Tomorrows update now cause of personal complications. (Cat got sick but is fine now)
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As it turned out Green had actually underestimated the amount of work that needed to be done. Part of that was his own fault. He'd gotten ambitious. He'd decided to create a proper shipyard that could handle anything rather than anything else. It turnes out a superstructure was a large bit of work that required an impressive amount of resources, who knew?
On a better note, it was a good experience for him, and this was a point where a lot of his subordinate gems could help. The concept of big structures was nothing new to them. They'd just needed a direction and they were merrily doing most of the work themselves, leaving him just oversee things mostly. As an added benefit, building this didn't actually need any diamond essence, so the gems were able to be quite generous with the materials used.
The entire project was turning out to be one of the largest things they'd built ever. Most of it was empty space certainly, but the rest of it was supporting structures to create a truly massive ship if need be. Once the thing was fully constructed they'd be able to almost print ships. Best of all, all of this would be useful in the future as technology increased due to their efforts to future proof it.
Green had already ordered a ship made as a test. The basics for ship construction had been run through and the initial problems had already been solved. He'd begun using that new functionality to create prototype and disposable creations to determine various tolerances. Some of those tests had been already done, but he wanted to cross everything off the list one at a time just to be doubly certain. Also to sort of test the testing procedure.
"I will say thank you for the lessons Morganite." Green Diamond commented as they watched the latest round of testing.
"My diamond your radiance and brilliance is such that they were barely lessons." The morganite responded before continuing. "Though your ability to go on tangents was enough to nearly make me poof."
"Well, some of them were interesting." The testing on the new compression technology for one was interesting.
In the distance several missiles were let loose. They sped through space at a relatively slow factor for space travel. Fast if they were on a planet, slow at the range they were working on. The automated drones juked as programmed to avoid the weapons. Some hit, some missed. The ones that hit caused space itself to ripple violently and the drones it weren't damage so much as sheered apart.
"The space compression missiles are working well." Green noted out loud before grimacing. "We are reinforcing the ships that use the space expansion correct?"
"Yes, and we're being sure they're fail-safe, not fail-deadly." The morganite responded and looked a bit ill at the damage herself. "All the current plans to use it are still under review, but we should be able to achieve a point five internal size expansion without causing the ship to destabilize if they take enough damage."
Another missile exploded and turned one of the drones into metal spaghetti and both gems nodded again.
"Can't say I'm eager to have it standard upon seeing this, but being able to make internals bigger has too many advantages not to use. How's the armor testing?" Green asked.
Morganite looked at her tablet. "Within acceptable parameters. We're actually losing durability using non-lightform armor, but the alloys we're using are rated for more exotic energies. It will take a significant amount of time to revamp the fleet."
"That can be done on Yellow's orders. I'm already being a bit obnoxious with my current dictates." Not that Yellow minded, she apparently subscribed to the 'if it works I'll use it' doctrine. "Laser testing?"
"We have one diamond-hand battleship assembled and have been doing destructive testing on it. The weapon systems are working as theorized. Each finger has a different weapon. With the high yield missiles on the middle finger, as requested."
That had been an in-joke that no one would get, but Green hadn't been able to resist. One finger was as good as another anyway, so it didn't matter. Adding more weapons and reinforcing some key aspects had made the ships tolerable to him, and they would be useful in service.
"Now, final question for the day then." Green muttered as more testing was lined up.
Both gems watched as a large device was flown into the testing area. It was not a pretty thing. It was a mess of wires and lenses. Proper form could come later. Right now the question was could it work?
The device activated, flared with light, and then exploded spectacularly before even firing.
"Scaling up the laser to the size we want for the titan is still an ongoing issue then." The diamond noted cynically.
"We'd have to go over the data with the Jades, but yes." Morganite didn't seem phased at the destruction.
Neither of them were. They'd hoped that the device would have worked, but the material tolerances were turning out to be more complicated than just 'make it bigger.' Past a certain point what they used would overheat and cause the entire device to destabilize. The Jades involved thought the problem could be fixed in time. They just needed a lot of experimentation and revision.
Hopefully the payoff would be worth it. They wanted a weapon that could shock and awe for the titan sized beast they were designing. A beam of light that could annihilate things a few light seconds away would be perfect. Without it the only thing justifying a titan would be the fact it would double as a dock and reinforcement point. Nice, but not what they wanted.
"How's the design going with the titan by the way?" Green asked the ship-Morganite as they left the testing observation post.
"Slow. There's been resistance to abandoning the idea of diamond tributes, but they are working on it. The designs for the internals are progressing faster than the externals. Admittedly that's because we don't know the power draw for half of the items, including your secret." Morganite said with a small frown at Green.
"That one's still a work in progress as well. We have time, and you'll know what it is once I'm sure it's feasible." Green adjusted his glasses. "The only reason I'm giving it a shot is because of these eyes. I saw something with our ships moving that made me want to look into it."
"Very well. Do you think you could rule on the shape at least? That would stop a significant portion of the arguments." Morganite asked with a slightly pleading expression.
Green grumbled and then sighed. "You know what, since they absolutely have to have a diamond tribute, let's make them look like White Diamond's gemstone. It's still appealing to her vanity some, but it's also how the mineral diamond looks when cut a certain way. You can even make the custom variants look like mine and Yellows, and any future diamonds."
Later, the diamond would be rather irritated internally at how fast things went after that dictate.
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Battleship - Diamond-Hand: A battleship in the shape of a hand. High durablilty, with increasing danger as you get closer.
Technology - Spatial compression: Makes things larger on the inside, provided you have power for the device.
Spatial Missile: Long range missile that upon impact rapidly compresses and expands the matter in a set range. This causes the target to tear itself apart, or become twisted in some fashion.Last edited: May 12, 2025 Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:Verdauga, EzertTheLizart, theImmortalGuardian and 962 others
Time passed. Problems were found and solved. The shipyard neared completion, and the first hand-warship rolled out of the dock as proof that the facility was working properly. Another person would have been happy to call the project done at that point. Green was of the opinion that a ship wasn't finished until it had a maiden run and been thoroughly tested in that run. He was not military though. He informed Yellow that the first ship of the line had been done and his recommendations, and let her decide the rest as he moved on. Proper relations between the scientist and the general would be imperative during a war. Best to get into the proper habits now.
Happy to add one more achievement under his metaphorical belt, Green reviewed what he'd done so far. He could safely say that he could help design a megaproject like this shipyard had been. He could not say that he was the best at actually getting it built. He'd managed, but that was more his subordinates helping than him doing the work. His talents just didn't lend themselves to the problems that came from coordinating large projects like this. Something to keep in mind.
His his self review interrupted by a priority message soo after he'd made this conclusion.
"All available resources are going to be focused on producing the next diamond." Green repeated the empire wide instructions.
"Yes my diamond. White has specifically asked you to refine how we gather materials." His pearl responded primly.
"Well, I'm not going to refuse that order." Green replied with a small laugh at himself. As annoying as it was to be directed like this, it wasn't like he objected to it. That was just how the empire worked. "So I assume we have the data for what she needs?"
His pearl nodded and typed something. A few seconds later the data was on Green's tablet and he was looking it over. He recognized none of it. Worse, some of the equations made his head hurt. The information on how to make a diamond was complicated, information dense, and had several rather abstract notions that he'd never even heard about. In making diamonds, White apparently had to use several dozen very theoretical fields. He was fairly sure that she barely understood how they were made.
Fortunately for his sanity, Green didn't need to understand all of it. He just needed to understand the key points. Enough to know what a diamond needed. The answer was time, diamond essence, and a significant amount of very rare resources that were noted to be in very hard to reach areas.
"Huh... So that's why our home world's cracked." Green guessed out loud. He'd been mildly curious about why their home world was the way it was, but it wasn't in the obvious history records. "Rather brute force way of getting things." He observed.
Assuming that was what happened, most of the materials they would need would be deep inside a planet. This would likely very based on the planet. They could do two things then. Survey planets for the appropriate resources on the surface, or just get to the minerals deeper. Doing the second option was a bit daunting.
Just making mine-shafts wouldn't cut it. Getting that deep was a logistical nightmare that even Gems would balk at.
It was an intriguing thought exercise. One thing that many people didn't get mentally was that planets were big. Oh sure, mentally they acknowledged the size, but the mind had trouble actually getting what that really meant. Cracking open a planet couldn't be done easily. If Green took a titan-class ship and used all it's weapons, it would scorch the surface at best. Using one of the scaled up lasers he'd been developing would get maybe into the mantle if he focused it for a few hours. In conclusion, he lacked easy firepower to break into a planet. They could do it, but he had to assume it'd take so much time and effort that White was practically ordering him to find a better solution.
"Our most destructive item in our arsenal are the spatial missiles correct?" Green asked pearl.
"That depends what you mean by destructive." The gem answered back. "I'd have to ask our morganites and jades."
"No need. We need something scalable."
He'd worked on the missiles once he'd noticed the shearing effect from the space compression. He knew the theory about them. They didn't actually scale up that well. They functioned by basically making the space around them flex and shift. Something hit by the missiles was actually damaging itself rather than the missile doing the damage. The power cost increased in proportion to the area covered. If he wanted to crack a planet with them he could guess that the energy costs would be excessive and he couldn't guarantee the damage would be beneficial. Explosions had to be calculated precisely to get the results they wanted.
What about teleportation then? They could shift matter from place to place with an almost trivial amount of energy. It just required a stable platform and some tech that they had refined for centuries. This would require some redesigning of the system though, and he wasn't as familiar with the theory as he'd like.
"Do we have any morganites that can be taken off current projects?" Green asked. "It's all right if we delay the titan-ship. That will be delayed due to White's order anyway."
"I can arrange for a few. I assume you still want some on the titan?" Pearl responded immediately.
"Some. We might not be able to begin production on it, but that doesn't mean the blueprint can't be refined still further." It was going to be a massive project after all. There would always be room for improvement somewhere.
A few minutes later had Green in front of the empire's premier ship designers. Morganites one and all, they were specifically designed to build ships. They were good at it too, once you got past their desire to be showy with more fanciful designs. Green liked to think they understood one another some now, which what made him make the request he was going to make.
"We need to make a specialized mining facility." Green began and ignored the hidden dismay at his words. "I'm leading with this because that's the core goal. The secondary goal is to break a planet."
The diamond could see their dismay shifting into attention. Even with his ever-present shades on he'd learned a lot on how to read gem-body language. With them off he could practically read someone's mind, though he refrained for a wide variety of reasons. The thought of a new and interesting project was drawing their attention like nothing else would have.
"White Diamond has tasked me to refine how we obtain certain rare materials. We need a significant amount of them, and they're most concentrated on average deep within a planet. I assume you're following what we need now?" Green asked and grinned at the nods. "Now, breaking the planet might be exaggerating, but if that happens in the course of the mining that's just good fortune. My best guess as to how to accomplish this is to look into using a combination of special warping and teleportation technology. We will rip the planet apart piece by piece. If you can refine or suggest alternatives let me know. You have the authorization to ask or enlist any Jades in the project. We have the premiere weapon researchers here, so they might have ideas. Nothing is off the table, big or small. We're in the idea phase, and we likely have plenty of ideas."
He could almost see the designers nodding mentally. Gems as a whole might not have been the most creative, but these ones? They designed and created by design. They made weapons as well. It was practically hard coded to want to explode things. Exploding a planet? That was a dream come true.
After that Green dismissed them and began to review the research they had on teleportation. The biggest initial problem they'd likely have would be too many idea instead of too little. He wanted to be able to eliminate the unfeasible ideas.
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Titan-class Shipyard: A shipyard designed to facilitate the construction of massive ships. It is optimized for larger ships, but can also do smaller ones relatively trivially. Has significant options to modify and adjust it's abilities to hopefully future proof the structure and allow it to function far in the future.Last edited: May 13, 2025 Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:Verdauga, EzertTheLizart, theImmortalGuardian and 983 others
14, 2025Add bookmark#1,309In his memories he recalled it. He'd called it a daddy long-legs. A creature more leg than body. It had amused him to learn that it was a predator of sorts. A little spindly thing that was more leg than body. That creature had been in another time and another life but he still could recall the memories, even if it had been centuries by now. He recalled because his newest creation resembled that sort of creature from a great distance. It was a massive spindly thing made up of legs and a comparatively tiny core.
This was not a warship. It was best described as a mining station, though even that fell short of what it really was. It was a massive thing that could barely shift from point a to b due to the sheer mass and delicate structure it had. Shifting into orbit was an exercise in patience. Every movement was slow and ponderous, like a particularly fat and clumsy bird.
Despite the size, compared to the planet it was still tiny. Even being one of the largest ships they'd built to date a proper planet dwarfed it. That was fine. Size was not everything. This thing was all legs anyway so the size was particularly deceptive. It was meant to cover a lot of area, not weigh a lot. Each leg had precisely calibrated devices on carefully measured intervals that could focus independently of one another. The entire mining ship was a central power node and a thousand little focuses on elongated poles.
Once the ship was settled power started to flow down the legs and they extended over the planet. The legs twitched and moved slowly, as if the spider was reseating itself on top the planet in slow motion. Inside the relatively tiny cockpit Gems ran calculation over calculation. There was a significant margin of error for things by necessity, but that did not excuse being sloppy or careless. The first run in particular was going to be a learning experience, so they wanted to reduce the variables as much as possible.
Once they were absolutely certain that the machine's foci were properly aligned the process began. One power plant nestled in the central core roared to life. Each leg lit up as if they were covered in small stars. Lasers shot down into the ground in precise spots and burned the surface. Then there was a pulse, and parts of the earth beneath the creation fractured along the burnt lines. The dirt started to drift up and before it vanished midair.
Elsewhere, several facilities reported that the matter had been deposited in the refinery. Most of it was useless. The material was filtered quickly by specially made processors and then teleported to appropriate areas. The trash was dropped onto another empty planet. The treasure was sent to storage. All of it done as quickly and efficiently as possible, even if half the workforce was Rubies. (They could run through molten metal, useful!)
At this level most of it was basically sand. Frankly a mine would have been significantly more efficient. This was just the start though. The first step as it was. The machine in orbit continued its task slowly and carefully, focusing and refocusing as it destroyed the crust underneath it.
Again and again the ground was burnt, fractured, then drawn upward. More of it was teleported away. The process was very slow. This was partially because they were trying to verify that the process worked as expected. The teleportation to processing systems in particular had been deemed particularly fragile as it was an entirely new system in place. Too much at once could have caused something to back up. Due to the failsafes involved it hopefully wouldn't be bad, but no one wanted to chance it.
Days passed and the machine continued to dismantle a section of the planet inexorably. The speed never changed, but the damage accumulated as a small mountain was reduced to materials. Soon the a sizable hole was formed in the planet, and the mantle was breached. The lasers were reduced in number as other systems began to start. There was little need break up molten rock after all. Magma oozed up to the surface and was treated as just more material to pull.
This was where theory met reality. The material they needed was not in the mantle. It was deeper. Liquid rock would bar their way if they wanted to try to just make a deeper hole. It would be like trying to dig a hole in water to get deeper.
Another series of lights started to shine in the miner. Space flexed as more magma was pulled up, but the magma was not replaced. It was like the molten stone had been blocked. Space itself had been warped just enough that the magma could not fill in what was taken out.
In crude terms they were using a straw made of space and time to drink the planet. It was a slow, energy intensive, and complicated process beneath the surface. The central core of the miner had a series of power generators inside it to facilitate the mining, and they would spin up and down as necessary. The cost in power was immense, but this deep into the planet the rewards were starting to accumulate.
The next step was pure exploration and science in a way. As they went deeper into the planet and reached the inner core the pressure differential made it so that the mining device actually needed to keep the materials down rather than drawing it up. The equations and settings to allow this were up in the air, and had to be done on the fly almost.
Fortunately they could afford to experiment here. The miner was the only thing valuable even close, and a cataclysmic eruption couldn't touch something so far in orbit. It took a lot of experimentation to get a feel for what would and wouldn't give them the forces they needed. Despite the forces involved it was still rather slow. They were moving mountains one step at a time.
Space warped still further as they shifted reality this way and that way before they found the right pressures. They burrowed through the outer core and then very slowly touched the inner core. It was not without cost. The miner's generators had all come online, and the material processing had been pushed hard.
Despite this, they touched the core and began to extract what they needed almost delicately.
The analogy with the straw was surprisingly appropriate then. Picture a straw trying to drink the center of an orange. With enough force it was theoretically possible. This was simplifying it to the point of absurdity, because an orange when cored would not catastrophically collapse on itself once parts of its core were removed. A planet would.
They'd chosen a barren and empty planet for a variety of reasons. One of them was that they had no idea what their mining would do once they got deep enough. On the surface of things it was absurd to think that even a large ship could destroy a planet. That was what one of their theories said would happen though, so they'd chosen one that no one would miss.
In this case the planet objected violently. The surface developed fissures and molten rock spewed into the sky in some areas. Earthquakes rocked the planet beyond anything it had ever seen as the innards shifted unnaturally. The planet rebelled against the intrusion and all across the surface things shook. The force involved was so violent that the space rift used to keep the hole open snapped mid-process. The inner core pushed back with extreme force and molten rock surged into the hole the miner had made with enough force to cause a plume of fire miles high.
A new super-volcano erupted on the unnamed planet as reality stopped bending and starting behaving as expected. Above it all the mining device hovered, completely indifferent to the damage it caused. The gems inside were already calculating what would work and wouldn't. The generators were spooling down and would be checked over.
Upon review, material wise this was a minimal success. Most of what they needed was near the core, but not at it, so they'd reached their goal in extracting the appropriate rare elements. Cost wise, counting the miner and the fuel for the generators, it was very technically a net negative if they just accounted for what they got. Had they been just looking for the mundane stuff, this would have been a total loss. However, they were not looking for just standard minerals. They were looking for specific rare materials. This was what barely edged the miner into a useful tool if they could get it working for longer.
This was a qualified success in Green Diamond's eyes. Once they further refined the mining process and found planets with the appropriate makeup, they'd be able to get all they needed. It would not be efficient, but it would be done faster than other methods. A specialist tool for a special task. It would speed up the timetable for making diamonds by centuries.
Admittedly that meant that it would just take a thousand years or so.
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Long-leg Miner - A titan class ship that is more leg than body. Slow, ponderous, and fragile comparatively, it can very slowly destroy a planet while also extracting the resources from it. Energy intensive and inefficient, it can give a massive amount of resources in a short period of time. Takes about a century to hollow out a planet.Last edited: May 14, 2025 Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:Verdauga, EzertTheLizart, theImmortalGuardian and 970 others
Creating a diamond was best described as a massive undertaking. Nothing about it could be considered small. The resources alone would have beggared another race. Add in the sheer attention to detail and the cost in time and you had something that Gems alone could do. White herself had to be so singularly focused on it that most of her duties were going to be handed off to subordinates.
Green and Yellow understood that quite well, so they'd immediately done all they could to secure their species future and keep White from getting distracted. Green focused on making things more efficient and providing the ungodly amount of resources needed. Yellow set up the defenses, to an almost excessive degree. No one was going in or out of the system without her knowing about it, and any thought of interference would probably result in instant destruction. Not that it mattered much, their only contact with other races was with the Ogryn, and they were still happily being hunter gatherers with absolutely no advancement. It was the principle of the matter in her eyes.
Other projects were mostly ignored or delayed. The entire Gem race was focused on producing the new diamond. Anything not related to that was a secondary task. That didn't mean the jobs weren't being done, just that if a gem could devote their time to help they would. It eventually got so bad that all the diamonds had to give a general order to work on unrelated jobs. There was a limit to how many hands could help the process and they still did have an empire to run.
Perhaps amusingly, there was a significant uptick in songs created about the process. There was also a very large uptick in people listening to those songs. If the gems couldn't help, they could certainly participate spiritually. Green couldn't help but feeling a bit proud about that in between his attempts to shave even a year off the already long processes.
Unfortunately, there came a point where nothing could be done but have the core team do the work. This was the third time making a diamond, and White had refined things on her end to the best of her considerable ability. Along her were several gems who had been her aids in the first two times. Green and Yellow interjecting themselves would have hindered things, so they kept away and focused on anything else in an attempt to keep things moving smoothly.
In this case, Green was assisting Yellow in identifying why several of their ships had gone dark. Scouts far away from Whites work to clarify. Any scouts going dark around White would have had the entire fleet going out. This was instead a sort of backlog of lost scouts on extended exploration sessions. It wasn't unheard of for this to happen for a variety of reasons. Explorers of that nature were by their very nature venturing into the unknown.
As a small aside, Yellow's scouting protocols relied heavily on automation. Roaming Eyes were the primary vector for scouting. They'd warp into a system, survey it for anything interesting, relay that information, and move on. Manned scouts would then confirm the interesting part. It was actually surprisingly common for Eyes to be destroyed for one reason or another and it would need intelligent confirmation. Scouts were trained to perform that, but they also sometimes ran into something that caused trouble. Exploring space was risky.
Yellow had more than a few scouts performing this duty. The rate they lost their ships was surprisingly high. The rate they lost their life was very low. Part of scout training was to basically 'hide' when the ship was going to be destroyed. Very few things could crack a gem in hiding. When a scout didn't report, a warship was dispatched, and this typically resulted in the scout being rescued.
Green Diamond's task was to investigate the times when the scout was not found. This was both dangerous, and extremely time consuming. The list was long, despite their low rate. They explored a lot, and they had records going back since Yellow was born.
For the sake of Green's sanity, he was starting from the earliest to the latest. Before he started though, he ordered one thing to be built. A battle-ship sized science vessel.
Looking like nothing more than a big sphere with a ring around it, the ship wouldn't win any awards for appearance. It was hastily built and slightly shoddy by gem standards. It made up for that in sensory arrays. Short of Green Diamond's own personal vision, it was one of the most powerful sensors they had. It was also absurdly durable, even by gem standards. Trading personal offensive for massive defense, the thing was designed to scan and survive, that was it. The weapons amounted to pea-shooters and were just for testing and experimentation.
Equipped with the finest sensory arrays the gem empire could build, Green went exploring.
He'd be the first to admit it was a relatively boring start. The first few casualties had been the scouting ship simply getting disabled and stuck in a hard to find area for one reason or another. Aside from being tedious to find, there was no particular exotic reason they'd been lost. One had flown into some sort of space effect that disabled them, another had simply bad luck, and so on. Boring things.
It helped significantly that they could detect gems. The process that powered their species as a whole was not particularly quiet on certain frequencies. With the new science vessel's scans it was fairly easy to locate a gem when they were close enough. Then it was just a matter of finding why they were there.
Eventually in the course of things they started running into mysteries. The first one was relatively simple, for a given matter of relatively. Apparently there were space beasts out there. One had been large enough to swallow a scout-ship. The thing was a master at staying concealed, but only dangerous in that it ate things that floated nearby.
Green's initial thought there had been to kill the thing to get back the gem. A bit of investigating led him to believe that was not exactly necessary though. The thing was stupid enough to eat anything that came close. A bit of finagling had them get a very tiny teleporter into it's innards and they were able to teleport the gem out. Then they called in a diamond-hand, which was too large for it to swallow and captured the beast live. Assigning the Bloodstones on studying the thing was a simple matter after that. He had to know how something could live in what amounted to absolutely nothing. The lifecycle alone would have to be fascinating.
Boyed by a good success rate, Green found his next mystery more frustrating. The place the scout had been lost was empty. The system the scout had been investigating was really just a planet that could have had life on it according to the reports. There was nothing to indicate anything that the scout would have had trouble.
He ordered a flyby on the planet just to be certain. There was life there, but nothing of note. Primitive primeval life that could or could not go anywhere. It was the most common form of life they had encountered so far. There were even a few monitoring agents around them to see if anything actually resulted from the morass. It could not have even touched a scout, much less destroyed a Gem.
A more complete scan of the system revealed absolutely nothing.
This was suspicious. There was no other way of saying it. Ships didn't just disappear. Green could actually predict where and when the scout had come in and there was not even a trace of it on the path it would have taken. Had the scout been destroyed that would have been one thing. There would have been debris. The gem involved in this had a few investigations under their belt as well. They wouldn't have done anything stupid that would have left them unrecoverable like fly into the local star for some asinine reason.
There was only one thing left to do, and though he was loathe to do it, he would. Green took off his glasses and went to the observation room. He ordered the ship he was in to very carefully rotate and focused on his special talent. Minutes passed. Hours passed. Days passed. Almost a month passed as Green focused and used his talent to the utmost. Gem biology made the task mildly annoying instead of impossibly tedious.
The hint he picked up was subtle and barely there. A history of movement at some point. The most faint trail imaginable, but still visible.
"Peridots. Recalibrate one of the sensors to look at the following frequencies." Green rattled off a series of numbers with his orders. "Tell me what you see."
Minutes later. "We're seeing a path. It looks like a possible flight path that dates around our arrival in the system." The captain of the ship paused. "Permission to move my diamond?"
"It is your command." Green replied as he focused on the anomaly.
"Following."
The science ship shifted and moved slowly as it traced the path. The path led itself to the shadow of one of the planets in the system. There, very faintly was another trace of something that the science ship was well equipped to find.
"We have traces of FTL. Something was here but not appearing on our scanners." The captain informed Green of something he could already see.
Green had only two words for that. "Inform Yellow."
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Science Orb - A relatively quick and dirty creation that is meant to protect it's occupants and scan at the highest possible fidelity. Will be going through many revisions as the product has already proven to be viable as a tool.Last edited: May 16, 2025 Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:Verdauga, EzertTheLizart, theImmortalGuardian and 1,046 others
So, to recap, they had an enemy that had been apparently watching them for some time before running away before Green could detect them. That meant a variety of things. They could conceal themselves from detection. They were able to theoretically take out scout ships, assuming that they were the culprits. Green was enough a scientist not to assume anything. Yellow was less inconclusive. She wanted things found and gutted immediately upon being notified, and her orders were priority here. So Green had to piece together what they were dealing with.
Starting with the facts. Whomever the enemy was, they did leave a faint trace of radiation when they moved. They could find them theoretically now that they were aware of whatever they were. The traces lasted a bit more than a year before Green's specialized senses couldn't find them anymore. A custom sensor could and was being built to find the particular frequency now. They didn't have enough information to conclude more. What they did have was more lost scouts to find and a signature radiation that could identify if this was a one off thing. A disturbing pattern emerged quickly once they'd investigated more.
The attacks had happened in isolated areas. Scouts were mostly hit. One monitoring station had been struck. All of them very were in very quiet areas that barely saw any traffic. Something was nipping at them at the borders, almost disgustingly confident they wouldn't be noticed. They almost hadn't been. Extrapolating based off the scouts lost, this had been going on for perhaps a century. The station was the most recent casualty, and applying it to the pattern meant there was a deliberate escalation as that seemed to be a more recent thing.
Just the scouts would have been... Well acceptable in a sense. A territorial race that didn't want contact? Understandable, though borderline provoking. The station? That was the action of a race that didn't care about provocation. One that had enough information to make it seem like the station had been still operating for who knows how long. That indicated a frankly disturbing amount of information this enemy had on them. It was utterly unacceptable in everyone's eyes.
The only reason Yellow Diamond wasn't going apocalyptic on everything was the fact that White still needed defense. Had the other diamond not needed assistance, even Green wouldn't have been able to talk her down from using the entire fleet to find and kill this enemy. As it was he had a few facts to keep her from going on a warpath. One was they had no idea who the enemy was aside from educated guesses. Two was the fact that they had not actually found a direction to search. These hidden foes had been delicate in taking their targets. There wasn't a consistent pattern to their attacks. It actually had signs of being something akin to a pseudo-random targeting. They'd passed up some very obvious targets at times, and it made pinning down even a direction very difficult.
Malicious hunting was probably the best word for what was happening. This wasn't some upstart race trying to get a few victories in. This was a subtle and consistent predation. To what purpose was impossible to tell as well. Were they studying gems? Trying to crack how they were? Just stealing a few bits of technology? They simply had too little to go on. The only real facts were they wanted to stay hidden, and they were taking everything.
It was a mystery Yellow ultimately couldn't solve with the tools they had. Just throwing more ships at the enemy wouldn't do anything if you couldn't identify where they were coming from. The best she could do was theoretically prevail upon the sapphires, and that was both a losing prospect and unwise. The future telling abilities of the gem race were potent, but limited in many ways. They were in essence expensive sentries. You placed them on a certain area and had them monitor the future. All of them were already assigned to key areas. Using one as bait would theoretically risk one, and having this enemy capture a sapphire was a bit nightmare inducing.
Since there were no easy answers here, it was up to Green. He was not one that could provide easy answers. The best he could do was put the full force of his attention on the problem and gather enough information. At some point they'd have enough for Yellow to do the rest.
His best bet to get clues had already been found at least. The observation post, as tragic and infuriating as it had been gave the best chance of information. Documenting everything in there had already been done, but it had not been investigated if that made any sense. His project with the Zircons and their investigation force was ideally suited for that, and they had not been called in yet. Even better, they'd stumbled on a way of reviewing information from the past! It required the fusion of a Sapphire and another gem outside her type, but it worked.
Green had admittedly not expected his work and orders to be taken in that direction, but he allowed it upon review. The fusion in question had voluntarily turned themselves in upon fusing and was awaiting further study. The two gems had apparently merged together over some drama that felt like a romantic comedy than anything real. They were good natured enough that the judge had not decided to have them bubbled and instead allowed them to serve. Green agreed with the judgement upon review. They were stable enough and their powers were useful enough that he half suspected the sapphire had foreseen something. (So many things to research. The list wasn't getting smaller!)
The vision the fusion had was not as helpful as they'd like, but it did clarify a few things. Their enemy appeared to be some sort of many-tentacled thing with a beak. It had dropped in unexpected and unnoticed until the last second. The gems minding the outpost had been shot with something that poofed their form and then their inert forms had been taken. The creature had then set a few things to record on the record post and left. All of it had been done within a few minutes. No movement had been wasted and the gems had barely had time to react.
Thankfully they had a need to know basis of things on the network the post had been attached to. Due to his insistence on strengthening the gem network it wasn't easy to get to classified information. They'd still been couped there. A monitoring station had a wealth of information.
It was also alarming enough that Green immediately began to review all their security procedures in the event this happened again. Fortunately making the observation stations more robust was not exactly hard. That was just standard defensive construction. The scouting missions required a different answer. Space was too big to use fleets to explore. They could send out a thousand scouting ships a day and still not get a fraction of the galaxy. Sending out drones and then small ships was already a compromise of sorts.
All Green could do for the scouts was create a more compact scanner for scouts to detect the enemy and pray for more information. It was galling to know that this was his limit. They'd been outmatched for the first time in gem history, and no one was happy about it. They couldn't argue about it either. Had Green been less thorough, the tentacle things would still be unknown and might have very well managed to capture gems for further centuries before being discovered.
One loss did not mean that they'd lost everything though. They would overcome this. For now, they needed to bide their time and not make unnecessary moves. The enemy would slip up at some point. Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:EzertTheLizart, theImmortalGuardian, AxelLB and 997 others
Emeralds occupied a rather specific slot in the empire. They were the fleet commanders, the generals, and the tactical thinkers. Also occasional judges thanks to Green. They were directly one and all currently under command of Yellow. There was some talk about transferring a few to Green's court, but that was still being decided, and the debates were rather hot. Someone would likely have to go and opinions of that varied wildly. Emerald Facet X-Three-Two, Cut F-Nine hoped it wasn't her. Green Diamond's court had been developing a reputation of sorts as the place where the crazy gems went. They served the empire well, but she much preferred the order of Yellow's court over the constant change and sometimes random orders of Green's.
Regardless, Emerald enjoyed her work. She had command over a small fleet of three warships, a half dozen scouts, and as many roaming eyes as she could request and manage. This didn't seem like much to the untrained eye, but it was actually a surprisingly hefty command for a single gem to manage. Her duties involved exploring and managing over a hundred star systems with her forces. Well, managing was a strong word. There were no colonies involved in her area. It was more that she had to secure the area and look for things the initial exploration missed.
This was a significant responsibility that provided enough work to keep her very busy. That work was doubled by the fact that she was the first one to find another race in one of her surveys. Specifically an FTL one. A loud one.
"I understand placing beacons at the edge of territory you consider yours. It makes some sense. It's the volume and how many frequencies they have. It's more like jamming than sending a message." Emerald noted conversationally to her crew as they discussed that very race.
"Perhaps a show of dominance? Did you see the biological documentary?" One of her peridots said.
"Not everyone watches those educational videos. Especially ones made by those Bloodstones." Emerald replied with a small shudder. "Ug, watching biologicals eat." She shook her head and firmed herself. "Regardless, Yellow's orders are clear as to how we're handling them. They have nothing we need, nor want. Get a record of their language and borders and then monitor them passively but nothing else. Unless they attack Gems we do not care."
"Already done my Emerald." Another gem said. "We've actually gotten a translation matrix up if you want it. They were broadcasting how to speak their language too."
"Primitive and arrogant, but what would you expect? Why can't they speak Gem like proper beings." The fleet commander was being a bit unprofessional, but she'd been with this crew for centuries now. They knew each other enough that there was no shame in it.
"My Emerald, I just noticed something while setting up our scanning protocols." Her gem in charge of sensors said slowly. "They have signatures very similar to that of the enemy."
All traces of humor and casual demeanor dropped. The fleet commander stood up. "Similar how?" She ordered clarification.
"I'd say it's derived from theirs based off the signatures." The peridot said. "We'd need Green's court to give a final say. It's obviously lesser since our normal scans are detecting them mostly."
"Send the data immediately." Emerald frowned as she debated the next course of action quickly and snapped out the next directive. "Find a ship of these organics and bring us there."
Her crew snapped to respond. Well polished procedure had them shifting into FTL and back in a matter of minutes. The organics they stopped in front were hidden from normal sight and most sensors, but it wasn't enough to stop their warship from seeing them well enough to shoot them. Not that Emerald was going to. She wanted to, it'd be easy, but Yellows orders were to leave FTL races alone unless provoked.
This was already skirting her orders pretty tightly. She'd probably be brought into that new court that judged gems. It'd be a novel experience at least, but she was doing this for a reason that would hopefully get mercy.
"We have a translation matrix? Then use it. Translate what I am saying next." Emerald ordered and waited a beat before speaking. "You are in suspicion of associating with our enemy. In the name of our most glorious diamonds, association with that enemy is death. You will explain how you derived your concealment device and provide one for study or be disabled and we will take it."
The cloaked ship had barely been able to react as they appeared, and the way they paused indicated significant surprise or internal debate. Emerald waited, still as only a gem could be. They could wait for hours if need be, and so long as the organics didn't run she didn't care. It occurred to her that it might be best to actually say that. They didn't know her and gems, as outlandish that idea was.
"You may take your time to decide. Do not attempt to run. We can see you and can easily destroy you." Emerald nodded to her weapons controller and lowered her voice. "Small warning shots, bracket them."
The lasers on the Destiny Destroyer were a step up from her previous Sun Incinerator. That one had been on a single turret and rather anemic. Her current ship could have up to four. They were also very capable of precision, as they proved by bracketing the cloaked ship. That seemed to provoke something because the ship decloaked and a transmission was sent back.
"The Klingon Empire does not give into threats! We will perish in honorable combat before we give up anything!" The gruff and angry voice replied.
Emerald cocked her head and she decided to clarify her previous words. "This is not a threat. It is a statement. You will explain how you derived your concealment device, or we will disable you and take one. Association with the enemy is death." It only occurred to her afterwards that her reply was mostly just her repeating herself. She shrugged internally.
There was a long pause then a reply. "Who is this enemy?"
"Transmit the data we have on them." Emerald ordered her crew.
A longer pause happened this time. Surprisingly long for an organic. Emerald was half tempted to order some music to be played. She'd been wanting to get through the Heavy-Metal Obliteration track. She was only three hours into it and it was getting into another good part.
Eventually the organics transmitted again. "We know those beings. We call them the vile ones. WE drove them off after they attempted to enslave us! We stole their ships and made them OURS. They are our enemies as well. Saying we have associations is an insult!"
"That is part one of my request. I still require part two." Emerald paused and reminded herself to be clear and polite. "Thank you for the information. Since you are their enemy, I will note to our wondrous stars that you are not our enemy as well and we shall be leaving you alone after this. If you require aid in giving us a sample of your device I will offer it as a show of generosity for being forthright."
The pause happened again and Emerald was wondering if it was an organic thing rather than anything else. "We cannot just give you our cloaking device."
With a mental shrug the fleet master gestured to her weapons gem. Their ship began to power up.
"HOWEVER!" The transmission continued as the Klingon shouted as if trying to get something urgent across. "You may take it if you best one of us in personal combat! As a manner of honor we would be obligated to comply then!"
Emerald calculated quickly and then ordered her weapons to be powered down. "Acceptable. Organics require preparation for that if I recall right. In twenty four of your hours I will personally travel to your ship, defeat you and take what I require."
---
AN: Organic leader be shittin bricks heh.Last edited: May 19, 2025 Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:EzertTheLizart, theImmortalGuardian, AxelLB and 1,069 others
Personal combat was a bit of a touchy subject among gems. They were born with a default ability to summon weapons so they were technically all capable of combat with an effort of will. These weapons, despite their look, were not simple things. They were capable of a variety of things that physical weapons couldn't do and meant that making advanced weapons for gems was typically a waste of time. They were also unique to each gem. It took significant effort to change them, and few did. The most common were military types, because it was a royal pain learning and teaching gems how to fight if every person's weapon was different. Topazes were the only gems that routinely did it. Learning how to use those weapons had once been controversial as well. There had been a noted social movement that only 'lesser gems' fought for a long time by gem standards.
That movement had been thoroughly crushed under Yellow's wargames once they started. It hadn't even been able to put up a fight. The second an Emerald had been soundly defeated by a horde of rampaging rubies, every single Emerald in the empire had started to learn how to use their weapons. The sheer humiliation of being manhandled by rubies just playing 'kill the leader' was enough to make most higher level gems sweat. White's court still had traces of that elitism, but theirs was more in the vein of 'I have too many diamond assigned duties, leave me alone or I'll just pop you with my bare hands and unbridled rage.' Not that Emerald knew any of that really!
She was just a leading gem who was either extremely busy or bored enough to gnaw on the walls. Practicing with her inbuilt hammer weapon was just part of expanding her talents. Green Diamond's writings were clear on the best ways for gems to contribute to the empire. Learn how to do new things when you could, spend an hour each day thinking of non-work related items, and always remember that the most valuable things gems could gain was experience.
Emeralds as a rule thought faster, moved quicker, and were more deadly than most other gems. They were meant to lead when Yellow could not. They were her some of most trusted subordinates. Leveraging all their talents in her service wasn't just important, it was a matter of pride. They were noble gems meant for combat above all else and they served best be being certain they knew all combat. When some were assigned to Green, they'd lead where he could not as well, even if he was half-mad. Science fleets?! Oh she didn't want that job at all. The amount of learning she'd have to do would be insane.
All of this went through Emerald's head as she practiced with a pair of Topazes. Gems didn't get rusty in the way organics did, but she wanted to show off properly so she was brushing up. They'd be seeing a gem for the first time after all. It would not do to be anything less than her best!
Once, this practice would have been a bit of a wash. Topazes took their duties seriously to a degree that was impressive even to gems. They were built to guard and enforce order. This meant that they were either on guard, or traveling to guard someone, or restraining someone. There had been very little time to practice, and they had never seen the point due to them being the elite vanguards of the gem military. Sparring with them would have been mildly productive at best.
Like most things with Yellow's court, the wargames had changed that. Topazes were big. They were bulky and durable beyond almost any other gems. They should have been elite. They had been completely and utterly predictable. Their professionalism meant that they were almost identical. It had been a point of pride at one point. They swung the same way, they moved in the same fashion, and once you knew that you could practically ignore them. Kill the leader had more than the Emeralds as a casualty. It had utterly broken the Topaz line's pride.
Now each Topaz had about half a day where they practiced. They worked exclusively in pairs. If you had a guard, one would always be standing guard while the other would be refining themselves or their defensive plans. They had impeccable teamwork when together. Fighting them both at once was honestly an elaborate form of getting yourself poofed. Topazes had turned themselves into walls that broke anything that would harm them or their charges and Yellow herself had observed their changes with pride.
Emerald found fighting one and then the other had a way of refining her own capability in close combat. She'd be able to beat the first one, then the next would step in and beat her by identifying the flaws in her first battle. She'd review, and the process would repeat. It was the best way she'd found to brush the metaphysical dust off.
About the only problem she had with the entire practice is that the Topazes just used halberds. It could throw Emerald off if she practiced too long against them. Some gems had some really strange weapons. Not like her trusty hammer!
She'd just knocked aside one of her partner's weapons when the timer went off for her 'appointment.' Since she wasn't an organic that would need something like cleaning, she just unsummoned her weapon and made her way to the shuttle that would bring them over to the organic ship. In short order her ship had landed in the hanger and she was internally notating everything through the cameras. Her Topaz guards stepped out of the ship first as protocol.
"Announcing Emerald Facet X-Three-Two, Cut F-Nine." One of the Topazes spoke once they'd completed their survey.
Emerald shook off her desire to scold whomever was responsible for cleaning the place and stepped into the dock. It was filthy with organic residue. She would have had any gem responsible for cleaning the place punished had this been her ship. The banners were slightly off center, there were stains on a few corners, and the men meeting her were outright sloppy! She didn't know how organic uniforms worked, but she could see the inconsistencies! Shoddy, shoddy.
But she wasn't here to inspect them. She was here to fight. She stepped forward, summoned her hammer and slammed it the the ground, just gently enough not to dent it. It wouldn't do to cause damage to the ship. She was being polite.
"I trust you have an appropriate opponent for one such as I." She intoned.
One of the klingons stepped forward and she found herself mildly dismayed. She couldn't read alien expressions that well, but he did seem a bit daunted. He should have been! He was also up to her waist and holding a bladed thing that looked to be made of metal of all things. Hopefully it was at least sharp. Otherwise she'd be doubly disappointed.
"I am Grovorf of house Grargh!" The man shouted out as he brandished his weapon. "I will be your opponent!"
For a beat Emerald stared down at him and then hefted her hammer as she mentally compared the size. It would be so easy to squish him with it. Really, the head alone would crush him. It brought to mind how she'd punted rubies over the horizon with a good underhand swing. It'd be so easy to win like that. He was only half her size.
"A match like this would not show the brilliance of our Diamonds." Emerald concluded and then focused.
Some mutters of mild outrage came from the organics, but Emeralds concentration was not on that. It was difficult to do this. She had very little practice doing it. Reducing her size was something few gems desired to do. Green Diamond himself was proficient at it though, and all Emeralds had found that going small had some serious tactical implications at the appropriate moments. The mild mutters turned into something akin to wonder as Emerald shrunk down until she was Grovorf's size. Then she shouldered her hammer and grinned challengingly.
Her opponent clenched his hands around his strange metal weapon. The bat'leth was a curved steel thing with points, meant to be clutched with one hand or two, and it wasn't a particularly elegant weapon. Emerald didn't know any of that. She didn't care either. She stepped forward and swung her hammer in a casual overhand swing.
The attack was so obviously telegraphed that it was painful. The Klingon blocked it as a matter of pride more than anything else. The supernatural weapon impacted against the mundane and rang his entire body like a bell. It also left him open for the kick that threw him practically across the ring.
"It occurs to me that aside from combat I didn't get how we're ending this. With our people it's usually to poof. You'd die from that though." Emerald said conversationally as she walked forward, twirling her hammer like it weighed nothing.
"We shall fight until one no longer can." Grovof grit out as he get to his feet.
"If you say so!" The fleet mistress said cheerfully as she swung her hammer in another casual arc.
Grovof didn't make the mistake of blocking it directly this time. A step back dodged the strike and he moved forward quickly with his own weapon in a swift strike. Emerald responded by using the haft of her hammer as an impromptu bludgeon. The strike almost knocked the man off his feet again, but he recovered and shifted his grip on his weapon to give it a wider swing.
A minute passed as they exchanged blows. Emerald's cheery expression never dropped, but Grovof's expression grew more and more angry as each exchange resulted in him being battered about by one hit or another. He couldn't block, even casual hits rattled him, and his dodges were just resulting in him getting more tired. Emerald simply couldn't get tired from this.
Eventually it came to a head. Grovof managed a rattling parry, and Emerald's hammer was out of position. Her body was already shifting into a follow-up strike, and the Klingon threw himself into the blow rather than avoid it. Bone cracked as her hand slammed into his ribs, but the man roared out and swung his bat'leth right into the gem's torso in return. The blade dug into her lightform, and then stopped with no damage at all.
Emerald stared down at the strike. "Well..." She brought a hand down to poke at the blade and tested it. "I honestly don't know what to say." She muttered in utter disappointment. Some damage would have made this exciting at least.
"What are you?" Grovof managed to breath out heavily.
"Rude." Emerald muttered and then used her hammer to throw him. The Klingon flew through the air and landed several feet away. "Wait, I'm not rude, you're being rude. I'm just a gem. And it turns out just sharpened steel cannot hurt one of us." She sighed out. "Do you wish to continue? I think organics need that."
"Until one no longer can." The Klingon muttered as he got to his feet.
Emerald shrugged and decided it was time to end this. She stepped forward with all her speed. The hammer swung with speed and grace instead of casual effort. Grovof parried. She shifted smoothly and swung again. He was forced to block. The bat'leth dented and nearly left his hands as the rattling blow connected. He tried to counter, but she shifted her footwork and her next hammer strike hit him dead center before he could really strike. The man flew up into the air and almost hit the ceiling. He landed with a thud and stayed unmoving.
"That counts right?" Emerald asked with good cheer.
Her reply was dead silence. She still counted it as a win. Though admittedly a sour one, because ripping the cloaking device out of the ship involved completely dismantling it enough to make it non-functional. She ended up having to have her peridots do the work and do some jury rigging to let the poor organics get home again too.
---
Kill The Leader Event - The wargames have hit an unexpected snag. A small army of rubies are setting everything on fire, running around without direction, and poofing all non-rubies. They don't appear to be under any direction, they're just a group that has decided this was how to play the game so to speak.Last edited: May 20, 2025 Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:EzertTheLizart, theImmortalGuardian, AxelLB and 1,010 others
So, good thing. Emerald was not being disciplined. Bad thing, she was now permanently assigned to deal with the Klingons. As in for the rest of her natural existence. Good thing, she had a larger fleet, including an on call Diamond-hand. Bad thing, she was responsible for being sure the aliens didn't get uppity and into Gem assets. Good thing, she had a pearl now. Bad thing, the pearl had to study these possibly uppity organics just to be sure that things actually went well. Another war wouldn't have been a problem, considering how weak these Klingons were, but it would be a waste of time and resources they could better use elsewhere.
"My Emerald, the Klingons are venturing in again." One of her the gems assigned to sensors noted.
"Are they actually going somewhere interesting this time?" Emerald asked curiously. They'd been exploring for awhile now but mostly far away from gem assets.
"It's theoretically possible they'll see one of our mining areas. The big one."
Emerald felt her eyes widen just a hair as she sat up. The big one was where one of the three titan miners in the entire empire was working. It was perhaps one of the few things the primitives could actually damage as well. None of the Emeralds liked the things. They were slow, unwieldy, and needed to be maintained in a shipyard far too often. They were also still too useful to stop using so she'd have to be sure they didn't get touched.
"Inform my pearl that we'll need her shortly. Set an intercept course." Emerald ordered immediately as she firmed up in her seat and looked over the readings. "Huh, three this time."
"Updated energy profiles and better cloaking as well. Mildly impressive advancement, though they're likely still doing the easy stuff." One of the technicians noted.
Emerald nodded at that. They'd run into something like that themselves. It was relatively easy to optimize ships after they were first constructed. Minor changes in configuration, adjustments to the framework, small improvements that resulted in a significant performance update. Actual advancements usually took time, and the more advanced you were it the harder it got to discover things that actually improved what you needed. Theoretically they'd reach a point where it would take centuries before they discovered something that would significantly improve their ships, though that hadn't happened yet. These aliens should expect a steady advancement that would slow after a century or two. Fully something she could handle with her current forces for the next millennia or two.
Regardless, that didn't mean she could slack on her duties. As their ship came into range the enemy ships paused. For a moment she wondered what they were thinking before she decided she really didn't care.
"Klingon ships, you are intruding on the space of the Great Diamond Authority. Halt and turn around or be disabled and removed." Emerald ordered.
"You know this will cause a confrontation correct My Emerald?" Her pearl chimed in as she entered the room.
"Huh..." Emerald paused before giving a shrug. "That will work. We do need to actually let them know the boundaries."
"Finally! I have found you!!!" The voice seemed familiar and it took her a second to recall it.
"Oh, Grovof, you have three ships now! Did you get promoted, congratulations!" Emerald said with good cheer. "Do you want another match? I hope you improved your blades."
There was a long pause. "It has been sixteen years since I last fought you but I remember it well. Emerald Facet X-Three-Two, Cut F-Nine. While you won with honor, I was forced to struggle and fight to regain my command after my defeat. Now I have something that can match you! Prepare yourself!"
"So you did-" Emerald paused at a whisper from her pearl. "Oh, you want to use those ships instead? You think they're good enough for that?"
They had a hilariously inflated opinion of their technology if they did. Emerald was fairly sure she could smash them with just a few shots from her current flagship. That said, they really did need some data as to how to fight ship-to-ship, especially against cloaked vessels. They might actually get something from a fight if they just changed how much their sensors detected.
Emerald took note of the Klingon ranting and her pearl responding diplomatically some as she keyed in a few orders. A few Sun Incinerators flew into sight shortly thereafter. To the Klingon's credit, his rants didn't change that much.
"All right, since you're big on honor and all that we'll make a match of it. Three versus three. We're going to blind our scanners so that you can use your little concealment technologies. Match is disable or give up." Emerald interrupted the organic with a small grin. "If you win, I'll let you see something interesting."
The Long-Leg miner was an impressive sight if you didn't know how finicky and irritating it was to deal with. It should over-awe these organics and let them know how great the Diamond Authority was. It also didn't show anything really important strategically. In fifty years or so the miner would move on and the area would be useless to them.
It took a bit of negotiation and talk, with her pearl taking over once Emerald got bored trying to wrangle them into what she wanted, but they managed to come to an agreement eventually. Why the Klingons wanted a way to contact them and more knowledge about gems was a bit of a mystery to her. None of what they wanted would really help them fight or tech wise. Her pearl had made it sound very important to them though, which was enough really. The Klingons were a lot easier to deal with when they thought they were getting something valuable. This wasn't uncommon. Stars knew she'd had to bribe more than one gem with a choice bit of gossip or something to get what she wanted.
Case in point, the upcoming battle was important to her! Valuable data on how to fight cloaked enemies would be useful for everyone. Even better it would be actually fighting non-gems. That had never been done before at all. The data alone would get some praise from Green Diamond!
It was admittedly a lopsided fight. The Sun Incinerators were the smallest warship they had in their fleet. They still outclassed the Klingons in all respects. Blinding their sensors didn't make them on par, it just gave the Klingons a chance. Cloaking was a rather potent tool if you built a ship around it properly.
Their opening steps were as predictable as they were effective. They cloaked and then shifted. Had their sensors been fully operational it would have been useless. The Incinerator pilots could get a bare idea of where they were due to the blinding, nothing more. So they fired in brackets in the enemy's general area.
From the side Emerald could see it was a poor choice. Only one of the Klingon ships had stayed in front. The other two had moved to flank. A small trick with their emissions was already baffling their reduced sensors and making it seem like the leading ship on the front was larger than it was.
Like that, the two Klingon ships had a perfect shot onto the Incinerators. They took it almost gleefully, a surprise shot with an energy weapon that hit them right on the rear. It impacted the armor of the Incinerators and did enough damage to be visible.
Damage reports from the ships indicated it was mostly cosmetic damage. Emerald was mildly impressed really. A few centuries and a shot like that would have been actually dangerous. It was a mildly poor showing on her pilots end, but understandable. Cloaking was like that. It was what happened next that would matter more.
On the surface their response looked good. The three gem ships immediately shifted so that their rears were covered and intensified scans. That was enough for them to identify the vague area of where the ships were, as a simulation of how effective their enemy's cloaking tech was estimated to be. This was enough for them to blast their own mounted lasers and hit one of the Klingon ships.
It was a glancing blow that hit some sort of shielding effect. The lack of damage on the strike was enough for Emerald to raise an eyebrow and look at her techs.
"Energy shields?" She asked.
"It's similar, but not exact to the armor we use on our ships. Green's orders had us move away from it actually. We use a composite mix now that's less durable and regenerative, but can handle different damage types and in a less all or nothing matter." One of her peridots explained.
That was exemplified by all three Incinerators throwing out missiles once they confirmed a tag. The widespread attack in the general direction caused several strikes to directly hit the ship in question dead on. The damage to the shield was mostly inconsequential. The damage to the ship itself was enough to chunk parts off it. Not enough to kill it, but it was near crippled.
Unfortunately for the gems, this was only one ship. The other two were taking advantage of the focus on their allies to take their own shots. More damage accumulated on the incinerators, but they kept focusing on the damage ship, which was slowly limping away. So slowly and obviously that Emerald's eyes narrowed.
"It's not critically damaged." She noted.
The confirmation was quick. "No My Emerald, the weapons seem to be offline, but the shields are at roughly half and its engines are functional. I'd give credit to the engineers because it took some serious damage."
Emerald growled before she gave the command. "The battle is over, we lose."
"My Emerald? The damage to our ships is not notable."
"If they had a bit more throughput we would have lost. Right now they're running around us like we're gems that have just finished cooking." Emerald practically snarled back before she controlled herself. "Pearl, handle the negotiations, give them a tour of the miner, and demand a rematch. I need to report this to our diamonds."
If they fought the enemy now and they were just a bit more dangerous than these Klingons, which they likely were, they'd lose badly considering even tonnage. That was a horrible spot to be in tactically. Especially with an unknown enemy. It was one thing to know their battle experience was non-existent, and another to see it displayed so badly. Even breaking their cloaking would quite likely let them only trade evenly. That was still a losing prospect in her eyes. Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:VVartech, EzertTheLizart, theImmortalGuardian and 1,010 others