Blue jumped down from the massive empty platform onto the cold metal floor of the battleship. The room was empty, except for Delta who was waiting for her next to the gate which led out of the chamber. When blue gem approached the prime obsidian, she turned and walked out of the chamber, Blue followed.
They walked silently through the corridors of the spacecraft, barely encountering any other gems, as everyone was either deployed or resting in their sections of the ship. After some time they entered an even emptier section of the ship. These were the quarters of the prime obsidians and other important or high standing personnel. After some time they reached their shared quarters and Delta opened the door.
Both gems walked through the heavily fortified door into the huge room which served as a workspace. There was a huge table in the middle of the room so that Delta could hold meetings with her subordinates for those times when the giant meeting room in the bowels of the ship couldn't be used. Next to it stood several smaller tables with consoles. Along the walls were aligned several cupboards filled with various documents.
The door closed behind them, leaving them completely isolated from all surroundings.
Blue collapsed on the ground, tears streaming down her face, sobs ripping through her shaking body. Delta sat down next to her. She didn't try to calm the blue gem, she learned that this was useless after the first several times. The only way she could help was by being there and listening.
After some time, the sobs dyed downs and the lapis lazuli started talking.
"I can still see their faces… The pain, the terror as their gems broke apart… Their screams still echo in my ears… I betrayed them! I was their leader, I was supposed to protect them, to find a way to win without losses, and I lead them to their shattering. I lead them into a suicide mission…"
"None of this is your fault Lappy… You couldn't have done anything… There was no way to prevent this."
Delta knew her words were just a repeat of what she said several cycles ago, but she didn't care anymore. She was too tired to think of anything else. She could barely hold herself for Lappy. If not for her, Delta wou!d have broken down long ago.
She wanted to scream until her voicebox and lungs would rip appart. She wanted to break everything in her sight, until her hands were completely shaterred, and unusable anymore. She wanted to run endlessly, until her legs would break. She wanted, no she needed respite from this endless hell…
"I lost most of my group… What kind of leader I am after this? How can I look into the eyes of those who lost their friends because of me? How can I continue doing this with all of these shardings on my conciousnes?"
Delta didn't answer, she didn't know how. What could she say to someone who experienced such trauma. She could barely comprehend such losses, not to mention how it felt to experience something like that herself.
There was nothing more to be said. And so they sat there, on the floor, their backs against the door, in complete silence.
The report smacked hard against the table, falling completely appart, pages flying everywhere.
Ninety percent losses!" Morganite nervously walked around her cabinet, silently murmuring to herself.
The lapis lazuli assault teams were nearly wiped out during the last assault. And while the reserve was quite massive, due to the fact how numerous the former generation of Lapis lazuli gems were, with such losses they would run out of flying troops before the middle point of the crusade was reached. And something had to be done about this as Lapis lazuli gems were the only way the crusaders had to counter terka sky based forces and to quickly fill up the holes in battle lines.
They were also partly terror weapons, which was very valuable when trying to break terka forces. This raised problems, due to the fact that for this to work, the enemy could only know that these forces were winged and used two sabers. For this reason, any enemy that the assault teams encountered had to be exterminated completely.
But this raised even more problems, due to the fact that a lapis lazuli simply couldn't sustain a form strong enough to carry weapons strong enough or long ranged enough to combat either terka land or air forces. Which only left a brutal melee assault as the only option. Which off course meant massive amounts off casualties.
But there was no way to solve this. Morganite searched for a way to solve this problem for the last ten planet cycles as they were readying and equiping the lapis lazuli gems and plowing through the last of the barely colonized enclaves and the few occasional terka military outposts.
And yet even though she wasn't able to find anything, that could not be easily countered by terka weaponry for a dozen cycles. Assault team leaders and land force commanders requested something to be done now.
The scientist fell onto her chair, rubbing the orange gem on her neck to calm herself. She turned on her console, maybe she would find something in the archives. Maybe someone had found any blueprints and uploaded it to the archives, or maybe she had missed something.
She looked through everything she could find, but to her frustration, there was nothing that would change her situation. The weapons she found were either too weak to harm interceptors, or too heavy to be carried by a lapis lazuli.
She turned off the archive and stared blankly at her console screen. She had completely runout of ideas.
"Well, I have wasted so much time, this won't change anything." She murmured to herself as she turned on the program.
As the program turned on, the screen split into two. Two columns with different illustrations or blueprints of weapons or other equipment started moving into opposite directions, stopping after a designated amount of time, putting one picture from each column between two lines that ran through the screen. But after some time, without further input, the columns would start moving again.
This program was designed by Morganite to save her from situations such as this. Before her experiences serving under the obsidian council she would have never relied on such a program, which lacked any logic and was completely based on randomness, as her saviour. But several events fought her that sometimes the answer is so illogical or unconventional, that one would simply be unable to find it by using common sense or logic.
She hoped that this was a similar situation, even thought the last few combinations proposed by the program were completely useless. She assured herself that first combinations were never usefull. And after all previous times proved to be successful,did they not?
She kept assuring herself with those arguments as the number of proposed combinations slowly climbed through the hundreds and later thousands.
She held herself calm and kept looking at the screen even as fear started gripping through her core. This didn't impact her in any direct way, but if a solution was not found the entire crusade could collapse.
And so she kept waiting.
And so she kept watching.
After the second cycle passed and almost all of the possible combinations were made, Morganite gave up. She leaned slightly forward, ready to turn off the program and after that the console as the last combination appeared on the screen. Morganites fingers stopped just above the button as she noticed what combination was proposed to her.
Instead of the "close"button, she pressed "pause"and started analysing the combination. Something seemed strangely right about it, even though this equipment was completely different in purpose and quite different in design. She quickly opened another program and hastily threw together a primitive and very basic blueprints After that a gallery was opened and a certain picture pulled up and put next to the blueprints.
A smile appeared on Morganites face as everything fell into place.