Though Amethyst tried to be an optimist, she reasoned that she probably didn't have forever.
Her "plan" hinged on three things: that the ship wasn't spiraling through light speed, that her industrial-grade duct tape would hold the green bug, and that it didn't have friends. Thankfully, other than smaller marble robots about the size of volleyballs, Amethyst saw nothing until she reached the bridge, the place from where the ship was piloted.
Yes, Amethyst had seen enough Star Wars to know it was called a bridge. It didn't open for her until she got mad and hit the panel with her baseball bat, but that meant it didn't close again, and also an alarm started blaring through the ship. Oops. Since no one came rushing at her with laser guns, she took this as her cue and stepped into the vacant room.
The panoramic view told her that, thankfully, no one was hurtling through light speed. According to the dashboard, the ship was on autopilot, had just cleared the atmosphere, and traveling at 4.13 x 10^11 magnatevvs per chronum, whatever that meant — it looked like a big number but the stars in the windows didn't seem to be moving much.
Gingerly, Amethyst pulled out the high-backed chair (was it floating? Now THAT was cool) and sat down at the dash. Her first naive thought had been that it couldn't be different from driving, but there were neither steering wheels nor pedals in sight. The holographic dash was scary and kinda hot. When she tried to touch it, a burning shock repelled her hand.
"Gah! Hot Belgian waffles!" she yelled, and then sat straight as realization dawned. "Wait...I'm alone. I can swear for real!"
Hand still stinging, she took a deep breath and let out: "SON OF A — "
The dashboard began to ring.
It was a monotoned, slightly-out-of-tune D flat, so literally the most annoying ringtone anyone could have possibly picked, and it was accompanied by a bright yellow square sliding up from the dashboard reading TRANSMISSION FROM JASPER 3B5L-5TZ. Whoever that was. Amethyst didn't really care to learn, especially since if they were trying to contact this ship, they'd probably not like that she'd hijacked it and tied its pilot in duct tape.
Unfortunately after five rings the caller, presumably someone named Jasper, decided that they were going to open the transmission anyway, and Amethyst found herself staring at a hybrid between a Viking lady and a Bengal tiger. Along with a mane of blond hair rivaling Amethyst's own, wispy fur curled on the sides of Jasper's tough jaw, contrasting with the dark red slashes across her face. There was a jewel in place of her nose — did everyone here have jewels on them?
Amethyst didn't realize she'd frozen until Jasper leaned forward, the camera magnifying her beastlike face to strange proportions as she examined the girl. "What do you think YOU'RE doing in a peridot's seat? Identify yourself, runt."
"Um." Amethyst started actually getting afraid now; she had to think fast. "Ummm...Amethyst 1ABC-321 at your, uh, service. Sir. Ma'am. Uh."
It'd been a shot in the dark, but with Jasper and now Peridot (she assumed that was the twitchy green bug) there did seem to be a pattern here of aliens being named after gemstones. For once she was grateful for her weird name.
Jasper's cat-pupiled eyes narrowed. "You, an escort? What, can defectives not wear proper uniforms? Are those alarms? Where's the pilot? Who's your diamond, anyway?"
The first two questions stung in a weird phantom way, the third Amethyst would ignore, the last she couldn't decipher, the second to last could be easily BS-ed. "The pilot," she said slowly, trying to buy herself time to think, "The pilot for the ship. The pilot chosen especially to fly the ship. The ship's pilot."
"The PERIDOT," snapped Jasper, clearly out of patience. "Tell me where she is or I'll have you reported."
"She's fixing a thing in the engine, right!" Amethyst grinned as she found a good lie. "That's the alarms. And she sent me up here to make sure we don't crash into. Uh. Space stuff."
"Put me on a remote line with her."
"Ah…" Amethyst hesitated, then leaned over the side of the chair out of sight of the floaty screen. Time to jump ship. "Sorry dude, no can do! There's, ah — ." She put her hand over her mouth and started making scratchy noises as she reached for her backpack. "The connection is bad! We're going through a — " more scratchy static noises " — meteor shower! I gotta go sorry bye!"
Jasper only managed "You insolent brat, what — " before Amethyst resurfaced with her dented baseball bat and brought it down on the dashboard. Fortunately, dashboards weren't made of the same stuff as marble robots.
"I shoulda done that forever ago," she muttered and fanned herself with her hat. The left side of the dash was now a sparking, smoking wreck. On the other side, random error windows began popping up. Threat detected. Power source 3C offline. Connection lost with hyperdrive modulator. Locator beacon disabled. External transmitter unavailable. System diagnostic check activating 30...29...28…
Yikes , Amethyst thought, and decided to go.
No answers would be found here, so it was back to hall running. The alarms had a new edge to them after she'd destroyed the dashboard, and from very far away she could hear the bug pilot, Peridot, shrieking. Homegirl just got what she deserved, having stolen away Amethyst's little bro. Still, Amethyst felt a little bad, especially as the alarms gave way to a metallic clanking and a paged message over the ship's loudspeakers.
" To the human female, if you are not still hard of hearing: I demand you return to my location to unfasten these bonds AT ONCE! I repeat, you will desist your siege or — "
— Here was a very loud thud, and when Peridot's voice came back, it was muffled and sounded distinctly of someone who has just tripped over their own tied gravity connectors.
Amethyst winced at the thud, but realized something too. By proclaiming her presence throughout the ship, Peridot might have just let Steven know she was here. She began to yell his name, no longer worried about subtlety. Once she thought for sure she had him, in a corridor labeled Prison Block, but each of the yellow-screened cells was empty.
Finally she said his name and heard a reply.
"Amethyst?!" It came unsure at first and muffled behind a door, but when Amethyst skidded to a stop in front of it, the voice came louder. "Amethyst!"
"I'm here, bud!" she called in the direction of the door she thought he was in. Thick, diamond-esque just like the door to the bridge. The door that hadn't held a candle to her baseball bat, she smirked. "Just stand back, I'm gonna try opening it by force, then we can go home, okay?"
She expected agreement, had even raised her baseball bat above the door's control panel, but then Steven cried out again. "Wait! We...I can't leave. Not yet."
Confused, Amethyst lowered the bat. "What?"
There was a hesitation, and from inside his prison, she heard Steven take a deep, shaky breath in. "Peridot said something about...her scanners picking up Rose Quartz, and that's how she found me," he said just too fast. "Amethyst — she knows my mom!"
First thing: I procrastinated in studio and drew Peridot from this story ( post/143552979390)
While it's on my mind, I'd like to address Petri Dish here, because I know a lot of you follow that too. The issue is I can only write so much in a week and the hiatus from Petri Dish was intended to get ahead in it; alas, I have hardly half of chapter 12 and a plot hole involving driving rules. I do not intend to infringe on my promise of a May 6 update, however, if I'm to do so, I will have to pause this story after the next two chapters. For me, two days for 1,000 words is an extremely tight turnaround time, one that I doubt I'll be able to keep up when also managing 5,000 words in a week, so I propose an alternative schedule.
I'm not sure what this alternative schedule will be. Perhaps we continue Petri Dish Fridays, except making them Petri Dish Every Other Fridays, and the off weeks will be At Harbor weeks (during which I plan to post 3-4 chapters each). With this plan, I predict that this story — which has been written COMPLETELY off the fly, with minimal plotting, hence foreshadowing that I've really just pulled out of my ass — will be finished fairly quickly.
Leave me your thoughts, guys! Sorry the A/N is longer than the chapter. :)