Ronan: Ziva Payvan Book 3 (45 page)

Aroska flipped the grenades’ primer switches and tossed them up the ramp. They adhered magnetically to the door, one at the top and one at the bottom. Everyone shielded their faces as the devices went off, but there was no time to waste. Ziva was on her way up the ramp before the fireball had even faded, ducking through the opening with Aroska hot on her heels.

Her anti-plasma shield was still functional – she’d made sure of that – and the thought brought her some comfort as she dashed forward. She saw and heard everything around her as a fresh adrenaline rush kicked in. As expected, the layout of the bridge was similar to the area they’d just left but on a bigger scale. Workstations lined the walls on either side of the room, and two massive circular tables were situated on each side of the center aisle, one displaying holographic statistical data on the battle and the other displaying holograms of other fleet commanders.

The soldiers who’d been watching the door had all shied away during the explosion and were just now regaining their bearings. A quick glance at them revealed that they were armed with plasma rifles rather than projectile; Ziva ignored them and let her shield absorb their fire as she pressed on, satisfied that she’d successfully captured their attention.

The sharp cracks of metal objects hitting the floor rang out behind her, followed by angry shouts and a sudden volley of gunfire. Several loud pops preceded a low hiss, and she knew the smoke bombs had been deployed. The Durutians were pouring in behind her, and Nosti were starting to fall. She holstered her pistol in favor of her kytara and engaged the blades just in time to block a blow from a man who swung his own sword at her. Her forward momentum threw him off balance and she parried, catching him in the face with her elbow before driving one end of her kytara through his rib cage. She wrenched the blade free and continued on, barely breaking stride.

A pair of Durutian soldiers had caught up to them, detonating more smoke bombs and providing cover fire as they pushed forward. The helm itself was separated from the CIC by a narrow walkway flanked by trenches that contained several more weapons control officers. The smoke consumed them and Reddic’s men began shooting, keeping them occupied while Ziva and Aroska turned their sights on the figure who watched them from the platform ahead, kytara already in hand.

Ziva slowed to a steady jog and then stopped moving altogether as she regarded the person. Full Nosti armor. Glossy black hair. Merciless black eyes. Average stature but strong, just like the rest of the Resistance troops.

Aroska pulled up short half a step behind her. His voice was hardly more than a whisper: “Oh
sheyss
.”

The woman on the platform was at least a head shorter than either of them but no less menacing for it. The battle raging just outside the front viewports provided a violent backdrop for her as she took a step toward them. She kept her gaze locked with Ziva’s, looking on with an unmistakable recognition in her eyes. Ziva tightened her grip on her kytara as confusion was replaced by realization; despite the fact that she’d never seen this woman in her life, she knew exactly who she was.

Tav Ronan
.

She was roughly the same height as all the other Nosti they’d encountered, built for speed and agility. She was well-muscled but maintained a certain poise that could only be the result of a long military career. Her long, dark hair had been bundled into a heavy braid that trailed the majority of the way down her back.

Ziva took a couple of precious seconds to listen to the action behind them, not daring to remove her eyes from Ronan. The Durutians had advanced further into the bridge and were keeping the majority of the officers occupied. The four chief helmsmen at the forward control panel were too busy trying to maneuver the ship through the chaos outside to pay them any mind. That left her and Aroska free to deal with the leader of the Resistance.

“You
did
say you wanted to be sent in for a solo strike,” Aroska muttered, moving up to stand parallel to her and readying his own kytara with a surprisingly steady hand.

She couldn’t argue with that, and she silently reminded herself that this interesting new development by no means altered the playing field. Ronan was Ronan, and she needed to be dealt with either way.

“Ziva Payvan,” the woman murmured, shifting her kytara to her other hand. The look in her eyes told Ziva she’d been waiting for this moment, maybe even expecting it. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. A pity you couldn’t have joined us sooner.”

Ziva merely shook her head, not in the mood to chat. She’d already been forced to re-live all her time with Gamon over the past few days; hearing the story of her intended fate would only make matters worse. It was eerie enough that Ronan even knew who she was.

Not wishing to waste any time, she readied her kytara and sprang forward, but she only made it a couple of paces before being blinded by a brilliant flash of light that filled the entire front viewport. The bridge shuddered, throwing them all to the ground. Ziva reached for Aroska in an attempt to keep him from falling down into the weapons control alcove, but his hand slipped from her grasp and he rolled over the edge of the walkway. She turned her attention back to the helm just in time to see the residual shimmering of the shields following the blast outside…and just in time to see Ronan’s kytara blade barreling toward her face.

For just an instant, she was transported back to that tiny apartment and saw Gamon’s sword coming at her. She jerked her head away, cringing at the sound the weapon made as it scraped across the floor beside her ear, and could almost feel Gamon’s serrated blade where it had cut into the side of her face. She raised her own kytara, deflecting another blow from Ronan as she swept her legs around and caught the woman squarely in the knee with the heel of her boot. Ronan stumbled backward with a grunt and found herself in the sights of one of the Durutians, but the plasma bolts he fired veered away from her as if she’d shot them herself. Ziva ducked away instinctively despite her shield and regained her footing, closing the distance between the two of them while the Nosti still had her attention on the shooter.

The screech of metal on metal filled her ears as their kytaras clashed. Perhaps it was just something about
Ronan
– the name that had been plaguing them all for nearly three months – that made this particular battle seem so much more significant than the others. She slid her primary blade against Ronan’s until it struck the hilt and the woman was forced to adjust her grip, all the while trying to convince herself that this was no different than any of the dozens of Nosti she’d already struck down on her way through the ship.

“You might want to duck,” said a voice behind her.

She did, and Aroska’s blade whistled over the top of her head, meeting Ronan’s with a sharp
clank
. The Nosti steeled herself, parried, and spun, in perfect position to put her kytara through Aroska’s chest if not for the fact that her aim was thrown off when the heel of Ziva’s hand slammed into her face.

A distant explosion rumbled somewhere within the hull, and alarms began to screech at the helm. “We’ve lost primary shields!” one of the pilots cried.

The generator
. Ziva could see in Ronan’s eyes that she knew it too. With the shields down at last, the GA wouldn’t hesitate to give this ship their full attention. She’d be relieved if not for the fact that she was still aboard.

A wave of Nostia slammed into her from Ronan’s outstretched hands, hitting her like a punch to the gut and sending Aroska flying backward into the wall. He slumped to the floor, dazed and blinking, and his kytara skidded across the bridge and disappeared under a workstation.

“He’s making a valiant effort,” the Resistance leader said, “but really Payvan, your people should not be meddling in affairs which aren’t theirs.”

“Oh you
made
it our affair,” Ziva retorted. A tingle coursed through the back of her head and she threw her hands forward as if shoving an invisible object. Her own wave of Nostia struck Ronan, knocking her to the ground and propelling her backward into one of the helmsmen’s chairs. “You made it our affair when you sent Jak Gamon here to turn a little girl into a piece of contraband, you
vehr frouchten shouka!
”

The look on Ronan’s face sent a chill down Ziva’s spine. Despite the blood gushing from her nose, it wasn’t a look of pain. It was a display of shock, awe, maybe even pride. “The formula worked,” she murmured.

Ziva was upon her again in seconds. “It didn’t work!” she shouted, taking the time to drive her kytara into the stomach of a pilot who had pulled out a pistol. She sidestepped and brought the sword back over her head, stopping Ronan’s blade from slicing into her shoulder. “You killed hundreds of people!”

The Nosti came in at a low angle, slamming the hilt of her kytara into Ziva’s shins. She was quick, stronger than Ziva would have expected of a human woman her size. But size was still her weak point; she could dodge and dart and slash all she wanted, but she couldn’t defend against such high attacks forever.

Fueled by rage now, Ziva went at Ronan again, feinting left before sweeping her kytara around from the right and slicing downward. The Nosti jabbed upward in response, switching to a one-handed grip just long enough to deliver a hard right hook. The blow struck Ziva directly in the mouth and was followed up by another flood of Nostia that sent her careening backward.

As she regained her footing and spit out some of the blood that streamed from her split lip, she saw movement in her peripherals past Ronan’s left shoulder. Aroska was on his feet again. That knowledge triggered a fresh surge of adrenaline and she rushed forward once more, determined that this would be her final attack. Her first blow was blocked effortlessly. Ronan stopped her next one as well, their blades scraping harshly together until the Nosti’s caught on the edge of Ziva’s hilt. Ziva pushed down, taking a moment to study the positions of the swords. If she broke off and brought the other end of hers around, she’d be vulnerable for a split second and Ronan’s kytara would be buried in her neck before she knew what hit her.

“You came all the way up here,” the woman spat. “Did you think you were going to just kill me?”

More movement. An idea.

“Nah,” Ziva replied. “I figured
he
would.”

She squeezed her kytara’s hilt, lifted, and pulled. It separated just as easily as it had that night in Aroska’s kitchen. She kept the left blade crossed with Ronan’s, pressing down with all her strength. The right blade she tossed to Aroska as he came within a meter of the Nosti leader. There was a brief look of confusion on the woman’s face before the short sword was plunged into her spine. Ziva sidestepped to avoid the blade as it burst through a seam in her armor’s chest plate. Aroska yanked it upward, then ripped it back down into her gut. She collapsed to her knees with the sword still impaling her, and her own kytara clattered to the floor. She was looking straight into Ziva’s eyes when she finally fell forward onto her stomach, the pool of blood spreading quickly beneath her.

Ziva watched her until her spastic attempt at breathing ceased altogether. Another enemy dead…that’s all it was, she told herself. Another Bothum. Another Saun. Another Dasaro. It didn’t matter who Ronan was, didn’t matter that she’d been behind the scenes of Ziva’s tenuous upbringing. What mattered was that she’d been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people across the galaxy and that her plan likely involved killing thousands more.

She felt Aroska’s gaze on her as she stooped down and tore the short sword free from Ronan’s body, fitting the two halves back together and wiping off the blood before retracting the blades. The three remaining helmsmen all watched her with mouths agape, but she paid them no mind; they’d either die when the ship went down or have their escape pods blown away, and there was no need to kill them here.

Based on the look on Aroska’s face, he wanted to say everything and nothing at all. He placed a hand on her shoulder and settled on a happy medium: “Let’s find a computer.”

She shrugged his hand away and turned to jog back toward the CIC, where the Durutians were picking off the last of the deck officers and tending to their wounded.

Groans from wounded ‘borgs and not-quite-dead Resistance troops rose up from behind the residual smoke that still drifted through the room. Reddic appeared through the haze, gripping a back-up pistol in one hand while he mopped at a cut on his scalp with the other. His silver implants glowed in the shadows and reflected the red strobes that flashed from the ceiling in sync with the klaxons that still wailed.

“We need to go,” he said, rushing over to help someone who came staggering through the smoke. It was Mae, coughing and sputtering and clutching at a long gash that had torn her arm open from her shoulder to her elbow.

“Not until we get what we came for,” Ziva said, coming to a stop at the main control panel for one of the large tables.

“You’re telling me
that
wasn’t it?” he exclaimed, gesturing toward Ronan’s mangled body.

“Far from it. Get back to the hangar and prep for takeoff. This place is going to start falling apart around us. We’ll be right behind you.”

He didn’t look convinced, but he turned to Mae, who hadn’t removed her eyes from the Resistance leader’s corpse.

“It’s done,” she murmured. She shook her head and scoffed. “Tav Ronan.” Unless Ziva was mistaken, there was something wistful about her tone, almost as if she’d been hoping to kill the woman herself.