//------------------------------// // -25- // Story: Coarse Diamonds // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// The Caravel Boutique had just entered space from the outer atmosphere of Ewesen and they immediately saw the heavily damaged fleet, the allied support from neighboring sectors of space and the damaged juggernaut of a space station itself Geoptis. Geoptis had taken a lot of damage wrecking one of the cores and letting it hit the outer hull. The highly damaged pockmarked half of the station had a now slightly smaller fleshy meteor chunk still sitting on it and the station was still blasting at it with whatever of its nearby turrets survived the crawling waves of monstrosities. The ship was on approach for the less damaged half of the stations as the surrounding backup fleets from the neighboring systems circled the surrounding space protectively. Of the four cities on the surface, Drixsto had been liberated second and as such Rarity was allowed clearance to leave. She however wasn’t going to be allowed back into any of those four affected cities until things were fully cleaned up and Ember was going to be involved with that for a while. Drixtsto hadn’t been completely cleared, but it was considered safe enough for civilians to walk the streets. The Triple P were going to launch bombing runs over the other two cities before letting ground forces comb them for survivors. “Open communications Opal, I want to know if we can dock with Geoptis Station. As I’m sure you know that we have some business to attend to.” At least it looked like Geoptis was mostly secured, judging by the activity going on around it. Rarity leaned back in her seat and considered what she was going to say about her two crew members that were rightfully arrested. “Right, hello who’s in authority right now? This is civilian ship Caravel Boutique, requesting docking clearance with Geoptis.” Opal dropped out sight on the screen and popped up with a headset which she held with a paw and gave a grin to Rarity’s smile. “Huh, oh hello there Officer Lirutiy or are you Commander Lirutiy? Right, that’s what we’re here for… okay and… Rarity we’re being granted permission to dock and they have several people watching where we’ll dock to make sure everything is clear. We’ll be docking soon, we’re being given the coordinates right now and I’m adjusting my flight path. It’s easy to say that Commander Lirutiy wants to personally talk with you, by the way are you taking your EVA suit?” “I don’t think I need it this time, plus it could use a few more washings or I could maybe make a whole new suit.” With a flick of her head, Rarity’s curled royal purple locks fell gently into place at the side of her face and she smiled a bit. “Although it wouldn’t hurt take my pistols with me, Opal you will be controlling CAT Uno and you’ll also be joining me Coco. Gabby you’re free to go wherever it is you need to take your package to, but don’t expect us to give you a ride you back to the surface.” “Of course I couldn’t expect any more or less for inconveniencing you the way I have. I mean the free ride is certainly going to give me more money to work with once I get paid for making this delivery and I feel kind of bad for taking advantage of you like this. How can I not feel like I’m taking advantage of you since you allowed me to hitchhike up here to deliver a package that was said to be needed ASAP, so if you ever need my services in the future just give me a call and I’ll make a delivery for you for free. I feel like I owe it to you! No really, you don’t have to say no and you did save my life so I really at least owe you one for helping me out so much.” Gabby seemed to bounce in place as she continued to gabber on like she usually does. Simply saying ‘thank you’ and ‘I owe you one’ would have been welcome, instead she just kept going on as if there was inertia to her beak and it had ice skates. “You’re a really good pony and you have really nice friends, so if you need a good honest courier remember me. Note that I do not take any packages that I do not know the contents of personally and will not make illegal deliveries. I’m a good griffon and I like to keep my beak clean, yes I do! I can haul up to three hundred pounds of goods so keep that in mind when fully utilizing my services. I might have to work as a gofer for a while, but I’m really good at that. I would know as being a gofer was and still somewhat is my job since I became a full on courier.” “M-m-me, are you sure you want me to go with you Rarity?” Coco started poking her two hooves together shyly as she looked at the floor. “Why yes Coco, why I even insist that you come with me darling. You simply must! You are my trusted partner and friend, this is an important meeting after all and it wouldn’t do for me to go alone to see about freeing up our incarcerated crew members.” Standing up and walking to the living area Rarity had Coco following her and they both walked in on Vera discussing something with Sassy on the exercise mat. “I’m not a mechanic and those two seem to be extraordinarily gifted for it. Besides I don’t want a malfunction like the one that gave me whiplash to be the death of you or any of our friends, I’m the captain and my top priority is the safety of the crew followed by the success of our business whatever that may be. I need to provide for everyone in my crew so that you are all willing to help me do my best at helping all of you; I should only be as successful as everyone else on the crew is no matter what we do.” “I’m willing to die for all of you…” Mumbled a slightly depressed Sassy who was currently underneath Vera, Sassy’s hair was notably styled slightly so that her long hair covered her facial scars and the half of her face they took up. She was still quite beautiful even with the scars and Rarity has even told her as much, but she didn’t ask for Rarity’s help with restyling her mane or hiding the scars. Sassy wanted to take care of her own appearance and accepted the hugs Rarity gave her even if she denied her assistance. “To the left and down a few degrees, am I really that stressed?” “I think Rarity would be happier if we all lived and enjoyed life while doing so Miss Saddles. Please try not to throw your life away like you don’t matter, because I’m beginning to see you as a friend as well. I like my friends among the living even if I’m going to be a spooky ghost to most of them.” It was Vera’s job to talk to Sassy and keep her from doing anything crazy; she had failed once and now she was going to try much harder to make up for it. She quickly pressured Sassy’s body with her hooves; this action was followed by loud popping noises and Sassy letting out a groan as she flopped against the mat in a boneless manner. “Yes, I’d say you were wound up tight and you need more comforting that Coco and Rarity just can’t provide because they stress you out like nothing else, mostly because you love them and your fear is getting the best of you. Also don’t think you’re alone in being the only one needing help! Even if she isn’t unstable Opal needs some psychiatric help, Rarity wouldn’t stop complaining about having to go into a sewer for you once you guys got back plus she’s stressed that you’re stressed, then there’s Coco who needs more confidence in herself and I might need a good stiff drink soon so I’m going to be the alcoholic of the group. You on the other hoof are unstable, yet you hide it so well. I’m going to make it my mission to help you whether you like it or not.” “That’s why I can’t take Sassy with me; Vera is quite busy with her as is. Grab what you think you need Coco and prepare to disembark. I’m sure we’ll meet an escort that will be adequate in taking care of us.” Rarity lifted her head and tilting it slightly looking into a mirror, she mostly studied her mane. It was perfection as far as she could tell. As for her tail however? She couldn’t meet Commander Lirutiy without combing it into shape to get the few loose hairs in line. Several gentle strokes of a comb later and she nodded at herself before she grabbed her saddlebags along with several of her things and saw that Coco had done the same. “Right then, if you’ll join us when we disembark I’m sure they will provide an escort for you as well Gabby.” Gabby nodded and clenched her beak, because she knew as soon as she opened it would start flapping and she’d start rambling inanely. She was quite aware of how annoying she could get, but she was curious about what Rarity’s meeting entailed and who her other crew members were. She didn’t want to pry. “Who are you’re other crew members? I thought that dragon might have been one, but nope definitely a bounty hunter that time and she has a sewer squid for a friend which is really neat! Speaking of friends, how come your friend over there looks like she’s getting a massage? I mean, is she? Because it’d be disturbing to think…” It was inevitable that Gabby would pry anyway, but she stopped speaking as she watched Rarity point to Vera and she became visible in the griffons eyes. Soon CAT Dos floated into the room and Rarity stopped pointing when it started to do so. “Okay, that is really neat, how did you get that mare to be invisible like that? Is she a ghost? Do ghosts really count as crew members? Wouldn’t a ghost count as a negative crew member? So wouldn’t the number of crew members be one less than it really should be? I can…” “Gabby, please be a dear and stop for a moment. I’m here to meet up with my other crew members, two of whom are currently being incarcerated for stealing a fighter and I don’t exactly know all the details quite yet. I hope to learn them soon enough though. I’m not sure if you know them, but they are Gilda Gottfrieda and Greta Gollenfer.” Seeing that the griffon was about to start jabbering on again Rarity quickly shoved her right hoof over Gabby’s beak quieting her before she could get started again. “You should let a lady finish talking before you start up again. Vera is not a ghost, she is a living breathing pony with the oddest affliction I’ve have ever come to know of. She is the crew’s therapist and is currently working with Sassy to get the kinks out of her system. Her affliction makes her very easy to forget or ignore, unless you happen to be touching her or pointing directly at her she’s rather quite hard to pay attention to.” “Tell me about, she’s by far the hardest crew member to keep track of.” Groused out an upset Opal who was having CAT Dos keep its manipulator arm constantly pointed at Vera to make sure she didn’t lose track of her. There was a sudden shuddering as the ship came to a stop, Opal had landed it gently. “By the way, we’ve landed and I guess the welcome wagon to Geoptis is already here, go out either airlock. We’re safely behind three atmosphere barriers, so that’s some nice protective redundancy there.” Shaking her head, Rarity ignored her AI’s commentary and had Coco and Gabby following her with CAT Uno taking up the rear. They were closer to the left airlock, so they took that one and made their way down into the hangar where two unicorn stallions and a heavily armed Minotaur were waiting. As they walked down the ramp to greet the escort Gabby started up again. “I know Greta and Gilda, those two are incredibly smart! Greta was the top of her class and Gilda… not so much; she’s a good pilot except for the fact that landing has always been a major problem for her. Gilda did get a mechanical engineering degree so she could build and pilot her own fighters. I think she’s aiming for making something that she can’t possibly feasibly crash in any way, shape or form. Gilda certainly has a good read of people’s characters and Greta was so into Gilda that she ignored every male that has ever tried to proposition her and didn’t give them the time of day much less look in the direction of any other Griffon, Pony, Minotaur, Cacceran, Human, Parascine or whatever other species as well. Heck I think Greta gave up riches, high standing and or tons of other stuff to just follow Gilda around like the cute sexually frustrated puppy that she is. Those aren’t my words; those were Gilda’s once upon a time. We’re old friends… well friends is not exactly the right word for what we were. I’m more of the nuisance that kept bugging them near constantly! They eventually warmed up to me, I think.” A lot of this stuff that Gabby was talking about was things Rarity already knew about, some of the things however were new to the unicorn now following the escort who just nodded and tried to ignore Gabby’s constantly flapping beak. “Anyway, Gilda was always so… tough is the word for it. She couldn’t attract or keep a mate if she tried; I think the problem was something about smelling too much like a pony? It’s funny that Greta attracts all kinds of male griffons despite the fact that she’s obviously gay, I think Gilda might be bisexual though I’m not entirely sure. Well it’s obvious enough with Greta if you watch her and Gilda interact with each other for a while. I’ve always been interested in their love life, but it apparently doesn’t exist. I swear Gilda is friend zoning Greta so hard, it even physically hurts to watch Greta keep throwing herself at someone who only grudgingly appreciates the effort. Maybe Gilda has her reasons, but I wouldn’t know them. Gilda got into all kinds of fights when she was younger and her best friend other than Greta was a pony named Rainbow Dash. I’ve always wondered if Gilda and Rainbow did certain things together given the pony smell thing that turned male griffons off around her. Greta was more my friend or far more tolerable of my personality at least, it’s really easy to make her feel cheerful. I can’t help but think that Greta’s cheerful nature filled me with sunshine as much as I did her! I mean they didn’t claw me to death and generally they didn’t bother ot make me leave them alone, so there was something about me that they must have liked as a friend. Aside from that not really many friends for me among the griffons and I haven’t seen those two in years. I wonder if they’ll be happy to see me, probably not because of how much I talk, jabber, gab, natter, prattle, blabber and chatter. The three of us used to be next door neighbors back in Griffonstone, oh we were the cutest chicks on the block and then we grew up to become respectable beautiful hens! Well technically I’m not fully grown yet, but I’m getting there so…” “Please for the sake of Titanium Bulwark’s sanity, shut up!” The massive bull was probably named Titanium Bulwark and he loomed over Gabby and looked down at her while clenching his big meaty fists. One of which was wrapped around a rocket launcher just in case they ran across a Vorager that was one of the remaining stragglers still causing problems on the station. As a Minotaur he was easily the most intimidating being around and his gruff deep booming voice certainly helped with that. “Titanium will not take much more of you!” Gabby successfully kept her beak closed after that, as did Rarity, Coco and Opal who did not want to antagonize the guy wielding a rocket launcher. Ember might be able to face tank a rocket blast or five, but they certainly couldn’t. Rarity quietly moved over to Gabby and gave her a friendly pat on the back; she had been more patient with Gabby than most people should even feasibly be and it cheered the griffon up slightly. - When they finally reached the safe zone Gabby had to go her separate way, as did the escort and Rarity’s team of three. The safe zone was assured protection and at the edge of it people from all races could be seen trying to piece their lives back together, showing an incredible amount of solidarity after such a horrible attack. “Well, see you later if at all. It’s a big universe and I’m all over the place all the time, so it was nice to meet you! Remember to call me if you ever hear I’m around and need my services.” Gabby wandered slightly off from the three and started to ask around for someone which made Rarity pause for a bit. “Hey, does anyone here know where I can find a Tree Hugger? I hope this package delivery isn’t a joke at my expense because it’s quite heavy and I need to deliver it to her.” That was the last Rarity’s away team heard from Gabby as they got too far away to hear her; they were too busy looking at all the internal damage that Geoptis had sustained by the MOM ground forces managing to bust into the grand space station. There were still a lot of tall sturdy buildings standing, but rarely were any of the ones they had passed undamaged as they made their way towards the local Planetary Protection Patrol HQ. There were also a few bodies buried under rubble or a few chunks of some unfortunate soul staining the street, along with a lot of dried blood, it was better not to consider what had happened to the less fortunate of which there was many. Overall the insides of the station held up pretty well and the city was mostly fine compared to the massive amounts of damage the outer hull took, it was still safe to say that Geoptis would need a lot of repairs. “It’s really awful; the people of Ewesen didn’t deserve this. What am I saying? I’ve lived on Ewesen for a long time and now…” Coco lamented the fact that she was starting to think of the Caravel Boutique as home, she was going to miss the slightly tropical lake planet. “So many people died and you could hardly even save Sassy, I didn’t do anything during this mess.” “You survived and I’m quite happy that you are still around Coco.” Wrapping her left hoof around the meek pony, Rarity gave her a gentle friendly nuzzle before quickly letting her go. She didn’t want Coco getting the wrong idea, but she still wanted to be affectionate. “Now come on then, let’s not dally. This is not one thing I’m willing to be fashionably late on. Besides, it could have been far worse from what we heard. Had one of those nasty cores landed on Ewesen intact, it would have had a quarter of the planet covered in monster in less than a month. All we can really do is mourn the fallen and move on with our lives.” “That’s a pragmatic way to look at it Rarity, if it had been one of our friends that died would you have been able to move on?” Coco was mostly asking out of thought of how much Rarity cared about her and the others. “Not as easily I admit. I would have felt quite horrid for a while if the deaths were more personal and meaningful to me, but I’m not one to pine away over a significant loss as to have my very soul painfully ripped from me. Yes I consider your friendship to mean that much to me, even Sassy’s and the others. I went through a sewer for Sassy and don’t think I wouldn’t do the same for you if you were in as much danger as well! I would rather continue to live in the memory of the friends I lose and could do nothing for; I would do everyone proud by continuing to live life how I want to and in everyone’s memory.” Sighing as they walked up to the building Rarity continued to think of how she would have reacted had Sassy fully bled out. It wasn’t a pretty thought and Rarity knew pretty, beautiful and extravagant. “You know I hold my appearance, our business and myself personally to ridiculously high standards, but if any of those things were to endanger my friends… then I will just have to say all bets are off as to what I won’t do. I may like the idea of making my appearance something worthy of being idolized wherever I go and want to make a name for myself, but not at the expense of my friend’s darling.” “Just reaffirming the fact that there’s a reason why I like you as a friend.” Coco needn’t to worry about Rarity becoming entirely cold or callous; if anything she was more emotional than ever and wasn’t letting the death and destruction they were currently surrounded by get to her. She idolized Rarity not for her appearance and outward demeanor, but for her generosity and the encompassing inner beauty. Said generosity was about to be quite detrimental to their living conditions, but coco cared little about any of the downsides as long as their friendship stayed true. - “As you can see you’re crew members stole a fighter, which is punishable in a lot of ways. First off I’m going to make you watch what we have of everything leading to us being here.” Lirutiy was in control of the situation and sounded particularly stiff in how she spoke. She had the attentions of five beings, if you counted Opal’s control of CAT Uno as the fifth. “Then I’m going to tell you the punishment that these two will be receiving and whether or not they will walk away from this building with you depends on your actions.” Rarity sat with Gilda, Greta and Coco, while Uno floated off to the side, they were in one of the few rooms that looked entirely normal and completely undamaged. Despite their being various claw marks and bits of Ant Heads littering the hallways on the way to this room, it looked positively pristine. Rarity appreciated that much at least. Things went about as well as could be expected on screen. It showed Gilda and Greta boarding the ship and went from there, the missed Greta hotwiring the ship but she had already confessed about doing so in order to make the shields even somewhat viable on top of hotwiring a Javelin fighter. What followed was an easy if short sortie over Geoptis’s hull that had the griffons making several passes before joining Femur squadron on the attack run of the remaining core with several other squadrons. What followed was Gilda breaking off with Entrencher squadron and hitting the flesh ball with a lot of explosives before it opened up revealing its true nature. After getting through the Shamroid wave with a few hits and losing the shield, the scene following that was quite gripping for Rarity as Gilda barely ejects the shell of the Javelin and got out of the way of three devastators going off at once. After that things proceeded with Gilda’s plan to burn off heat to help the heat sinks get back in order, which was done by pushing a lot of energy through the shell decoupling system to redirect all the heat out of the heat sinks. Following that was Greta’s act of popping her canopy open and gunning down the Vasp that were still getting their bearings and quickly used the magnetic grips on her EVA suit to fix a few things along what was left of the fighter. What followed after was Greta swiftly getting back into her seat and then Gilda making the Javelin stop its random tumbling to start falling that much slower until it evened out and flew towards the ground at a slow pace. It culminated in what was an almost good landing that actually ended up going wrong quickly leading to Gilda’s arm being in a Bio Cast and shattering the canopy with her body. “Yeah, I’m not going to live that landing down.” Gilda rubbed idly at the Bio Cast around her limb. “At least I landed it in a semi working condition; I even had it this time before one of the variable thrusters decided to overcompensate and that caused the slight crash at the end there.” “With the state the Javelin was in at the time and given that you’re both engineers, I’m willing to bet that’s the most accurate assessment we’ll get.” Lirutiy still spoke in her rather stiff tone as she turned to Rarity. “Now then, as much as it pains me to say it. They did get all kinds of new information that we needed to know on these planet infesters to spread around. Not only that, they destroyed the core and saved millions if not billions of lives. I regretfully inform you that if they had died we could have just painted them as heroes, since they are still alive we still have to punish them. Thankfully, and know that many agree with me on this, we are capable of showing some form of leniency. As such they are capable of being bailed; if they aren’t bailed then things might get ugly. Even if they are heroes, the law would have us punish them to the full extent otherwise. Gilda and Greta can’t use any of their funds from making a confirmed kill on the core or their other numerous kills in the course of action as their assets are currently frozen due to the theft.” Taking out a data pad the Plurt shoved it over to Rarity who looked over the information on it and goggled at the amount that was on the pad. She bit her lower lip and slid it over to Coco who also goggled at it for a bit and then passed it over to Gilda, Greta and Opal to look over. “That’s a complete and utter yikes.” Their bail was quite large and that’s with the leniency in play, Greta didn’t actually expect that anyone would pay such a ridiculous amount. “Well that’s the end of us traveling together boss lady.” “I’ll pay it.” Rarity stated clearly and Coco looked at her with a slight frown, after a moment Rarity spoke to her friend. “Coco, how much money do you have saved up? I could use a little help right now.” “I support Rarity in paying the bail.” There was no hesitance for Coco once Rarity had asked her for help. After looking over their combined total amount of pooled cash, they found it still wasn’t nearly enough “It’s not enough, we’re still short a couple thousand.” “I give my money to the cause as well.” Sassy’s voice sounded out from Opal’s CAT drone with a ‘no nonsense’ tone to it. “It should be just enough to aid you Coco-chan, Rarity-sama.” “Wait, are you all seriously bankrupting yourselves for…” Gilda had gained an indefinable look on her face when Rarity gave her stern look. “I’d do a lot for my friends Gilda, even this. We might come out of this poor, but if Sassy and Coco are willing then yes we’re paying for your freedom as our crewmates.” It was quite a touching moment and Rarity couldn’t believe that her two friends were just as willing as she was. They had paid off the bail in full and both Greta and Gilda were free to leave. Even then there was quite a somber tone flowing throughout the room at the fact that they were all going to have problems making ends meet for a while. “There is still the other matter to attend to, now that the bail is paid in full… here’s at least a little more than a quarter of that money back for the destruction of the core and all the confirmed kills that the both of your crew members made. Devastators aren’t cheap to make, so you’re not getting much more than that back.” The sudden looks of shocks made Commander Lirutiy’s day and the smug slug chuckled with a bit of mirth. “Plus, since your crew members were not criminals less than seven days ago on Ewesen’s time scale… your claim for the Derringer is still active. As such I Commander Lirutiy Gastraslorcth hereby approve of its release into your command Captain Rarity Belle. Since we have a lot of spare parts flying around out there in space at the moment you could probably keep that as salvage while doing us a favor of recovering the mostly intact fighters and other targets of interest that are still floating around for Planetary Protection Patrol if you’re willing. About the destroyed Javelin, it landed in a junkyard and is considered to be junk at that point and given nobody else was there to claim it at the time, it immediately goes to Miss Gollenfer and Gottfrieda to do with as they please as they were there first to claim it. If you hadn’t paid the bail, then none of this would be possible so don’t think I’m doing this out of the goodness of my heart now. Two last things, please don’t commit any more illegal acts in my system or else… and I would like to commission one of your EVA suits.” “Wait… WHAT!” It was a shared disbelieving sentiment between everyone that was part of Rarity’s crew for what amounted to a resounding loss of a large amount of money for a somewhat painful slap on the wrist that sounded more like a rather fair trade off.