DISCLAIMER: I do not own Lara Croft or Tomb Raider. I am not making money
with this work of fiction.
Only to be archived at Fanfiction.net and "Lara Croft's Tales of Beauty and Power". All other sites please email me first at siirma6@surfeu.fi to gain permission.
Tomb Raider: Prevail by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi)
Chapter 5
It was Sunday morning. Dry gusts of wind flapped the curtains and a lonely bird sang out in the what could have been an African version of a ghost town. Everybody was at church.
In a lonely hotel in the side of a dirt road, Lara Croft lifted her head from the pillow, certain that she had the hangover of the century if taking in consideration the intensity of her headache. Even though she had only had one drink. Aware that something in the puzzle wasn't right, she reached for the glass of water she had placed on her bedside table the evening before.
It wasn't there. Lara sat up and jiggled her sore feet under the blanket. After close consideration of her surroundings she noted she wasn't even in her own room. Lara got out of bed, and noticed a pile of clothes on the floor that, according to Lara's recollections, belonged to Josephine Ross. Lara lifted the white T-shirt from the floor. Positive identification - Josephine. Lara walked to the bathroom, trying to get hold of the big picture. The vision in the bathroom mirror did clear out some things, the least.
Lara's hand flew up to her head as she saw the bump on her forehead, with a thin trail of dried blood decorating her cheek. What do we have here? I've been whacked on the head by a someone. Lara washed her face with a piece of toilet tissue and dropped it to the trash bin next to the bathroom door. A towel was already there - with blood in it. Why would someone knock her unconscious and then decide to clean up the mess a bit? Unless that someone was not very experienced in whacking people in the head. Counting up with the fact that she'd heard something from Josephine's room the night before and probably went to see whatever it was, the answer seemed clear.
I've been hit in the head by a certain someone. Lara figured her pistol must've been in the room somewhere - Josephine, in her opinion, wouldn't be intelligent enough to take it.
It was under the bed. Stuffing the pistol mouth into her bra, it being the only possible place as she didn't sleep with her holsters as some might think, Lara dashed to the hotel lobby and out of the door - to see the jeep gone as she had predicted.
First anger was a little animal, biting her insides, then it grew into a tiger.
So this was what one got from helping out an old friend... fiend. The last time I ever do a good deed in my life, Lara half-heartedly decided as she walked across the lobby, still barefoot, evoking a surprised look from Sam at the reception. Then Lara thought again, and returned to the reception. Flashing her best angry smile she asked Sam if he could borrow his phone for a minute. Sam pulled an old, roll-the-numbers phone from under the counter and told Lara to make as many calls as she needed.
First she called the car rental agency. The jeep had not been returned. Then Lara asked Sam for the local airfield number and Sam scuttled away to find it. He came back with a scribbling on a paper. Lara dialled the number and waited.
"Yez this is Kinsang Airport reception how can I help you?" a woman replied at the other end.
"This is Lara Croft. I need information on a foreign traveller. Her name is Josephine Ross, and she has bought a ticket either this morning or last night," Lara explained politely, gritting her teeth, cross at herself for letting things end up as they had.
"A moment, please." the woman replied and Lara heard her tapping the keyboard. "We have the name Josephine Ross both in a car park file and in a reservation. First I need to ask what your use for this information would be."
I've got plenty of use for it, thank you. "I'm travelling with her and I think she might be in danger." At least when I get to her.
The woman seemed to buy her explanation. "Very well. She has a car parked at square forty eight. And she bought a ticket to the 09:15 Air Senegal flight to Mowe Bay Airfield."
"Where's that at?" Lara asked.
"Coast of Namibia."
"Are their any departures today for Mowe Bay?" Lara asked quickly.
A pause at the other end. "No, I'm sorry, the next one is tomorrow. It's an Air Namib flight."
"What about somewhere nearby? On the coast? I can tell you the cost is not a problem."
"There is one private jet flying to Opuwo at noon where there are quite many connecting flights to different parts of Namibia. I could try and get to speak to the captain. He often accepts foreigners as passengers. Shall I call you back?"
Lara checked her watch. Ten thirty. "Don't bother. I'm coming over anyway."
Six hours later the little jet touched ground in Opuwo. Lara gulped the last of her tea, and thanked the steward. She climbed out after other passengers, and recovered her baggage and diving equipment that had been far too expensive to leave in Senga Bay. She'd made a compromise and packed everything.
There was no terminal, just a small airfield and an office building. Lara strapped her tanks and the rest of her diving equipment - which Josephine had short-sightedly left lying on the back of their rental jeep in Malawi - on her back and carried her bags, legs nearly giving out under the heavy weight. She made her way to the office and left the gear outside. An Asian man roughly the age of thirty was sitting behind the only counter, typing in to what looked like one of the earliest models of computer ever manufactured. He raised his head as he heard the outdoor clatter.
"Welcome to Opuwo!" he hollered cheerfully. He didn't seem to have any trouble dealing with customers wearing a full scuba diving gear. "How can I be of help, Madam?"
"Thank you. I need a car, and a good map of the coast and the desert from here to the border."
"You are a tourist, yes?"
"Not exactly. I'm here on business," Lara replied, thanking the fact that she'd travelled with a private jet and so avoided all security checks. The Namibian authorities wouldn't actually have held a party at the sight of a gun-smuggling foreigner.
"There is a car rental shop half a mile down the road next to the bar. You can get maps from there, I think. If you would like to use the phone, be my guest." The man, whose nametag read Michael Yan, pointed at the wall, where a surprisingly modern phone hung.
Lara grabbed the received and then turned to see the man. "If I wanted to... Say, reach someone at Mowe Bay, whom should I call?"
Michael Yan pondered the question for a second. "I'd call the hotel. Usually there's only one in a small city or village. In Mowe Bay there's only one-"
"You wouldn't happen to have the actual number, would you?" Lara said, certain that he didn't but she tried anyway.
"In fact, I do. This isn't an air traffic office for nothing. Most folks who come here don't stay. And Mowe's a good place to start getting to know the Skeleton Coast."
Michael Yan placed her the call, and Lara found out that Josephine had not stayed at the hotel. That was a start, at the most. Michael was still on the phone when Lara made a sign to listen to her.
"Ask if there's a grocery store of some sorts in the town. If yes, then ask if the owner might've seen any foreigners during the past two days. If they can get hold of him, that is."
Michael Yan looked at her, puzzled. Then he turned his attention back to the receiver and spoke quickly in some local dialect. After a moment he gave Lara a thumbs-up. Then he ended the call.
"The owner happened to be a local drunk, sitting in the hotel bar. Seems you've got luck with you. A brown-haired white woman, as the owner yelled, had bought his store empty and also rented a 'big' boat with storm capability for tomorrow."
Lara smiled graciously. "You didn't by any chance ask where the boat was due?"
Michael nodded, pleased with himself. "Khumib Beach. It's on the map, shouldn't be difficult to find."
Lara was already rushing out of the door.
"You still need someone to guide you, driving through the desert-" Michael yelled after her, but Lara was already out of hearing range.
Hours later, the woodlands surrounding the small airfield were gone. Instead, Lara reined her rental jeep through a much more desolate landscape. The road was wide and sandy. Lara remembered her old hobby of taking note of different colors of sand in different places. In Egypt it was deep, creamy yellow - a rather irritating colour. In Italy the sand was always of peculiar colour - black or multicolored. Australia she'd never visited but had once been given a vial of Australian sand by a friend who was originally from the continent. It was red, probably the deepest red sand could be.
But if those were sand, this was Sand with a capital s. Depressingly brown, it never seemed to end. A few dried bushes and trees the shape of Japanese bonsais decorated the otherwise rough landscape, and the odd phone line pole divided the land into neat squares. Somewhere in the distance, humidity turned the far-off mountains and their surroundings blue.
Lara pressed gas, and enjoyed the speed's cooling effect. Some would say she was driving recklessly. Lara, personally, would have said she was merely taking advantage of an empty road. As one often could in Africa.
She dug out a muesli bar from her shorts pocket and ripped off the other end of the wrapping with her teeth. The small piece of foil then flew off in the wind.
Come and get me, Greenpeace.
Seriously, what was she doing? Chasing someone unintelligent enough to die of colliding with a door? For no reason other than continuing the eternal legacy of good manners? Good manners that did not include whacking working partners in the head.
Or could it be that she was torturing this car for other reasons? Could it be that she wasn't pissed off by just the fact that something had collided with her dear head?
Who wouldn't be pissed of after being assaulted? Saint Margaret, the tops.
The truth, of course, was that Lara was extremely enraged by the fact that she was, again, accused of something that had nothing to do with her - being good at what she did. Being scary - but not scary enough, as people still tended to pull these stunts on her.
The universal truth is that nobody cares about the winners, the people who eventually survive through what they've chosen to do. They don't need friends, people say. They even daresay that they don't even ever need help.
I cope without help only because it hasn't exactly been ever offered, Lara thought and slowed down a bit as she was passing a herd of uninterested- looking caribu deers. So they did really live this close to the coast.
Lara was annoyed with herself by ever having high hopes at even getting along with Josephine Ross. It probably wasn't Josephine's fault. Whose fault are prejudices anyway?
The sun was setting. Lara passed a few dunes, a sign that she was drawing closer to the coastline. Dunes had always had a sad echo in Lara's imagination - they could swallow entire villages and destroy the agriculture on an area entirely.
A few puddles of capillary salt were settled next to a few fallen tree trunks. And sand everywhere. There was a thing about the sand - it was heavy, unlike Saharan sand that tended to stick to the most uncomfortable of places and irritate one for hours. If you took a short camel ride in the desert surrounding the Gizan pyramids - the bonus; deafness as a result of sand piling up in your ears came free of charge.
Between dunes, there were little groups of dark green trees just about to be buried under a wandering dune.
Lara took off her sunglasses as the first stars appeared in the velvet blue night sky. As there was a special characteristic in African sand, there also was one in the sky; the stars really lit the way, unlike in most other corners of the world.
The dunes grew higher, and an elephant made its way down one's slope somewhere far away. Lara was too wrapped up in her thoughts to notice. It was completely dark, and the sounds of nightbirds and cicadas filled the air. Lara finally eased the pressure on the gas pedal. Her stomach didn't seem to be pleased with the muesli bar anymore.
Then she heard it. Crashing of waves, somewhere nearby. The jeep lights started brushing on more small rocks than there had been during the preceding hours. Lara slowed down to make sure she wasn't colliding with any cliffs. Yhe sound of the waves became distinct. She turned off the engine.
She leapt over the jeep door, and after an unsuccessful attempt to hold her balance, landed on her bottom in the moist sand. Need more stretching, I see. At least she had no audience. She got up and walked towards the whishing sound until her hiking boots got wet. She closed her eyes as she smelled salt, and water.
Finding the place had been easy as the general rule of African roads naturally applied to Namibia - there is, generally speaking, only one road to every place.
Then she noticed it. A small fire, a mile away. It was only an orange flicking, but as Lara had yet to come across any rock formations or animals that flicked in the night, it must've been a campfire. Lara walked to the jeep, and recovered her second pistol from the glove compartment. The other one was at its regular home in her hip holster.
Only to be archived at Fanfiction.net and "Lara Croft's Tales of Beauty and Power". All other sites please email me first at siirma6@surfeu.fi to gain permission.
Tomb Raider: Prevail by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi)
Chapter 5
It was Sunday morning. Dry gusts of wind flapped the curtains and a lonely bird sang out in the what could have been an African version of a ghost town. Everybody was at church.
In a lonely hotel in the side of a dirt road, Lara Croft lifted her head from the pillow, certain that she had the hangover of the century if taking in consideration the intensity of her headache. Even though she had only had one drink. Aware that something in the puzzle wasn't right, she reached for the glass of water she had placed on her bedside table the evening before.
It wasn't there. Lara sat up and jiggled her sore feet under the blanket. After close consideration of her surroundings she noted she wasn't even in her own room. Lara got out of bed, and noticed a pile of clothes on the floor that, according to Lara's recollections, belonged to Josephine Ross. Lara lifted the white T-shirt from the floor. Positive identification - Josephine. Lara walked to the bathroom, trying to get hold of the big picture. The vision in the bathroom mirror did clear out some things, the least.
Lara's hand flew up to her head as she saw the bump on her forehead, with a thin trail of dried blood decorating her cheek. What do we have here? I've been whacked on the head by a someone. Lara washed her face with a piece of toilet tissue and dropped it to the trash bin next to the bathroom door. A towel was already there - with blood in it. Why would someone knock her unconscious and then decide to clean up the mess a bit? Unless that someone was not very experienced in whacking people in the head. Counting up with the fact that she'd heard something from Josephine's room the night before and probably went to see whatever it was, the answer seemed clear.
I've been hit in the head by a certain someone. Lara figured her pistol must've been in the room somewhere - Josephine, in her opinion, wouldn't be intelligent enough to take it.
It was under the bed. Stuffing the pistol mouth into her bra, it being the only possible place as she didn't sleep with her holsters as some might think, Lara dashed to the hotel lobby and out of the door - to see the jeep gone as she had predicted.
First anger was a little animal, biting her insides, then it grew into a tiger.
So this was what one got from helping out an old friend... fiend. The last time I ever do a good deed in my life, Lara half-heartedly decided as she walked across the lobby, still barefoot, evoking a surprised look from Sam at the reception. Then Lara thought again, and returned to the reception. Flashing her best angry smile she asked Sam if he could borrow his phone for a minute. Sam pulled an old, roll-the-numbers phone from under the counter and told Lara to make as many calls as she needed.
First she called the car rental agency. The jeep had not been returned. Then Lara asked Sam for the local airfield number and Sam scuttled away to find it. He came back with a scribbling on a paper. Lara dialled the number and waited.
"Yez this is Kinsang Airport reception how can I help you?" a woman replied at the other end.
"This is Lara Croft. I need information on a foreign traveller. Her name is Josephine Ross, and she has bought a ticket either this morning or last night," Lara explained politely, gritting her teeth, cross at herself for letting things end up as they had.
"A moment, please." the woman replied and Lara heard her tapping the keyboard. "We have the name Josephine Ross both in a car park file and in a reservation. First I need to ask what your use for this information would be."
I've got plenty of use for it, thank you. "I'm travelling with her and I think she might be in danger." At least when I get to her.
The woman seemed to buy her explanation. "Very well. She has a car parked at square forty eight. And she bought a ticket to the 09:15 Air Senegal flight to Mowe Bay Airfield."
"Where's that at?" Lara asked.
"Coast of Namibia."
"Are their any departures today for Mowe Bay?" Lara asked quickly.
A pause at the other end. "No, I'm sorry, the next one is tomorrow. It's an Air Namib flight."
"What about somewhere nearby? On the coast? I can tell you the cost is not a problem."
"There is one private jet flying to Opuwo at noon where there are quite many connecting flights to different parts of Namibia. I could try and get to speak to the captain. He often accepts foreigners as passengers. Shall I call you back?"
Lara checked her watch. Ten thirty. "Don't bother. I'm coming over anyway."
Six hours later the little jet touched ground in Opuwo. Lara gulped the last of her tea, and thanked the steward. She climbed out after other passengers, and recovered her baggage and diving equipment that had been far too expensive to leave in Senga Bay. She'd made a compromise and packed everything.
There was no terminal, just a small airfield and an office building. Lara strapped her tanks and the rest of her diving equipment - which Josephine had short-sightedly left lying on the back of their rental jeep in Malawi - on her back and carried her bags, legs nearly giving out under the heavy weight. She made her way to the office and left the gear outside. An Asian man roughly the age of thirty was sitting behind the only counter, typing in to what looked like one of the earliest models of computer ever manufactured. He raised his head as he heard the outdoor clatter.
"Welcome to Opuwo!" he hollered cheerfully. He didn't seem to have any trouble dealing with customers wearing a full scuba diving gear. "How can I be of help, Madam?"
"Thank you. I need a car, and a good map of the coast and the desert from here to the border."
"You are a tourist, yes?"
"Not exactly. I'm here on business," Lara replied, thanking the fact that she'd travelled with a private jet and so avoided all security checks. The Namibian authorities wouldn't actually have held a party at the sight of a gun-smuggling foreigner.
"There is a car rental shop half a mile down the road next to the bar. You can get maps from there, I think. If you would like to use the phone, be my guest." The man, whose nametag read Michael Yan, pointed at the wall, where a surprisingly modern phone hung.
Lara grabbed the received and then turned to see the man. "If I wanted to... Say, reach someone at Mowe Bay, whom should I call?"
Michael Yan pondered the question for a second. "I'd call the hotel. Usually there's only one in a small city or village. In Mowe Bay there's only one-"
"You wouldn't happen to have the actual number, would you?" Lara said, certain that he didn't but she tried anyway.
"In fact, I do. This isn't an air traffic office for nothing. Most folks who come here don't stay. And Mowe's a good place to start getting to know the Skeleton Coast."
Michael Yan placed her the call, and Lara found out that Josephine had not stayed at the hotel. That was a start, at the most. Michael was still on the phone when Lara made a sign to listen to her.
"Ask if there's a grocery store of some sorts in the town. If yes, then ask if the owner might've seen any foreigners during the past two days. If they can get hold of him, that is."
Michael Yan looked at her, puzzled. Then he turned his attention back to the receiver and spoke quickly in some local dialect. After a moment he gave Lara a thumbs-up. Then he ended the call.
"The owner happened to be a local drunk, sitting in the hotel bar. Seems you've got luck with you. A brown-haired white woman, as the owner yelled, had bought his store empty and also rented a 'big' boat with storm capability for tomorrow."
Lara smiled graciously. "You didn't by any chance ask where the boat was due?"
Michael nodded, pleased with himself. "Khumib Beach. It's on the map, shouldn't be difficult to find."
Lara was already rushing out of the door.
"You still need someone to guide you, driving through the desert-" Michael yelled after her, but Lara was already out of hearing range.
Hours later, the woodlands surrounding the small airfield were gone. Instead, Lara reined her rental jeep through a much more desolate landscape. The road was wide and sandy. Lara remembered her old hobby of taking note of different colors of sand in different places. In Egypt it was deep, creamy yellow - a rather irritating colour. In Italy the sand was always of peculiar colour - black or multicolored. Australia she'd never visited but had once been given a vial of Australian sand by a friend who was originally from the continent. It was red, probably the deepest red sand could be.
But if those were sand, this was Sand with a capital s. Depressingly brown, it never seemed to end. A few dried bushes and trees the shape of Japanese bonsais decorated the otherwise rough landscape, and the odd phone line pole divided the land into neat squares. Somewhere in the distance, humidity turned the far-off mountains and their surroundings blue.
Lara pressed gas, and enjoyed the speed's cooling effect. Some would say she was driving recklessly. Lara, personally, would have said she was merely taking advantage of an empty road. As one often could in Africa.
She dug out a muesli bar from her shorts pocket and ripped off the other end of the wrapping with her teeth. The small piece of foil then flew off in the wind.
Come and get me, Greenpeace.
Seriously, what was she doing? Chasing someone unintelligent enough to die of colliding with a door? For no reason other than continuing the eternal legacy of good manners? Good manners that did not include whacking working partners in the head.
Or could it be that she was torturing this car for other reasons? Could it be that she wasn't pissed off by just the fact that something had collided with her dear head?
Who wouldn't be pissed of after being assaulted? Saint Margaret, the tops.
The truth, of course, was that Lara was extremely enraged by the fact that she was, again, accused of something that had nothing to do with her - being good at what she did. Being scary - but not scary enough, as people still tended to pull these stunts on her.
The universal truth is that nobody cares about the winners, the people who eventually survive through what they've chosen to do. They don't need friends, people say. They even daresay that they don't even ever need help.
I cope without help only because it hasn't exactly been ever offered, Lara thought and slowed down a bit as she was passing a herd of uninterested- looking caribu deers. So they did really live this close to the coast.
Lara was annoyed with herself by ever having high hopes at even getting along with Josephine Ross. It probably wasn't Josephine's fault. Whose fault are prejudices anyway?
The sun was setting. Lara passed a few dunes, a sign that she was drawing closer to the coastline. Dunes had always had a sad echo in Lara's imagination - they could swallow entire villages and destroy the agriculture on an area entirely.
A few puddles of capillary salt were settled next to a few fallen tree trunks. And sand everywhere. There was a thing about the sand - it was heavy, unlike Saharan sand that tended to stick to the most uncomfortable of places and irritate one for hours. If you took a short camel ride in the desert surrounding the Gizan pyramids - the bonus; deafness as a result of sand piling up in your ears came free of charge.
Between dunes, there were little groups of dark green trees just about to be buried under a wandering dune.
Lara took off her sunglasses as the first stars appeared in the velvet blue night sky. As there was a special characteristic in African sand, there also was one in the sky; the stars really lit the way, unlike in most other corners of the world.
The dunes grew higher, and an elephant made its way down one's slope somewhere far away. Lara was too wrapped up in her thoughts to notice. It was completely dark, and the sounds of nightbirds and cicadas filled the air. Lara finally eased the pressure on the gas pedal. Her stomach didn't seem to be pleased with the muesli bar anymore.
Then she heard it. Crashing of waves, somewhere nearby. The jeep lights started brushing on more small rocks than there had been during the preceding hours. Lara slowed down to make sure she wasn't colliding with any cliffs. Yhe sound of the waves became distinct. She turned off the engine.
She leapt over the jeep door, and after an unsuccessful attempt to hold her balance, landed on her bottom in the moist sand. Need more stretching, I see. At least she had no audience. She got up and walked towards the whishing sound until her hiking boots got wet. She closed her eyes as she smelled salt, and water.
Finding the place had been easy as the general rule of African roads naturally applied to Namibia - there is, generally speaking, only one road to every place.
Then she noticed it. A small fire, a mile away. It was only an orange flicking, but as Lara had yet to come across any rock formations or animals that flicked in the night, it must've been a campfire. Lara walked to the jeep, and recovered her second pistol from the glove compartment. The other one was at its regular home in her hip holster.