Missing Peace: Chapter 45

Steven panted as he struggled to block the flurry of attacks that Rose sent his way. "So, this really is how you operate isn't it Pink?" Rose snarled. "Every time I become inconvenient for you, you just call in the other Diamonds to get rid of me?!" Rose swung her sword towards Steven again, only for it to be stopped midway as it was blocked by a bright turquoise spear. Steven and Rose's gaze flashed to the side, and fell on the owner of the spear. Pearl stood gripping her weapon in both hands, straining against Rose's strength. "Pearl!" Steven exclaimed with a smile. Rose let out a guttural growl, and swung her sword out sideways in Pearl's direction. Pearl bent over backwards, dodging the blow, before twirling round and sending a kick towards Rose's face. Rose raised her sword quickly enough to block it and remain on her feet, but the force of the attack sent her skidding few metres backwards. "Pearl!" Steven continued. "I know what she's planning! We have to stop her!" Pearl tossed her Diamond Line communicator to Steven. "Tell them whatever you need to. We'll keep the enemies off your back while you're busy."

Steven allowed himself a momentary glance over his shoulder. Amethyst was currently fighting her way through the throng of Facet 31 Gems, joining Bismuth and Connie. She and Pearl must have shown up together. He smiled to himself. He should have known his friends would come through for him. He activated the Diamond line communicator, and a screen bearing White's face appeared in the air in front of him. "White! It's Steven. The zoo's a weapon, and it's pointed at Earth! You have to stop it from firing!" White looked shocked, but responded quickly all the same. "Understood. We'll do what we can. Good luck Steven." The channel closed, and Steven turned his attention back to Rose, who was still trying to fight her way past Pearl to get to him. He still couldn't bring himself to abandon his attempts to reason with her, but he wasn't about to let her cut one of his friends in two either. Summoning another shield, he charged back into the fray.

The Diamonds' ship was possible the only ship in the fleet that was not a maelstrom of chaos. It was piloted exclusively by the three Diamonds, and while there was a very limited crew aboard Yellow and Blue's arms to monitor the other systems, the ship was still very quiet compared to the frenzy of activity that was surely going on on-board the other vessels. The quiet was punctuated only by the Diamonds' barked orders, and the regular rumbles of laser fire against the hull. The ship was durable enough to shrug off the majority of the attacks from the rather outdated Facet 31 ships, and was drawing ever closer to the formidable weapon that had once been the Human Zoo. "Alright, here's the plan" White said over the internal channel, heard by everyone on the ship. "As soon as we're in range, we're going to grab the barrel of that weapon, and position the ship right in front of it. We are not to let that weapon fire at all costs. We've already done so much harm to Earth over the course of our history; we cannot let any more harm come to it as a result of our conflict." Sat in her command chair in her arm, Yellow nodded to herself in agreement. It was time to start making up for millennia of mistakes.

As the Diamonds' ship came within reach of the weapon, Yellow and Blue willed their arm ships to reach out. The enormous mech grabbed the barrel of the weapon with both hands, and then bent at the elbows, bringing the torso fully in front of the weapon's business end. It looked for the entire world like some sort of giant mechanical samurai, about to impale itself on its own sword. A jet of fire shot from the base of the torso as White engaged the launch thrusters. From the zoo's command centre, Rose's eyes widened yet again as she realised silently what was happening. "They're trying to tilt the weapon away from Earth..." In between parrying blows from Pearl and Steven, she turned to one of her Peridots, and spoke out loud this time. "They're trying to reorient the weapon! Switch to it to conventional fire and take them out!" Rose knew that if she tried to engage the zoo's own thrusters to counter the Diamonds', the station would likely rip itself apart. It would be quicker and safer to dislodge the Diamonds' ship from the weapon. Switching the weapon from radiation to conventional laser fire would make it a potent anti-ship tool. The Peridot tapped the required commands into the console, her fellow Facet 31 members keeping the Crystal Gems off her back long enough for her to work. As she finished, the weapon let out a metallic wail, increasing in pitch as it wound up to fire. White watched from her bridge as the barrel of the weapon glowed in the Diamond mech's hands. "Keep hold of that weapon!" she ordered. "We need to block that shot no matter wh-" She didn't get to finish her sentence. A titanic blast of energy fired from the end of the weapon, blowing a hole the size of a house in the torso of the mech. Yellow and Blue's hands released from the barrel as the ship's nervous control shut down. The impact blew the ship back, and left it rotating slowly end over end as it drifted away; a trail of smoke and mangled white metal tumbling from the hole in its chest.

Rose smirked as she watched the huge humanoid vessel drift away. She knew a hit like that wouldn't put the Diamonds down for good, but it pleased her to simply swat away the people who had cast her aside just as casually all those years ago. Still, best not to dwell on it too long. It would be much more prudent to capitalise on the opening she had been presented with. "Switch back to radiation mode!" she shouted to any technician who might hear her. "Prepare to fire on Earth!"

On-board the Diamonds' ship, White got groggily to her feet. She controlled her portion of the ship from the head, and had therefore survived the blow the ship had taken to the torso, but it had still been quite a bump. She tried to will some displays into existence to assess the damage, but the ship would not answer her. Evidently the damage was quite severe indeed. Resorting to more manual measures, she produced her Diamond Line communicator, and brought up Yellow and Blue on its monitors. The plume of smoke that was visible behind Yellow's head told White that their ships had taken a beating too, though at least theirs appeared to have functional lights and consoles. "Can you two still move?" she asked hurriedly, acutely aware that Rose Quartz was likely already charging the weapon again. "We can, but we don't have enough power to drag your ship with us" replied Blue, looking apologetic. White was frustrated that her ability to be of active assistance was at an end, but she knew what had to be done. "That's fine" she replied. "You two go. Restrain the weapon in any way you can." Yellow and Blue nodded, electing not to close the channel this time, so that White could still be included in at least some capacity. The two arm ships broke free of the torso and flew back towards the zoo, leaving the statuesque white bust floating in a cloud of its own debris.

The arm ships grabbed onto the weapon again. Both Diamond pilots were acutely aware that with no torso segment, they couldn't block the weapon's blasts again, but at least now they were free to attempt to reorient the weapon without coming under direct fire. Some of the station's other turrets tried to target them, but they weren't designed to be able to aim towards the main weapon. If Yellow and Blue were careful enough, they could theoretically stay in the sweet spot where they could carry out their task without having to worry about the station's defences. "Divert all non-essential power to the thrusters!" ordered Yellow. "We have to tilt that weapon away from Earth at all costs!" Given that Earth was billions of miles away, she knew that adjusting the angle by even a fraction of a degree would be enough to prevent the shot from hitting its target. From here on, it was going to be a battle between their ships' thrusters, and those of the station.

Rose watched the two titanic metal arms grapple with the weapon. A quick glance at the screens to her right revealed that the weapon was 0.025 degrees out of alignment. It wasn't much, but it still needed to be corrected if there was to be any chance of the beam hitting Earth. She let out a snarl. "Divert some of our ships to attack the Diamonds! We need to get the weapon back into position!" The station's thrusters were straining against the arm ships, but Rose knew that she couldn't keep this up forever. It was only a matter of time before the hull stress became too great, and the stations started coming apart. She had to hope her ships could deal with the Diamonds before that happened. Knowing that there was no more that she could do on that front, she turned her attention back to Steven, who was fending off Quartzes and Rubies from all sides. Rose reassured herself that even if she was powerless to influence the battle outside, at least she could have some measure of revenge on Pink. Shoving a path through her fellow Quartzes, made another charge at her enemy.

Outside surface of the weapon:

Two escape pods melded through the hull plating of the station as though it were some sort of viscous liquid. As they pinched free of the plating, the pods began to unfold; deactivated from within by their occupants. Once the pods had folded away into flat disks beneath them, Lapis and Peridot floated in the vacuum of space. Peridot used her metal powers to move the disk underneath herself as a mobility aid, while Lapis simply allowed her own pod to drift away, having no need of it. When the pair had evacuated the humans, the original plan had been to reunite with Steven afterwards and help him in his fight against Rose. However, with the station on high alert, the corridors were now crawling with more Facet 31 members than the two could fight their way through. Lapis though, had thought of another way they could be useful. While all Gems could survive in a vacuum, few had her or Peridot's mobility. She watched the battle unfolding around her, as colourful beams of light arced between the two factions' ships, causing explosions whenever they hit their mark. Cutting through the chaos, she chose a target. Peridot did the same, and the two gave each other a brief nod before flying off into the thick of it.

Lapis soared through the void, twirling out of the way of weapons fire from multiple ships. She was small enough that it wasn't clear if the ships of either faction had even noticed her. It was very possible the weapons fire had been intended for another ship, and she was simply experiencing the consequences of being in between the two sides. In the frigid cold of space, she was having to dedicate a portion of her focus to keeping her wings in a liquid state; running small vibrations through them constantly to keep them from freezing. It only took a small amount of her power though, so it left her a lot to work with when the time came to go on the offensive. Glancing over to the planet which the zoo orbited, she saw exactly what she had been hoping to see. While many of the bodies in the planet's ring system were metallic, just as many were made of ice. Ice was just solidified water, and water was something she could work with. She reached an outstretched hand towards the rings. Even at a distance of thousands of metres, her power was sufficient to have quite the impact. Exercising a much greater deal of her power than she had been using to vibrate her wings, she mimed an overarm swing, and threw a piece of ice the size of a house in the direction of the nearest Facet 31 ship. The huge body crashed into the archaic yellow saucer, smashing a large hole in the hull. The antique vessel was left drifting lifelessly in space, as its crew no doubt scrambled to effect repairs.

That got Facet 31's attention. Other ships began converging on her; their fire clearly targeted at her specifically this time. Most were Era-2 sun-class vessels like Lars' ship. The more modern ships would likely not be as easy to damage as the saucer had been, but relenting wasn't exactly Lapis' style. Jutting both arms forwards, in a pose that almost looked as though she was expecting to fire lightning from her fingertips, she hurled more house-sized chunks of ice at her attackers. Her projectiles moved to fact for most of the ships to dodge, and, while they received only dents, they still reeled from the blows. Lapis allowed herself another smile; the third or fourth one that day, which was probably some sort of record. On Earth, she often had to reign in her power, out of a desire to avoid property damage, or to not frighten the humans. Out here though, in space, she could really cut loose. Her only regret was that the nearby planet was a gas giant, and therefore had no ocean for her to manipulate. Then it would really have been fun. Still, she was more than capable of making do with the tools she had. Summoning another hunk of ice from the rings, she sped towards one of the dazed vessels. Facet 31 was going to regret messing with her home.