Read Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 Online
Authors: EJ Fisch
Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 (7 page)
She gritted her teeth against the pain in her shoulder as she reached in and slid her hands under Spence’s arms. Digging into the mud with her knees and feet, she began to tug him out centimeter by centimeter. He squeezed his eyes shut and assisted her by pushing against the seat with his legs.
Once the upper half of his body had cleared the window, Ziva slid out from under the nose and regained her footing, then pulled Spence the rest of the way out from a standing position. She dragged him across the ground and propped him up against a nearby tree where she took a moment to survey his wounds. The shard of glass had by far caused the most damage, but it appeared he would remain stable at least until someone found him.
He stared up at her, struggling to focus, and clutched at his chest with an unsteady hand. He closed his other one around her forearm. “Y-y-you…”
Ziva pried his hand off and placed it firmly in his lap. “Hold on, agent,” she said, rising. “Just hold on, and know that I didn’t do whatever they said I did.”
She paused for a moment and listened as a flood of garbled transmissions came through on the aircar’s damaged comm system. Someone somewhere had no doubt seen the craft go down and reported it, or worse yet, they’d been picked up on HSP’s scanners and a squad of agents was already closing in.
Taking one last look around, Ziva stooped down and gathered up Spence’s pistol and communicator. She tucked the gun into her pants at the small of her back and jogged over to the bushes on the edge of the service road, chucking the comm unit into the back of a shipping rig that rattled by. Hoping the mobile comm signal might distract the agency for at least a few minutes, she moved back into the trees took off as fast as she could back in the direction of Noro.
Emeri Arion stood on the comm pad in front of his conference table with his hands clasped behind his back. Surrounding him were the translucent, silvery-blue projections of HSP’s six regional directors, as well as Luko Zona of the Royal Guard and the Royal General himself, Njo Jaroon. It seemed odd to have a military man like Jaroon taking part in a police conference, but with Tachi out of the picture, he was currently representing the Royal House in both a military and law enforcement capacity.
Emeri sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. He had spent a good portion of the afternoon waiting for the opportunity to meet with these men all together, and now that the chance had arrived they could do little more than argue.
“Listen, gentlemen,” he said, breaking up yet another dispute between Jaroon and Brychon Zinck, the regional director in Haphor. “I’m expecting an update at any moment. Last we heard, they had cleared the final checkpoint and were making their approach into the capital. For now, I believe we should keep our focus on making a smooth transition into the Facility, not on what may or may not happen a week from now.”
He received murmurs of agreement from everyone but the three men in Haphor. Zona remained silent, listening to the outburst Emeri’s words had drawn from his superiors.
“While you make a valid point, Director,” Jaroon growled, “I’m not sure if I completely understand why you’re so intent on incarcerating Ziva in the first place. Treat her like the bloodthirsty murderer she is and execute her
now
!”
“Sir, under normal circumstances you know we would release her and have a Cleaner assigned to her after the hearing at the end of the week. However, I don’t think we can consider any circumstances regarding Lieutenant Payvan as being ‘normal.’ As skilled as she is, it would be far too easy for her to fall off the radar, resulting in a vast amount of wasted time for all of us. Keeping her detained is the most logical way to prevent that from happening.”
Jaroon crossed his arms, his eyes dark in the shadow cast by his furrowed eyebrows. “Still, why bother keeping her alive at all? She’s clearly guilty, so why wait?”
Emeri had never been able to fathom how Njo could view his own step-daughter in such a harsh way, and Ziva had never elaborated on her complicated family background. He knew her real father had been killed by Sardons in the Fringe War and that she had run away from Haphor as a child, but nothing more. “You know the laws of due process, General. In the grace period before they are convicted and executed, a capital criminal has the right to petition associates for help in building a case that could prove their innocence. It’s only fair that we give Ziva the same chance, even if it’s while she’s rotting in that prison.”
“I know this looks bad, Emeri,” said the director from the Mairo office, “but are you sure you want to execute Payvan? She’s done a lot for this agency over the past eight years. What if she could somehow be proven innocent?”
“Then that information will be presented at her hearing,” Luko Zona reminded them, as calm and collected as ever.
“
Regardless
of whether she’s guilty or innocent, I’m not going to make any exceptions to the law, not even for Ziva,” Emeri said. “For now she’ll be given the death penalty, just like anyone else who has done what she’s accused of. Innocent people sometimes lose their lives, and that’s unfortunate.” His mind wandered briefly to the incident with Soren Tarbic two years earlier. “But it’s the price we pay for peace here, and everyone realizes that. You’ve all seen the crime rate statistics from the past few decades. An intelligent person isn’t going to commit a capital crime if they know they’ll be killed for it, and they’ll take care to steer clear of any situations in which they might be falsely implicated. If we were to give Ziva any special treatment, what kind of example would we be setting?”
“Why are we even discussing the possibility that she could be innocent?” Jaroon protested, his voice becoming louder and more abrasive as the conversation progressed. “You saw the evidence – we
all
saw the evidence! Fingerprints and DNA don’t lie, Director. As a high-ranking member of your precious spec ops division, she has the skills to back it up; if you ask me, that makes for an indestructible case against her.”
Emeri was growing weary of the Royal General’s personal opinions. He suddenly felt a small need to defend Ziva, at least a little, if for no other reason than to agitate Njo. “That doesn’t mean she isn’t entitled to her rights.”
“I agree with the General,” Brychon Zinck piped in. “If Payvan is as good as everyone makes her out to be, what’s to keep her from breaking out of the prison? By bringing her to Haphor, we’re presenting a danger to everyone in the city, including myself and General Jaroon. Think of the King!”
“We will take every precaution to make sure nothing like that happens,” Emeri reassured them. “I don’t think we’re dealing with any sort of psychotic break here. She hasn’t come
completely
unhinged.”
“You never know, Director,” one of the other regional directors said. “You know as well as I do that it isn’t unheard of for spec ops agents to snap and begin spree-killing. It wouldn’t be the first time it has happened.”
The discussion was getting out of hand. “This isn’t about—” Emeri stopped when his office door opened. He turned to find Diago Dasaro waiting just inside the doorway, his demeanor calm but his eyes frantic. Grateful for the interruption, Emeri looked back to the holograms around the table. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me for a moment.”
He stepped off the comm pad and moved toward Dasaro, who approached simultaneously. He noticed the captain was carrying a communicator, and his face was grim as if he had come bearing bad news. Perhaps Emeri would have preferred to continue his conference.
“This had better be good,” he muttered.
“You’re going to want to hear this,” Dasaro replied, handing him the communicator. “Payvan escaped.”
Over an hour passed before Ziva found herself within earshot of what remained of Checkpoint Fifteen. In fact, she was surprised anyone was still there. The fact that she had escaped was no doubt old news by now, and she wondered why these agents weren’t out combing the forest for her.
She crept closer to the checkpoint and took cover behind a large patch of brush, taking the time to spread a thin layer of black mud over her pale face that contrasted so starkly with the dark forest. It wouldn’t take too long for someone to catch up to her. Hoping to throw off any of her pursuers’ calculations regarding time and foot speed, she had made a point to start out traveling as fast as possible and in irregular patterns. Still, a decent tracker would be able to trace her movements over the wet ground fairly easily – she needed a new mode of transportation before they could do so.
There were more agents at the checkpoint than there had been when the aircar had passed over, giving Ziva the impression that reinforcements had been brought in to assist with the search. That was exactly the case, according to what she could hear of a conversation going on nearby. Similar camps were being set up within ten kilometers of the crash site and agents would soon be dispatched into the forest in an attempt to box her in.
Ziva was exhausted and soaked to the bone with sweat and rain, but she was relieved that her strategy seemed to have worked. She slipped behind a nearby tree and began to move around the perimeter of the camp, watching as portable tracking equipment and supply caches were set up in the clearing. Several groundcars and hoverbikes were parked unattended on the far side; that needed to be her destination.
A holoprojector table like those in HSP’s situation rooms and the one in her own living room was being set up under a cover to protect it from the weather. Once they got it operational they might be able to hunt her down via one of the infrared probes hovering in the Haphezian atmosphere, assuming there’d even been any in the area. Unless one of them had been pointed in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time, the chances were slim that they’d picked her up at the crash site. Even if HSP did manage to trace her to this place, she liked to think she’d be safely away by then.
Ziva made up her mind then and there that taking out any of these agents would draw far too much attention. Still, she knew walking up to one of the bikes and riding off on it wasn’t exactly subtle either. She would have to come up with an appropriate combination of the two.
“It was a stupid idea in the first place,” one agent was saying as he and a colleague carried a cargo container nearby. “I understand where they’re coming from, but they know better than to send a spec ops agent like Payvan off with such little security. Did they really expect things to end well?” He grunted as they set the container down.
The second agent nodded in agreement and the two of them began unloading equipment. “If it were up to me, she should have been shot the moment she was apprehended. Keeping her alive was just an invitation for her to escape again.”
Ziva took their remarks as compliments and continued moving. The process was slow, and several times she was forced to move away from the camp in order to stay adequately concealed. Twenty long minutes later, she found herself within several strides of the group of cars and bikes. There were seven vehicles in all, and one particular bike on the outer edge beckoned to her. It would do nicely.
Ziva cautiously picked her way across a more open area, careful to avoid detection by a few nearby officers who had their backs turned. A large stack of empty storage containers hid her from view as she knelt down among the cars and began to formulate a plan.
None of the vehicles had their ignition keys in them, a smart move on the part of these agents. Finding any keys in the camp – all the while avoiding being caught – would be close to impossible. Hotwiring was always an option, but it would take time Ziva wasn’t sure she had. For the time being, however, it was the best choice she had. She began to fiddle with the control panel on the bike she had chosen.
Not ten seconds after she’d started, Ziva ducked down behind the machine to avoid being seen by an agent who had suddenly appeared on the edge of the camp. He was wearing a full riding suit and had a matching helmet tucked up under one arm. A key dangled from his other hand.
“I’ll check in when I get there,” he hollered back into the camp. He shook his head as if he were glad to be getting away and mounted the bike on the other side of the car beside Ziva’s.
She saw the opportunity and made her move. Staying low, she crept around the bike and car and came up behind the unsuspecting agent as he started his bike’s engine. She came within a meter of him while he leaned over and took up the helmet from where it had been balancing on the handlebars. With her footsteps drowned out by the hum of the engine, she leaped onto the seat behind him and hooked her elbow around his throat just as he was sliding the helmet over his head.
The young officer was too stunned to do anything other than flail his arms at her and claw at the helmet visor that had fallen down over his face. By the time he had mustered up any form of reaction, Ziva could already feel the sleeper hold taking effect. She tightened her grip, gradually cutting off the blood supply to his brain. Slowly the agent quit fighting and slumped back against her, unconscious.
She slid off the seat, moved the body back, then jumped onto the front with his limp form leaning against her back. Yanking the steering column around, she took the bike into a sharp turn, spraying mud over the vehicles around her with the repulsors. She steered the bike into the forest and away from the camp, keeping the officer’s body between herself and any agents who happened to look up at the departing vehicle. By the time anyone realized the man and his bike weren’t coming back, she would be long gone.