Homeworld
Yellow Diamond
The sound of fingers tapping into a screen keyboard filled the private chambers of Yellow Diamond, the matriarch in question could be seen sitting back in her yellow throne-like chair as she used both hands to type and slide her digits across the keyboards around her to bring up and read incoming reports of her colonies and ongoing production of various gems on them; Yellow's pearl on the other hand could be seen working at her own small desk beside her Diamond's chair, her task was to simply accept calls and give the gem on the other end of the call an appointed time in which her Diamond would be available to call back.
One such call would soon make that exception, as one of Yellow Pearl's communicators on her desk lit up. "Oh my." she perked up in subtle anticipation, the one call she couldn't simply tell the other gem on the other side to wait was ringing her communicator. After a few inputs on her own keyboard to key in the command to pick the line up, a holo-screen soon popped up from the communicator, showing a certain Citrine Commander on the other end. "Citrine." Yellow Pearl spoke with an attempt on her part to hide her contempt for her Diamond's favorite Gem out of all her other creations. "To what reason are you calling?" she queried.
On the other end of the call, Citrine could be seen sitting in her chair within the bridge of her Ship; her legs were crossed while her arms rested on the armrests of her chair, one finger was idly tapping out of habit to calm her nerves. "Hello, Pearl." she spoke politely through the two way video communication, "I'm calling in to report a few things I'd like you to pass on to our Diamond, I'm sure her hands are full at the moment in dealing with reports." Citrine spoke dryly.
Yellow Pearl momentarily let her eyes drift to the side and muttered, 'That's one way of saying it' she muttered under her breath, before giving her full attention to Citrine and responded back to her, "I'll be sure to pass along the message." She cued Citrine to go ahead and explain what she needed to say, not noticing that her Yellow Diamond had ceased her activities, and listened in on the conversation once she heard the familiar voice of her Citrine Gem.
"Right." Citrine began to say as she leaned to the side a bit in her chair, "I'd like to formally apologize that I'll be a bit late on the return trip to homeworld." she said with an irritated look on her face as she made a flippant gesture with her hand, "My ship was unfortunately accosted by an unknown faction within gem society-" Citrine tried to explain herself of her situation, only for Yellow to interrupt the call between Yellow Pearl and Citrine.
"Pearl." Yellow Diamond spoke up, earning both gems attention as she lowered her hand down to be given the communicator, "Hand me the device." she ordered with a firm tone and expression.
Yellow Pearl, who straightened up a bit when her Diamond called for her, immediately took the communicator from her desk and offered it up to her Diamond, "Yes, My Diamond." she responded, shortly before delivering the device into Yellow Diamond's palm.
As Yellow Diamond lifted the communication device in her head up to place it onto her own desk, she leaned forward to speak with her Citrine Gem commander. "What's this I hear about your ship being 'accosted', what's the status of your ship?" she questioned the gem on the other end of the call.
Citrine, who now sat up straight while giving her Diamond the salute in respect, responded succinctly, "My Diamond, All is well, save for the fact that I now have the perpetrators bubbled and all other hostels as well." she reported with a sharp look in her eyes, "The Ship is damaged, and it'll take at least a week's worth of repairs with the peridots I have on board." Citrine explained to her Diamond.
"Hmm." Yellow narrowed her eyes at her Citrine gem on the other side of the two-way video call, "I noticed you said an unknown faction from within gem society were the ones that accosted you, earlier." she mused with a critical gaze in her eyes, "Are you certain whoever attacked you, isn't some rabble rebels?" she questioned her Citrine gem.
Citrine shook her head negatively, and relaxed her arms once the conversation went into full swing with her Diamond. "No, the perpetrators were able to use advanced technology to displace my ships out of warpspeed." she answered with an uncertain look on her face, "I'm planning on extracting what I can from their memories, and get to the bottom of who orchestrated the attack on my ship, my crew, and me." she responded.
As Yellow Diamond began typing into her holo-keyboard, she traced the call to home in on where the call was coming from. "You…landed on Pink's moon…" she muttered with a narrowed look in her eyes.
"I Apologize!" Citrine spoke up with a panicked look on her face, "We crashed, not landed, and we're doing our best to respect the-" she would have spoken more, but a sharp gaze from Yellow Diamond ceased her ramblings.
"Be still yourself, Citrine." she spoke with an authoritative tone in her voice as she leaned back in her chair, before crossing her arms and legs, "Tell me, is the garden area still operational, are any gems still there tending to the garden on that moon of Pink's?" she questioned her Citrine gem.
"I…I haven't sent anyone to check the place yet." Citrine began to explain with a cautious tone in her voice, "Do…do you wish for me to check on the place?" she questioned her Diamond.
"Yes." Yellow Diamond spoke sharply as she stood up, taking the communicator with her, "Is there anything else of note you wish to inform me of?" she questioned further.
Citrine gave a positive nod back, "A comet is on a collision course with the moon, but by the calculations done, the Garden will be able to remain unscathed."
"Hmph." Yellow Diamond sighed to herself, "I see, I'd have to hate to tell Blue that Pink's garden was destroyed." she mused, before speaking once more. "Take care not to run into any more incidents, Citrine, I'll be seeing you soon within the allotted time after your ship is repaired." Yellow ordered, prompting Citrine to stand up and give one final diamond salute and a 'My diamond', before the call ended.
Once Yellow Diamond handed the communicator back down to her Pearl, she reached up and clasped her hand on her chin in a gesture of thinking as she mentally went through the bits of information she was told by her Citrine gem; There were many noble factions within the higher echelons of gem society, with a select few within the caste were allowed to actually put to use new gem technology before its put into widespread use. That fact alone allowed Yellow Diamond to narrow down the suspects by a wide margin, but what Yellow didn't like was that the warp displacement technology was brand new, and only someone of Diamond Authority had the permission to put it into use.
She would know, her Peridots came up with the schematics of the technology for the purpose of installing it into her own ship; That left Yellow with two suspects, but with how Blue has been these past centuries, Yellow was left with White…and that thought made Yellow Diamond rethink how she would approach this conundrum that her Warp Displacement was used on her Citrine Gem's ship. "Come, Pearl." Yellow ordered as she exited out of her room, the pitter pattering of small footsteps could be heard behind her as she left her room.
She'd need to inspect the records of procured technology within the last century, before she made any movements of accusing White of mishandling or misusing of gem technology. Yellow Diamond couldn't inspect the records from her room, the archived procurements were hardlined within data discs instead of stored within data bank servers; thus she was left making a trip to the data archives.
Planet Albus 01 of the Patet Sol System
From the view of outer space, the planet looked to be an ecumenopolis, a world in which not a speck is left untouched with megacities covering the surface of the world; the night sky part of the planet as it rotated on its axis lit up with gem-building lights, showing the planet's residents never rested…though that's not saying much when the majority of Gem species do not partake in sleep.
From the point of view on the surface of the planet, or at least the upper crust of all the megastructures built upon each other with sky crawling gem-skyscrapers built high towards the sky, the city was abuzz with gem aristocrats traveling in gem-styled hover vehicles piloted by Amphibole gems, lesser gems of the Nephrite gem line. Amphibole gems share a good portion of looks to their Nephrite gem cousin gem line, save for color being light green color scheme in contrast to a Nephrite gem's average color scheme of dark green.
The point of view then changes further down to the depths below the megacity sprawling planet, a place where not even a ray from the planet's binary stars could be seen from. It is here where the majority of gem society live, that is to say, the servants, the maintenance crews, the clean up, etc. Many gems have gone centuries without seeing the upper heights of the planets, others do see it sometimes when duty dictates, but the majority are stuck never seeing the light of the suns in order to not be seen by the higher echelons of gem caste society.
Some gems would even say they never once saw the surface, and yearn to one day see life beyond the towering megastructures that blot out any attempts for the lower crust of gem society to see what goes on in the upper parts of the planet's society.
Corundum had a body similar to that of a Ruby, with hair styled into an afro and bright red skin. Her Gem line was the predecessor to the Rubies, yet her line of work involved carrying materials from point a to point b; a monotonous type of work she's only ever known, something that should have been displaced by automation, but Corundum could count her lucky stars that her use by gem society hadn't yet outdated her to the point of disposing her gem line.
Corundum shuttered while carrying her packages over her shoulders in her arms as she remembered when White Diamond 'expired' the Hematite gem line, that was more than ten thousand years ago, but still remembered when the Herkimer Quartz soldiers came down and rounded up every Hematite in existence; they said it was something to do with relocating the entire Hematite gem line to a different planet to be processed for different use, but she and every other gem in the lower crust of planet Albus knew what was going to happen.
They should have done something, she should have done something; but every gem of the lower crust just stood and watched it all happen out of fear, fear of retaliation from White Diamond and what she could do. Corundum allowed a wry smile to grace her lips as she weaved around a crowd of bismuth workers as they worked on repairing a pillar that held up the overhanging ceiling of whatever building she was under now. 'At least there's no sign of those gems being outdated, those gems have been around long before me.' Corundum thought to herself as she continued to weave through more crowds of gems.
'Actually, speaking of outdated, I wonder if the Herkimer Quartz gem line has been updated yet.' Corundum continued to think to herself as she finally approached her destination to drop off her package, she greeted the gem she was supposed to meet. "Hey Fayfay." she greeted cheerfully as she tossed the packages on her shoulders down onto the hovercraft-cart next to the gem she spoke to.
The gem with a bobbed haircut style that covered her eyes, blew out a sigh as she wrote with her stylus onto her holopad while leaning on the nearby wall she stood next to; she finished writing before using the stylus to part her hair a bit to look at Corundum with an eye, "Easy on the goods, Cor, can't have another accident like last time." she warned. The Fayalite gem that Corundum spoke to, was dressed in a set of worker's overalls with a slender build and height as tall as your average Amethyst gem. Her gem was on her shoulder and her skin was iron red.
"Hey!" Corundum began to defend herself with a shrug, her gem could be seen on her left hand. "That wasn't me! One of the Bismuths bumped into me."
"I know." Fayalite responded as she continued to hold her hair up to give the Corundum before her a look, "I'm just saying, if you're not careful, one of the higher ups will come down on us hard." she warned.
"Right…" Corundum muttered with a regretful sigh, before perking up and gave Fayalite a cheeky grin while leaning over to elbow her fellow gem a bit in excitement, "Hey, you still up for Tephroite's little jam session after our shift?" she asked.
With a smile back, Fayalite responded candidly, "Wouldn't miss it." she said, prompting Corundum to cheer and leave with a wave back at her before disappearing into the crowd of gems. After a few moments passed, Fayalite frowned as she stopped leaning on the wall she stood next to, and stood straight up. Lifting her datapad up to look back down on it, there was a broadcasted message to all gems of her line. All Corundums are to be reported for the next gem line to be relocated off of the world. "Oh Cor…" she muttered with worry.
