sheldon Donnovan.
"Do you think he suspects us, or is trying to protect us?"
"Why not both?"
Marprojekt's Chief of Security, twenty-six year-old Terren Miller, is a phantom, a man whose idea of personalising something is adding his initials to it. This may have a little to do with his strict Asian upbringing, although, truthfully, it was mostly Terren Miller. He is the kind of man who made poker-faced Trowa look like unruly Duo. The desk against which he was leaning was standard issue, impersonally empty like the rest of his office.
One would have never been able to tell, except by familiarity with his blithely ordinary face, that he was the young man who inherited Miller Industries, the Earth Sphere's largest legal ammunition manufacturer, upon the humane euthanasian of his deranged father in A.C. 193.
Twenty months ago, Terren switched the company's main product from bullets to health supplements, sending panicked stockholders to the boardroom and scandalised media-dogs to the presses. In his own words, "there's remarkably little difference between making a pill and making ammo, except the pills are cheaper."
Six months later, he gave the company to his elder sister, Mira Miller, and retired from the life of a genius entrepreneur into obscurity, thus securing his place on Lady Une's very exclusive Persons-of-Interest list. The basis for her concern, Zechs realised after his first encounter with Terren's tarry Asian eyes, was one that he agreed with whole-heartedly. Incredibly intelligent and shrewd men like Terren Miller do not just content themselves with dropping off the face of the world and joining experimental space programmes. It disturbed them both, as survivors of Treize Khushrenada, that they have yet to find his angle.
"I am not suggesting anything, Miss Noin," Terren smiled ambiguously, revealing little of his true agenda. "But the fact of the matter remains, that there have been two deaths aboard this ship in as many hours. My prime directive is ensuring the continued safety of those that remain.
"I have heard things, I admit. My people say that 'the face of beauty bodes many troubles'. There is a whisper that Mr. Williams was responsible for Miss Noin's incident with the gravity booster, and that she was dating Mr Donnovan, which, together, makes this all appear highly coincidental." He shot Zechs a meaningful look.
"I do not believe you believe in coincidences, Milliardo Peacecraft."
Zechs flinched out of habit. It was still difficult to remember that his Princely identity was no longer a secret that needed guarding. Beside him, Noin growled, balling her fists.
"We can take care of ourselves, Mr Miller."
"I have no doubt, Miss Noin," Terren dropped his scrutiny to the perfectly polished black leather shoes he stood in, the traditional footwear of high-powered business executives throughout the ages. "And I do admire that. However, I hope you can understand my position as well, and the incredible risks I took when I hired the pair of you…"
Zechs did understand, which was why he said nothing.
Perhaps if he had, Noin would not have gone to the gym.
'Cat-fight' is not an accurate description of what happened there. Women who were tough enough to become Mobile Suit mechanics do not fight like ordinary girls, they fought like the men they worked alongside, throwing their full strength behind each tackle and blow, landing each one as surely as they intend it.
Zechs found himself joining the spectators accompanied by Auldo, an aging engineer who thought well enough of him to appear at his door the moment news of the scuffle broke out. "People can say what they like about you, boy, you ain't gonna shoot a messenger, not for telling you your partner's in trouble."
The Lightning Count had thanked him, through his worries were reserved for Sheldon Donnovan's apparent fan-club. There were a number of things he and her were prepared for, although facing down his bereaved female supporters was not one of them. For one, Zechs had been unaware of Donn's popularity amongst the ladies. But Noin, he explained to the crooked old man, has yet to lose a match she intended to win.
"Now, that may be, but you're still gonna come watch. What good's a friend who won't watch ye win a fight?"
He almost laughed.
Terren Miller arrived alone, solidifying from the shadows with a polite cough that put an end to the display of determined women circling, and inadvertently failing, to teach the ex-OZ lieutenant a lesson.
Only the keenest observers would have noticed his disinterest as he competently took stock of the situation— eight angry and grieving women took it in their minds to physically confront the reason Sheldon Donnovan was taken from them for good: his alleged girlfriend— and injuries— three concussions, five bruised ribs, four split-lips and two lost teeth shared out amongst the eight attackers, and a slightly bloodied jaw, a limp in the left leg and various scrapes on Noin— and confiscated all the wagers and footage collected in the sidelines.
To everyone else, his attentions did not come to rest on Zechs until the pilot brushed past him to lend a shoulder to his brunette wingman.
"Peacecraft, one murder is a tragedy, two begets conspiracy," Terren mused darkly, a cold hand pressed firmly, subtly, against Zechs' clothed navel, "and three suggests a serial. Which will this turn out to be, I wonder?"
If it weren't for the success of military conditioning, Noin's knuckles would have kissed him blind.
...
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A/N:
I'm not much of a Mystery writer (should have thought of that before deciding this instalment was going to be a whodunnit), so instead, this chapter is more rife with bad puns and oblique references than usual, heh. See if you can catch all of them…
For the curious, I imagine Terren to be a vaguely SD Ootori Kyouya.