(Backpost) Tess' Johnson

Posted on Mon Aug 31st, 2026 @ 4:06am by Lieutenant Jack Lashmore & Lieutenant Arianna Frost
Edited on on Mon Aug 31st, 2026 @ 4:10am

Mission: A New Day at Midnight
Location: Dartmouth - Humpy Creek, Forest. Victoria, Australia.
Timeline: Two 'n' a bit Months prior to present

ON:

Getting to the Horsfall Estate had been an embarrassing exercise in taking directions, night vision and knowledge of one’s ancient homeland. To drive the point home she was also so much out of practice that it took her forever to get Jack to agree to join her on this endeavour started…orchestrated by their mutual friend.

As much as him taking almost two hours to get his affairs in order before leaving irritated her, she couldn’t really be mad. She’d had no affairs to settle, and her duffel bag was always ready to go at moments notice. Her duffel bag and her flute in this case. She couldn’t be mad that he’d had more of a life than her in the past year.

On the bright side, Jack showed her a much clearer, much less rough trail than the one she stumbled up and down through trying to find him.

The clouds had cleared, allowing a full-moon to better illuminate their way under a ghostly hue, at least for Jack who, of late, preferred to operate at night and had somewhat become accustomed to travelling the hills on foot at night. In truth, such had made him Horsfall estates Shepard than farm-hand, using his Winchester pulse rifle to ward off foxes and the like from various flocks of farmstock.

Wearing stained jeans, an even more stained and dirtied white singlet, red and black checkered flannelette long-sleeved and collared shirt under his oil-skin coat, Jack also had an oil-skin cowboy-like hat on, a duffelbag over shoulder and his winchester rifle held in his freehand. Guiding the way in silence, he eventually sighed and had to ask, “you didn’t scan for log cabins in the woods at all? You parked forever away.”

“I did,” Ari groused as she swatted yet another night bug away from her face. The torch-light was attracting all sorts of annoying, flying pests. “But since all I was given was Dartmouth, by Alex, I didn’t exactly know which farm you decided to play hidey hole in. I only learned it was Horsfall from gronk number two after I nearly shot his bits off.”

Jack shrugged, “ya had a chariot of flying duranium with spotlights, phasers and a transporter…would’ve just harassed folk via loudspeaker until ye found the target and just pestered until they agreed to beam onboard.” Jack smirked to himself, “but I’m prone to being an ass that way.”

Ari laughed softly as she nearly tripped on another rock, but ended up hopping over it in the end. “I don’t like to draw that much attention to myself in any circumstance.” She replied almost automatically, though she’d found herself quietly reconsidering her original choice.
“But then again,” she rubbed her throat gently, “you wouldn’t have gotten to see that impressive performance of chugging down rubbing alcohol in under twenty seconds.” She said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Highlight of the year,” Jack replied dryly, perhaps at how pathetic and true that realisation was. After a few more steps taken, he suddenly knelt, signalled to stop and gestured with a palm facing the ground to lower. Unshouldering his dufflebag and setting it to the ground he seemed to ready the antique Winchester pulse-rifle.

Ari quietly unholstered her own phaser pistol and knelt as well, releasing the safety switch. “Where?” She whispered. Years of training and instinct from her days of Starfleet Security hadn’t gone away yet, it seemed. Thankfully.

Jack remained silent, listening, not answering. In the near distance, splashes could be heard…a muffled male voice spoke in the distance, followed by the giggle of a woman. Jack sighed and lowered his head and shook it slowly before staring forward again as if he was disappointed and just a touch pissed off. Keeping low he proceeded toward a bush at the edge of the forested hillside they were travelling upon and used the rifles barrel to part a branch or two to stare down at the valley below.

Ari followed after him quietly, unable to hide a smirk. She turned off her torchlight as she did so and holstered her sidearm. She crouched down close, next to him and had to roll her eyes. Aussies never changed, did they?

Down below, at the mouth of the creek sat a pond. Seemed to be an underground geyser or maybe its own underground mouth, she couldn’t quite tell in the dark. Two rolled-out sleeping bags, a small torchlight illuminating a part of the pond. Two people without any clothes were frolicking in it.

The man, even partly submerged in the water, was extremely tall. He was around 23 years old, as far as she could tell from their position. The girl though, around 16, softly curled, blonde hair and blue eyes. Ari couldn’t help but blink.

”Christ, this could have been me if I was born here.” She thought to herself. To Ari, the girl looked like a spitting image of her younger self, even the parts of her birthday suit she could see. ”Damn.”

“How bright and long-range can the settings go on that wrist torch?” Jack whispered.

“Very.” Ari smirked.

“Light ‘em up when I fire.” Jack instructed. Taking a moment, he aimed his rifle to just a few feet left of the two frolickers and loosed a bolt of red pulse-fire into the water with quite an audible yet electric hiss.

Before he fired, Ari quickly adjusted the beams for long range and, wide focus and stood back a little so that the light wouldn’t blind them as well as the unfortunate frolickers below. She turned the beams on right after he fired.

Good positioning, Jack thought. As Jack stood, the silhouette of his hate came into the light enough to be projected over the two below. “Johnson! Get your shit and run, before I fetch the Bossman!”

Seemingly, those words alone were enough to strike pure fear of god into the young man who without any further regard for his young lass, waddled frantically through the water to his discarded clothes by the bank and picked them up without bothering to dress before sprinting off into the forest.
Then the woman turned casually to look up without any effort made to cover herself, one hand above her eyes to shield from the light shining from above. Her voice was very heavy in a distinctly country-side Australian accent, heavier than most Australian’s accent. “You’re a spoilsport you rat!”

Ari chuckled softly behind him, “friend of yours?” She asked under breath.

“She is the god-damned Bush Bunny, and that is Humpy Creek.” Jack sighed in reply before projecting his voice back down toward their target. “What would your father do if he caught you sleeping with the help again, hmm?”

The teenager in reply, seemed to act coy and splash once in the water, in their direction, though far from able to project water that far; the ignorant girl was smiling at them playfully. “Do more to you than me if I said it was you!”

Ari meanwhile was silently dying with laughter. To the point her eyes were tearing up.

So when the girl spoke, she chimed in amusedly. “Oh darls, you’ve got a long way to go to bag a man of experience.”

There was a frown from the girl, though her smile never faded as she raised her hand above her eyes again to squint. “Who dat? Ye get yourself someone there, Lashmore?”

“None of your business, Tess. Pack your gear and get home before your Dad finds your bed empty…again.”

Ari was barely holding it in but decided not to interject just yet, waiting for the girl...seemingly the real Bush Bunny of Humpy Creek to clear out. Shame, she was starting to like the odd title.

“You can always come down!” The girl shot back.

“Used goods darlin’, and I ain’t referring to myself.” Jack shot back, “besides, I’m on my way off to walkabout.”

“And miss this?” The girl gestured at herself in mock shock.

“Can’t miss a place I’ve never been. Go home, Tess!” With that said, and last piece of duty for the estate done, Jack turned and walked past Arianna without any further word on the topic, after a few steps only stopping to pick-up and re-shoulder his duffel.

Ari followed after him in quiet, albeit very high amusement. She gave it about a hundred steps before she commented, “seems like you’ve been corralling more than just the animals on that Estate, hm?” Her voice was still laden with amusement.

“Always bloody security, wherever I end up.” Jack grumbled lightly as he led them back towards their required path, though the path was more a faint rabbit track than an actual path.

“That’s not a bad thing, though.” Ari offered as she followed him. “Should be about 500 metres ahead.”

“Different shades of pain in the ass, most of the time.” Jack replied before sighing and stopping. On their angle of the hillside, with the forest beginning to clear he turned to the left and just stared down across the valley stretching for kilometers ahead of them under the moonlit. The softly sloping hills were covered with the canopy of gum trees, winding creekbeds and a light early morning fog beginning to form. He took it in for a moment before sighing again.

“Can miss places you’ve been, though.” Jack sighed again before almost begrudgingly continuing towards where the scoutship should be.

Ari had stopped where she had been and took a look too, taking in the scenery, letting the cool air caress her skin. She would miss the ability to have fresh air whenever she wanted it. She’d miss the privacy of her apartment, and not being answerable to too many people. So she took another moment, nodding silently to what he had said before following after him.

The shuttle came into view pretty quickly. Powered down as it was, it seemed to still be in one piece. Ari stepped over to the entrance, observed the edges for a moment. If one looked closer there was a small piece of plastic, or gummy string that been attached over the door. You could only see if you were looking for it.

It was untouched. Thankfully.

She reached to the side of the door and removed the string, and tapped in a few commands. As the ramp that was under the door extended and the door opened, Ari motioned for him to enter.

“People ‘round here wouldn’t break into this thing, probably just piss on it,” Jack noted, quite familiar from previous operations, the action of one checking the seams of doors.

“They can do that all they want, I’m not explaining to Alex how I managed to lose his ship like a rookie out of the Academy if they steal it under my nose.” She countered.

He hadn’t entered at her motion. Alright then, she stepped in first with a sigh and called for a re-start of the systems.

In Jack’s life experience, non-standard shuttles, such as the scoutship, always lead to hellish experiences. Hellfire, Driaan; intelligence operations that rarely were clean or even well-intentioned. He was finding it hard to cross that threshold all of a sudden.

However, what would be worse would be a tiny blonde giving him shit about that for the trip. With a sigh, he forced himself onboard.

“I was about to come get you,” he heard Ari’s voice from the front. “There’s some room out back, not a lot, I’m happy with whatever you take. I don’t need a lot, I’ll squeeze in. I’m running pre-flight checks. We should be airborne in a couple.”

Jack immediately stored his gear in an overhead locker compartment and paused as he closed it, hands still on the panel…muscle memory was an annoying reminder. He was not entirely sure if old habits were a good thing to get into. Then again, he never really had a hundred doubts and a growing nervous disposition in this situation before. He shook his head to himself and forced himself upfront to the co-pilot chair and stared at the controls. “...they made LCARs more blue??...I miss the yellow already.”

The scoutship started to hover and slowly lift up into the air, before Ari adjusted the pitch and headed towards the atmospheric lanes that would lead them off the planet. “I know! It’s like the new designers have no field experience and just design things as they like.”

She tapped a few commands, requesting an exit course and departure clearance from Starbase 1 Orbital Control.

“Looks like you’ve got it handled…carry on.” Jack stared, for longer than he would have liked at the console infront of him until he found the control to set his side of controls to a locked position. All just so he could rest his feet upon the console and pull down his hat a little to cover his eyes and attempt to rest some.

The blonde next to him glanced over, and smiled at the old Earth drover next to her. There was something oddly comforting and familiar in that image, despite them both being ‘discount’ Aussies, having been born on different off world Australian founded colonies.

She received the exit course and departure clearance within moments and easily guided the ship out of the atmosphere and into the system. It would take them a little to clear the system before she could engage warp.

“There’s bunks in the back if you want to go have a kip. I can man the first watch.” She said, giving no further explanation as to why, given that it was the middle of the night and normally the bodies urged rest at this point.

Truth be told, she didn’t think she could sleep right now. There was too much to process now that she had picked Lashmore up and was about to set off towards whatever goodies and horribles the flying duranium box by the name of Pandora contained within.


OFF