I placed the gemstone in another flask for analysis. "Well, unless you see anything else that you want to trade bullets for, it might be time to go." I said as I trained my gun on the yellow scaled female. She paid us no mind as she took the bullet to her cohort of young merfolk. There was no threat. Either she did not intend to do it, or she just meant it as a simple prank. He rolled his shoulders. "We can go. There's only so much we can look at them in this lake." he said. We made our way up the river to the landmark. That was when we were attacked by the red merfolk there. I was overloaded with information for a second before drawing my gun. I did not see them. Corey did not seem to be able to do much. His nose was bleeding. I just grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away from the river. That worked for a few steps before rock pelted us from behind. It hurt quite a bit. I did not see any of them, so I had no clue how they were able to hide from us. Maybe it was part of their brand of warfare. I had heard that the boys were often snuck up on by blue merfolk. Camouflage?
Nothing we had could help us see them if that was the case. We would need something else. As we got 30 yards away, Corey got out of whatever was affecting him. He wiped his nose with his arm. "They were in my head." he groaned. That was cool. "Did you make out anything!? Emotions? Thoughts? Words!?" I prompted. He looked at me. "They were pissed off. I could get that. Not much else though." he told me. I shrugged. "Makes sense. You guys have been at war with them from the moment you met the red and blue tribes. Of course they hate you." He looked shocked I would say that. "C'mon. You know if the roles were reversed here, you would want a holy war against them personally brought from all of the other Solari squads." I said pointedly. There was nothing that he could say to that. We continued on our way. Once we got to the ship, we got checked out. I also submitted the flasks. They were happy to see that the gemstone was a large ruby. That was good. Precious gemstones were very valuable. "Corey and David, you guys should try to find a deposit of rubies."
Obviously, we clearly outranked all of the researchers and scientists on the ship. We did not need to listen to them at all. It was just a suggestion. Then again, they knew what they were speaking about. That was why they were here with us in the first place. Going out, we could take these on as bonus quests. Their rewards could be really good though. Finding rubies would be nice. "The merfolk were trading them and the shiny rocks at the mouth of the river. We would probably need to follow them or put them under camera surveillance." I said. They thought about it. "We might be able prepare something for you later." one of the engineers said. That would lead to a cool side quest. Corey was not interested in it. The shiny rock was similar to a pearl, but it did not seem to come from a clam like on Earth. That meant that there was some creature that had a similar function somewhere. One that a merfolk found valuable. This was backing up my claim that they were sentient. Random animals did not open markets. Haroon, Larl, Alyas and Dolan dragged themselves up to the ship.
