Sura did not even notice when the two Gerijkls left. She just stood in her house, watching the pendant and wondering what it might bring.
Chapter 3 - Uncertainty
The disc had been tucked away in a draw, and although out of sight was certainly not out of mind. Sura had examined it closely for signs of ownership, but had found none. She was certain that there were electronics inside it, and the pair of holes was probably a socket of some description, but she owned nothing that fitted them.
What to do with it? Whenever she had heard of Elite rated pilots they were spoken of as legends, invincible cruisers in Witchspace, but she was not naïve enough to take the stories at face value. They were still bound by the same laws of nature as everyone else, after all.
More certain were the rumours that nothing happened to them by chance, or at least any throw of the dice that could possibly be under their control. Those who lived the same dangerous life in any other fashion did not live long enough to make it that high. Yet something had clearly gone wrong for one of them, somehow. And if that was due to deliberate action on someone else's part then they were powerful, and dangerous.
Why not forget about it? Throw it away, in the desert, in the lake, and that would be the end of the story? Unless some of the electronics in it enabled it to be tracked. Paranoid, Sura thought. Why hasn't anyone come for it yet, then? Perhaps they didn't know how to track it, at the moment. Even if they could, why not just leave it somewhere where it could be picked up and taken away without bothering her?
That would all depend on who might want it, and why. If anyone did. All the Elite rating measured was someone's talent at killing, in the depths of space, irrespective of why. The passing of those whose business was death was seldom mourned, but were the most likely ones to have a high combat rating. Was the previous owner of the pendant such a person, and their obvious downfall a cause of celebration?
Pirates seldom lived long enough achieve the greatest of fighting accolades. Several bounty hunters had. You needed to have an experienced hand on the laser trigger in that business. A number of trader- combateers, those in search of high profit with high risk were known to be Elite. And others, too. Space was too dangerous a place for those who strayed away from the very narrow safe routes to live long without some battle skill.
A noise nagged at the edge of Sura's mind. In her reverie she at first ignored it, but it sounded again, and jerked her back to her room. The door chime. With a head full of her worried musings she stiffened in alarm, then shook the thought of someone unpleasant being at the door out of her head. She was working herself into a panic, and there was no need. Not yet?
Fighting off her irrational reluctance she answered the door, letting loose a relieved laugh at the sight of Janice Yvre, a friend who usually came round several times a week.
Janice looked curiously at Sura. "Something up?" she asked.
"No! Why do you ask?" Sura replied, trying to calm down a little, and succeeding with the reality of talking to a friend instead of wondering about legendary killers.
"You just look like you've seen a ghost, or something," Janice shrugged. "Never mind," she added, seeing Sura glare at her. "Are you going to let me in?"
"Sorry. Of course, come in."
Janice made her own way into the lounge, with Sura going into the kitchen to find some drinks.
"What do you want?" she called through to her friend.
"Oh, just some fruit juice, whatever you've got."
Easily done. Sura poured herself one, too. She picked them up to carry them through to the other room, but on a sudden thought put them back down, looking thoughtfully at a small bottle on a shelf. Taking the bottle, she pulled its stopper free and added a couple of drops of the Qudiran "nasty juice" to her drink. It tasted foul, and was potently alcoholic, and drinking it was probably completely pointless.
As she was carrying the drinks through Sura started talking, everyday nattering of little importance. Yet she must have sounded a bit too eager to gossip, for Janice suddenly interrupted their conversation.
"You seem to be unusually excited by all of this," she noted curiously. She sniffed the air, then her hand whipped out and grabbed Sura's glass. "Thought so!" she exclaimed, ignoring the protests coming from her friend as she took a sip of the remaining drink. "Why are you drinking that stuff?"
"It's been a stressful day, that's all."
Janice looked pointedly at the wall clock. "Day? Early afternoon. Anyway, I thought you were going to be taking the whole day easy."
"I was, but a couple of Gerijkls showed up."
"Oh?"
"Nothing of much importance."
"It doesn't sound like it," Janice replied sarcastically, rolling Sura's glass between her fingers meaningfully. Sura snatched it back off her.
"A little supply problem, that's all," she lied. "There's less of this coming in." To emphasise her point she drained the glass empty.
"Suit yourself," Janice replied, abandoning her quest to probe the cause of her friend's ill ease. "You know where to find me if you need someone to talk to, though."
"Thanks," Sura muttered. Now she was certain that she could not go on doing nothing, not if it kept her distracted like this. And neither could she go on making excuses and lies without quickly having to make more to cover up the earlier lies. The town's people worked together in most things, and keeping things quiet in such a community was impossible. They helped each other out because they helped themselves that way, but there were some who would abandon that principle if they saw a large chance of personal gain. Normally there wasn't anything in the town worth such a betrayal.
"Look," she said, quickly. "I'll be gone for a little while. Can you get Geoff to cover for me?"
"Wait a second!" Janice exclaimed, looking at Sura in astonishment. "Going where?"
"To the station. There's a person I need to see about the lack of 'juice." There. Said and done, and committed now. Her hurried explanation seemed weak, and she was not surprised when Janice looked even more confused.
"I didn't think you've ever been off-world," she pointed out to Sura.
"I haven't, and I've been putting it off. It's about time I met one or two people in the flesh."
It was not much longer before she managed to persuade Janice to leave, answering the rest of her queries with "I'll tell you when I get back." Now what? By Qudiran standards Sura was fairly wealthy, making money from organising some planet to orbit trade. Life in her home town offered little to spend money on, and it could build up with a bit of care. The cost of a shuttle to the single orbiting Coriolis station would not set her back much. There were no ships landed in the town, but one could be called from the station easily enough.
How long would she be there? It was true that she had contacts in orbit, and it was her hope that they might be able to provide her with the information she needed to pass the burden into the right hands, at the very least. One night away at the most, with any luck. She gathered together a few things and chucked them into a bag, then reluctantly took out a small hand weapon from a locked and hidden draw. Sura ordered the shuttle, and tried to wait for its arrival.