Savannah Green
Posted on Sat Dec 21st, 2024 @ 12:33am by Lieutenant JG Jaya Maera Garlake & Lieutenant Colonel Storr Garlake & Zharra Neerassi
3,982 words; about a 20 minute read
Mission:
S1E6: Where Skies End
Location: Garlake Property, Laphalale, South Africa
Timeline: MD 8
Zharra stepped off of a civillian transport in Pretoria, dressed in a brown coloured set of cargo pants, black military boots and a long sleeved grey shirt, covered with a cotton, ochre coloured jacket. She had her long black hair in a plait, and a black baseball cap was on her head. Protective sunglasses graced her eyes. She had harness hidden under the jacket, which holstered her weapon.
After confirming the disappearances of Cal's girlfriend and the fellow Orion Laena, Talina and Zharra had parted ways as Taline had to move to her next assignment. Zharra returned to work the next day, and had a quiet couple of days catching up on her cases before another call from Cal came, this one was a bit more involved than a simple welfare check.
This one was an extraction assistance request, coming directly from Internal Affairs of all places. She was being seconded to this assignment covertly and needed to be in South Africa on Earth post haste. And it was all classified up the whazoo and a personal favor she could cash in on. Which meant, she couldn't do this on her Federation Security jacket, not officially. So she needed an excuse to be there that wouldn't raise too many eyebrows hopefully.
So Zharra quickly organized an exfil transport for two adults and three newborns and headed down to Johannesburg as quickly as she could. Her transport would meet her down in Pretoria, from where she would take it herself to the Garlake property to the north. Laphalale it was called.
The Orion had set up a story that she was their professional chauffeur with transport to take them around sight seeing. Given that there were many races, many orions included, doing tourist jobs like these, she would hopefully fall under the radar, as she had assumed the classified level of this operation would need a cover story, so she played on her race and the job in hopes of passing for the obvious.
She did a quick bug sweep before she started the hover-vehicle and headed off towards Laphalale.
It didn't take her long to get there. She put through a call to the property as she was a few of minutes out so as to give the Garlakes time to prepare. Cal had given her a weird passcode, so that the family would know that she was a friendly.
Normally, properties of this size would have a multitude of people and employees living and working there. Someone would have to pick up. Someone, anyone would hear an in-coming comm call request coming through.
Only...they weren't.
"Storr! Storr, love, I need fresh clothes! Kevin messed his again!" Normally, Jaya considered herself a patient person, but juggling three paternal triplets was a taxing task for even the most gracious of people. "Storr? Where are you?!"
Glancing back over her shoulder, she was wishing and hoping to see Storr coming right along as he had been. Instead, all she felt was disappointment. Just what could he be doing?
"I'm sure it was the wind," the elder Garlake chuckled as he gently placed the shotgun on the rack.
"Well, as the eldest son, I can't go around embarrassing my father if I want to stay in the will," Storr grinned back, lovingly running a cloth over the antiqued silver engraving. The two bull elephants that ran along the receiver shone as brightly as the day he first laid eyes on the work of art he now held.
"Does Jaya know you love that haelgeweer more than her?" Kevin Garlake continued with the chuckle, taking the firearm from his son and placing it alongside its triplets on the wall. The father's hand was as beefy as his son's, the two men's fingers almost covering the entire barrel's length. Storr's heart ached momentarily, watching the three weapons be put back to rest, knowing that his brother wasn't here. He missed Altus, and the two never knew when their shore leaves would align to allow the next visit. Thankfully Odele was here, as Rhodesia was a much shorter trip than from whatever hinterlands the USS John Paul Jones was skulking about.
The Lieutenant Colonel's mind immediately returned to the present when his father mentioned Jaya's name. He looked at his watch and groaned. "Vader, I'm in it deep...I was supposed to be back and help Jaya with the twin's nap twenty minutes ago." Storr's eyes cut over to the table, still full of equipment, ammunition, and other sundry items waiting to be put back in their place, before looking back to his father.
"Go," Kevin said with a somewhat forlorn smile. "She needs you more than an old ma...."
The elder Afrikanner's words were ripped from his throat as a loud explosion detonated outside the room they were in, causing the door to buckle inward (though not break) and dust to jump from the floor, walls, and ceiling simultaneously. What sounded like energy weapon reports sizzled in the air, along with accompanying screams. The two men looked at each other, the elder nodding, reaching up, and grasping the shotgun before tossing it to his son and doing the same with a full bandoleer.
"Go to your family. I'll find your mother and sister," Kevin Garlake said, carefully peeking through the shades covering the nearest window before taking his own weapon down from the wall.
Storr nodded, opened the gun's breach, and popped in two double-aught buck shells before slamming it closed. "Ja meneer."
A tingle went up Jaya's spine that made her skin prickle with gooseflesh. Something was not right, and it wasn't Storr being lackadaisical. "Come on, my hearties. Let's get you back in the carrier."
By carrier, of course, Jaya was thinking of the transparent polyduranide incubator whose onboard inertial dampener and hermetically sealed ventilation system virtually made it a portable bomb shelter. It would protect them from anything short of a photon torpedo. Aker and Chelsea were still swaddled, so Jaya put them inside the carrier first, one after the other. "Come on, Kevin, darling; please cooperate for Maray," she said, using the Deltan word for Mother. Her tone had an edge of pleading to it.
Something behind Jaya made the baby's eyes grow wide in curiosity. Coupled with her Deltan empathic intuition, Jaya went into full alert mode. She grabbed Kevin and sidestepped from the changing table. An elongated dagger slashed through the air where she had just been standing. It still managed to graze her shoulder.
"No! Kevin!" Jaya shrieked just as she managed to put the baby next to his brother and sister. She ducked down and slapped the seal command which would lock the carrier until input by the release code. From there, she turned to face her attacker.
If he wasn't of Vulcan, he was still Vulcanoid. The bald man had wasted no time and brought the knife down for a stab that would have pierced Jaya through the heart and lungs. Her hands flung outward in reflex, crossed at the wrist as Storr had shown her. She didn't have the leverage to counter the attack, but at least she bought herself a few precious seconds. Looking at her attacker's pointed ears, she took a deep breath and prepared to buy a few more. Eyes closed, tension focused on her larynx to attempt a sonic projection of the empathy normally reserved for tactile contact, Jaya screamed from the depths of her soul.
"STOOOOORRRRRRR!!!
The would-be assassin flinched hard enough to drop the knife, but he didn't slow much. He drew back his right hand and cocked it for a haymaker.
Two thunderous roars kept the fist from ever falling on the Deltan. The bald man (or, rather, what was left of the Vulcan's head and neck/right shoulder) slumped to the ground like so much detritus, revealing a leveled shotgun behind it with twin smoking barrels.
"Jaya, my God...you're not hurt, are you?" Storr said as he rushed over the fresh corpse to his bride. He thanked the good Lord above that he had enough tactical sense and a level head to switch to slugs rather than shot before entering the room. His ears would still be ringing from the shots if he hadn't already had the in-ear protection from the earlier shooting he had done with his father. He knew that Jaya had no such protection, and between that and the level of panic/threatening she had just endured, he held her close and as tightly as he dared rather than wait for a reply.
"No..." Try as she might, Jaya couldn't quite keep the tremor out of her voice. She clung to Storr in a moment of quiet desperation and relief. A pang of fear welled up from deep within her and was expelled in the fierce discipline of her Deltan equanimity. Poised once more, she stepped back. "I'll be fine, but we need to get the babies to safety. How do we get out of here?"
The Marine held on to his wife as if she would slip through his fingers if he did not, his sense of protection so overpowering. He kissed the crown of her head before looking back up as she beautifully composed herself. *My God, what a woman,* he thought, amazed at every new turn at her resilience and unwavering commitment to him and now their children.
"A good question," he began, looking through the window. While the firefight seemed to have mostly abated, it by no means meant that they were safe.
"Come, back out the way I came. The children are still in the main house, yes?"
"No, they're right in here," Jaya said, pointing back to the room. "I was just getting them ready for their nap when..."
When Jaya broke down into tears again from nervous shock, she allowed herself to be consoled as only a wife can be by her husband. Time was of the essence, though, and Storr knew better than most At Jaya's nod, Storr nodded back and broke the shotgun, ejecting the spent rounds casings and thumbing in two new ones from his bandoleer.
The messages kept going unanswered, which in Zharra's mind meant only one thing. The compound had been breached, people were in trouble. Going in alone was akin to suicide, the Orion knew, as she would be going in a lone into multiple likely Spec Ops or at the very least Intel trained bogeys.
Help was too far away, but she none the less sent off an anonymous request for assistance to Laphalale from the local Security Contingent in Pretoria. She herself drove the transport through the front gate and causing the gate to fling open crookedly as force met immovable object, the transport speeding towards the main house.
There was fighting in the courtyard. Two, maybe three bogeys that she could see coming in were pinned down by some of the staff. There was a couple of dead bodies on the ground as well.
So, Zharra swerved, and came to a stop so that the transport could serve as a shield. She quickly set the autopilot with an exit strategy and left the transport running. She unsheathed her sidearm and jumped out the side facing away from the battle and ducked over to the group.
"Hi there," she yelled casually as she ducked over to the woman who looked like...a maid? "Need a hand?"
"Ja, absoluut!" the woman exclaimed in heavy Afrikaans. "The attackers! They came from out of nowhere!"
Zharra sent off a few shots, and was about to reply to the woman when her ears picked up sounds she'd recognize in her sleep. Starfleet issue weaponry. More specifically marine issue close quarters rifles. The orion took a moment to orient herself.
The sounds were coming from their left, from one of the maintenance buildings. The marine detail holed up in there it looked like.
"I've sent out a distress signal, so hopefully Pretoria will send reinforcements soon. Keep your heads down. I'm going to find the Marines. I need to get the Garlakes out of here." She said to the maid, and without waiting for a reply, she dove for the nearest cover. She fired a few shots each time she passed between covers.
One managed to actually hit the target, which eliminated one person. Other pass managed to graze her shoulder. She knew she was doing it wrong. She was rushing. She had noone to watch her back and no team she could do it right with. So winging it it was.
She finally managed to reach the the maintenance building where some of the Marines were holding position.
"I'm a friendly! Don't shoot!" She hollered as she came closer.
"'bout time we had a friendly face around here!" the Andoran Marine said to what looked like the gardener; the middle-aged man was of stocky build with a square Dutch face and chin and curly blonde hair, topped with a wide-brimmed straw hat. The blue-skinned Marine held a Type 2 phaser rifle while the gardener held what looked like a bolt action rifle.
"A pretty face to boot," the Afrikanner said with a grin and tip of his hat to Zharra. Jerking his head over his left shoulder he returned his gaze to the Marine. "Name's Willem, my blue antennaed friend here is Athathaob...just call him 'Bob'." "Bob" rolled his eyes.
"We've known each other for two days, and he already gave me a nickname."
"Men become instant buddies after downing a bottle of Amarula. If I remember correctly you..."
"Enough, enough!" Athathaob cut Willem off, their situation not one for jaunts down memory lane."
"Right right...Masters Garlake have done a number on these bliksems with their J-burg Peppershakers, but a few are holed up in the well-house just on the other side yonder." Turning his blue eyes to Neerassi, he smiled softly. "Think you could cover us while we do a pincher on the building?
Zharra blinked as she tried to process what they had just said. "Right, yes." She looked again between the two. "I was told to give you the code word waarheid."
It was Afrikaans for truth, a simple code given to the Marines by Arianna Frost before the Garlakes and the Marines left, a method of recognition between allies. Zharra hoped she was saying the word right, though she was pretty sure she was butchering it. She was pretty sure Cal had butchered it too when he gave it to her.
"Don't know what the fuck that means, but our mutual friends said you guys would know. Anyway, I've got an exfil vehicle down by the entrance. Let's get people out of here before anyone else dies." She said as she checked her sidearm, wishing she had a phaser rifle herself. A good old TR116, or at least the type 3A, anything but this dainty side piece.
Beggars could not be choosers, though.
"Heh, close enough. Glad to have a friend," the gardener said, tipping his hat, "But we're not 'exfiling.' This is my home and the Garlake's estate. They're the intruders, and they'll be the ones leaving, preferably feet first. If there is anything our people have learned since the 17th century, especially during the troubles of the early 21st after the failed "rainbow nation," it's that good intentions don't mean kak without the willingness to fight and kill to defend it." "Bleksim vreemdelings." he continued under his breath.
"Alright, lads, let's go. Mate, stick to your covers and don't fire blindly, " she said to the young gardener. You cover his back," she pointed over to the Marine, "I'll cover yours."
Green disruptor blasts of the Romulan variety came down in a hail of suppressive fire. The attackers weren't in a place to shoot for accuracy, which meant one or more attackers were likely in the process of flanking maneuvers. Seconds later, a man with twin blades dove into the Marines' midst with a blood lust. While his first attack caught a Marine in an armored chest plate, his second attack sliced his underarm. The suppressive fire stopped as he began his bloodletting.
Zharra took a moment from her cover as the erratic fire grew more so and fired at the back of the attacker, aiming for the center, for the spine. Even Romulans didn't take kindly to spinal damage. Even if she didn't kill him, if she just got him off of his feet and on the ground, it'd stop the full frontal assault.
Unable to dodge, the attacker fell to his knees and threw his hands in the air as he cried out in pain. One of the bloodied Marines slid right behind him and locked in a rear naked chokehold. Pulling against the attacker's weight, he wrenched and cranked for all he was worth. The attacker threw himself sideways, his mouth gurgling and eyes bulging, anything to break free. Both bodies tumbled through the dirt in a fight for survival.
"Bloody take him out, Bob!" Willem shouted to the Andorian. While he truly wanted the Marine to win, he didn't trust himself to shoot the Romulan in the middle of the scuffle and not hit his friend. "I'm a gardener, not a gunslinger, blerrie hell!"
Unfortunately, another attacker, this time a lithe, gray humanoid, skirted around the building and fired at Willem, singing the gardener's overall's shoulder strap and sending him to the dirt in a panicked defensive position. Standing over Willem, the marauder began raising his blaster when suddenly his right arm disappeared in a thunderous blast. The alien fell to his knees in shock, before a second shot sent him reeling face-first into the muddy ground at the gardener's feet.
"Willem, why is it you're always the first to find trouble?" a familiar voice boomed, almost as loud as the smoking shotgun he held at his hip.
"Master Garlake! Oh, you're a sight for sore eyes, sir. Help an old gardener up?" Willem asked, extending a hand with a smile. Kevin Garlake took it, helping the burly man off the ground.
"Your buddy there finished up just a moment ago. Those are not bad wrestling moves, though I'm unsure if they would be up to par for either of my sons," he said with a jerk of his thumb over his left shoulder.
"Nothing can ever be on par with at least your youngest son, sir," Bob said raggedly, appearing aside Kevin.
"That's my boy," the elder Garlake said with a snicker and a smile. "Now, who's the lovely lady here, and what's the plan now that we've secured the pump house?"
Zharra chuckled as she surveyed the perimeter momentarily, her own weapon still drawn, pointing down, with the safety on. "Zharra Neerassi, Guv. I'm with Fed Sec. I work for a friend of the Colonel and the Counselor. They got issued evac orders. Any idea where they got pinned down?"
"Up yonder," said one oft he Marines, the one who had taken a knife wound that he'd finished tying off with a field dressing. "The estate has a defensible underground bunker. We can get them there."
It turned out that security and marines, with the seasoning of a gardener and an old man could make things happen when they put their collective skillsets to it. The small team made their way into the main building. The elder Garlake suggested that they would be going to protect the children first and foremost and the patriarch led them towards the the nursery.
In Zharra's on-the-spot analysis the attackers were definitely highly trained, but their attire was not matching their skillset. These were not romulans, as their gear and attire suggested from the two they had killed. These were however, definitely, intelligence or special ops. But whose? For a team to slip by and attack a family compound was a highly specific, targeted move that Fleet Intel would have intercepted way before it happened, or at the very least now as it was happening.
Which meant this was a targeted inside job, or a false flag operation. Zharra hated inside jobs. The anger that simmered inside her fueled the orion on. This would get investigated when she had a moment.
The group approached the door to the nursery surprisingly quickly.
"Go! Go! Go!" Zharra urged as she ducked behind a corner and returned fire, as the group picked up more attackers.
"Pop Garlake, you do the talking, we'll cover you, just...floor it, yeah?" She called over her shoulder as the group hunkered down just outside the door to the nursery.
When they exited the ground vehicle and breached the front doors, pulse blasts disintegrated the vehicle into shrapnel that blew far and wide. Another Marine took a flaming shard in the neck while another one was merely grazed. All of them ducked down.
"Where the hell is backup?!" shouted the wounded Marine as he watched his squadmate bleed out in front of him.
As more attackers approached the main door with their disruptors at the ready, something overhead drew their attention and then their fire. Weapons raised, they opened fire just before the ground beneath them lit up in a dust storm that was burned away by large-scale phaser strikes. The burnt-orange nadion streams vaporized the attackers, heralding a shuttle flying overhead. It circled around for another pass, but evidently not finding other enemies, it dropped down to hover just off the ground. The door slid open.
"Get in!" shouted a woman's voice. It was a scrawny little Orion at the helm, her hair pulled back in a loose braid. She was not wearing a Starfleet issue uniform. "Authorization: come with me if you want to live because there's a comm jammer and another ghost transport on its way."
Jaya who had been led downstairs by Storr had been at the nucleus of the little huddle along with the reinforced hovering baby stroller. She had no idea what was going on, but she glanced at Storr. "I think we should trust her."
Zharra caught the voice over the noise of the weapons and upset people. "She's with me! Get in!" She shouted and returned fire towards a group of stragglers that came forward after the shuttle vaporized the main force.
In the distance, the dirt of the road started kicking up and chatter began filtering through the comms. Reinforcements from Pretoria were finally on their way.
"I got a safehouse we can crash if we need one," Taline offered from the helm, "but it's kind of a shithole."
"We have a ship," Jaya pointed out, "though I don't know if it's the best option..." She looked to the others, mainly Storr, for input on the final decision. Should they return to the Achilles transport for a quick exit or was another approach more desirable?
"Get in, we need to go!" Zharra yelled over the noise.
As the group filtered in to the shuttle and it took off, Zharra hoped that the people left behind would use her vehicle as an escape route or shelter until the reinforcements from Pretoria arrived.
"Alright, kid, get us out of here!" She told Taline before she turned back to Jaya, "Missus Garlake, I was told to give you this code, 'Southern Cross, Deathly Hallows, Dreamcatcher, Ankh'. I was told you'd know what that meant."
Jaya braced their hovering baby carrier with one hand and seized Storr's gargantuan wrist with the other. Her eyes shot wide with a gasp. Those were specific tattoos belonging to exactly one person... "Ari!" Looking at her husband, she said, "We need to get back to base right away!"
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