Read Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 Online
Authors: EJ Fisch
Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 (34 page)
Before either of them could say anything further, the computer beeped and the screen was highlighted in various shades of green as Zona’s files were finally unlocked. Shevin’s face lit up and he began typing furiously, and Aroska moved his chair around to get a better look.
About half of the files pertained to the present case, and the other half were from three years prior. It appeared Zona had been busy comparing the two occasions, searching for similarities. His findings had been stored in a separate file of notes.
“This information is about Ziva and Dasaro,” Kade said, eyebrows knit. “What the…” He hesitated a moment before opening the file marked CONCLUSIONS
.
Aroska’s eyes were on the move, eating up all the information the second it was displayed on the screen. Some of it was already familiar to him, thanks to the special ops clearance Dasaro had provided him with, but there were some things the captain had left out that immediately filled in the gaps he’d been struggling with throughout the past few days. As he read the final line of Zona’s findings, everything became clear.
“
Sheyss
,” he muttered.
Kat was startled to find the landing pad already occupied when she arrived at Bosco’s shop. It wasn’t often that anyone other than the locals frequented the place, so the freighter-sized vessel that was currently docked there seemed out of place. It had a classic Haphezian look to it, though it was nothing like the ships used by the embassy. It looked to be an older model and had no doubt been modified on several occasions.
Somewhat annoyed, Kat brought her aircar to rest on a neighboring shop’s landing pad and got out, shielding her eyes from the mid-morning sun. She and Ziva had chosen a rendezvous where they would meet in thirty minutes after they had each completed their respective tasks. Kat had refrained from saying why exactly she wished to speak to Bosco, partly because she didn’t know herself. First on the agenda was to demand an explanation as to why he had chosen to send the three refugees to her. While she was glad to have crossed paths with Ziva, there were certain…
circumstances
– which Bosco was well aware of – that could potentially make it difficult for her to assist them.
But, since she already
was
assisting them, she figured it would be smart to stock up on supplies and see if the older man had any advice on how to proceed. He was the closest thing she’d ever had to a father and was the only person she had told about the puzzle she’d been putting together over the past three years. With the new information that had come to light thanks to Ziva and her crew, Kat thought a fresh set of ears might help.
She worked her way up the walkway to Bosco’s landing pad, studying the strange ship as she went. The boarding ramp had been left down, indicating that the customer either didn’t intend on staying long or wished to make a hasty exit.
With her attention devoted to the vessel, it took Kat a moment to realize the shop’s open sign wasn’t on. Most accurately, it was a glowing banner above the door that, when illuminated, displayed the shop’s open status in a variety of Fringe languages. It sat there dead at the moment…strange considering Bosco’s shop was rarely closed, and when it was he had always called to let her know.
The interior lights were on, so Kat concluded that Bosco had simply forgotten to turn on his sign. She hit the door controls and stopped short – it was locked.
“What the hell?” she muttered, trying again. She pressed her face to the small window in the door and strained to see inside. Nothing looked out of place, and somehow that made her entirely uncomfortable.
Kat took a step backward and glanced behind her. The strange ship still sat motionless and it didn’t appear that there was anyone in the cockpit. Still, she felt as though she was somehow being watched, and she had a strong feeling she should not be there.
Even stronger, however, was the pull to find out what was going on and see if the old shopkeeper was okay. Taking one last glance through the window, Kat moved back and surveyed her options. The roof provided the best means of getting a look inside. The ceiling of the shop’s foyer wasn’t overly high, but it rose up in the back to make way for the storage shelves and was interrupted every so often by narrow skylights.
Kat took hold of one of the reinforced cables that ran up the side of the shop’s outer wall. These ran into fans and various fixtures on the roof, no doubt part of the ventilation system for the rest of the towering building. She began to climb, using the braces that fixed the cable to the wall as footholds, and hauled herself onto the roof. The higher part with the skylights angled upward before her and stood taller than the shops on either side of it, leaving her out in the open and vulnerable should anyone with unfriendly intentions come along. She pressed on anyway.
It appeared the skylights hadn’t been cleaned for some time, if they’d ever been cleaned at all. Kat settled down beside one and peered inside as best she could; unfortunately anyone within the shop would be able to see her much better than she’d be able to see them. She took comfort in the fact that they weren’t likely to be looking up.
Unable to see anything of interest, Kat picked her way down the row of skylights to the one on the far end that overlooked the rear aisle of the warehouse and the door of the little room Bosco used as an office. She lowered herself to her stomach, pressing her face as close to the filthy glass as possible in order to get a look inside.
She could hear the visitors’ voices before she could see them. Wishing to be safe rather than sorry, she ducked away from the window and slowly began to scratch away some of the grime with a gloved finger. It was impossible to tell what they were saying, though one man was clearly angry. It sounded like he was directly below her, or maybe within the office.
After a moment of gentle scrubbing, Kat had a clear section of glass just big enough to see through. She rolled over onto her stomach, allowing only one half of her face to break the plane of the window. She could barely make out the figures standing below her: three men – wait, one was a woman – all speaking Haphezian. One of them, the one she guessed to be the leader, was standing in the doorway of the office, addressing someone within. He was the one shouting, and Kat had no doubt that his words were directed at Bosco.
It didn’t take her long to realize she’d been holding her breath. She exhaled and the hot air fogged up the glass, obscuring her view. Fighting away panic, she rolled back over and cleared it away. Even with all of the moving around, it still appeared the visitors were oblivious to her presence – the angle was just right, she concluded.
Kat had barely gotten her eye settled back over the hole when the darkness inside was pierced by an unmistakable muzzle flash. She heard the spit of the suppressed projectile pistol as a second shot was fired, originating from the man who had been standing in the doorway. Whoever was in the office had just been shot.
Startled, Kat rolled away from the window and held perfectly still, listening as three sets of footsteps made their way back toward the front of the store. The echo of her own pulse sounded abnormally loud inside her head. Somewhere amid the noise, a tiny voice commanded her to move, to get to the front of the store and ascertain the identities of the three intruders.
Against her better judgment, she managed to break free from her stupor and throw herself down onto the lower part of the roof. She rolled to a stop against the ventilation duct coming up from the shop below and flattened herself out as best she could. The shop’s front door opened, it seemed, at the exact moment she managed to still her breathing. Three pairs of boots exited the shop and began making their way across the landing pad, their owners silent. Heart pounding, Kat lifted her head just high enough to catch sight of the three of them walking up the boarding ramp of their ship. Two of them were
emilan
– the leader and the woman – and the third man had a scar running up the back of his head that parted his rich brown hair.
She ducked back down and dug her fingers into the roof’s rough surface, listening as the ship’s engines roared to life and the vessel lifted away from the landing pad. To her surprise and relief, it turned and took off in the opposite direction, leaving her lying there in silence.
Kat remained there for a full two minutes – she counted every second – before moving. She sat up first, taking a moment to look around and make sure the area was clear. It seemed safe enough, so she climbed down onto the landing pad and paused a moment before the front door. The interior still looked normal, but she forced herself to be patient and not just barge inside. One wrong move and she would be implicated in whatever had just happened.
Her hand was trembling as she reached for the controls and opened the door, which had been left unlocked. The interior was dead silent, and Kat took another moment to just listen. The small security cam in the corner above the door had been moved, as had the one overlooking the counter. She couldn’t help but feel that this was good. Now the authorities – and the intruders, for that matter – would never know she’d been there.
Sensing no immediate danger, Kat darted forward and slipped around the bar, making a beeline for the little office on silent feet. She found the door open just as the hostiles had left it, but something kept her from entering right away – either the fear of encountering another intruder who had been left behind or the fear of what she was going to see…she wasn’t exactly sure which.
The sound of faint, raspy breathing was what finally drew her inside. She found Bosco slumped on the floor as if he had slid out of the chair at his desk. His eyes were closed but his chest continued to rise and fall, and he clutched at the two crimson holes that had just been blown through it.
“Bosco!” Kat said. His name had been a shout inside her head but it came out as a choked whisper. She dropped to her knees at his side, not wanting to touch him for fear of hurting him further but at the same time not wishing to just sit by and do nothing.
His eyelids parted slightly, but the sight of her only seemed to cause him more pain. “Get out,” he sputtered, clamping a blood-stained hand over her forearm. He tried to lift his head and bloody saliva oozed out over his chin. It was all he could do to get the words out. “They came for you. Get out.”
He struggled a moment longer, his fingers digging mercilessly into her arm, before he let his head fall back onto the floor. He was staring into her eyes when he finally let go of her and exhaled one last time.
Stunned, Kat could only sit in silence, glancing between her friend’s lifeless body and the blood he’d left on her sleeve. When she found herself upright and running back toward the front door, she couldn’t remember how she had gotten there. The only thing she could process was that Bosco was dead because of her, and that if she was in danger, so was everyone else.
By the time Ziva made it out of the swordsmith’s shop with her purchase, it was nearly time to go meet Kat at their rendezvous location. The owner hadn’t been as willing to part with his bariine alloy as Kat had made him out to be. It was a pricey substance, and despite Ziva’s generous offers, he had only allowed her about half a kilo of the stuff in the end. She carried the fist-sized chunk in a small sack, clutching it as if it would be torn from her hand at a moment’s notice.
When combined with cheaper forms of metal, bariine created a lethal form of ammunition that Ziva had concocted herself. While it was true that the popularity of projectile weapons was growing among HSP agents, bariine rounds could hardly be considered projectiles. The metal was heat-resistant, one of the only materials capable of withstanding lasers, energy shields, and the like. It made an ideal lining for powerblades.
For ammunition, Ziva preferred projectiles that were forty percent bariine and sixty percent another soft metal, usually plain lead. When chambered in the rifle with the modified plasma cell, the round would become superheated – the soft metal took on a molten form while the bariine remained intact. As a result, the round would enter the target with the same consistency as a regular plasma bolt, burning and cauterizing whatever it touched. Once inside, however, the rapid cooling of the round would cause the bariine to become unstable and break apart, taking fragments of the soft metal with it. It not only caused internal bleeding for the victim, thus ensuring death, but it also prevented her weapon from being traced via any forensic measures.
Ziva adjusted her little parcel and began walking in the direction of the meeting place. She only used her custom ammo on freelance missions independent of HSP. She was content to use generic projectile or plasma rifles while working with her team. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them with her invention. It was just that it
was
her invention, her signature – or lack thereof, considering it left no forensic trace.
Kat had given her detailed directions to where they would be meeting, and as Ziva walked she was able to pick out each of the structures Kat had described in her instructions. Her familiarity with the area and the locals told Ziva she had spent much of her adult life exploring, and probably some time while she was still at the embassy. Endion and the Underground were her stomping grounds.
As Ziva walked, she kept her eyes peeled for their rendezvous place, a small square with a fountain outside one of the nicer hotels. She had been instructed to leave the swordsmith’s shop and turn right, then walk straight for two of Chaiavis’s large city blocks. The extra walking time would give Kat ample time to get to and from Bosco’s place, though Ziva wasn’t going to be surprised if she had to sit and wait a while. Kat had seemed intent on speaking to Bosco about something, something she had withheld from the rest of the group. Ziva didn’t feel that her secret was pertinent to the case, but her inner control freak wanted to know what it was all the same.
She wasn’t entirely sure how she managed to spot him – maybe she’d just been looking in the right place at the right time, or maybe she’d subconsciously picked out something familiar in this foreign environment. Either way, Ziva found herself frozen in place, eyes glued to the humanoid creature making his way through the crowd twenty or so meters ahead of her. The tell-tale tentacles on the back of his head were bundled into a crude ponytail, and he turned his face slightly to reveal dark, reddish-brown eyes that contrasted greatly with his pale green skin. A Cobian
– the
Cobian.
His name was Farag Foda, captain of a small band of Cobian pirates that had been notorious for hitting supply vessels exporting weapons from Haphez. He was the primary target on the mission Ziva had been running point on when Ikaro Tachi gave the order to return to base. She found herself paralyzed by a fresh memory of being chained up in the Cobian bunker; Foda himself had been responsible for the capture and torture of her and her strike team.
Ziva felt a tingle run up and down her spine, caused in part by the recollection of her gruesome imprisonment. The other part was sheer anger. Foda and most of his crew had escaped before the rescue team arrived, and no one had seen or heard from them in the three years since the incident. The fact that he was there on Chaiavis confused her. He appeared to be searching the crowd for something. Ziva took a look around as well, terrified that he had men nearby, but she saw no one.
She felt a certain part of herself suddenly come alive, almost like an engine mechanism on a machine that had simply been idling. It was as if a second version of herself had been activated, switched on like a light. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and her heart rate began to rise. Time itself seemed to slow; she could see every detail of every face, every figure in every window, hear every engine of every ship around her. Everything but the Cobian seemed to be moving in slow motion.
This flip-of-the-switch effect was not something foreign to her. She liked to think of it as a survival mode, an autopilot of sorts that helped her focus and do what needed to be done with minimal thought or emotion. HSP’s physicians had called it an adrenaline response…which it was, but it was also so much more than that.
Foda showed no signs of seeing her; his focus was devoted to whatever he was searching for. Judging by the way he was moving and the way he kept glancing back and forth at the passersby, that thing was a person.
Curious, Ziva continued forward but moved up into the shadows against the buildings. From that angle, she had a better view of Foda as he moved through the crowd. He was armed with at least one pistol, probably more considering his line of work. He was built like any other Cobian: only about Zinni’s height but well-muscled under the thick, armor-like flesh around his shoulders.
Ziva risked a quick glance away from him and noticed an area up ahead that appeared to be her rendezvous point. She considered ignoring the meeting plan in order to follow Foda, but there was no way of telling why he was there. His presence could be a mere coincidence, and the thought of wasting her time chasing him sickened her. It was tempting to just shoot him then and there after the things he’d done to her.
She hesitated when she saw him take a couple of shuffling steps and stop. From her vantage point under the awning over a storefront, she could see him looking intently ahead at something. She followed his gaze and found a familiar green aircar touching down beside the fountain in front of the hotel. Ziva didn’t even bother to look at Kat before returning her attention to Foda and the way he was reaching for his communicator.
Something told her he wasn’t calling just to chat with anyone. Without another thought, Ziva had her own pistol drawn and was rushing into the street. At the sight of the gun, those around her began to scatter, and she successfully cleared the area when she fired a round through the back of Foda’s left knee. He started to draw his weapon but she was upon him before he had a chance to turn and take aim. The two of them hit the street and rolled up onto the opposite walkway, out of sight of any security bots that happened to be hovering around.
Foda’s gun flew from his grasp and clattered to a stop a couple of meters away. He was quick to retaliate regardless, and when Ziva pounced on him again she found that he had managed to draw a sharp knife from a sheath hidden on his belt. The blade met her shoulder, slicing through her clothing and leaving a deep gash. More angry than in pain – at least for the moment – she seized Foda’s forearm and wrenched it around until he groaned and let the weapon fall from his grasp.
Ziva heard the roar of a car pulling up behind her and was momentarily terrified that the authorities had already arrived at the scene. She took a quick glance with her peripherals and instead found Kat, who had no doubt been alerted by all the commotion. The young woman reached her, armed with a pistol of her own, and together they managed to flip Foda over and get his arms pinned behind his back. Ziva brought her gun down against the back of his head, putting an end to his resistance.
“Nice timing,” she said as she and Kat began hauling Foda’s limp body to the car without further discussion.
“Who is he?” Kat asked. They shoved him into the back seat and she fetched some crude restraints from the storage compartment.
Ziva climbed into the back as well and went about securing Foda’s hands as they lifted off. “Let’s just say if he’s here, we’ve got a real problem.”
Judging by Kat’s hesitation and the strange greenish tint her skin had taken on, there was already another problem Ziva was unaware of. “Great,” Kat muttered. Her voice caught as if she were about to cry.
“What happened?”
Kat gave her an abbreviated rundown of what had transpired at Bosco’s shop, emphasizing the fact that the hostiles were Haphezian but didn’t appear to be local. Bosco was dead – news that would not bode well with Aroska – and his killers had been careful not to leave any evidence of their presence. Kat’s account of their actions made Ziva’s skin crawl, and her survival mode flared up once again as the young woman described their physical appearances.
An odd combination of fear, excitement, and anger welled up within her, leaving her frozen in her seat. “Kat Reilly, allow me to introduce you to Diago Dasaro.”