While it would be rather final for the two Pearls for their actions to have been caught on camera, it also wouldn't be as good for drama.

  After all, to be hunted down as traitors to the empire, or to be searched for desperately by people trying to rescue them when they don't want to be rescued?

  Emerald's No Good Very Bad Day

  +++

  Absolutely nothing had gone according to plan, and Emerald was very much not happy with that.

  Right from the very start, it had been a total failure of intelligence. They had been sent for reconnaissance, with the expectation that they wouldn't find very much of actual interest. They had been told that the organics, even if they were found, would have old, outdated, obsolete technology. They were expecting, at the most, a short engagement.

  It had indeed been a short engagement. Her allied ship destroyed in a single shot, and her own boarded by scores of well-equipped and well-trained warriors wielding dangerously capable technologies- supported by their own stolen and reprogrammed Gems!

  Traitors- except they weren't even traitors. They'd never been loyal in the first place.

  Emerald noted that she was beginning to indent the seat of her command chair, and forcefully unclenched her fingers, crossing her arms in front of her chest instead.

  It had been an uncomfortably close thing that they had managed to Warp out of the trap that they'd wandered into. Her ship wasn't fresh from the lines, but it wasn't as old as the Serenity had been, either, and that had been about the only thing that had allowed her crew to secure the Warp Engines for long enough to translate out- with an unfortunately large amount of the invaders still on the ship.

  Dealing with that had taken even more time, and the invaders had certainly not made it easy, rushing to escape pods and bays so that they could try and escape on smallcraft, making fine messes on her ship in the process. Where, after all, did most of her support staff shelter in combat situations?

  Exactly where the invaders had gone.

  So much of her crew was just missing, now, leaving them all desperately understaffed on top of everything else. At least a small portion had been recovered and was now simply waiting to regenerate, but the rest?

  Emerald glanced to her side.

  Empty space greeted her. Neither nervous, slowly steadying red or impervious, perfectly reliable green stood there.

  Emerald unclenched her hands again.

  Protocol dictated that all non-combatants were to shelter in designated areas in the event of combat. Pearls, owing to their status, fell into a grey area in protocol, in that they were to follow the orders of the owners before following that particular protocol, but Emerald had not overriden them anyway.

  Viridian and 16A had gone to take shelter shortly after the battle had begun. After her troops had swept the ship, however, they still hadn't been found. When Emerald realized her Pearls were missing, she'd quickly had someone look into it.

  Then she'd learned that the last time they had been seen had been when a Lapis Lazuli had been chasing after them.

  "Peridot." She commanded, turning to one of the few remaining technicians still present. She ignored the smaller Gem's fidgeting; after being so closely exposed to combat, she wasn't going to repimand them for not maintaining perfect discipline. They didn't deserve that. "Anything?"

  Peridot slowly nodded her head. "My apologies, my Emerald." She grimaced, looking regretful. "Almost all of the internal sensors went down when we were boarded. Enemy action, a cyber attack, but... there's no data to recover for most systems. The only thing that stayed active were a few of the lower-priority harmonic sensors, and those don't do much more than track the location of registered crew. And, uh... they're not detecting the presence of Pearls aboard."

  Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

  Her Pearls were missing.

  Emerald carefully did not react. The Peridot did not deserve her anger. "Do we know what happened to them?" She asked.

  Peridot winced. "About that..." She worked for a moment, and a hologram flickered to life in front of her. It showed a schematic of the Retaliator, before it promptly zoomed in on a specific section. Two small dots were shown in what Emerald recognized as a doorway, right next a much larger amount of dots just inside of an area. A timestamp floated slightly to its side "It starts here, my Emerald."

  The hologram suddenly burst into motion. Virdian and 16A's dots suddenly seemed to overlap, and then both of them shot off a surpisingly rapid pace. Emerald couldn't help but picture it in her head, since she was well aware of what that other mass of dots was.

  The Gems who had seen her Pearls last.

  Viridian and 16A, being chased by a cruel parody of a Lapis. A wall of water, streaming through the ship, seeking her harmless Pearls.

  It's not a vision that ends well; the dots slam into a locked door, and they stay there. The water reaching them, trapping them against its unforgiving bulk. They don't have the strength to get past it. There they stay, for a few seconds, while the Lapis has them in her grasp. Emerald can easily see the terror on 16A's face, and while she knows that Viridian is much more composed, she can't help but imagine that Viridian must have also felt afraid.

  Had they been destabilized, then?

  The timestamp continued to tick. She matches it to the blaring of an alarm in her memory, as her forces successfully start the Warp Engine again, and the dots start moving again a moment later. Fast- but well within the capabilities of a Lapis carrying two Gemstones. It went in the direction of the nearest hangar -shortwave communications, surely-, the fastest way out of the ship right then and there. Indeed, it's a short time later that they arrive at the hangar, the two dots moving in, and then-

  Fizzing. Like a lost signal.

  "They entered a fighter, my Emerald." Peridot explains, pausing the projection. "Which was missing when we checked the hangar."

  "I see." Emerald closes her eyes.

  Her Pearls had been kidnapped.

  And of course, why wouldn't they have been? Pearls were assistants, directly supporting their superiors. How often had they both been exposed to information intended for Emerald? How often had Emerald sent them to relay orders to different groups of Gems? In terms of military intelligence, the only thing that could have been worse would have been for Emerald herself to have been captured.

  Worst of all is the fact that she can't even do anything about it: the Retaliator is in no condition to fight, let alone chase down enemy ships. With the Warp Engine so damaged, they'll be limping back to empire space, back to reinforcements, back to a fleet that could actually do anything about this dramatically more dangerous than expected threat.

  So.

  Her Pearls are on their own. Trapped by the enemy- an enemy who has every reason to tear them apart to try and get at the information they hold. Neither of them capable of protecting themselves, neither of them deserving anything that would happen to them. What wouldn't they do to her Pearls?

  "Plot a course back. We need assistance." She opens her eyes, glaring at the footage. If her Pearls were harmed at all...

  She'd finish what Yellow Diamond started, personally.