Ronan: Ziva Payvan Book 3 (32 page)

“It’s slowing down,” the shuttle pilot announced.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the bombs began to fall again. Without warning, the
Vigilance
altered its course, swinging out toward the river and curving back inward toward central Noro, all while leaving a path of utter destruction in its wake. Its plasma cannons were at work as well, firing on the nearest structures and any vehicles unfortunate enough to be within range.

“
Frouchten hehle
, somebody do something!” Ziva shouted to no one in particular.

Someone somewhere had read her mind. The AA guns turned inward and resumed their bombardment, ignoring the idea of collateral damage for the time being. Plasma and missiles rained down from the GA’s ships above, gradually eating away at the
Vigilance’s
shields until someone finally scored a direct hit. Black smoke billowed from one of the frigate’s engines, but it continued its journey toward the center of the city, dropping charges as it went. Everyone in the shuttle held their breath as it passed over Noro Spaceport, leaving at least three hangars in ruin. Still it pressed on.

“Where the hell do they think they’re going?” someone muttered.

Ziva studied the trail of smoke and the way the ship dipped lower and lower the further it progressed. She shifted her attention to the structures ahead and her eyes widened. All anyone in the shuttle could do was stand and watch as the
Vigilance
crashed headlong into the center of HSP Headquarters.

-44-

HSP Medical Center

Noro, Haphez

“Look, Lieutenant!”

Skeet watched as Zinni’s stretcher was pushed inside and then turned to find the speaker. His gaze was immediately drawn to the
Vigilance
; it was close enough that it commanded the majority of the visible sky. A trail of black smoke streamed from its rear end and plasma bolts were pelting it from all directions. It was slowing down, almost as if it were coming in for a landing, but it was still headed straight for them.

He sprinted back to the door, taking cover in the entryway as the massive ship passed directly overhead. Its own guns were ablaze, raining plasma down on the city. At least it had stopped dropping the bombs Ziva had talked about, but it was causing no less damage. A stray bolt struck the landing pad he stood on, flipping the medical transport that had contained him, Zinni, and several of the Salex children only moments before.

Once the frigate was out of sight, he took off at a dead run toward the end of the landing platform, attention directed upward. His advance was slowed when the entire building shuddered and he was forced to duck out of the way of some falling debris. Then a horrible sound reached his ears; it began as a series of sharp cracks combined with some sort of metallic screeching, and it rose in volume until it was nothing more than a deafening roar on the other side of the med center. He regained his footing and continued down the platform until he reached the corner of the building, where the sight before him rendered him completely immobile.

By his estimation, the
Vigilance
was between two hundred fifty and three hundred meters long – small for a military-grade frigate, but large enough that it would have needed to use one of the spaceport’s massive intragalactic transport bays in order to land. As such, the idea that it was currently burrowed head first into the heart of HSP Headquarters was inconceivable. He reached out to brace himself against the wall of the building and swallowed against the overwhelming urge to throw up.

For what seemed like a long time, he could only stand there staring at the wreck, or more accurately, what little he could see of it through the swirling cloud of smoke and dust. The ship’s hull rested flat on the ground, or as flat as it could get with all the rubble beneath it. The scene was just a larger version of the
Titania’s
crash site; the ops towers and administrative buildings were still intact, but the docks, training center, and all the smaller structures in the center of the campus had been completely obliterated.

Even from two blocks away, he could hear the multi-toned wail of the alarms rising up throughout the complex. He’d seen a good portion of HSP’s air force out over the city already so perhaps many of their pilots and vehicles had avoided the attack. Trying to find a silver lining was almost pointless though. He couldn’t even imagine how many people had just lost their lives, both in the crash and in the preceding destruction.

Without even realizing it, Skeet had his communicator out and was sprinting back across the landing platform. He burst through the doors they’d taken Zinni through and got halfway through entering Emeri’s comm code when he spotted the director approaching with Aura Stannist and several frantic security guards.

“What the hell is happening out there?” Emeri demanded, ushering his entourage aside to make way for the same group of emergency responders who had just brought Zinni and the kids inside.

Skeet wasn’t even sure where to begin. For the moment, he was just glad the director had made it away from Headquarters unscathed. If he and Aura had already made it this far into the med center, chances were they hadn’t seen a thing that had transpired outside for the past ten minutes.

Unsure where to even begin, he heaved a sigh and shook his head. “We’re at war.”

-45-

Patrol Frigate
Vigilance

Noro, Haphez

Sadey pulled herself up off the floor and dusted herself off. A tiny stream of blood trickled down the side of her face – the result of striking her head on the corner of her desk – but after a quick self-examination, she found no severe injuries. Her helmsman had done a good job keeping the
Vigilance
level even after they’d lost shields. He’d brought the ship in slowly enough and at a shallow-enough angle that she doubted they’d sustained much loss of life, if any. The
Vigilance
was a sturdy vessel; chances were the docking bays, labs, and anything located in the lower hull had been destroyed, but if the crew had all moved to the upper decks like she’d ordered them to, they should all be fine.

Crashing the ship into HSP Headquarters certainly hadn’t been on the agenda for the day, but she’d had to think on the fly once it became clear they wouldn’t be able to leave the atmosphere. She wasn’t sure how the Haphezian military had made it down to the city so quickly – it was almost as if they’d had advance warning. Had they found the
Vigilance
out on the edge of the system and tracked it, or worse, had they somehow gotten their hands on the
Titania’s
data?

The only way they’d have gotten to the
Titania
that fast was if they’d followed it. She was confident that her agents had taken every precaution against being tracked, which meant the Haphezians had another source of information. The only people who could have told them were people with firsthand understanding of their methods. If Jalen had been executed during interrogation, only Payvan remained. She was likely to be at HSP Headquarters, the main reason Sadey had chosen it as a target. The chances of actually taking Gamon’s former student out by crashing the ship were slim, but somehow the act still seemed appropriate.

Ronan had said to keep the Haphezians occupied, so that’s what Sadey planned on doing. Destroying a large portion of their main police facility was a start. Unless she was mistaken, they’d landed right on top of HSP’s air patrol docks, severely limiting the extent to which the agency was capable of responding. Even when they could respond, they’d still have to deal with removing a wrecked frigate from their campus…a wrecked frigate containing two hundred well-trained Resistance soldiers, almost all of whom were Nosti.

Sadey’s kytara had flown from her grasp upon impact and she took a moment to search for it. She found the weapon resting against the wall at the base of the cabin’s slanting floor and snatched it up, firmly attaching it to her belt. Elsewhere in the ship, the rest of the crew was no doubt doing the same. Everyone had kept their kytaras hidden for the majority of the mission in case the
Vigilance
was boarded by Feds, but now the time for concealing their Resistance affiliation was over. The Haphezians would figure out who they were anyway when Ronan and the fleet arrived in less than two days; a little forewarning wouldn’t hurt anything.

The jacket Sadey had set out for herself had also slipped away in the crash. She recovered it and shrugged it on over the plain white tank top she wore under her military uniform, making sure it adequately concealed the kytara. Along with herself, she’d selected a number of her highest-ranking officers and ordered them to don plain clothes and arm themselves to the best of their abilities. HSP – and possibly even military troops – would no doubt attempt to infiltrate the
Vigilance
at some point. She’d ordered her agents to stay aboard and kill any Haphezians who tried to enter; they had an advantageous position aboard the ship, and they’d likely be able to make a decent dent in the agency’s numbers. She and the other officers would escape during the foray and slip into anonymity in downtown Noro, a city that was already renowned for the amount of foreign traffic passing through.

She’d relayed all of this to the crew via intercom the moment she’d spotted the Haphezian military ships hovering over the city. Unless they wanted to be shot down, leaving the area had been out of the question. She had to admit she’d been surprised the Haphezians had retaliated, even after the
Vigilance
had begun dropping more bombs. Perhaps they simply recognized that their city was already being destroyed so there was no harm in causing a little more damage. Sadey couldn’t help but smirk to herself as she went to the cabin’s jammed door and manually overrode the controls to open it. Even crippled, her crew still came together to create a brilliant destructive force. Ronan would be proud. Ronan had
better
be proud.

The corridor outside her cabin was silent except for the hiss of the fire suppression systems within the ceiling. This high up in the ship’s structure, everything was virtually undamaged. If not for the fact that everything was tilted about ten degrees to the left, Sadey wouldn’t have even known anything was wrong.

She jogged forward toward the hatch to her personal escape pod bay, silently lamenting the fact that she hadn’t had time to commend her crew on a job well done. There’d barely been time to come up with a plan, circulate the idea, and make it back up to her cabin. Everyone had come together as a unit and followed her orders to a T despite the ridiculously short notice; she imagined self-preservation had been a motivating force. Even though there was no one around, she offered a salute to thin air for good measure and climbed through the hatch.

They’d launched all the escape pods in the midst of the bombardment, partially to confuse the Haphezians but mostly so the officers could escape through the empty pod bays. Initially, HSP’s scans of the vessel would only show the main docking hatches. Chances were they wouldn’t even discover the makeshift escape routes until Sadey and her colleagues were long gone.

The scent of burning material overwhelmed her as she passed through the airlock and crouched in the empty bay. Through the opening, she saw that the area immediately surrounding the
Vigilance
was shrouded in smoke and dust, making their escape all the easier. Based on what little she could see of the surrounding environment through the haze, it would take responders some time to remove rubble before any entry teams could even get to the ship. Praising her good luck, she climbed out and inched along a narrow ledge before reaching a set of handholds designed for maintenance workers. Bits and pieces of the ship’s hull had been blown away by Noro’s AA guns, providing additional footing options that weren’t part of the vessel’s original design.

Sadey reminded herself that she and the other officers weren’t just escaping to save themselves. That was partially the case; they were all ranking Resistance officials who needed to do everything in their power to get back to Forus and maintain the organization’s structure. But theoretically, they’d also be able to work covertly within the city to help coordinate Ronan’s attack, feed the fleet information, and do whatever they could to slow the Haphezians down. Assuming they made it safely away from the wreckage, their physical build and training would allow them to slip in and out of crowds, and their kytaras would make them lethal opponents in close-quarters combat. Sadey imagined herself tracking down Payvan and catching her off guard. Surely killing Jak Gamon’s former student – and a potential source of Resistance intel for the Haphezians – would help win back Ronan’s favor.

The number of available hand and footholds was dwindling, and after another few moments of climbing, they disappeared altogether. Sadey took a look around to ensure the area was still clear and then glanced down; a good ten meters of hull still separated her from the ground. The surface was smooth and curved outward around one of the ship’s intact engines. Not wishing to waste any more time, she settled down onto her stomach and allowed herself to slide backward, using her palms and boot soles to slow her descent. She crested the curve and fell the remaining couple of meters, tumbling down onto the cracked surface of an HSP landing pad. With a quick roll, she was back on her feet and headed away from the ship. This battle was not over, not if she had anything to say about it. The real war was just beginning.