"I'm sure I'll be seeing them when they arrive," she guessed, smiling sweetly, sarcastically, at him. "If you ask nicely I might even tell you what they say. Goodbye." Sura gratefully closed the communication, and pausing only to put on a wide-brimmed sun hat ambled outside.
Still in the distance, something was moving, the patrol returning, this time travelling quite slowly. As they drew closer she could see two large beasts with them. So, it was the Gerijkls, and as she had been informed it was obviously not a trading party. Sura frowned in confusion. This was atypical behaviour for them. Did they just want to talk about something? On the rare occasions they did that it was usually at the same time they traded, an obvious attempt at trying to show themselves to be honest in what they were saying.
Sura waited in the shade of a building as they approached. Two beasts, two of the small humanoids on the first of them, beings that always unkindly reminded her of childhood fairytales of goblins. The beasts were jittery with the noise of the patrol vehicles' engines, and the lead Gerijkl was attempting to shoo them off. The drivers ignored it and kept in close convoy until they had passed the gates in the dirt wall that surrounded the landward side of the town.
Most of the patrol left them at this point, but one car, a jeep with a roof-mounted pulse laser that was kept pointed on the visitors, continued to follow them. They started to turn towards the centre of the town, but Sura stepped out of the shade and hailed them.
"Looking for me?" she called out. The edgy beasts jumped a little at the unexpected noise, and the jeep stopped in a puff of dust.
"They demanded to see you," the jeep's gunner called out. "No explanation, just orders, the cheeky little sods."
"You're the soul of diplomacy," Sura shouted back. "No wonder you've never left the planet."
"It's the only flaw in my character," he replied cheerfully. "A place like this suits me. We'll be off now?"
"Right." The gunner waved to her as the vehicle sped off towards the town centre.
The Gerijkls dismounted and lead their mounts over to Sura. She recognised one of them, more smartly dressed than most of them, and with a vicious scar crossing his serrated landscape of his wrinkled skin. Whatever his role amongst his own people to have given him that mark, he served as a translator when they had dealings with humans.
The other was tall by their standards, and was standing ill at ease in the strange surroundings, watching its companion. Judging their gender or position by looks alone was a skill Sura did not possess, and she knew she would have to wait until introductions were made before they knew anything.
"Sura Elleran," the translator greeted her formally.
"Injit Nah," she replied.
Both parties stood silently, watching each other, trying to guess at an alien species' body language. Sura knew she wasn't hiding her curiosity, although whether they recognised that or not was unknown. In her turn she thought the second one was nervous, which might be due simply to being in the presence of the race who had taken over their planet and ruined much of it with their fighting. Injit Nah was completely unreadable.
Sura broke the silence. "Come with me, please," she asked, but Injit Nah held up his hands and crossed them over, a sign she had learned to mean meant disagreement.
"Private discussion," he declared.
"My house?"
"Yes."
She walked off without saying another word, knowing that they would follow her, and that they disliked unnecessary discussion. At the house they tethered their mounts to the ladder and followed her inside. Sura tossed her hat out of the way and showed them through to the lounge.
As usual the Gerijkl refused a seat, or any form of refreshments. Out of vague sense of deference to their ways Sura also stood, facing them across a table.
"This is Palkrk Mah," Injit Nah stated, pointing with both hands at his companion. "He discovered an object in the desert."
Expecting them to explain the entire story at once was futile. To Sura the Gerijkl's habit of telling a small part of the story and then discussing that, before moving on to the rest, was extremely frustrating, but they refused to proceed any other way. It was a small wonder that they talk to us at all, she mused.
"A human object, I assume?" she asked.
Injit Nah's face twisted as he spoke flatly. "Of course. If it was not it would not be your concern."
"How did he find it?" Sura replied, trying to put the reproach behind her.
Injit Nah spoke to Palkrk Mah in his own language, and translated the response as it came.
"We were in the desert. One of the faraghs tripped over something. It was a human corpse, not dead for very many days. Around its neck was a chain with a pendant on, and on that pendant was a symbol of significance."
A flash of pain crossed Sura's mind. Lost, dead, in the desert. Knowing that you were going to die, and helpless to prevent it? She had known people who had left the town, and never returned, and were never seen or heard from again. This world could be a harsh one, even without mankind's interference. Nature proved itself the greatest predator the universe over.
"What kind of person was it?" she asked, with a hint of pity in her voice.
"Please elaborate."
"Could you describe the appearance?"
"Dressed in rags, such as some of you seem to at your smaller habitations. Hair all over the face, like the human Gerring." Her unpleasant contact in the town hall. "I do not know if it was the effect of death or the natural state, but the skin was coarser than most of your race's, but not as much as ours. The chest was flat, unlike you."
"Yes, thank you. He was a man, then." Sura cringed inwardly as she felt a hint of embarrassment. It wasn't much of a ribald comment in the first place, and in any case was just a meaningless observation.
"If that is what the description means," Injit Nah said, oblivious to her brief distraction. He continued with the short narrative. "We brought the pendant back, and decided that it was best passed on to another human, lest it cause us trouble." When Injit Nah spoke again it was to Palkrk Mah. He reached into a pocket and removed the disc, laying it down on the table.
A small gold-coloured metal disc, with some markings on it. Sura picked it up, angling the circle to catch the light. And gasped.
"Oh, shit," she breathed.
"It is of significance?" Injit Nah asked.
"Very definitely so!" Seeing the pattern on its surface made it seem unreal, like a drop from a different universe intruding into reality. Sura was holding something in her hand that almost certainly meant the wider galaxy had, for whatever reason, noticed Qudira. Or at least one small but very important part of it had.
"The emblem of an Elite pilot." She shook her head. "And no longer with that pilot." The body it had been found on was probably not the original owner. Theft? It hardly seemed likely. The Elite were not to be trifled with that easily. Proof from a bounty hunter of a prized kill? Then why had it ended up on a corpse in the desert?
"I don't know whether to thank you or swear at you for this," Sura said quietly, all the while staring at the disc in her hand. "Something like this does not go missing without a reason, and someone is going to want to know what happened to it."
"Then we are well rid of it," Injit Nah replied. "Throw it in the desert for all it matters to us. We will not take it back."
At that remark something went in Sura. "This is the symbol of dedicated, and lethal, people!" she shouted at them. "Whether they are good or bad, we're now going to be caught in the middle of it!" The wretched goblins! This might be what's required to tip the precariously balanced scales over into ruin! Safe from their neighbours at the moment, any outside interference could be the spark in the powder that drives them to charge.