Planet v32m of solar system 1110n
In the orbit of a blue gas giant that orbited a binary star system, A dark red volcanic moon slowly made its round trip around its planet, the twin suns from afar just barely reaching the moon; from beneath the heavy ashen clouds of the ever active volcanic moon's geoactivity, the bare sun rays from the far distance of the binary suns peaked through the clouds, signifying that the moon was in its night and day orbit phase for the many gem denizens that occupied the moon.
Built within the face of one massive volcano, which was in one of its cycles of erupting with lava signified by its ashen smoke flowing out from its top, a facility built with angular surfaces in gradients of red and orange with its walls and roofs having a sheen to them. Outside the facility, Sulfur gems were hard at work as they pushed floating grav trollies to and from the facility, with several gem cargo ships docked outside on an airfield.
The entire area was surrounded by tall poles that projected upwards a forcefield that diverate any and all debris from the active smoke, lava, and rocks that would inevitably explode from out of the active volcano of the one nearby the many others within a distance of eye view; that left the facility and gems to work unhindered from the forces of nature as they all worked around the clock.
The Sulfur gems in particular were mostly era one gems, having yet any need to replenish their numbers, or even increase them as their productivity had yet to be burdened with any influx of war assets that the planet made for Yellow Diamond's military. The common appearance of the sulfur gems were red for the skin of their lightforms, with dark red gauntlets that looked rocky in appearance. The hair for every Sulfur gem was coal black, while their gems gleaned bright reddish orange.
From the viewpoint of one of the fortified windows of the nearby facility, a green Olivine gem paced back and forth as she fiddled with her holopad. "No no no. we can't have that." she muttered to herself as she used a stylus to write into her holopad while pacing around her office that was in gradient red colors to match the outside. The entire room had a red hue as a side effect while enhancing her own gem colors to stand out among it all. "Yes, that should do it." Olivine continued to mutter to herself in satisfaction.
Ceasing her pacing around her office, Olivine stood in front of her office window to glance out to check on the other active volcanoes in the distance, there were five visible, with three of them active and flowing with lava, while the other two were smoking and had visible volcanic lightning striking out from the ashen clouds. Reaching up to touch the side of her floating green glasses that allowed her to interface with it, Olivine zoomed in with her optics to see how the other facilities were faring.
Lifting her other arm up that was covered with a gauntlet, as well as her gem that was on the backside of her hand, but was left visible with a glass covering, Olivine spoke into her gauntlet, "Facilities 4J and 5G, any changes in your volcanoes before their scheduled eruption?" she asked through her gauntlet glove.
After a few seconds of silence, two screens popped up from Olivine's glove as she held it out for her to speak with the other gems on the other side of the two way video call. Her gauntlet was just one of her inventions she'd been trying out, and she's been hoping it would pique her Diamond's interest for era two's technology for the coming centuries. Essentially, it is supposed to teleport an olvine's gem to a safe location should the gem ever get poofed, a failsafe for any of those rebellions that have been popping up over the centuries.
Of course, that was just one of the major functions, but she'd show her diamond the rest once the next Technology exposition gathering on homeworld. If there was anything good that came out of Rose's rebellion, it was her Diamond's insistent need to increase their tech and military exponentially. Of course, it came at the terrible cost of Pink Diamond.
Olivine directed her attention between the two gems on the other end of the call, two red tephroites,that like their many other gems, had an amorphous clear body. Both head glowing orange dread hair tips that covered their eyes as they converse with Olivine in a polite manner, "Everything is going as predicted, My Olivine." The tephroite on the left holovideo responded with a small smile, while in the background of her video showed many rubies at work in offloading supplies from an aircraft that had just arrived.
One of the Rubies however tripped and fell, causing the package she carried to burst open and allow the contents to spill out that were all robonoids, all of which began to walk off in aimless direction. "I'll get them, my Tephroite, don't you worry a thing!" The Ruby shouted in worry, before scrambling to chase after the robonoids.
The tephroite in response to the accident, frowned as she glanced at the fumbling Ruby, "Hurry it up! We can't have those robonoids wander off without the proper designated jobs inputted into them!" she chastised the ruby, before looking back at Olivine through the two way video call, "Aside from that stupid ruby, we have just received our new robonoids as scheduled, and yes, our volcano on my end is soon to erupt within the next day."
Olivine frowned in disappointment, but refrained from speaking any further on the matter about the ruby's accident. You get what you have when it comes to rubies, they were simple gems that were either relegated to guard duty for Sapphires, or other means of productivity for their gem line, nothing else that didn't exhaust their simple minds.
"Very well then, resume your overwatch of your facility." she commanded, earning a salute from the Tephroite, before the video call with her end.
From the remaining holoscreen that showed the other Tephroite, Olivine adjusted her glasses before speaking with the other gem, "How goes your volcano? Your's was documented to erupt with a substantial amount of peridotite within its magma."
"Quite so, yes." The Tephroite responded with a quick nod, and brought up a holopad with a stylus in her nimble amorphous hand, "The volcano should be fully active within a months time, which will give us a reasonable timetable of preparing the capsules needed to ship the resources off to homeworld." she commented while tapping her holopad with her stylus to go through the date and time of the moment the volcano would be ready to erupt.
"Good." Olivine nodded back at the Tephroite, "See to it that you send some of your smoky quartz over when they are finished for the day, I have some spare empty capsules that you can use." she instructed with a firm tone.
The Tephroite saluted her Olivine with her amorphous hand, "By your command, my Olivine." She replied back in respect, before Olivine ended the call with the gem.
Relaxing her gauntleted arm back beside her, Olivine stared out her window for a few seconds, to watch for a few moments as the other volcanoes continued to have lava flow from out of their tops, while the other two volcanoes continued bellowing with ashen smoke, while periodically volcanic lightning struck out from the heated clouds of the volcanoes. The bright volcanic lightning lit up Olivine's glasses from afar, while reflecting the images of the lightning momentarily.
Adjusting her glasses once more as she fiddled with the settings on it, allowing data to feed into the left optic, Olivine frowned to herself as she read incoming reports, before turning on her heels to march herself out of her office, "Oh dear, my Diamond will undoubtedly be calling-"
Before she could finish her sentence, the right optics of her glasses lit up, signifying she was getting a call from her Diamond herself. Walking quickly back to her desk, Olivine palmed an oval convex device that had a hand imprint on it. Shortly after palming the device, a large holovideo displayed behind her that was projected from a device on her office's ceiling.
Snapping to the diamond salute, Olivine watched as the video began to display the appearance of her Diamond sitting in a yellow stone chair with her leaning forward with her elbows on the armrests, and her fingers interlocked. Her Yellow Diamond has a focused look about her as she stared at Olivine from the other end of the video call. "Olivine facate m4d cut w42." she announced with a firm and strict tone.
"Ma'am!" Olivine stood ramrod straight as her Diamond announced her designated full gem name, "I am here to serve to the fullest of my capabilities!"
Without missing a beat in the conversation, Yellow Diamond spoke back to Olivine with a focused look of determination, "The time has come to put project ch1531 into use. I do not believe I need to tell you why." she said.
"Yes ma'am!" Olivine relaxed her posture and tapped her glasses with her finger of her non-gauntlet covered hand, "I just received your war intel package."
Yellow Diamond lifted her index fingers out from her interlaced hands and tapped them into each other in an idle gesture, "Good, I want that ship deployed and ready as soon as possible for one of my armadas to have it join up with." she instructed, before ending the call, just as quickly she had started the conversation.
Once the holoscreen blinked out of existence from Olivine's office, the gem herself straightened out her white overcoat, before quickly marching herself out while lifting her gauntlet up to begin a number of orders with haste.
As the Olivine gem exited from her office, she stepped out onto a vertical catwalk that allowed her to walk above the entire inner facility, red hot magma was being siphoned up out from the bottom floor and into fortified large capsules that were made to keep the magma at a consistent temperature to keep it in its semi liquid form.
While Olivine began calling up many gems to begin getting everything ready to get the designated ship ready for deployment, beneath the metal catwalk she walked across, dozens of sulfur gems were stationed below in carrying the capsules off, slotting new ones in, some were even on duty to keep an eye on the flow of magma that was being siphoned up through the ground.
The ground floor itself was a seemingly translucent floor that showed the depths below of a flowing river of lava, with columns from the siphons shooting down into it. The glow of the lava and red hot magma gave the entire factory floor a crimson hue that lit reflected on the gems' bodies as they worked around the clock in collecting the magma from the active volcano.
"This is Olivine facate m4d cut w43, I want everyone at theirs station to hear this, this is a code p14n37 c24ck32. This is not a drill, I repeat this is not a drill!" she somewhat in a rushed voice into her gauntlet, "I am now ordering all stations to be put on hold, I want project ch1531 ready for liftoff within the next hour!" she instructed, before ending her announcement.
Already, below her, the sulfur gems made sure to end their shifts appropriately before rushing off to their new station, dozens of Sulfurs rushed off to the backend of the factory floor, while above them all, Olivine marched herself towards the backend of the factory as well, where was doorway was present for her to go through.
After making her trip to the other side of the facility, where many gems such as Peridots, Sulfurs, and Corundums were rushing in to begin the hasty process of getting the ship inside the enormous room up and running, Olivine walked herself down the stairway leading from the doors she walked out from, down to the platform that had several Nephrites stationed standing by monitors showing data about the ship.
Walking down over to the platform, Olivine glanced at various monitors before stepping next to the Nephite captain that was designated to 'captain' the ship so to speak. Both gems looked up at the massive ship that had a giant weapon fashioned on the bottom of it, while the ship itself was fashioned into a sharp angular cone.
After a few seconds of silence between the two gems while the workers below the ship were hard at work in getting the ship ready, Olivine spoke to the Nephrite captain with a clipped tone, "feeling nervous?" She asked the gem, while reaching up to lift her glasses off to look at the ship with her own eyes. The ship itself was a testament to their Diamond's need for a super weapon to end a conflict quickly.
While it was supposed to be a last resort, since they needed planets and their resources all intact and manageable, the planet cracker was created with the need to end any conflict if the planet was deemed unnecessity in the long run.
They couldn't create more gems, afterall, if the planet was split in twain; theoretically, they could, but the theory behind using such method was theoretical at best, and a failure at worst; in the end, creating gems required the life of the planets and its flora.
The Nephrite captain spoke back to Olivine as she crossed her arms while looking up at her ship with her single eye, "A tiny bit, but I'm also glad I get to finally do what I was made for. I almost thought our Diamond would never bother using this ship."
Olivine hummed in agreement while she looked down at her glasses for a moment, and noticed a smudge. "You get that war information package yet?" she asked while pulling out a cloth from her breast pocket, and wiped her glasses until the smudge was gone.
Nephrite looked away from the ship to pull out her holopad, making a hologram of a planet blip into existence, "Yeah." she affirmed, and looked intently at the planet that was slated to be cracked. It had two lush green continents with the rest of it an ocean for aquatic organics. "The planet was surveyed for its resource value some thousands of years ago, but now it has become the homeworld of some spacefaring race…I thought organics couldn't get that smart." she mused.
After finishing wiping down her glasses, Olivine affixed her optics back onto her head over her eyes and looked at Nephrite with a frown, "Ten thousands years ago, to be precise, according to the war information package. They had seemingly advanced beyond our calculations." she remarked, before correcting herself, "Well, not our, as in I had anything to do with it, but the Peridots that had been in charge of the survey."
Nephrite put her holopad away and looked back at Olivine with a fixed star of her single eye, "I know what you mean, you don't have to try and be specific." she spoke in an annoyed tone, "I'm not like your sulfurs or stars forbid rubies." she remarked.
Olivine frowned back at the Nephrite captain, "Watch your tongue, Nephrite, I still out rank you by several gem classes." she tsked at the captain.
The two gems stared each other down, before the Nephrite Captain acquiesced from the staredown and looked back up at her ship, "Apologies, you'll have to forgive me. It's been too long since I've waited to be deployed with my crew."
Letting the snark slide, Olivine looked back up at the ship as well, and conversed with the Nephrite Captain, "Yes, well, perhaps you should put in a request." she suggested, "After this campaign is over, I'm sure you'll get a chance."
"Right." The Nephrite captain nodded in agreement.
Yellow Palace
Within one of the barracks designated as belonging to the troops for Citrine's armada, dozens of gems were on high alert as they marched off in a rush to the loading bays for Yellow diamond's ships. Among a group of gems that were yet to be deployed, Corundum and Fayalite stood with their fellow gems that had been collected by Yellow Diamond's Citrine commander.
Corundum reached up to scratch at her head as she had a nervous expression on her face while watching the various quartz soldiers hurry off to be ready to board their ships. "You think…you think we'll be part of that mess?" she asked Fayalite beside her while glancing up at her
Fayalite looked through her bangs down at Corundum, "I doubt it." she answered with a nonchalant shrug, "We barely did anything other than get acquainted with fighting by that Bismuth."
Beside the two of them, Pink Tephroite and Blue Spodumene stood with a somewhat relaxed demeanor. Tephroite was the first to speak as she glanced at the two beside her, "Guess again, I heard that Citrine commander will use any and all gems she has available to finish a battle, so I suspect that she'll have to do something." she remarked in a soft tone of voice.
Spodumene spoke next with a bubbly attitude, "Hey!" she began to say as she glanced at the others, "Who knows, maybe we'll be stuck with moving stuff around, than being put on the battlefield!" she suggested, "I mean, it's not like that commander would use gems that have no experience in battle, right?"
"That's where you are wrong!" The Bismuth from before announced herself as she stormed over to the confiscated gems of planet Albus, "At attention, all of you!" she barked out while biting down on a metal pick, and pulled out to point at them all while stopping in front of them all, "Listen up!" Bismuth announced.
The gems did as they were told, so as to not incur the wrath of the bismuth gem, as the gems were notoriously able to fashion their hands into hammers and slam them with enough force to poof a gem. Bismuth h47 eyed the gems as she planted her fist against her hip and spoke aloud, "Within the next hour, we'll be shipping off post haste! So grab your designated weapon, and get a move on! MOVE IT!" she yelled, earning a snap of a salute from the gems, before they all dashed off to do as ordered.
Bismuth cracked a smile as she watched the gems run off, and put her metal chisel piece back into her mouth to chew on, "Yup, they'll do just fine under me, I'll make sure of it." she mused to herself before rushing off to get ready to lead the gems to their designated ship.
Citrine
With quickness in her strides, the commander made her way through the Yellow palace hallways, her face was that of focus as she dwelled on everything she had been debriefed on from the war information package. The last thing she expected after all the messes she had been through, it seemed like she'd never get an ounce of reprieve; it was one thing after another, and now they had organics that her Diamond never thought would have advanced in a short time frame of ten thousand years.
'Of all the shortsightedness and overconfidence!' Citrine mentally screamed, before calming herself as she reminded herself what she was thinking, "Damn it all." she hissed under her breath as she stormed through the hallways now with her fists clenched, "Of all the times to think that it wouldn't be right to simply annihilate an entire species, I almost forgot I'm part of a space conquering race, of course that would be the go to option of ridding the competition for the galaxy!" she chastised herself.
Of the many scenarios humans have always pictured their first time interacting with another race, the dream scenario would be an alliance, but putting it into realistic terms, every interaction would inevitably result in confrontation. The Diamond empire and its race was no different, but that didn't mean she had to agree with any of it. In any other scenario, she might have proposed a test to see if they could use organics as an axillary resource to supplant the numbers they needed to fill in the need for positions of the empire with the ongoing resource shortage.
But that also led to the problem of the lifespan of organics, compared to a gem, and the mere fact you had to teach organic how to do a job while gems were inherently programmed on how to do what they were created to do the moment they emerged from their kindergartens.
In the end, she couldn't really do anything other than do as ordered and march off to war against a space faring race that had initiated contact by attacking one of their colonies; either they were a stupid race, or they wanted to preemptively start war with them when they were at their weakest.
Citrine halted in place as she realized, the organics were attacking the Diamond Empire while they themselves were dealing with internal conflicts from all sides. Citrine eyes widened a tad as she reached up to palm her chin, "...someone set this up…someone…must have made sure this had happened!" she theorized, "How else would a spacefaring civilization attack now, of all times?" she questioned herself with narrowed eyes. "Why even wait ten thousand years and not report that the organics advanced this far?"
Letting out an exhausted sigh, Citrine continued marching herself towards the shipyards, "too many questions." she hissed out in anger, while momentarily reaching up to her chest to pull out her Pearl's gem from her own gem.
"Pearl." Citrine announced as she stormed through the hallways, passing by several soldiers and guards that saluted her in respect, "It's been more than I day, by my estimate, are you finished yet?" she demanded in a rushed tone of voice.
In response to Citrine's inquiry, the pearl gem glowed bright orange, allowing Citrine to release the gem into the air as it floated up. Citrine stood and waited as Orange Pearl's hardlight body formed from out of her pearl gem, before finally becoming herself with little change in her uniform.
Orange pearl opened her eyes to look up at her Citrine, before looking smiling in relief, "Oh, it's good to see you safe, My Citrine." she remarked while palming her chest, before frowning a bit, "You…look a bit taller."
Citrine frowned back at her, "Taller? I feel the same height, Pearl, I think you're just imagining things." the commander commented back, prompting Orange Pearl to look back at her with an apologetic look.
"I suppose you are right, it's probably just my imagination that you look a tad bit taller." she remarked.
"Now come along pearl, we have another conflict to end." The Commander instructed, before leading the way for her pearl to follow post haste.
"Oh dear!" Orange Pearl remarked in response as she followed after her commander.
If there was one thing Citrine liked about having her orange pearl, it was that she came as a designated Yellow Court pearl that was pre-designed to be able to reform herself faster, compared to the other pearls that were premade for the other quartz. Yellow court pearls are noted to be the fastest, while the white court were the slowest due to the inherent fact that the white court was all about perfection.
Blue court pearls were comparatively second, with Pink court pearls a close third, that left yellow court pearls as the fastest pearls to reform their bodies, due to the need of how Yellow Diamond required every gem within her court to not waste time.
As Citrine stepped out from the doorway to stand outside where her armada of ships were stationed, the duo of Sapphires from the off color undercity were waiting on her with expectant smiles; the commander however frowned at them as she palmed her hips, "Am I to assume fluorite unfused, along with your other gems among your off color group?" she questioned.
A cerulean pearl who had been standing behind the two sapphires, stepped beside them with a nervous smile, "Hi…hehe, hello…um…" she shuttered out, "I'm one of those gems." she squeaked out while poking her fingers into each other, "Sorry…it's been awhile since the others and I have been separated." she apologized towards the commander as Citrine was looking at her with a fixated stare.
Citrine narrowed her eyes at the pearl, before snapping her fingers, "come, all of you are to walk with me and my pearl." she ordered, "We'll talk more once we enter my ship." she added.
With nothing else to do but do as ordered, the two sapphires and cerulean pearl followed after the Orange Pearl while making sure to keep a respectful distance between the two.
Author's note; bon appetite