Emerald's Second No Good Very Bad Day

  +++

  Emerald was feeling such an excess of emotion right this instant that she wasn't entirely sure what she should be feeling. She had been thrown up and down and side to side like the prop of a Spinel, with wild and enthusiastic abandon.

  It had started so well.

  Joy. Genuine triumph. The sheer good fortune, the support of her fellows, the fact that so many had been so willing to help her in her endeavour... Truly, it made her feel shining and resplendent.

  Vindication. In dealing with these organics. A vicious, sharp edge being satisfied. Moving closer and closer to her goal.

  Hope. When a trace of her Pearls might finally have been found.

  And that's when it had all started to go downhill.

  Concern. When the Gleaming Blade had reported that the Roaming Eye was trying to dodge them. Had it not been her Pearls? Were her Pearls still prisoners somewhere? Maybe even on that ship?

  Confusion. When the organics had started to retreat some of their fleet, their larger ships. Why? Organics were strange; such large ships would have been quite durable. What were they hiding that they weren't worth committing?

  Fear.

  The memory played itself again in her mind. The screaming warning of the sensors, klaxons blaring. The sudden, stark realization of exactly what the organics had done, and the knowledge that even with the orders and warnings given, there would be little that anyone could do about it. How completely insane did you have to be to detonate DIAMOND ESSENCE?!

  How utterly disrespectful! How immensely dangerous! These organics were clods!

  Terror. When the blast went off and too much of the fleet went with it... When her own ship had screamed and groaned and broken, but had still come through in only a few pieces.

  Rage. Because how dare they?

  And then...

  A slowly growing... numbness, in the aftermath.

  Nothing had gone according to plan. The Diamond Essence had not been successfully retrieved. The organics had not been completely wiped out.

  And, of course, her Pearls still weren't WITH HER!

  ...

  It was mockery, truly. To be at such heights, only to be thrown low, and then just as she reached the cusp of reclaiming it, it was stolen from her again. Dangling hope only to flick it away. She'd started the day feeling like a Diamond, and ended it feeling like a unpolished rock.

  The feeling of it was... like someone had scooped out a portion her chest. She felt vaguely hollow, and she hated it utterly.

  "M-my Emerald?"

  Emerald opened her eyes, straightening up. "Ax3." She addressed, immediately recognizing the Peridot. "Do you have something for me?"

  "We finished the analysis, my Emerald." Peridot reported, holding up a data slate to her. "We pulled the sensor records from the entire fleet. We are now certain that the Gem signatures we detected on that vessel were indeed Viridian and Sixteen A."

  Emerald took the slate, glancing through it. Ax3 had, rather helpfully, left the information Emerald truly wanted to see active. The Gleaming Blade's sensors had gotten as good of a look into the Roaming Eye as a ship that old could have gotten. Two gem signatures, matching records to Virdian and Sixteen A, no others. No organic life signs, though they wouldn't have been sure what to look for there in the first place. The Roaming Eye had not had active communications, aside from its IFF. The Roaming Eye's Warp Engine had activated after the freighter had started to detonate.

  In turn...

  Logic derived the following facts: Her Pearls had not tried to meet up with the Gleaming Blade, and had, in fact, tried to avoid it; Her Pearls had not communicated, only done their absolute best to get as far away from the freighter that they'd launched from as was physically possible; Her Pearls had been able to figure out how to activate the Warp Engine, but had waited for some reason.

  Emerald closed her eyes, letting her head rest against the back of her chair.

  But why?

  Emerald wasn't sure what to think. What sequence of events had taken place, here?

  How did they get to the Roaming Eye? Why not communicate? Why such a desperation to be not there? If they knew how to Warp, why not just Warp out immediately? Surely, it would have been safer...

  She hadn't been on the Roaming Eye. She didn't have access to the same information her Pearls did. Viridian was too perfectly competent to make such a pointless risk. Sixteen A would have left immediately, owing to her personality. There had to be a reason, but she hadn't been there in the old thing-

  Emerald opened her eyes. "Ax3? Which is the oldest Roaming Eye in this fleet?"

  +++

  Her fleet had been made up of a dozen other fleets, old and new and outmoded and updated alike. Very nearly top of the line ships mixed with vessels so ancient that they pre-dated Yellow Diamond.

  In the aftermath of the detonation, there was significantly less Roaming Eyes still present in the fleet, but that didn't mean they were all gone. Indeed, the oldest ones were still here, since they were slowest of them all- and therefore, the ones furthest away from the blast.

  Emerald stared at the interior of the Roaming Eye, looking through the bridge. Large, surpirisingly spacious, and so very, very simple.

  Ax3 walked quietly behind her as she took the seat, staring at the controls for a moment.

  Emerald had made assumptions, up until now. There was data she didn't have.

  Her Pearls were not pilots. Her Pearls had, seemingly, been the only ones aboard, but that did not necessarily have to be true. It was unlikely from the sensor logs, but it was possible that an organic might have been at the controls, and her Pearls had just been... poofed, or something.

  Emerald is not a pilot. She has never tried to fly a Roaming Eye.

  It takes her exactly fifteen point three seconds to figure out the controls, and less than ten seconds more to get the ship moving how she wants it to. It is intuitive in a way that many ships are not. And if she had this little trouble?

  Viridian and Sixteen A would have been perfectly fine.

  Emerald reconsiders the facts, and dismisses the possibility of an organic pilot.

  It takes her another minute to open the control panels for the ship. A whole host of systems scroll past as she looks at them. Communications is right at the top, but Warp Navigations is only slightly below it.

  Emerald selects it, and finds the resulting menu extremely easy to navigate. Using the Warp would have been as simple as just selecting a destination and hitting the button.

  Easy for them.

  She selects Communications, and a sub-window opens, numerous pre-programmed channels already present. There's menu for making new ones, and a general broadcast option is also available.

  "Does the communicator also control the IFF?" She asks.

  "They're seperate systems, my Emerald." Ax3 responds. "And the IFF is very difficult to turn off without physical access."

  Emerald stares at the pre-programmed channels. "Can the channels be removed?"

  "If you know what you're doing, easily." Ax3 confirms. "With... the apparent level of technological understanding these organics have, they would have no trouble."

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  "And making new ones?"

  "More difficult, my Emerald." Ax3 shakes her head. "You need either codes, or to aim a laser at a receptor, or in-depth signal knowledge. If you don't know what you're doing, you won't figure it out."

  Competence is not magic, Emerald knows. Her Pearls could not pull knowledge out of nowhere.

  The organics were opportunistic attackers, raiding quickly and decisively. They would not be programming lines of communication to Gem ships.

  Even in Viridian's tendency to explore, she certainly would not have picked up this. Her only option would have been a general broadcast... but-

  "Roaming Eyes have servant-system capacity, yes?"

  "They do, my Emerald." Ax3 agrees. "With the proper codes, anybody would have been able to easily override a Roaming Eye's systems so long as they could connect to it."

  "Would disabling communications stop a connection?" Emerald questions.

  Ax3 nods immediately.

  Emerald considers, again. Disparate information is starting to align.

  It starts when her Pearls had been able to get on board of the Roaming Eye- No. She's not considering the actual timeline, there.

  Her fleet had arrived in the system. The fleet had located the organics. There had been an extended period of time between locating them and actually beginning combat, with maneuvering and travel taken into account.

  Her Pearls are Pearls. They're not dangerous, not like Rubies or Quartzes. They're not soldiers and they pose no physical threat.

  Taking into account the fact that her Pearls had been wanted for what was almost certainly information, they had likely been simply incarerated, but not actually poofed. They had been stored on a warship-

  Emerald pauses, as the thought occurs to her.

  They had been stored on a warship. A ship that had gone straight into combat. The vessel they were using to store hostages was one that was attacking the fleet.

  Emerald needed a word worse than 'clod'.

  With effort, she wrenches her train of thought back on track.

  They had been stored on a warship. They had likely been under guard the entire time. When combat began, though... well, would there have been much need to guard two Pearls?

  It... made sense. The organics had likely trusted in their containment measures, only for her Pearls to prove more capable. They were Pearls. Emerald was well aware that Viridian kept a storage of things she would regularly be using, which simply weren't worth returning. She'd had plenty of gifts from other Gems, too. The odds that she'd have something on her that would allow her to escape containment were actually not bad.

  So, her spectacularly brave Pearls escape, taking advantage of the chaos to make their way to the hangar. They're able to take a Roaming Eye, and so they rush out as fast as possible, disabling communications to stop themselves from just being redirected back in...

  Something Viridian could have plausibly known about. Emerald knows she talks- talked to the Peridots as a part of getting to know them. Whether idle curiosity or simply performing her purpose as Pearl, she could have come across that information and had it become useful laster.

  It made sense. It also made sense why she wouldn't risk a general broadcast, then; that would be immediately telling the organics that the ship could be contacted and control assumed.

  Wait, she was overlooking something here. "Why couldn't we override the Roaming Eye, then?"

  "Well..." Ax3 paused to consider that. "Theoretically, we could have. Actually, unless they completely rewrote the OS, they shouldn't have been able to stop us. About the only way to do it otherwise would have been to remove or replace the communications systems with something that only functions on specific lines, but that would mean you would lose general communications-"

  "Halt." Emerald interrupts. "Their ship couldn't broadcast?"

  "I..." Ax3 straightens. "I cannot make any judgements or observations without directly examining the target, my Emerald. It is possible it couldn't. It is also possible it could."

  That wasn't as helpful as she would have like, but she didn't blame the Peridot. It did raise the possibility that her Pearls couldn't communicate, even if they wanted to, but there was no way of knowing.

  Aside from that, why avoid the Gleaming Blade? That was active, deliberate effort, not getting caught while still in the process of going further away. Obviously they were running, but why were they so desperate? They couldn't have known-

  It clicks.

  Emerald lets out a breath of air as she figures it out.

  They had known. Her Pearls had become aware of the bomb- they'd known exactly what the organics had done.

  Emerald grabs her dataslate, immediately flicking through the files until she finds what she's looking for.

  The path of the Roaming Eye that her Pearls had taken. It leaves the ship, heading straight from the fighting, but there's a point where it turns and heads almost directly away from the freighter- a direction it keeps moving in even while it evades the Gleaming Blade.

  They'd known about the bomb, but how? There were so many ways. Had the organics taunted them with it? Had they just overheard?

  Did it matter?

  No, it didn't. The desperation makes sense in light of that. Dodging the Gleaming Blade... somewhat less sense.

  Why dodge? The Warp wasn't that difficult to figure out. If they were that concerned, they would have just Warped immediately. Why stay and play this game? It wasn't like them.

  Sixteen A wouldn't have done it. Viridian didn't do anything without a purpose-

  Oh.

  That had been Viridian trying to warn them, hadn't it? This out-of-character behaviour, the dodging- this was something she'd talked about five years ago to Viridian in one of their quiet moments. One of the ways to communicate something was wrong when you didn't have actual communication; do something strange and attention grabbing that isn't actually hurtful. Exactly like this.

  An idle bit of chatter on her part that Viridian, as always, had taken in account like the perfect Pearl she was.

  Emerald slumped in the seat.

  And Emerald hadn't seen it because she'd been too busy elsewhere. Hadn't paid her Pearls the attention they deserved...

  And they definitely deserved it. Their actions had led to the Gleaming Blade moving away from the battlefield- away from the bomb. Her engines were gone, but aside from that, she wasn't that damaged. It had been led away from the danger with what Emerald is now realizing was deliberate purpose. And her Pearls themselves.... The Warp they had executed was timed so exquisitely precisely that Emerald wasn't certain a team of Sapphires could have done it better. Their Roaming Eye had gotten ahead of the blastwave by what must have been mere microns.

  Still, just like before, they were lost to her. There were innumerable destinations, and the bomb itself had... effects on local space.

  How utterly she had failed them.

  Still... it wasn't completely beyond hope just yet. Her Pearls were out there somewhere, and she was not going to abandon them.