LOG-011.

  It began around when we were entering the initial orbit of the failed colony's furthest moon. I'd been carefully helping clean up some of the scattered components the Peridots had left lying around during one of their 'inventive periods' and had nearly leapt into the fucking air as an alarm had blared out from seemingly the entire ship.

  Seconds later, my Emerald's voice was bursting from the carefully hidden speaker set somewhere within the maintenance room, drawing both my attention and the curious gazes of the two technicians behind me.

  "This is your Emerald speaking. The Serenity has acquired direct line of sight of the mission objective. All hands are to report to immediate active stations and await further directives. Non-combatants are to migrate to either the bridge or designated safe zones, depending on role. That is all."

  I set down the plasma torch I'd been holding on a nearby table with wide eyes, even as both Peridots (Facet 2M5P, Cut 6XC and Facet 2N5P, Cut 6XD respectively) let out annoyed grumbles, making their way outside into the corridor beyond.

  With nothing better to do, I followed suit. I'd be better off hanging around the bridge than anywhere else, after all.

  ---

  "Stars..."

  The softly spoken word slipped out of my mouth before I could even think to stop it, yet as I stepped towards my Emerald's command throne to stand next to a shocked looking Sixteen A, no one else within the bridge seemed ready to reprimand me for the slip-up.

  A Jasper sighed from her position seated next to a weapons control console, eyeing the image being projected from the primary viewscreen.

  "At least we know what happened to our lost freighter."

  The cerulean form of the Serenity took up part of the view, but it was the vessel beyond our tagalong destroyer that set a surging unease loose throughout my gemstone.

  The starship...might have been a dark purple once. It was hard to tell considering the sheer level of damage it had apparently taken. The vaguely cuboid shaped vessel floated lifelessly amidst the void of space, a maimed and outright mangled husk of its former self.

  What might have once been a gleaming hull was now marred with jagged tears and gaping wounds, evidence of the outright brutal onslaught it had endured. What almost looked like green flames flickered sporadically throughout its interior, casting eerie shadows that danced across the shattered remains of exposed bulkheads and corridors.

  The ship's exterior was a veritable patchwork of scorched metal and shattered crystalline plating, with large sections of armour and bulkheads torn away to reveal the twisted wreckage within. Fragments of debris spun lazily around the ship, clear remnants of what had presumably been its aft section.

  As the Retaliator's exterior sensors adjusted to better display the devastating scene, the true extent of the destruction became ever more apparent. The ship's entire superstructure had been rent asunder, with entire sections of the vessel missing or collapsed in on themselves. What remained of its once oversized engines remained cold and lifeless, their once powerful thrusters now reduced to smoldering ruins.

  Amidst the wreckage, the faint glimmer of fading emergency lights still flickered weakly, warring with the raw crackling energy of exposed power couplings, a feeble reminder of the life that once thrived within the ship's halls.

  "...Dispatch recon probes and have them scan for life signatures. Send a transmission to the Serenity and tell her to begin standard active pings. Whatever did this might still be around."

  The admiral's order was followed without hesitation, and soon enough a trio of green spheres were ejected from the cruiser, small thrusters activating and bringing them closer to the shattered freighter.

  The next few moments passed in utter silence. There was no requests for singing or dancing. No idle chatter between bridge technicians. Just more tense silence as the probes continued to circle the wreck, beams occasionally running over its surface.

  A Peridot gulped as something flashed across her screen, before the green Gem shook her head.

  "No signs of survivors, my Emerald. It...it appears the primary cargo section was breached as well. She's been emptied out entirely..."

  It was all I could do to resist hissing in alarm at that seemingly innocuous fact, even with the other Gems within the bridge holding no such compulsion and letting out various sounds of dismay. Even the admiral herself let loose a seething snarl of a noise, her fist slamming down against one of her armrests with enough force to shake the air around it.

  A bulk transport carrying basic supplies and materials being stolen from was a loss, but not something that truly amounted to much in the grand scheme of the interstellar entity that was the Gem Empire.

  But a battle freighter carrying refined Diamond Essence?

  My inner thoughts continued, even as my Emerald swept a hand forward, lips spread wide apart in a toothy grimace.

  "Sweep through everything! Search for signs of other possible vessels! I want debris, sublight drive trails, anything! Get me a direct line to the Nephrite controlling the Serenity, I don't care how old that damned destroyer's systems are, I want all possible sensors linked at once!"

  Both Sixteen A and I remained as quiet and unobtrusive as possible, even as the entire bridge crew sprang into action at the admiral's roared orders.

  ---

  We'd split up, initially. The Retaliator using its superior sensor systems to attempt to track down some kind of trail we could follow, some piece of evidence we could use to figure out just where the perpetrators of the attack had gone. The Serenity had instead gone towards the moons, physically searching for signs of possible ships or even old orbital stations that the devastator fleet had perhaps missed during their murder of an entire world.

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  It had been well over ten local rotational cycles (in terms of the planet and its respective moons) since our initial arrival into the star system, all of them almost twice as long as what I distinctly remembered to be a day on Earth.

  Gem memory was nice like that. Everything could be recalled. Perfectly. At any time.

  It also meant that I would never forget my first time seeing a perfectly functional warship (even if it was practically a relic considering its age) get blasted into almost nothing before my very fucking eyes, the only reason I even got to witness the sight being that the veteran ion destroyer had been moving to group back up with us after finding a whole lot of nothing.

  Just like that, everything aboard the bridge went silent for one utterly gobsmacked moment right before devolving into utter chaos as the impossibly distant figure of the Serenity (almost ant sized, considering its position relative to us) split into two distinct pieces beneath the eye searing glow of a trio of impossibly bright golden beams, both savaged remnants beginning to fall towards the moon below them with no thrusters or engines left to fight the satellite's gravitational pull.

  "ALL HANDS TO BATTLESTATIONS, NOW!"

  The deep thrum of the Retaliator's thrusters switching to max burn almost drowned out the yelled orders and affirmatives spreading throughout the bridge, even as I stumbled back a step.

  "Multiple drive signatures detected! I'm reading three destroyer sized vessels and...and something bigger! Way bigger!"

  "Optics, get me a sightline! Weapons are charging but I can't see Stars damn it!"

  "Escape pods detected from the Serenity, my Emerald! They're heading towards the surface of the tertiary moon!"

  My head swam from the constant flurry of sound, one of my hands desperately reaching towards a nearby console for support.

  "Massive energy build up detected from the fourth signature, get those shields facing forward damn it-"

  I needed to get out of here. There were holdout areas within the depths of the Retaliator that I knew were connected to our own escape pods. My body was already moving through the open doorway into the corridor beyond, even as my mind raced, drowning out the sound of yelling voices from behind me.

  The ship shook. Once. Twice. I moved faster.

  Alternatively, the hangar always remained an option. I was confident I could get a starfighter outside without crashing into one of the walls at this point-

  "BRACE FOR IMPACT-"

  ---

  "-an!"

  ...Mm.

  "-ridian! Viridian!"

  Mm?

  "Get up, please!"

  The blurry form shaking me finally coalesced into the distinctly crimson figure of Sixteen A, her eyes wide with panic.

  "W-what..?"

  Thin, delicate hands wrapped around my own before I was quickly lifted to my feet, my fellow Pearl desperately presenting both of our forms to the bridge door's scanner.

  "Come on! We need to go, now!"

  Unfortunately for the desperate slave, nothing happened.

  "W-why won't it open!?"

  Gently shoving the panicking Gem off of me, I shook my head, one hand coming up to gently prod at my aching eyes.

  "Did we get hit by something?"

  A fearful nod was my answer, prompting me to let out a hissing breath.

  "If it managed to break past the shields and damage the ship, then the depressurisation protocols are in effect. The Peridots say it's to keep everyone from getting sucked out through a hole in the hull. Could also be that the scanner just...broke from the impact? The bridge doors are some of the thickest ones aboard the ship, we can't exactly cut through them."

  I rolled a shoulder, flinching at the distinct feeling of pain emanating from that particular part of my lightform. I'd taken one heck of a tumble, apparently.

  I turned back towards Sixteen A as her hands came up to pull at the sides of her hair, facial features twisted in fear.

  "No no no, w-where do we go then!? The soldiers were fighting near the middle deck and-"

  Her babbling paused as I stepped forward, one hand reaching out to grab her wrist. Maybe the serious expression on my face calmed her, or maybe she took solace in the fact that I wasn't also shitting myself.

  I totally was, but saying that wouldn't really solve anything, now would it?

  "Who were they fighting? Have we been boarded?"

  I'd thought it unlikely. I'd said as much to the Rubies just a while ago!

  "Organics! They had this silvery looking armour and some kind of-of ranged destabilizer!"

  Just what were the odds that we'd get attacked? Fucking showed what I knew. We were on the fringes of civilized space damn it, of course we'd get fucking jumped!

  Pulling the teary eyed Pearl along with me, I started down the corridor.

  "Follow me. There's a secondary cubby room some of the Jaspers like to hang out in. Maybe we can get past the doors there and stick with them till everything settles."

  A whimper was my red twin's response, even as we steadily jogged our way down a winding set of corridors, taking several detours to get past unresponsive doors.

  Our pace slowed drastically as we noticed several deep rents in the nearby walls, follwed by the loud clanging sound of weapons impacting against other weapons echoing down the last hallway leading to the cubby room.

  There was also...something else. Like rushing water, almost.

  I took another step forward, only to be tugged backwards as Sixteen A dug in her heels.

  "Can't you hear that? They're fighting!"

  I tried to step forward again, only to be halted. Again.

  "We can't go in there! We're just Pearls!"

  If it weren't for my training back at the Reef, I likely would have snarled at the crimson Gem. Part of me, hidden deep within the layers of decorum I'd painstakingly built up, still really wanted to.

  "So what?! Do you plan to just sit around and hope things somehow get better? We're gonna be glitching shattered if we get caught out on our own, so get a damned hold of yourself and move!"

  She reeled back as if struck by the sheer impropriety that was another Pearl swearing, before letting out a wail.

  "We weren't trained for this!"

  I just huffed in response, before tugging her back towards the escalating sounds of the fight ahead of us. A few seconds later, we were finally turning the corner.

  "Pebbles-get down!"

  Only for both of us to duck pretty much instantly as an armoured form flew through the air with a shrieking squawk, right before slamming into the wall behind us with a sickening crunch.

  I locked eyes with a panting Morion, only for the Quartz to whirl around as the rushing sound roared behind the solid line of shocktroopers holding back a veritable swarm of silver garbed figures, each Gem using removed patches of walls or even doors as makeshift shields as their opponents, used the unmistakable shapes (to my human memories, at least) of guns to fire what almost looked like lightning at them.

  It wasn't the lightning guns that occasionally hit a soldier and forced their lightform to glitch out slightly that took up the majority of my attention though. No, that was reserved for the literal wave of water that poured out from a nearby doorway, knocking the entire group of Quartzes over like fucking bowling pins.

  As the horrific sound of multiple lightforms discorporating reached my ears and one of the silver suited aliens ratted us out with an outstretched, pointing talon, part of me considered that, maybe, just maybe, Sixteen A had been right in not wanting to join up with the shocktroopers aboard the Retaliator.

  Guns raised upwards to take aim, and I felt my Batchmate wrap her shaking arms around me, preventing me from so much as trying to throw myself back around the corner.

  "Hold fire! They're just servant caste!"

  The voice was familiar, triggering an old memory of a certain angsty blue Gem from the show. Back when all of this bullshit had been fiction.

  My jaw managed to somehow drop even further as the distinctive form of a Lapis Lazuli emerged from the doorway, dark eyes locking with my own just like Morion had a moment ago. The typical dress had apparently been ditched for what almost looked like the uniform of a Quartz at some point, topped with what seemed to be a lightform jacket.

  Her gemstone shined from its position right beneath one of her eyes as I stared at it.

  ...

  "Pebbles."

  I punctuated the curse by grabbing hold of Sixteen A and physically carrying the Pearl along with me as I began to turn back around the corner, catching the blue rock cutter's eyes widen as she stepped forward, reaching for us.

  "Wait!"

  Then I was sprinting back down the hallway we'd just been in, and desperately trying not to scream like my crimson counterpart was as the sound of rushing water began to build up right fucking behind us.

  "Back to the bridge! Back to the glitching bridge!"

  I failed, unfortunately. I totally shrieked my non-existent lungs out like a little bitch.