Canon Omake: Welcome to Earth, Part 2
Captain Helidor's body reformed under the red auxiliary lights of the ship's bridge, which was thrown into disarray by the devastating moon weapon. Her vision returned in spots, her senses acclimating to her reconstituted body.
"Captain!" an indistinct figure called out.
Heliodor normally took great pride in one of her eyes being her gem, but at moments like this she would have preferred two working eyes and depth perception.
The captain-governor let out a pained groan. Weren't gems supposed to feel good as new after being restored? She felt awful. Slowly, Heliodor stood up from the uneven floor, using her crooked command chair to hold herself steady.
"What in the stars…?" Helidor murmured as she rubbed her gem to check for scratches. When her vision cleared, she saw that she was surrounded by rubies. "Status report."
"We were shot down by the moon array three local days ago, Sir!" the visored ruby squad leader said.
"The… moon array?" Heliodor repeated. "Ah, yes. Clearly, that was a trap laid in place by our intergalactic enemies to delay my arrival."
To think, only a few solar cycles ago, the gems thought they were the only intelligent life in the galaxy. Now they were well aware that the galaxy was full of enemies out to subvert and shatter every facet of gemkind. Organic beasts and rogue machines alike. Which one of them dared to try and claim the Earth under the Diamond Authority's collective noses?
"You're so smart, Sir!"
"Thank you, Ruby."
Outrage aside, Heliodor was in a state of shock over the attack. Her confidence in gem shipbuilding was such that even an aging shoe being taken out like that left her shaken. Though unnerved, it would do no good to look weak in front of her soldiers. They had already lost days since the crash, and they were all vulnerable until they reached the planet's colonial outpost. She outwardly regained her composure and addressed her pilot.
"Nephrite! I need a full report of the ship's remaining capabilities. Assuming anything still works on this old boot."
She waited for a response from her pilot. When that response wasn't forthcoming, she reached over to the pilot's seat.
"Nephrite, do you hear me? I want a--"
Heliodor turned the chair around, causing the nephrite's dormant gem to fall to the floor and roll down the slanted hallway towards the cargo hold.
"Oh."
"The pilot hasn't gotten her body back yet," the bashful ruby said. "What do you want us to do now?"
"Were you able to do a security sweep of the surrounding area while I was… indisposed?"
"Yes, sir!" the stern, equally-one-eyed ruby replied. "We scared off the packs of scavengers and pests poking around the crash site while awaiting further orders!"
"That is some good news, I suppose. Secure the perimeter while I get the reactor up and running."
The rubies performed a diamond salute and went about carrying out their orders. While they did so, Helidor climbed down into the engine compartment. It wasn't a job befitting a commander-governor, but the pilot was out of commission for at least a week, and she couldn't exactly trust rubies to handle sensitive equipment. Besides, how hard could fixing a starship reactor be?
As she would soon discover, fixing a starship reactor was not as simple as it looked. While her size made her a mighty warrior, being tall and statuesque left Heliodor cramped in a tiny maintenance tunnel designed for much more compact gems. Her hands fumbled with the tiny toolkit mounted to the wall, with which she tinkered with the ship's power grid until it became clear her attempts to cobble up a solution were hopeless.
"Oh, come on!" she shouted at the unresponsive tech.
The fact that she could really use a peridot right now was left unacknowledged and unsaid.
By the time she crawled out of the tunnel, the rubies had already dragged a spare generator out of the cargo hold and managed to get the ship's computers back online. All it took was trial, error, and blunt force applied to the monitor until it started working again.
Far more comfortable with the ship's user interface than the messy internals, Heliodor got into the pilot's chair and tried to force the engines on with an automatic startup sequence. It seemed to be working for a moment, only for it to be cut off with a loud error message.
"The ship's engines and tracking beacon are both offline," she said grimly.
The naïve ruby saw the dire engineering report and shrugged.
"That's okay, Sir! The heel thruster is too stuck for us to fly anyway!"
"Darn it!" the short-tempered ruby cried. She kicked the wall and immediately regretted it. "Ow!"
Upon returning from her job of retrieving their nephrite, the ditzy ruby poked her head into the bridge.
"Gee, we could sure use a peridot!" she said blithely.
"Like the one in charge of the Earth colony!"
"Yeah!" The rubies were in general agreement. "Why don't we ask her for help?"
Heliodor pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Enough of that! If I can't get this ship online, we'll have to trek to the nearest warp pad by foot!"
Captain Heliodor downloaded the directions to the outpost onto her personal geolocator and shut the terminal down. None of them needed to be peridots to direct the spare robinoids from the cargo hold to carry the nephrite and the captain's gift from Yellow Diamond. The latter even came in a special case, giving the mindless drone who carried it an air of class and prestige.
Once everyone was outside, Heliodor could see that the area where the ship landed was a white field of snow dotted with brown tubes with green frills. She'd seen the former on frigid, glacial worlds before, but the latter left her stumped.
"What on Earth are those?" Heliodor asked.
"Those are trees, Sir!"
"Trees?"
She tested out the word. Examining them further, Heliodor could see several 'trees' were twisted, scorched, or otherwise battle-scarred. Like the ruby described, she could also see that the ship's heel thruster was sunk deep into the mountain beyond any conventional means of recovery. Not even if she melted the ice around it.
"All of you, fan out. I'll need a good vantage point from which I can use the geolocator."
The device was fuzzy and temperamental. It didn't want to state anything more specific than that they were on Earth's Northern Hemisphere, and that there were no other gem vessels around for miles.
"So much for being built to last," Heliodor grumbled.
She was still poking at the display when a faint, dull roar rang out in the distant terrain, stealing away her attention.
"Sounds like they're back," the timid ruby said.
"I thought you said you were scaring off scavengers. Small, weak organisms that pick at the food ignored or left behind by larger ones?"
The inquiry got her a confused look from the rubies.
"What? I've overseen worlds with native life on them before."
It was one of the many reasons she was deemed the perfect gem to take over Earth.
"Really? What kind of worlds did you look at?" another ruby asked.
"Primarily lichenous, aquatic, and desert planets. When the lapis lazulis got lazy or careless, which my assigned pair always did whenever I took my eyes off them, you'd see a few creatures skittering about trying to consume one another. Organics are disgusting, and I wouldn't want to touch one without gloves, but they're nothing a gem has to be afraid of."
"Well, these scavengers were more armed than what you're talking about, but the earthlings were no match for the Ruby Squad!"
"Armed? What kind of beasts are…?"
The roar grew closer; more intense. Helildor could make out multiple sources from the din, and it was clear now that they were dealing with wildlife that was far more severe than the fare she was accustomed to.
A bright orange hilt grew out of Heliodor's gem. With one hand, Heliodor pulled the hilt out and drew forth a massive, glowing flamberge!
Being caught unawares did not mean she forgot how to handle herself in a fight. Heliodor came out of the ground knowing how to use her blade, and she would make sure that whoever this was would regret crossing an agent of Yellow Diamond.
"Rubies! Prepare for battle!"
The rubies formed a defensive line around their leader and the robinoids guarding their items. Right as they did, a pack of armored vehicles broke through the trees and landed in the clearing! Each primitive machine was loaded with heavy projectile weapons, their hoods emblazoned with hot colors and skull decals. The vehicles were all rugged, smoke-belching monstrosities, covered in scuffs and dents from prior skirmishes and their earlier run-in with the Ruby Squad. Heliodor could make out small, helmed creatures driving them.
"Are these humans?" Heliodor whispered.
"I think those are cars?" one ruby said, uncertain.
Heliodor rolled her eye.
"The ones driving the cars, Ruby."
"They're humans alright!" the ruby leader replied. "Say the word and we'll trounce 'em!"
"Hold steady until I give the say," Heliodor commanded.
The savage humans and patriotic gems entered a tense stalemate, neither group making the first move. A broad-shouldered human with a painted skull atop his face and chest stepped out of the frontmost vehicle. His head was adorned with a spiked, orange mohawk, which only accentuated the human's aura of arrogance as he stepped up the Homeworld gems without a shred of fear or trepidation.
"Seems like my bros and you got off on the wrong foot last time."
"Who are you?" Heliodor said to the human. "And what do you think you're doing here?"
"Me? The name's Fistrick, and I'm a businessman in a booming market."
"Such as?" Heliodor asked, keeping the human's minions at bay with her flaming sword.
"You're new in town, so I'll keep it simple for you. The market says Gem technology is worth its weight in taydenite right now, and my bros and me couldn't help but notice you're sitting on the jackpot."
"You expect me, the governor of your own world, to surrender my ship?"
"Lady, I don't care what you and your little rock band call yourselves. We do this song and dance with every ship that crashes on this side of the Rockies, and it ends the same way. Every time. If you were all to buzz off back to your green and orange gal pals now, I'd even throw in a bonus for saving us all the trouble. Deal?"
Heliodor didn't ruminate on the offer for long. Her temper inflamed, the gem warrior lowered her flamberge to the human's chest! The rubies jumped into combat when they saw the signal, attacking the armored vehicles in a mob with heated abandon!
"You dare insult my dignity and right to rule your pitiful planet? As long as I live, you marauders have no right to command anything of me!"
The human spared a casual, curious glance to their endangered minions before turning back to Heliodor with a smile.
"I was hoping you'd say somethin' like that. In that case…"
In a flash, the human drew out a glowing machete from his belt! He parried Heliodor's blade with enough force that she nearly lost her grip!
"What?!"
Heliodor then took the fight seriously. She rushed forward and performed a series of furious, wide sweeps with her blade, forcing Fistrick back when the ice around her slashes became a fresh slush.
"How do you like that, you human pest?"
"Not bad, bro-ette!"
Fistrick circled around her with a wicked laugh. He tossed the machete from one hand to the other with deft skill and an eagerness for carnage. The rubies were keeping the rest of his forces busy as a gargantuan fusion of five, allowing the two warriors to fight mano a gema without any outside interruption.
"Too bad the whole 'life' gimmick you have going on is cutting into my bottom line. Looks like I'll need to take that off your hands, too."
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