Ronan: Ziva Payvan Book 3 (17 page)

“Just a hunch,” she replied matter-of-factly. “We know the gas is nostium, we know he’s one of Ronan’s agents. I wanted to see his reaction, and I think it proved that we’re not just dealing with the Resistance here; we’re dealing with a new wave of Nosti.”

“Do you have any idea where this intel about the nostium came from?”

“No clue.” The lie rolled off her tongue just as easily as it had every time she’d ever been questioned about her connection with Gamon. “I was just briefed on it this evening.” She jerked her head toward the agent. “How did he get in?”

“We don’t know for sure yet,” Zona answered. “The gas was stored in a canister with a timed detonation mechanism and inserted into the ventilation system from the maintenance room. As near as we can tell, he killed a guard on his way back out. Nobody could smell him but security forces heard the commotion and pursued him, wounding him before he made it out of the yard.” He shook his head. “It should have been impossible for him to infiltrate this place.”

It’s not impossible
, Ziva wanted to say.
I did it once
.

“What matters is that we have him now,” she said instead.

“But at what cost?”

“I have the utmost confidence he can provide us with information that will make up for what he’s done.” She almost felt bad saying it, but it was the cold truth. “We need to make security a top priority for him. His hands – hell, his whole body – should be kept immobile. Any objects in a room that aren’t bolted down will be fair game for him. And I want him sedated for the trip back to Noro.”
So he can’t blurt out the wonderful fact that he somehow knows who I am
, she thought.

She stood and massaged her eyes as Zona began to go about making arrangements for a prison transport. She’d never imagined finding herself in the middle of a situation of this magnitude when she’d taken Kat’s data pad and agreed to look into Ronan. It seemed, perhaps, that the entire Haphezian military – or maybe the entire
civilization
– was in the middle of the situation.  Now if they could only figure out exactly what that situation was.

She stared down at the back of the unconscious agent’s head, feeling the telltale tingle building up in the back of her own head. Clenching her hands into fists, she strode from the room with the intention of finding Aura and leaving this place. It had already been a long night, and it was about to get even longer.

-26-

Patrol Frigate
Vigilance

Fringe Space

It had been too long. Something was wrong.

Sadey strode out of the elevator and onto the
Vigilance’s
bridge, taking a moment to collect herself before approaching the communications officer. He glanced up when he saw her coming and gave his head a subtle wag as he removed his earpiece.

“I’m sorry, Commander. Still no word.”

Eight hours had passed since they’d heard from Jalen. He’d sent a coded message upon arriving in Haphor, informing them that he’d acquired a vehicle and would be ceasing all communication, just as planned. Upon completing the mission, he’d been scheduled to report back with a single binary value, just as Ronan had done before. A green light indicated a successful mission, while a red one announced failure.

There’s more than one type of failure
, Sadey thought. In the best-case scenario, a failure simply meant that, for one reason or another, the nostium hadn’t been distributed and Jalen had been left with no choice but to bug out. But if he’d been forced to take his own life to avoid capture – or worse yet, had
been
captured – there’d obviously be no way for him to contact them. She’d notified Ronan about her concerns but had been instructed to wait a bit longer before jumping to conclusions. There were a number of reasons Jalen could be taking extra time. He could have simply had trouble getting in or out of the Royal City and needed to take a more circuitous route. Or the vehicle with his comm equipment could have been towed away. Or maybe that equipment was simply malfunctioning.

Or maybe he’s dead
.

By now it would be nearly dawn in Haphor. Jalen was a skilled operative who wouldn’t have wanted to risk conducting the mission in broad daylight. If the job hadn’t been done by now, it probably wasn’t going to be. And if they hadn’t heard back from him by now, Sadey doubted they ever would. She hated for the Resistance to lose a soldier – especially one under her command – when numbers weren’t on their side in the first place, but it was better than having a whole squadron wiped out.

“I’m writing him off as a casualty,” she said, wishing she didn’t have to speak the words.

“Shall I prepare to transmit a ‘mission failure’ to Ronan?” the officer asked.

Sadey shook her head. “We don’t know for sure if it
was
a failure. Do we have access to the Haphezian news networks yet?”

The
Vigilance
floated on the outskirts of the Noro system as the crew waited to move in and rendezvous with the small shuttle Jalen had taken planetside. “Looks like we’re too far out of range to pick up any local news signals,” the comm officer answered. “But if they have anything streaming on an interplanetary network, we should be able to see it.”

Sadey watched with bated breath as he sifted through news feeds on the large viewscreen above the control panel, irritated that they’d lost not only a soldier but a shuttle as well. All the shuttles and fighters docked on the
Vigilance
were either stolen or registered to legitimate organizations, so there was no reason to be concerned about someone finding it. It was just one more lost resource.

“I’ve got something,” the officer announced, pausing on one particular news feed with Haphezian text scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

“Circulate this,” she ordered.

The man manipulated the controls and the news report appeared on every viewscreen on the bridge. All the crewmembers in the vicinity stopped what they were doing to watch.

A Haphezian woman stood outside a large white gate speaking into a recording device as several hovercams floated around her head. The timestamp in the corner indicated the feed was live, and the sky behind the reporter was already beginning to lighten. The translation software kicked in and a feminine voiceover began relaying everything the woman was saying in Standard. The banner at the bottom of the screen read “Breaking News.”

“…have been working through the night to clear the air inside the house so authorities can continue the investigation. The Royal Family and their staff were kept under quarantine pending an initial examination then put through a decontamination process before being released. I’ve been told the Royal General and Royal Lady are currently resting comfortably and aren’t in any pain.”

A tingle of excitement made Sadey’s skin crawl. So the mission had been a success, then? She listened as a male voice thanked the woman for her report, then the feed flashed over to a previously-recorded interview. A man who appeared to be a member of the security detail stood amid the crowd of law enforcement personnel, and according to the report, he’d just been released from the quarantine.

“It all happened so fast,” he said. “We hit the floor but that stuff was already in the air. Even if we could have made it outside, it would have been too late. Once the seizures kicked in, there was nothing anyone could do.”

Sadey’s eyes widened and a grin spread across her face. Seizures, of course, meant the nostium had done too much damage to the brain to be effective. But if she understood what the man was saying, the symptoms had set in mere minutes – maybe even seconds – after exposure. The infusion may not have been a success, but they’d still managed to take out the head of the entire Haphezian military, and they now had confirmation that they were headed in the right direction with the formula.

The news feed returned to the woman at the gate. “Initial findings suggest this was a follow-up attack performed by the same group responsible for the incident at the Na Base over a week ago. Police are still searching for leads as to who is behind these attacks. Meanwhile, authorities do have a suspect in custody—”

And just like that, everything went to hell. Sadey’s heart leapt into her throat; the reporter kept speaking but she didn’t hear a word the woman said as she focused on the previously-recorded clip that was spliced into the feed. It showed a group of HSP agents escorting a man up the boarding ramp of a prison ship, towering over him as they went. His head was covered by a black bag and he had some sort of restraining contraption fitted over his hands and arms, but the black stealth suit he wore was unmistakable. Jalen Gero was alive, and he was currently in the custody of the Haphezian Special Police.

She stood and watched with a gaping mouth for another few seconds, taking in every detail she could. The pocket containing the suicide pill had been ripped from his sleeve, revealing bare skin underneath, and the agents were practically carrying him up the ramp thanks to a poorly-treated wound on one of his legs.

“You’re recording this?” she asked.

The communications officer nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Play that back.”

He complied and backed the footage up several frames then played it back at half speed. Sadey took a step closer, though it really did nothing to enhance her view of the screen, and studied one of the agents walking with Jalen, a tall woman with deep red stripes running through her dark hair. Another wave of uncertainty and dread swirled through her stomach. They were the same red stripes that ran through Ziva Payvan’s hair in the mugshot that had circulated on some of the Fringe’s news networks after Ikaro Tachi’s assassination. After her reported disappearance, Sadey had never expected to hear of her again, but there she was, alive and well and very much involved with the same agency that had been hunting her.

Part of Sadey felt a glimmer of hope at the sight of Jak Gamon’s former student, but the other part was stricken with terror at the thought of Payvan interacting with Jalen. He was smart enough – and trained well enough – to not divulge any information during an interrogation, and the absence of his suicide pill told her he’d already tried to take it. But with Payvan’s experience as a Nosti student, however long ago it was, Sadey doubted it would take the woman long to figure out who he was.

“Are we going to launch a rescue, Commander Payne?” asked a young officer who had been watching from a nearby workstation.

“No,” Sadey replied without hesitation, though it pained her to say it. “He knew the risks, and I’m confident he’ll do whatever is necessary to make sure his identity and Ronan’s operations remain undisclosed.” She looked around and found that everyone in the area was looking at her. They all knew she meant Jalen would kill himself. No point in wasting resources to rescue a man who was as good as dead.

She leaned down and spoke in a hushed voice to the communications officer. “I want a copy of this footage forwarded to Ronan forthwith. Once we’re out-of-system, open a direct line to Forus Command and reroute the transmission to my quarters.”

Sadey pivoted and strode back across the bridge, pausing long enough to instruct the navigator to plot a new course out of the Noro system. She entered the elevator and returned to her cabin, where she sat down at her computer console and began to draft a written memo with orders on how to proceed. Having Payvan in the picture changed everything. The agent might not recognize Jalen’s affiliation right away – maybe she never would – but Sadey had no desire to take any chances. They’d already had to move through the plan at an accelerated pace, but now that there was an increased risk of being discovered, they’d have to move even faster.

Calm down
, she told herself.
You know how the Haphezians are – even if Payvan realizes who Jalen is working for, they may not want to involve themselves in Resistance matters
.

No, she decided, that wasn’t going to fly anymore, not after their military and political leader had been attacked. Regardless of whether Payvan kept her mouth shut or not, there was no time to waste. The time for subtlety was coming to an end; the next stage of the plan would have to be put into motion immediately. She relayed her orders in the memo, requesting a slight alteration of the most recent nostium formula in hopes that it would be less potent. They would need a smaller ship as well. The
Vigilance
was far too large, and the other two shuttles it carried weren’t adequately equipped for this upcoming mission.

What they needed was a freighter-sized vessel, and Sadey smiled as an idea presented itself. They’d been scheduled to rendezvous with the
Titania
, a Resistance ship masquerading as a medical transport, near Sardonis following Jalen’s mission. The
Titania
was due to report back to Forus Command after spending the past several weeks on assignment on the other side of the Fringe, and the two ships had planned on traveling home together. They could still make the rendezvous happen but alter the timetable. The
Titania
was perfectly equipped for this phase of the plan, and unless Sadey was mistaken, they were already transporting one of the Haphezian test subjects. If they were still on schedule, they’d only be about an hour away from the Noro system at the moment.

Feeling better but still apprehensive, she went to the viewport and gazed out at the stars until the transmission from Ronan came through.