Cryptic

They'd found a cryptic message, a piece of paper with some words.

2x sim mik

bongerall

mik koc tal

Captain Prun-Devi Boutella, newly minted intelligence officer of the Fusiliers, had spent the best part of two days, trying to find a match, either in the local patois, or the chaos tongues, but nothing, the structure didn't even match those languages.
"Where'd you find this, "Smokey"?" She used her nickname, transparently trying to belong, new intelligence officers only made more friends than commissars, and that, just barely.
"Upper hive, had been a high born hab, for sure."
"Any clues on who wrote it?"
"You're asking me? Euh, no, although, now that I think of it, it was found on a clothes hamper, in the back..."
"If it matched any tongue we know of on that continent, I'd be sure it was someone's grocery shopping list!"
"Err, the servants looked foreign..."
"Foreign how?"
"Shorter, freckles, spent more time in the sun than the locals."
Prun-Devi's own freckles were showing, under her smart beret and bright red hair, when she wasn't out of her element, she was inordinately proud of that hair. "Of course, It's Vann-speak."
"What's that?"
"Speech common to the islands of the Vanna, halfway across the globe from here. You know what's common there?"
"Err, no captain?"
"Hiring themselves overseas, and doing laundry and other menial tasks! You flagged up a frigging shopping list! How am I supposed to find any useful information if the sieve of the regiment just flags everything up?"
"Err, thank you for letting us know about that Vann-Speak, maybe add it to the data-slates?" Prun-Devi thought she looked like a particularly dumb golden retriever when she said that, but she was right, no use taking out on her her inability to act on information she didn't have in the field. She'd been right to flag the cryptic message, it could have been anything, if one didn't know... "Just, get out of here."
"Aye, Sir!" Smokey thought she'd have a funny story to tell the others, properly embellished of course, no need to drag it down with accuracy, and the captain was a dish, that anger brought out her indigo eyes so nicely...