The Case of the Missing Murder or How Detective Q. Van Docq Got His Groove Back

There were no Martian natives, of course, except for the couple million who called the red deserts home. They were a rarity though and more often than not had another planet listed as their origin on a holo-ID. Nonetheless, however, those crazy few called the Mars settlement home. 

And an even smaller and crazier few called the Echus Chasma home. Nestled in the North of the Valles Marineris canyon system, they stared down all her gambling and crime, all her glitz and glamour, every single one of her thousands of kitsch and jazzy themed venues: they looked over the edge of the murderous waterfall she was built around and thought of nothing but home. They walked happily along her cracked and crooked streets, all the hot sand underfoot lathered with plastic and precise laminate tiling, all her 32 different neighbourhoods, each themed and pigeonholed for precisely the right kind of customer: they looked at the pink sky above and the gleaming white beneath and said nothing. They looked at Mars in all her glory and did nothing but live.

The majority of those few million kept their heads down enough that they never even noticed the hell that lay beneath the gilded image. A minority noticed and had long-since accepted it, resigned to painting over cracks and looking away whenever things got loud. A smaller minority dedicated their lives to trying to improve things, rewriting dusty legal codes and playing criminal chicken; that minority usually moved away before hitting Martian double-digits. 

An even smaller minority looked hell in her ugly mug and dared to wink. This minority consisted of exactly four individuals.

They were the Solis Lacus Detective Agency. And this is the Case of the Missing Murder.