Ronan: Ziva Payvan Book 3 (39 page)

“Respectfully, sir,” she said, doing her best to keep the volume of her voice from rising, “I do
not
feel like that would be the most efficient use of my skills.”

“Director Arion predicted you’d say that. He and the other officers I’ve consulted all believe this is the best place for you. You’re the only person even remotely qualified in the area of Nosti strategy.”

Other officers?
Ziva set her jaw and turned toward the group who waited by the door. She’d been with Aroska all night, ruling out his involvement in the decision. The possibility that Skeet had been on board with it sickened her, and she was relieved when she saw how wide his eyes were. He gave a subtle shake of his head and glanced to Aura, who stood with that same old deadpan look on her face. For a split second, she looked almost apologetic when she realized she was under scrutiny, but Ziva looked away again before she could tell for sure.

“Ziva, believe me, I know you want to be out there,” Emeri said. “But think about this. If you’re overseeing things from the command center, it’s like you’ll be everywhere at once. Imagine if we were trying to stay in constant communication with you while you were in the field. You’d never get anything done. It would be impossible to know what was happening on all fronts.”

The last thing she wanted to do was admit he had a point. “Send me in for a solo strike!” she cried, not caring that she was nearly shouting. “I can take Ronan out, cripple the Resistance at their source. You can be damn sure I’m the only person ‘qualified’ for
that!
”

The way everyone at the table shuffled their feet and averted their eyes told her the last thing they wanted to do was admit
she
had a point.

“The decision is final,” Ganten growled after a moment. “You’ll report here to Haphor by fifteen hundred hours. Agent Stannist will escort you.”

Ziva drew a deep breath in through her nose and released it in the form of a sharp sigh. “And what of my team?”

“Unless I am mistaken,
Captain
, they’re not ‘your’ team anymore. They will report to Director Arion as they normally might.”

Emeri cleared his throat. “Because Officer Vax is still out of commission, Lieutenant Duvo and Sergeant Tarbic will accompany you to Haphor to provide support and oversee the HSP teams taking part in the assault. They
will
remain under your command.”

Ziva heard a gasp behind her. She wasn’t sure if it had been Skeet or Aroska, but whoever it was stopped when she held her hand up for silence. “I hope you realize,” she began, shifting her eyes to Ganten and reveling in the way he fidgeted under her glare, “that you’re throwing away the best agents HSP has to offer.”

It only took him a moment to re-compose himself. “I understand your concerns, Captain. Trust me, I do.”

“Then let me go after Ronan.”

“I told you, my decision is final. We’ll see how well you perform, see how the assault is going. If we see success after a couple of days, we may send you to Forus.”

Ziva couldn’t help but think that it would be too late by then. Either the worst of the battle would be over by the time she got there, or Ronan would escape and disappear for another twenty years.

Her thoughts were interrupted when an alarm on the comm console began blaring. The holograms of the three military officers on Na turned red and fizzled away completely before being replaced by a different man who had been patched into the conversation. Sweat had gathered on his brow and his hair and uniform were disheveled.

“Sir, we have a problem. You need to see this.”

Ziva watched as a panoramic image was projected from the center of the table where everyone had a clear view of it. According to the navigational data that appeared on the small screen before her, they were looking at sector of space just outside the Noro system, an area free of FTL lanes that should have been completely empty of traffic. But now it wasn’t. As she watched the series of images move through a time-lapse, she realized two things: the scout ships had indeed been destroyed, and nobody would have to go to Forus after all.

-52-

HSP Headquarters

Noro, Haphez

Aroska, Skeet, and Aura moved forward as a unit, eyes fixed on the projection that hovered over the table. It was difficult to tell how many ships there were; Aroska estimated at least fifty, though more moved in and out of view every second. He saw fighters. He saw gunships. There were several freighter-sized ships that appeared to be the same model as the
Titania
. The majority of the larger vessels were agile frigates akin to the
Vigilance
, though several massive cruisers were beginning to appear toward the back of the procession.

“Where’s this coming from?” Ganten demanded.

“Freighter pilot, sir,” the soldier stammered, breathing hard. “He tried to send the live feed back to us but his communications were being blocked. Had to turn around and get out of their jamming range before he could transmit.”

“You’re telling us this is a recording?” Emeri exclaimed. “From how long ago?”

The man swallowed. “Almost an hour. We just received it minutes ago. It was difficult to get a fix on the incoming ships; we’re guessing they’re using some of the same stealth measures that made the
Vigilance
and the
Titania
so hard to find.”

“If this was an hour ago, how close are they now?” Ziva asked, leaning aside to give Aroska and Skeet a better look at the screen in front of her.

“We estimate they’ll be entering Haphezian airspace in the next five hours.”

The entire room fell dead silent for several long seconds. This fleet was clearly large enough that it had needed to leave FTL early to regroup. A smaller group of ships might have come out right on top of them, so in that sense the large numbers were a blessing. Still, despite the fact that it had cost the Resistance the element of surprise – at least partially – this armada was larger than what Aroska had imagined. He’d always assumed the majority of their firepower existed on the Res-controlled worlds within the Core, and he shuddered when he realized that could very well still be the case. This might only be a fraction of their true strength.

When he looked back up, the three holograms from Na had rendered again, though now the men were a far cry from the composed soldiers he’d seen upon entering the room. All three were rigid, fidgety, pausing at intervals to turn and bark orders at other people in the rooms they were in. 

“You have my authorization to proceed as you see fit,” Ganten was saying. “Make sure comms are functional and mobilize the fleet.”

The men saluted and all the holograms from Na faded once more, leaving Ganten the only person not physically present in the room. Aroska was beginning to wonder what this would all mean for Ziva, and he almost felt guilty for wondering what it all meant for
him
. He’d spent so much idle time the previous day formulating a plan for exacting his revenge on Ronan and the Resistance; being locked up in a control room in the capital wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind.

Ziva turned around to face them, eyes wide. It was a look of desperation Aroska had never seen before, and he wasn’t sure if he liked it.
Do something
, she mouthed, though he had no idea what she expected them to do. Based on her expression, she didn’t either.

“Duvo, Tarbic!” Emeri said before he had a chance to dwell too long on it. “Fetch Officer Vax from the med center. If she still needs medical attention, she can get it in Haphor. I want her to stay close to you during this mess.”

They both stood there dumbfounded for a split second before making any move to comply. “Sir,” Skeet finally muttered, clearly just as unhappy with Ganten’s decision as anyone. They turned and headed for the door, and Aroska was aware of Ziva’s footsteps as she began to follow.

“Payvan, stop!” Ganten roared. He couldn’t see her if she wasn’t on one of the comm pads, but the fact that she’d left the table likely told him enough.

“I’m not allowed to go make sure my friend is okay?” she snapped. Even at a distance, her agitated voice was loud enough to carry through the comm system.

“Ziva, if I let you walk through that door, I have no way of knowing if you’ll come back,” Emeri said. His voice remained surprisingly calm. “Stay here and get ready to depart for Haphor.”

The security detail that had been posted outside the office door stepped in, waving Skeet and Aroska out while Ziva was still focused on the director. Aroska recognized them from the med center the night he had accompanied her during her brain scans. Once upon a time, their sole purpose had been to help her. Now it appeared they were willing to do everything in their power to hinder her.

“You’ve got to be bloody kidding me,” she said when she turned and saw them there. Her voice remained sharp, her eyebrows furrowed, but after what Aroska had seen on the hill in Salex and in his own home the previous night, it was difficult to miss the slight droop in her shoulders, the glimmer of fear in her eyes. His own confidence dwindled when he saw these things, and he vowed then and there that he would fix the situation. His plan would not change after all.

“Na is reporting that the fleet is in motion,” Aroska heard Ganten saying as he and Skeet reluctantly resumed their journey to the elevator. “All troops in the city are being recalled to rendezvous with them.”

And that would be his way out. He’d have a ride, plenty of firepower, people to back him up until he was able to break off and carry out his own mission. These were all things he’d wondered about as he’d sat there in the med center the day before. He’d be reprimanded for defying orders for sure, would probably even lose his job, but he wouldn’t have a job to lose if the Resistance wiped everyone out.

The elevator opened onto the commons, where soldiers and agents were scrambling to react as news of the Resistance fleet’s arrival trickled down through the ranks. Aroska and Skeet broke through the front doors, shielding their eyes as they both looked up to observe the ascending GA ships. A cluster of smaller gunships idled in an area that had been converted to a temporary landing zone off to their right; they too would be gone within a couple of minutes, and any chance of joining up with the fleet would be lost.

“Tarbic, let’s go!” Skeet called.

Aroska realized he had stopped in the middle of the grand staircase and looked down to find Skeet still hurrying toward a bank of parked groundcars. He forced his feet forward, turning instead toward the landing area. “Go get Zinni!” he shouted back. “I’ll catch up!”

He shook away the guilt wrought from lying to a friend and picked up his pace. Disregarding orders was not something he took great pleasure in, but if Ronan was ever going to be stopped, it was necessary. Necessary because thousands of innocent lives were being taken, not only in Noro but all over the galaxy. Necessary because fathers and brothers like Maston were being stripped from their families in the blink of an eye. Necessary because Ziva, HSP’s greatest weapon, had been rendered virtually useless by the very people who regarded her as such. Emeri had said it himself; she was still in command of her team. She was the one who had told Aroska to do something, and that’s exactly what he was doing.

He fished his credentials out and waved toward the gunship as soldiers loaded into it. They stopped and looked back, readily helping him climb aboard when he arrived. For a moment he was afraid they would turn him away, but upon closer inspection, they almost looked relieved to have an extra man on their side.

“Glad to have you here, sir!” one of them shouted above the roar of the engines as the craft lifted off. “Didn’t think the agency was sending anyone up yet.”

Aroska nodded and displayed his badge. “Sergeant Tarbic, spec ops,” he said. “I’m here on Officer Ganten’s orders.”

-53-

HSP Medical Center

Noro, Haphez

Zinni reached down, struggling to secure the straps on her boots. Her muscles had atrophied a bit, the doctors had told her. Spending five weeks lying immobile in a dark cargo hold having countless tests run tended to do that to you. She cursed her stiff fingers and paused to flex them; they still came just shy of creating a solid fist, and it was infuriating. No wonder she hadn’t been able to successfully hold on to the kids aboard the ship.

Even putting on her boots felt like a chore, and by the time she sat back up, she was out of breath. She’d awakened in the middle of the night and hadn’t been able to go back to sleep. When the nurse had come in a few minutes earlier to inform her that someone from Headquarters would be by to collect her shortly, she’d been excited by the prospect of getting out of bed and being productive. Now she wasn’t so sure.

The Resistance
. It was still mind-boggling. Based on the few foggy snippets of interaction she’d had with her captors, she would have never guessed they were Res soldiers. She was glad Skeet had been there to answer all of her questions when she’d awakened; otherwise she imagined she’d still have no clue about anything that had happened or was happening now. It was hard enough to keep track of everything as it was. Five weeks was a long time to be kept in the dark…
literally
.

The med center had already provided her with some comfortable clothes to replace the tactical suit she’d been found in. With her boots successfully donned, she was ready to go. She eased off the edge of the bed and stood on quivering legs, testing out her balance. Someone had left a sleek cane for her; her first instinct had been to be stubborn and refuse it, but now that she was actually on her feet, she welcomed the thing. The message from Headquarters had said she was going to Haphor. She had no idea why, but somehow she got the feeling it meant there wouldn’t be any fighting going on. For once, she was glad.

Zinni caught a whiff of Skeet just before his head appeared in the doorway of her room. “You ready to go?” he asked. His shoulders rose and fell in a steady rhythm as he sucked in deep breaths and let them out, and she wondered if he’d run up the thirty floors to her level. The fact that he seemed to be in such a hurry prompted her to pick up her pace as best she could.

“What’s going on?” she asked, falling into stride beside him and clutching his arm with one hand, the cane with the other.

They entered the hallway and he glanced around as if to make sure nobody would overhear them. “Ronan is here,” he murmured. “There’s an entire Resistance armada coming into the system. They won’t enter Haphezian airspace for another few hours, but they’ve got considerable firepower. Our fleet is moving to intercept now.”

Ronan
. It felt so odd to be able to put a face to the name –
well, sort of
– after weeks of trying to figure out what Ronan even was. It was frustrating listening to Skeet talk about it like it was old news. While it
was
for him, her tired brain was still struggling to keep up with the most mundane of tasks, let alone this barrage of new information. Even being in a well-lit room again meant figuring out how to divert some of her already-dwindling energy back to her sense of sight, something she’d learned to live without for the past five weeks.

“And what are
we
doing?” she said as her mind managed to process the fact that going to Haphor meant they weren’t joining up with the fleet.

Skeet was silent for a moment, his lips pressed into a thin line. “We’re accompanying Ziva to the capital to coordinate all of HSP’s involvement in this.”

Ziva.
It was like hearing these names flipped some sort of power switch in Zinni’s mind, both allowing her to remember old details and overwhelming her with new things to keep track of. Ziva was the only member of the team she hadn’t seen yet upon her rescue. Skeet had of course spent the majority of his downtime there in the room with her, and she’d seen Aroska the day before, had mumbled a few incomprehensible words to him before falling asleep again. The last clear image she had of Ziva was in this very med center upon returning home from Argall. She thought she remembered seeing her superior and maybe even talking to her in the cargo hold aboard the freighter – the
Titania
, as Skeet kept calling it – but that didn’t make any sense. It must have been a dream.

Zinni had accepted the fact that she wouldn’t be seeing combat any time soon, but the rest of the team? She stopped, partially to allow the news to sink in and partially because her legs already felt like jelly after walking down a single hallway. “You’re not joining the fight?”

Skeet’s face had grown grimmer by the second, but that crease had also appeared on his forehead, telling her he was both angry and concerned. He ran a hand through his hair. There was still something he wasn’t sharing with her.

“Look,” he began. “I wanted Z to be the one to explain this all to you someday, and maybe she still can once we get underway. The reason we knew the gas on Na was nostium, the reason we know this is the Resistance…it’s because she
is
one of them.”

Zinni couldn’t see the expression on her own face, but Skeet’s reaction gave her a good idea of what it looked like.

He dipped his head and sighed. “Okay, that came out wrong. She’s a Nosti.” He was nearly whispering now. “She said she doesn’t even like to call herself that, but she’s got the abilities. This substance that’s killing everyone else? It only made her stronger. She’s even got one of those swords.”

They were both silent for a moment, Skeet allowing the information to sink in and Zinni trying desperately to make space in her head for it. She wanted to laugh; she’d known Ziva since signing on with HSP’s Junior Guard and had seen her plenty of times during basic training before that. There was no way her friend could have been hiding such a secret that whole time. And yet…

“That man she killed,” she murmured. She hadn’t intended to voice the thought out loud, but Skeet nodded as if he understood exactly who she was referring to.

“Ganten said he wanted her ‘running point’ on this assault, but he only meant he wants her working with the strategists to figure out the best way to combat these people.”

“Why can’t we just blow their asses out of the sky?” she exclaimed. The extra effort it took to raise her voice left her breathless.

He shushed her and began helping her along as they continued toward the elevator. “Maybe we can now that we don’t have to go all the way to Forus. Come on; let’s see if we can talk some sense into Emeri and Ganten.”

Zinni put careful thought into every step she took, placing one foot in front of the other and doing her best to gain speed with each stride. Her short legs already had enough trouble keeping up with Skeet and the rest of the team under ordinary circumstances, so the fact that they needed to be hurrying now only contributed to her frustration.

They arrived at the elevator and waited a moment for the door to open. When it did, they found the car occupied by a lone human woman about Zinni’s height with short brown hair and icy blue eyes. She moved to the far side of the wide car to give them space and gave them a fleeting glance before fixing her gaze once more on the elevator’s control panel.

Zinni’s foot caught and she faltered, clutching Skeet’s arm and hoping he’d attribute the stumble to her weakened legs. In truth, the scent within the elevator had hit her like a punch to the gut and she’d had to force herself to not hesitate before entering. Her olfactory system was still working in overdrive after being her primary source of information during her captivity. Not only that, but this particular smell sent her right back to the cold floor of that pitch dark cargo space, and for a split second, that was the only fact her mind could process.

“You okay?” Skeet asked, helping her regain her footing as the elevator door slid shut behind them.

“Yes,” she gasped, glancing between him and the woman, who looked on with concerned curiosity. Their gazes locked for the briefest of moments, and in that time, Zinni saw an unmistakable flicker of recognition.

She swiveled on the cane and took up a position on Skeet’s right, keeping him between herself and the mysterious woman. The only interaction she’d ever had with her captors had either been in the dark or while she was unconscious so she’d never seen any faces, but this woman’s scent was all too familiar. Not only did it bear the same vague qualities as the
Titania’s
crew and the children after they’d been taken from the room, but there was also something distinctive about it, something unique.
She was there
, Zinni thought.
This woman was in that room with me at some point.

She heaved a sigh, sniffed, and then squeezed Skeet’s arm all in quick succession, hoping he’d catch the hint that something was awry. He sniffed in response and reached up to wipe his nose, telling her he too recognized the scent. After spending hours interrogating live Nosti and clearing out a frigate full of dead ones, she didn’t blame him. He knew this was a Resistance soldier sharing their elevator, likely one of the
Vigilance’s
missing officers. 

What he couldn’t know, however, was that this woman knew Zinni, knew she was someone who could alert the authorities to her presence.

Something had to be done, but the prospect of facing a warrior who specialized in melee combat in such close quarters was daunting. The same adrenaline rush that had heightened Zinni’s senses in the cargo room gave her strength now as she tried to form a plan. She slowly released her grip on Skeet’s arm, relying on the cane as her primary source of support. Using his body to block the Nosti’s view of her hand, she reached for the holster strapped to his thigh and wrapped her fingers around the grip of his pistol. He shifted his weight to his other leg, preparing to lean out of the way as soon as she was ready to move.

Zinni drew the weapon and took aim at the exact moment the woman came at her, a newly-revealed kytara in her grasp. She got a shot off, but the plasma bolt veered off to one side and the gun was wrenched from her stiff hand by some invisible force. It clattered to the floor in the corner, leaving her stunned and exposed.

The kytara blades sliced through the air, narrowly missing Skeet’s head as he ducked out of the way. The only consolation was that the fully-extended blades were long enough to make the weapon cumbersome in such an enclosed space, but it was no less deadly. The woman seemed to be aware of this and was slowly working her way out of the corner, forcing Skeet and Zinni into the opposite one.

Unsure what else to do, Zinni dropped to her knees and rolled, lifting the cane above her head. As she successfully absorbed a blow from the kytara, she couldn’t help but conjure up some memory of a curtain rod from the one and only time Ziva had recounted her duel with that Nosti she’d killed all those years ago. She was now happier than ever that she’d brought the cane with her, and she couldn’t help but recognize the irony of the situation. She was supposed to go to Haphor so she could avoid this.
So much for staying out of combat
.

Skeet had a knife – this was good. It and the cane could be pulled from their grasps just as easily as the gun, but when they were crossing blades with the kytara, the woman risked throwing off her own balance by stripping them of their weapons. The key would be for one of them to get the pistol back while she was busy with the other. Zinni preferred to leave the latter task to Skeet; she wasn’t sure if she could handle the force of that sword in her current condition.

She kept the cane above her head, fighting away the blackness that crept inward from the edges of her vision as she ducked and dodged. This Nosti woman had skill – there was no denying it – but two opponents in such a small space were proving to be a challenge, especially with Skeet attacking from above and Zinni coming in from below. In order to face one, she had to turn her back on the other. She had no doubt been on the move since the
Vigilance
crashed and appeared to be just as tired as they were.

Zinni jammed one end of the cane into the small of the woman’s back, forcing her to take a staggering step toward Skeet. He thrust the knife forward, filling the elevator car with the screech of metal on metal, and pushed upward, forcing the kytara toward the ceiling. He didn’t even have to look at Zinni to tell her to go; she was already lunging for the pistol. She snatched it up, rolling onto her back and firing straight up into the woman’s chest just as a kytara blade whistled down toward her head. She flinched and leaned away, but the sword clattered harmlessly to the floor.

Skeet picked it up and held it over the woman as she fell back against the elevator wall, clutching at the smoldering hole in her chest. Her blue eyes were glassy as she glanced between the two of them, and each breath she took was like a hissing cry. She lifted her eyebrows as if a sudden thought had come to mind. “Too…late,” she managed, her facial expression morphing from one of fury to one of desperation. It was still like that several seconds later when she finally fell still.

Zinni closed her eyes, sucking in raspy breaths of her own. She’d grown so accustomed to lying on a gently swaying floor that this almost felt comfortable. She allowed the pistol to slip from her grasp, focusing once more on flexing her stiff fingers. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she could hear Skeet asking if she was okay, feel him reaching down to help her up. She managed a nod, but as the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open, the only thing she could think about was the fact that she was actually making a fist.