Missing Peace: Chapter 40
Li and Dalton kept their weapons trained on each other, each never letting their gaze shift from the one stood opposite. In his free hand, Li held his Diamond line communicator aloft. The small, octahedral device didn't look all that menacing, but he knew how dangerous it could truly be. "Did you know" he began, his eyes fixed on Dalton, "that these communicators have a failsafe installed?"
"What kind of failsafe?" asked Dalton in an icy tone.
"A self-destruct function" replied Li, gaining a small measure of satisfaction from the look of surprise on Dalton's face. "Usually, it could only be activated remotely by the Diamonds themselves, but my country's government put extensive work into hacking the device following the Beach City Conference. Now, I can activate it myself; even put it on a timer if I have to."
Dalton was in shock. A bomb?! What did Li even hope to achieve with one tiny explosive against a small army of Gems? Finally finding the words to say, he spoke up: "Why? What's the point? You're not going to be able to do much to Facet 31 with that, and I fail to see how it helps the hostages at all."
"This isn't just about the hostages" Li replied coldly, "it's about all of humanity." Seeing Dalton's confusion, he continued: "If I detonate this device on the zoo's main power distribution node…" he said, gesturing to the throbbing bundle of cables behind him, "the blast will be carried through the entire zoo, destroying the whole thing. Consider it a contingency plan. Our Crystal Gem allies are naïve enough to still believe that they can solve this with diplomacy. The 'Universe' child wants to talk to an alien terrorist! He will fail, and when he does, we need a back-up plan to put an end to Facet 31. This is it."
Dalton was speechless. Li intended to blow up the zoo?! And the UN had sanctioned this?! He had expected that the observer might be duplicitous, but he hadn't foreseen that he would attempt an actual act of war. Facet 31 had thrown the first stones, yes, but Dalton had thought his fellow world leaders smart enough to realise that a straight-up conflict with them was doomed to failure.
"You can't be serious" he at last replied. "This was supposed to be a rescue mission. And besides; your only role is to assess the Crystal Gems' performance and report back to the UN. Are you seriously expecting me to believe that they sanctioned an attack that could make our relations with the Gems even worse?!"
"Make them worse?!" Li shot back, finally letting the extent of his irritation slip through his usually stony mask. "These aliens already mean to destroy us; relations can't get any worse!"
"Some Gems!" Dalton corrected him. "Most of them are on our side, trying to stop this mess. But you received the same reports from Homeworld that I did; Facet 31 has a lot of potential support there. If you go and blow up a Gem installation, you risk radicalising more of Homeworld's population. If a single Russian agent was enough to allow Facet 31 to amass a small army, imagine the strength their message will have after it gets out that Humans killed a whole station full of Gems!"
Li was now almost foaming at the mouth in rage. How could this American fool not see the necessity of this plan? "They won't get the chance to recruit any more soldiers" he said, trying to stay coherent enough to argue his point, "because we'll take out their entire leadership here. If Rose Quartz dies, Facet 31 dies with her!"
"I don't believe that, and neither should you" replied Dalton. He could see that Li was not going to be swayed by moral arguments regarding the killing of hundreds of Gems, or even the human hostages, so he focused instead on arguing in terms of practicality. "When in our history has that ever worked? Facet 31 didn't just spring up from nowhere you know; they rose out of a climate of collective fear and anger."
Dalton spoke from experience. Over the course of his time in the military, and subsequently in politics, he had developed an intimate knowledge of how violence tended to spread in troubled regions. While Facet 31's members were aliens, their behaviour was all too familiarly human. "Rose Quartz was able to recruit as many people as she did because there was a planet wide sense of fear towards Earth. Their planet is changing in ways they can't predict, and Earth made the perfect target for their animosity, once Rose Quartz stoked them up a little. Even if you somehow wiped out all of Facet 31 today, billions of their sympathisers would still exist, and might be driven to move against us if we prove her right. Facet 31 isn't a collection of Gems; it's an idea, and you can't kill an idea with a bomb!
"What's your alternative?!" Li snapped back. "Ask nicely? Give her a shoulder to cry on? Universe already tried that once, and he failed. We never should have left Earth's fate in the hands of that child!"
"That 'child' reformed Homeworld's entire civilisation" replied Dalton, fuming at Li's condescension.
"So we've been told" replied Li sceptically. "You don't honestly believe that do you? We have only the Diamonds' word to go on that any of what we were told is true. Do you really believe that the rulers of an intergalactic empire just suddenly decided to play nice? That they're willing to befriend us even though there's nothing they need from us? They're playing you, Dalton. The sooner we make it clear that we won't be pushed around, the better."
Dalton sighed. He didn't make a habit of considering anyone a lost cause, but Li was seriously making him reconsider that stance. "I'm not about to let you escalate this any further" he said, tightening his grip on his pistol.
"And I'm not about to let you throw humanity under the bus out of some sort of naïve idealism!" Li spat back, gripping his own weapon more tightly in response. Dalton knew that if he took the shot, Li would almost certainly do the same; but he also knew that, unlike Li, he could afford that outcome. Li needed to actually prime his explosive for his plan to work, whereas all Dalton had to do was stop him. If that meant dying here then, well, he could think of worse ways to go out. If it gave Steven the time he needed to avert a war, and saved uncountable lives on two worlds in the process, then it was worth it. His only regret was that he wouldn't be seeing Amanda again. Trying to push the thought of her face from his mind, he put his finger on the trigger.
In the weapons room, a group of Quartz soldiers ducked behind any pieces of cover they could find, trying desperately to protect themselves from the volley of energy blasts their target was sending their way. Peridot, upon realising that being cornered in a room full of weapons wasn't quite as much of a disadvantage as she had first though, had put said weapons to good use. Pushing her metals powers to their limit, she wielded a dozen blasters at once, ranging from limb enhancer arms to large cannons usually reserved for Gems twice her size. As she slowly advanced towards the room's exit, she made sure to change the direction of her fire regularly, so as to keep all her assailants pinned down. "Ha!" she shouted confidently, "say hello to my little friends!" It was a line from an Earth movie, so she knew that the reference would be lost on the Quartzes, but it amused her, and that was enough.
Once she got close enough to the door, she dropped all but a couple of the weapons, and dove out of the exit, sealing the door behind her. She quickly interfaced her tablet with the door controls, and a couple of quick commands later, the door was locked. Quartzes weren't known for their technical expertise, but she knew that even they wouldn't be contained forever, so she set about trying to find her team. Having had to prioritise her own escape, she hadn't been able to take the zoo's weapons offline, so the best she could hope to do would be to meet up with Lapis or Garnet, and help them with their objectives. She hadn't been able to raise either of them over the communicators, so she simply ran through the corridors, using the Diamonds' map of the zoo to find her way to where Lapis was meant to be, assuming the Quartzes hadn't forced her to move off.
Peering down at her screen as she went, she ran head first into someone's torso. Yelping, she jumped back and raised her weapons instinctively, only to see the familiar face of Lapis staring down at her. "Um…hi Peridot" said Lapis, looking slightly confused. "I thought you were going to-"
"The weapons room? Yes" said Peridot, cutting her off. "I might have encountered a small obstacle there, and been forced to make a…tactical retreat. Anyway, what are you doing here? Did the Quartzes stop you getting to the environmental systems?
"What? Oh. No, I poofed them" Lapis relied nonchalantly, opening the palm of one of her water hands to reveal a pile of Quartz gems. "And I put that code you gave me into the computer. These guys we're fighting won't be able to switch off the life support now." Peridot stared bug-eyed at the pile of gems for a moment, then up to Lapis, then back to the pile again. She really did like Lapis, but Peridot had to admit that her sheer power was scary sometimes.
"O….K…." Peridot said meekly. "That's great. We should probably try to meet up with the others then. None of them are answering my calls, so they may be struggling with the Quartzes. As usual, it's up to us to save the day." Peridot thought back proudly for a moment to the time she, Lapis, and Bismuth had piloted Blue and Yellow Diamond's hand ships to Homeworld to rescue Steven and the others. She smiled. "Where would they be without us?" she thought to herself.
She was snapped out of her reflection when Lapis grabbed her hand. "Hop on" said the blue Gem, giving Peridot a warm smile; something she reserved for only her and Steven. Setting the Quartzes down, Lapis shifted her second set of arms back into their usual, wing-like form. Lifting her arm, she tossed Peridot up onto her back with surprising strength that one wouldn't have expected from looking at her almost scrawny limbs. Peridot steadied herself just in time, as Lapis flew the two of them through the corridors at high speed.
"Where to?" asked Lapis as Peridot held on for dear life. "I suppose we should probably try to meet up with Garnet. She's the closest, so we-gah!" Peridot was cut off mid-sentence and Lapis can to an abrupt stop. She set Peridot down, then immediately pulled her round a nearby corner. "Hey, what was that abou-" Lapis put her hand over Peridot's mouth before the latter could keep talking. With her free hand, she gestured around the corner. Peridot pulled Lapis' hand away, and peered out carefully. Around the corner were two Amethyst guards, carrying a tray of some sort of strange objects, which bore a passing resemblance to Earth foodstuffs. Approaching a door not far from Lapis and Peridot, they slid the tray through a slot, before turning and trudging away.
Once the guards' footsteps had faded into complete silence, Lapis and Peridot rounded the corner and stood out in the main corridor again. "What were those guards doing?" Peridot asked, as much to herself as anyone else. Walking around carrying things was fairly typical behaviour for a Quartz, but usually they were given heavier objects. No-one would waste a Quartz carrying something that a Ruby could lift with one hand. "I'm not sure" replied Lapis, evidently missing the rhetorical nature of Peridot's question. "Maybe this is some sort of storage room, or-" Lapis stopped talking as she reached the door. Turning to face her, Peridot saw that Lapis was staring through a window in the door at about the latter's head height. Her expression was a mixture of surprise and apprehension. Lapis turned to her, and spoke in a concerned tone: "Peridot, there are humans in here."
Peridot scampered over to her. "What?! Let me see!" Lapis shifted her wings back into extra arms, and lifted Peridot up to the window. What Peridot saw inside the room was simultaneously reassuring and unsettling. All the humans within were alive, and, if her head count was correct, matched the number on the manifest the Diamonds had given her. However, the conditions they were being kept in were less than humane. They had been relocated from the zoo's spacious habitat, to a room barely large enough to hold them all. It was dark and cramped, and the humans were clearly in low spirits. They were huddled at the far end of the room, shrinking away from her gaze. Evidently their confinement had made them wary of Gems. Once Lapis put Peridot back down, the smaller gem looked up at her. "Lapis, we've got to get them out of there and off this station."
"How?" Lapis replied. "I don't think they're going to follow us. Pearl's team was in charge of the hostage stuff because they had those two guys in suits to help win these humans over. How are we going to convince these guys that we aren't with Facet 31?"
Peridot had to admit that Lapis had a point. Winning people over wasn't exactly either of their strong suits. She spoke a couple more times into her communicator, trying to get hold of anyone in the other groups, and much like in her previous attempts received no answer. Whatever was going on in the other areas of the ship, it was obvious that help wasn't coming. If they wanted to evacuate the humans, they were going to have to do it themselves…
Author's Notes: OK, looks like things are really moving now. On a side note, I'd like to say thankyou for the fic reaching 50 followers. As my first fic, it's nice to see so much
interest in it. There should be some major developments in the coming chapters, so strap in. As always, feedback is appreciated, and I'll see you in the next one.