Ronan: Ziva Payvan Book 3 (41 page)

For a moment, Ziva could only stand there and ponder what had just happened. Based on Aura’s actions, she deduced two things: their destination was no longer Haphor, and the Royal Officer had no knowledge of this little deviation. Not yet, anyway.

She moved forward toward the cockpit on light feet, half-expecting this to still be a trap. She had yet to holster her pistol, so she maintained a tight grip on it and kept it ready at her side. Several seconds went by and no one jumped out at her; all the hatches and storage spaces in the corridor remained properly bolted. Aura’s scent was the only one she could smell as she drew nearer.

She hesitated in the cockpit doorway, watching through the front viewport as the Noro skyline dipped out of sight below them and was replaced by the hazy mid-morning sky. All she could see of Aura from this vantage point was the back of the woman’s head as her hands flew over the ship’s controls. The fact that she’d done exactly what Ziva had planned on doing to facilitate their escape was both impressive and baffling. Still, Ziva couldn’t bring herself to trust her just yet. Those same self-preservation instincts kicked in and she raised the gun to the back of Aura’s head.

“What is this?” she demanded.

Judging by the way the woman straightened in her seat, she knew she was being held at gunpoint, but she apparently didn’t care enough to divert her attention away from what was in front of her. “Did you hit your head in Salex or something?” she muttered, altering the ship’s course a bit before handing back the confiscated communicator. “I seem to recall telling you I was loosening my grip on your leash.” Then, under her breath, “I just never planned on letting go of it entirely.”

“Doesn’t really answer my question.”

“Well, what do you think we’re doing? I’m taking you to find your man.”

Was it so hard to answer one bloody question? Ziva holstered her weapon, satisfied for the moment, and moved up to sit in the co-pilot’s chair. Within seconds, she had assumed control of the ship and angled them in the direction Aroska’s gunship had gone. “I’ll do the flying,” she said. “You need to do some talking.”

Aura sighed and leaned back in her seat. She was quiet for a long time and didn’t clear her throat to speak until after they’d passed through the atmosphere and were moving past Na.

“I was spec ops like you,” she said quietly.

Ziva risked a glance at her. Her jaw was set and she stared straight ahead with the light from the sun reflected in her eyes.

“My team and I were behind enemy lines out on Zaganti. We completed our mission and were on our way to the exfil point when a group of insurgents came out of nowhere. My intelligence officer was killed, and my sergeant and I got separated in the chaos. I couldn’t raise him on comm – figured he’d been captured or killed too – and the pilot picking us up was tracking a group of enemy ships headed our way. The mission had been a success; I had a memory stick with the data we’d gathered, and that was the important thing. So I left.”

Ziva remained silent as she guided the ship forward. She had a hunch she knew where the story was going, and if she was correct, it put some of Aura’s actions from the past few days into perspective.

“We were halfway out of the system when a transmission from my sergeant came through,” the probation officer continued. “He was alive and unharmed. He’d just been hunkered down and wanted to know when exfil would arrive since his comms had been down for a while. Have you ever had to tell a comrade you left him behind, Captain?”

“No,” Ziva replied quietly, gripping the controls with white knuckles. She told herself this was mainly because the people she worked with were good enough to not get left behind in the first place, but she realized in a couple of cases it had been because of her unwillingness to
leave
a teammate behind. She thought back to Taran Reddic’s little jab in the café on Aubin, the way he’d been surprised she was planning on rescuing someone. It seemed like she did it more often than not. Some spec ops agent she was.

“I told him I didn’t know,” Aura continued. “Didn’t want him to know I was already gone. I checked with the pilot to see if there was time to go back, but he was still tracking those ships and said there wouldn’t be time to go back planetside and get away again before they were on top of us. I reminded myself that we needed to get that data back to HSP intact, and we kept going.”

Images of Dakiti’s white hallways flashed through Ziva’s mind as she recalled going back for Aroska despite the imminent threat posed by the GA. “Did your sergeant make it out by himself?” she asked, aware Aroska wouldn’t have been capable of such a thing.

Aura hesitated. “I picked up another transmission from him about an hour later. He was looking for me, said he couldn’t find me at the rendezvous point. I finally told him where I was – he begged me to come back for him, but I told him it was too late. The insurgents found him while we were talking, and I got to stand there and listen to him die.” She drew in a hissing breath through her nose and let it out. “The thing is, I would have been able to save him if I’d just gone back after the first transmission. We may have ended up having to outrun a few enemy ships, but there would have been time.”

She swiveled her seat around until she was facing Ziva. “If I would have gone back for him, we both could have been killed and that data would have been lost. At the very least, it would have been a breach of spec ops protocol. That’s why I transferred to the Royal Offices after that, why I do what I do. My job is to make sure other agents follow protocol. I’ve spent the past fifteen years trying to convince myself I did the right thing.”

Ziva threw her a glance. “And you’re still not sure.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Right now, you’ve got a chance to save your agent, and I’m here to make sure you take it, protocol be damned. Don’t make the same mistake I did. You’ll be stuck living with the knowledge that you could have done something, and in turn you’ll be constantly second-guessing yourself in the future. That’s certainly not going to help you do your job.”

Without even asking, Ziva understood why the woman had never made good on her threats to turn her and Emeri in for going to find Skeet and Aroska. She’d seen it as an opportunity to do what she herself had failed to do years before. They’d
both
been seeing bits of themselves in the other.

Aura continued with a sigh. “More importantly, what I told you before still goes. You
are
the only person on this planet qualified to go up against Ronan, but HSP hasn’t spent the past ten years turning you into a weapon only to have you locked up in a control room talking strategy. I understand that now. You need to do what you were built for, which is covertly infiltrating that flagship and taking the Resistance out at the source. I don’t know how the hell you plan on doing that, but after seeing everything else you’ve done this week, I have the utmost confidence in your ability to get the job done.”

Ziva turned to look her in the eye. Aura had a real talent for maintaining that deadpan expression, but there was something else in her eyes, that same desperation Ziva had seen in the med center the day before as Emeri explained what was expected of her. But this time, there was an element of trust mixed with it, and maybe a little uncertainty. The message was clear:
This needs to be done, and I’m letting you do it your way. Don’t make me regret it
.

The truth was, she had no idea how she was going to pull this off either. The prospect of facing real Nosti – people who had spent the majority of their lives training for this – was rather intimidating. Yes, she’d spent the majority of her
own
life training in one way or another, but ranged weapons and even superior size were useless assets when the enemies were agile, skilled in melee combat, and could move objects with their minds. Despite the lack of practice, she’d at least be able to hold her own for a while, but she doubted the same could be said for the rest of the GA troops and HSP agents caught up in the fight. She found herself hoping they’d spend most of their time fighting ship-to-ship rather than hand-to-hand.

She leaned back in her seat as the ship settled into a cruising speed, comforted by the feeling of her kytara jabbing into her side where it dangled under her jacket. If she was going to be fighting Nosti, it was the one object that might actually afford her some success. At the moment, however, her biggest concern was finding Aroska and making sure he didn’t try anything foolish. She now understood how he’d felt while watching her load that Korberos rifle with the intent of finding and killing Dasaro on Chaiavis.

“Take over for a while,” she instructed Aura. “I’m going to go do a quick inventory.”

She switched full control back over to the pilot’s console and made her way through the ship to the cargo space. The vessel had been docked at Headquarters since the team had arrived home from Aubin, so everything Skeet, Zinni, and Aroska had taken on their mission to find Ronan should have remained aboard. A quick glance around the room revealed a variety of HSP-issue ordnance, as well as a few larger weapons she didn’t recognize as belonging to the agency. There were three jet suits – two large ones for the men and a smaller one for Zinni – designed for individual aerial reconnaissance but only capable of reaching an altitude of about a thousand meters. No good in space anyway. She found the comm console the Durutians had destroyed in the hotel in Zylka and wondered if there was any information that could be pulled from it. Trying would likely be pointless; if they wanted to learn about Ronan now, all they needed to do was look out the window.

Satisfied that they had more than enough supplies at their disposal, Ziva returned to the cockpit and sat back down, monitoring the sensors as Aura continued to pilot the craft. The GA’s ships had gotten enough of a head start that it was at least an hour before they appeared on the
Intrepid’s
scanners. Even then, another lengthy stretch of time passed before the two of them had a visual. From their vantage point, the Haphezian fleet was nothing but a vast cluster of silver specks in the distance, with a couple of smaller vessels in the foreground that appeared to be medical frigates. The view was breath-taking, and this wasn’t even the whole fleet. At least a quarter of the military’s total force had stayed behind to act as a final line of defense for the base and Haphez itself. The idea that the Resistance fleet was just as big if not bigger sent chills down Ziva’s spine.

“Look here,” Aura said, gesturing down at the control panel.

Some of the front-line Res ships were beginning to appear on the scanners. They were meeting the enemy halfway, a move Ronan likely hadn’t anticipated. Sure, coming out of FTL speed further from Haphez had given the GA more time to react, but Ziva doubted the Resistance had planned on the Haphezian fleet already being completely assembled. Ronan’s ships would be forced to engage out in the middle of nowhere, sparing all the innocent people back home the terror of having a battle raging right over their heads. Ziva only hoped the Haphezian blockade would continue to hold if any Res ships managed to break away from the action out here.

They sat still with their eyes fixed on the view ahead as they drew nearer, alternating between forming a plan and long periods of reflective silence. It was decided they would start by rendezvousing with the Haphezian command ship, the
Soroya
, where they’d see if they could locate Aroska. Then they’d follow the GA’s lead from there. The last thing they needed to do was launch their own offensive and find themselves caught in the line of fire.

The group of incoming Resistance vessels grew larger and larger, rapidly closing the space that separated them from the Haphezian fleet. The first plasma bolts had already begun to fly when the
Intrepid’s
comm system crackled to life.

“Unidentified
Infiltrator
-class runner, this is Rear Admiral Ostin of the
Soroya
. Be advised that we are locked on to your position. Identify yourself.”

“I’ll do the talking,” Aura said, reaching forward to switch on the comm receiver. “Admiral Ostin, hold your fire. This is Agent Aura Stannist representing Royal Officer Jan Ganten aboard independent vessel
Intrepid
. Authorization code Alpha 37401. I’ve been tasked with recovering a wayward HSP agent who stowed away aboard one of your landing craft in Noro.”

Despite the probation officer’s heartfelt story and encouraging words, Ziva wondered for a split second if this was all still some sort of ruse. Her hand moved toward her pistol, but she lowered it again when Aura turned and gave a subtle shake of her head. It was a ruse, but it wasn’t directed at her.

“Agent Stannist, all our ground troops from Noro have been accounted for. If there was an HSP agent aboard my ship, I’d know about it.”

Ziva already had her communicator out and was in the process of entering Aroska’s comm code. The transmission went through, but as she’d expected, there was no answer.

Aura ended her conversation and motioned for Ziva to plug the device into the ship’s console. “Try to pinpoint his location – we should be close enough.”

A new blip appeared on the scanner, a blue dot among hundreds of yellow ones. Aroska’s signal was moving further forward into the chaos, and a quick glance out the front viewport revealed a likely – and very large – destination.

“
Intrepid
to
Soroya
,” Aura said, reestablishing the connection with Ostin. “You have a small craft on course to intercept a Res dreadnought. What’s your play?”