Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 (28 page)
Read Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 Online
Authors: EJ Fisch
If the sight on the large viewscreen hadn’t rendered Dasaro completely speechless, he would have let loose a string of colorful expletives directed at Nejdra and Hoxie as well as himself. He stood instead with his eyes fixed on the screen, stroking his chin as he tried to wrap his head around what exactly he was seeing.
Not wishing to alert anyone to the situation until they were completely sure of what was going on, they’d opted to send a bot back to the Haphor relay station rather than an agent. It was there now, recording what it saw with a cam that transmitted a live feed back to the screen in Noro. It stood in front of the pyre on which Lieutenant Tarbic had supposedly burned Payvan’s body. It was clear that something had indeed been burned there, but it was also clear that it hadn’t been a corpse.
“Focus in on the pyre please,” Dasaro said into the earpiece he wore.
The bot complied, panning back and forth and giving him a closer view of the charred pile in its entirety. There were no visible bones, no clothing fragments, not so much as a tooth to tell him that Ziva had been taken care of. Not wishing to believe that he had been deceived, Dasaro found himself once again entering Tarbic’s code into his communicator. Again there was no answer, and he allowed a growl to escape his throat as he returned the device to his belt.
“What are you thinking?” Hoxie asked, his smooth voice carrying through the darkness of the situation room in which the three of them were holed up.
Dasaro couldn’t help but smile, almost amused by the sheer ridiculousness of it all. “Payvan’s good, I’ll give her that much. Tarbic had me fooled too – I should have realized he was up to something.”
“And now that they have Shevin?”
“Now that they have Shevin,” Dasaro echoed, rubbing a hand over his face as he thought. “Now that they have Shevin, everything could start coming unraveled faster than we can tie it back up. The key is to keep all those knots intact.”
“What do you propose we do?” Nejdra asked, pivoting around in her chair to face them.
“Eliminate ways for them to untie any knots before they even have a chance to try,” Dasaro replied. He paused a moment and studied the computer screen Nejdra was working with, watching as a pattern recognition program searched through a seemingly endless string of surveillance feeds for the riding suit Payvan wore. They’d already spotted Shevin on one of the spaceport cams, but the angle had been bad and there was no way of knowing which transport he’d boarded. It was time to find another approach. “How many leads besides Shevin does she have? Who else has she been in contact with recently?”
Nejdra turned back to the workstation and brought up a transmission log on another screen. “No activity on the Alpha team’s office comm for the past four days. The last incoming message appears to be from an intragalactic code.”
“Run it,” Dasaro said.
He and Hoxie both stepped forward and leaned closer, watching as Nejdra began a trace on the code. The source was found after mere seconds, both startling Dasaro and piquing his curiosity.
“It’s from our embassy on Chaiavis,” Nejdra said. “Looks like somebody used their weekly transmission to contact Payvan.”
Dasaro nodded thoughtfully. By “weekly transmission,” she referred to the allotted single message the Haphezian outcasts were allowed to send or receive per week. The government had thought it only fair that the Defectives be allowed to stay in touch with their culture of origin, but at the same time this method prevented too much contact. The fact that someone at the embassy had sacrificed precious communication time to contact Ziva’s team intrigued him.
“Do we have any audio from the call?”
Nejdra played with the computer a moment longer and opened the audio file that had been saved with the transmission log. Rather than Ziva’s voice, they found themselves listening to that of Officer Zinni Vax. The caller was a woman who introduced herself as someone who had heard good things about Ziva and wished to discuss a potential job offer with her. Dasaro took another look at the transmission’s timestamp – the call had come through just moments after Ziva’s arrest. It was no wonder Vax had answered.
“Tell you what,” the intelligence officer was saying. “I’ll see if I can find her, but for now I’m going to transfer you over to someone in records where you can leave your contact information.”
There were several seconds of static and random tones as the transmission was routed to a different department. The recorded voice came on asking the caller to leave her name – she responded: “Kat Reilly.” There was a short pause before the automated system prompted her for a comm code, but she ended the transmission abruptly before answering.
Nejdra had a search running before the audio file had even ended. “Kat Reilly,” she said. “Age twenty-five, she was born in Argall and has lived at the Chaiavis embassy since birth due to an appearance abnormality. According to their records, she left the residential wing seven years ago. She lives on her own but stops in periodically to send a transmission or look for work.”
“Reilly,” Dasaro echoed as the gears in his mind began to turn. The room fell silent for several long seconds. Nejdra pivoted in the chair to face him. “You think it’s—?”
“Could this girl know something?” Hoxie asked.
“For now, it’s the best lead we’ve got,” Dasaro replied. “It looks like we’ll be taking a trip to Chaiavis.”
The Chaiavis spaceport where their transport finally touched down bore a striking resemblance to the one in Noro. The sense of familiarity sent a wave of relief washing over Ziva – or maybe she was just happy to be off the ship. Being in close quarters with others came with the job, but after being cooped up in a tiny room with Aroska and Kade for close to two days, the fresh air felt heavenly.
It could hardly be considered fresh though; the port where they’d landed was on the border of an industrial sector and the air was thick with smoke and emissions from various nearby factories. This was the only city on the planet, situated in a temperate zone halfway between the equator and northern pole, but it was nearly the size of Haphez’s Noro and Haphor Regions combined. The planet itself was a capital of sorts for many of the Fringe worlds, a political hub for the civilizations that weren’t part of the Federation. Still, it rested on the edge of Federation space and thus saw heavy traffic due to the merchants, politicians, smugglers, and tourists traveling back and forth between the Fringe and the Core. If someone wanted to hide, this was the place to do it.
Night had long since fallen, casting the crowded streets in shadows, and the people in the area had an all-around grimy look to them that reminded Ziva all too much of home. She sighed and nodded to herself; this place was perfect.
Toting her backpack, she walked down the ramp and through the boarding gate with her two male companions in tow. She steered them out of the heart of the crowd and paused for a moment on a street corner, familiarizing herself with the area. There were a variety of cheap hotels and flophouses in the immediate vicinity, though the thought of remaining there so close to the docks made her skin crawl.
“We need to keep moving,” she said, not wanting to but also not wishing to be caught after all the trouble they’d gone through to get there. She turned to Aroska and Kade, hesitating for a moment as she studied the looks they were both giving her.
“What?” she demanded, feeling even less secure loitering there in the street than she would have in one of the flophouses.
She didn’t need a response to know what they were thinking. They stood with sagging shoulders and deadpan faces, telling her that they were trying hard not to broadcast how exhausted they really were. They glanced briefly at each other before Aroska stepped forward, hand extended in a calming manner.
“You know we can’t stay here,” Ziva exclaimed before he had a chance to say anything. “We are at
war
right now. We’ve got to move, regroup.”
“Do you see Dasaro here?” Aroska said, his voice just as gruff. He held his arms out and looked around. “I didn’t think so.
One
night.”
“And how do you know he’s not going to be on the next transport that docks here?”
“He won’t be. We were careful – he has no way of knowing which transport we were on, and even if he
does
, he can’t know where we landed. For all he knows, we could have gotten off yesterday.”
Kade remained calmer as he spoke. “I vote we stop,” he said. “We can rest a bit and start fresh in the morning. The way I see it, trying to press on in this condition will more likely result in mistakes, and
that’s
when we’ll get caught.”
“You two have been planning this, haven’t you?” Ziva placed her hands on her hips and turned back to study the docking area for a moment. Most of the travelers from the transport had dispersed by now, leaving Chaiavis’s nighttime crowd to govern the streets. Sighing, she pivoted and looked over their lodging options before peering up and down the street as far as she could see.
“Fine,” she said, “but I want to move out of this area.”
The two men seemed pleased as the three of them secured their packs and began walking. As they moved further from the factories, the lights became brighter and the crowd thickened. Ziva couldn’t help but wonder how many of these people might recognize them from the news.
Half an hour’s trek hadn’t taken them as far as she would have preferred, but the feeling of being exposed in the street was beginning to take its toll on her. Ziva paused in front of a dilapidated little hotel with a flickering sign that was sandwiched between two booming night clubs, her eye on one of four rooms that had windows overlooking the street. One of these would do nicely.
The three of them entered and, finding the lobby’s only occupant to be a drunken man passed out in a crusty old chair, continued up the stairs. There didn’t seem to be any other tenants, so they chose one of the street-view rooms whose door faced the stairs. The room was sparsely furnished, with a single bed, tiny sofa, and a faulty lighting panel that only seemed to work for ten seconds at a time. All in all it was perfect – it was a place where nobody would be inclined to look for them, and where anyone who found them wouldn’t be inclined to bother them.
Ziva made her way across to the window, coughing against the scent of cigar smoke that lingered in the curtains. They had an unobstructed view of the street below and could see the majority of the ships heading to the docks. She set her bag on the floor and turned to find Aroska and Kade watching her as if they weren’t sure what to do.
She gestured toward the bed and the sofa. “Well?”
Kade slid his satchel from his shoulder and placed it gingerly at the foot of the bed. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ll keep watch,” she replied, turning back toward the window. “I’m not tired.” Several seconds of silence passed before she reassured them, “I’ll wake one of you if I have to.”
For a moment Ziva wasn’t sure if they were buying such a lie. She took comfort in knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep even if she wanted to, so in a way what she was telling them was true. Both men studied her for a moment before reluctantly moving away to their respective sleeping arrangements, Aroska taking the bed and Kade the sofa.
Ziva sighed and stretched her stiff shoulders. She parted the curtains slightly, remaining far enough back in the shadows that she had a clear view of the street but that any onlookers were unlikely to see her lurking there. She wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for, short of Dasaro in the flesh. Part of her wondered if there would be bounty hunters coming after her, but another part wondered if the rest of the Haphezian population even knew she was still alive. Certainly the captain and his posse had figured it out by now, but perhaps he had chosen to keep it quiet so nobody would know about his mistake…and so no one would start to question the supposed charges brought against her.
She wasn’t entirely sure what she preferred. The fewer the people who knew she was alive, the lower the risk – dealing with Dasaro and the other two captains would be easy enough. On the other hand, if more people knew she lived, it could help discredit Dasaro and he would go down all the more quickly. At this point, Veya Shevin was the only person who knew. If she’d done as she was told and had gone to Noro, Marshay and Ryon would know, and if they knew, Skeet and Zinni most likely did too. That thought coaxed a sigh of relief out of her, but the relief didn’t last. All of that depended wholly on Veya, and Ziva didn’t have a lot of confidence in the young woman. Worse yet, maybe everyone else already knew her death had been staged, and Dasaro had had time to paint her and Aroska and Kade as criminals on the run.
Aroska and Kade. Surely Dasaro realized by now that Tarbic had played him. Did he know Kade was with them? How was he explaining the young agent’s disappearance? Had anyone from the Royal Guard even noticed he was gone? Shevin had told her about being dismissed from the office; chances were nobody would be missing him for a couple more days. Did they realize his family was gone? What about the bodies left at the RG headquarters? And so the questions continued to spin through Ziva’s mind, questions that spawned new questions and eventually led her back to where she started.
As her brain worked, her eyes remained on the window, taking in each individual and vehicle that passed by. As time ticked by, the crowd reached its apex and finally began to die down as the morning hours approached. Ziva was brought out of her trance by the sound of Aroska’s heavy breathing. She turned away from the window to find him curled up in a semi-fetal position, clutching the pillow with white knuckles. The light from outside reflected off his sweaty forehead and partially illuminated a face contorted with misery. Sighing yet again, Ziva returned her attention to the street. He’d done better than she’d expected so far in terms of withdrawals, but considering the condition he’d been in when she’d sought him out, she knew they were inevitable. He’d handled the transport trip well enough, probably due to the fact that he’d snuck out for a drink two different times under the pretense of stretching his legs – she’d been able to smell it on him upon his return. The man was a fool if he thought she didn’t know, but she’d allowed it for fear that he would be incapacitated by withdrawal symptoms sometime when she needed to count on him.
She eased back into her semi-conscious state, this time leaning against the window frame and looking down into the street at an angle. All of the questions came flooding back within a moment, getting so tangled up in one another and vying for her attention that they all became a dull buzz in her ears. The majority of them were impossible to answer from where she stood now, yet having those answers would show them what steps they needed to take. For the first time in a long time, she felt rather lost. At the moment, her plan consisted of acquiring money and some form of transportation and then seeking out Aroska’s contact. Then what? Kade was getting closer to breaking the encryption on his boss’s files. Perhaps that would help point them in the right direction.
It seemed like only minutes later that Ziva heard someone say her name and became aware of something cold and hard pressing against her head. More accurately, her head was pressing against the cold hard thing – she was perched in the windowsill, one leg dangling down to the floor, her face resting against the glass. What little of the horizon she could see through the forest of buildings was already pink with dawn. She snapped to attention and turned to find Aroska standing there with his hand retracted as if he’d been about to tap her shoulder.
“
Sheyss
,” she muttered, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as she got down and stretched her cramped legs. “You’re terrible about letting me doze off like that.”
“Come on. You know as well as I do that you could use the rest.”
“Where’s Shevin?”
“He went downstairs to see if anyone knows where we could find an old aircar for sale. I assume we could use one?”
“Good, good,” Ziva said, pleased that someone was accomplishing something even while she was being useless. “We can use the money I have left, and once I can access one of my accounts we’ll be good to go.”
“One of your accounts, huh?”
Ziva smirked. “I’ve made some money over the years that hasn’t necessarily been clean. It requires off-world accounts HSP doesn’t necessarily know about.”
Kade returned presently, bearing a small holographic advertisement. “The bartender at the club next door has an old car he’s been trying to sell. I told him we were interested – his shift ends in twenty minutes.”
“Thanks Shevin,” Ziva said, checking her pistol before tucking it back into her pants. Her fingers brushed over one end of her kytara where it dangled from its special harness under her jacket. “You stay here, hold down the fort, and we’ll go get the car and find Aroska’s contact. We’ll keep you updated.”
“Got it,” Kade said with a respectful nod. “What if someone comes?”
“If anyone walks through that door?” Ziva gestured toward the pistol resting on the sofa beside his bag. “Shoot them in the head.”