I felt as if my head—well, our head—was about to explode. I was pushing my future vision to an unbelievable limit, but right now, we had no other choice. Those guys had trackers, and I was sure that the moment they fired the first shot, they tagged us. I was processing so many timelines at once that the fusion felt on the verge of overload, but I was going to keep it together; both parts of me were in total agreement that this was no time to unfuse.
I pulled off a violent maneuver in the vacuum while the radar showed that ship keeping pace with us with annoying persistence.
"Yarbis, activate frame-by-frame evasion mode!" I yelled, my three eyes narrowing seriously.
My hands flew across the controls. This was a thousand times better than being Opalite; here, I didn't just have strength, I had probability. I knew what was going to happen before it did, though the stakes are always high in space. I could hear the echo of gunfire in the background; I let Pearl handle the artillery alone—she always did better when no one was getting in her way. The fifth blast missed the cockpit by inches, heating up the air and sending drops of sweat rolling down my forehead.
Out of nowhere, an internal comms screen popped up in front of me while I kept maneuvering.
"Hey, Sodalite, this ship doesn't look like it belongs to the Empire," Pearl said hesitantly, never stopping her fire.
"Space pirates?" I replied, hesitating for a second as I tried to remember if such a thing even existed in this sector.
"I guess," Pearl answered, just as confused.
Suddenly, a blunt impact shook the entire hull. I heard the screech of the shields taking a direct hit, and I felt Silica's rage rising up my throat.
"Pieces of shit!" I roared, snapping a quick command to the AI. "Yarbis, activate Rocky mode!"
"Right away, General Tablos," Yarbis replied with his usual coldness as the thud of heavy cannons began to echo through the ship.
I glanced at the indicators; our energy was draining fast from the exertion, though luckily the cores I installed recharged at a decent speed. I was scanning the immediate future when suddenly, a mental image hit me: a missile, but a messed-up one, completely different from the others.
Without hesitation, I yanked the wheel hard, dodging that weird projectile as it streaked past into the deep recesses of space.
"What the hell was that?" I growled, still dodging volleys, with the sound of Pearl's shots creating a war symphony in the background.
Out of nowhere, an incoming call notification flashed on my main screen, cutting off the tactical data stream.
I just stared at it like, "What the actual hell?" since I didn't remember giving my number to anyone in this quadrant, but I didn't care and, out of pure tactical curiosity, I answered.
"Hello!" said what looked like a Sapphire on the other end of the line.
For some reason, my Sapphire half tensed up, a shiver of anxiety running down our spine. In that microsecond, I felt her take total control of the fusion. Remember Malachite, the Lapis and Jasper fusion? Where one always ended up dominating the other... well, right now it was me, Silica, behind the wheel, just without the mental warfare. It was me using Sodalite's body.
"Are you an Empire gem?" the enemy Sapphire asked with a calmness that made me sick.
"And what if I'm not?" I replied with a raised eyebrow and a hostile tone.
"Well..." she said, making a weird gesture to someone off-camera. "We need your stuff, so... sucks to be you."
She flashed a shit-eating grin just as my ship began taking a hail of gunfire. Luckily, my reinforced shields took the punishment, vibrating with each impact but holding firm. I stared dead at the Sapphire through the screen; she still had that smug little smirk, thinking she had us cornered.
"Sucks to be you," I said, returning the smile, but with a much more dangerous one.
The Sapphire on the other side instantly lost her laugh. She saw something in my eyes she didn't like.
"Yarbis, Final Flash Mode. Attack in 3... 2..."
"Hyperspace! Let's get out of here!" the enemy Sapphire screamed in pure panic, realizing we weren't easy prey.
"Fire," I said coldly.
A torrent of pure, concentrated light blasted from the ship, straight toward the enemy. The pirate ship desperately tried to turn around to dodge, but it was useless. For some reason—probably overconfidence—they didn't have their shields up. The shot hit dead-on, ripping through the hull as a bunch of supplies and metal debris flew out into the vacuum.
"Yarbis, hyperdrive," I ordered. Right now, I didn't give a crap if someone from the Empire detected our heat signature. I just wanted out of there.
"Setting destination: Planet FanganZ," Yarbis announced.
The inertia was brutal. I felt Sodalite hit the floor as the ship blasted off at an absurd speed. The call had cut out a while ago. Suddenly, my vision went white; my physical form destabilized, and I felt like I was floating in space for a second.
"Dammit..." I muttered.
When I opened my eyes, I was on the cockpit floor. I looked at Pearl next to me, completely dazed and reforming her physical body. We were back to our light forms, our gems trying to stabilize after the stress of battle. Even though I couldn't talk to her yet, she looked at me, and seeing that I was "whole," she calmed down.
After a few tense seconds of silence and stars whizzing past at high speed, the ship came to a dead halt. Silence returned to the cockpit as the light from our forms integrated back into our gems. We had escaped, but that planet's name was already on the radar.
Once the three of us gathered ourselves—though Sapphire looked different, with an expression I couldn't quite read—I began the descent maneuver toward the planet's surface. My hands, still shaking a bit from the residual adrenaline, gripped the controls.
"Yarbis, scan for organic life," I ordered immediately, breaking the silence in the cockpit.
"Scanning... No intelligent life detected, my Silica," Yarbis replied quickly.
I nodded, focusing on the landing. I felt the roar of the engines during atmospheric entry until the ship finally touched down with a dull but stable thud. As soon as the systems stabilized, I got up and leaned against the wall, feeling the stress hit me all at once. If we had ended up exploding in that nebula due to a math error... Good God, I don't know what I would have done.
I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling a constant dread tightening in my chest. In the distance, I could hear Pearl rambling to Sapphire about how worried she was for her plants after those sharp maneuvers. Sapphire, for her part, was quieter than usual. Thanks to the fusion link, I could still feel a lingering residue of memory: she knew that other Sapphire somehow. Did I care? Only if she chose to tell me.
I sighed deeply and wiped away a small tear that threatened to fall. It wasn't time to cry; at the beginning of my birth, I had already cried enough for a thousand lifetimes. I stood up and started muttering to myself.
"Yarbis, damage report," I requested, trying to get back into my engineer mindset.
"Damage report: Shields at 15%, multiple dents on the outer hull, and the left wing has severe plasma burns compromising structural aerodynamics," the AI reported.
I shook my head while analyzing the situation. It could have been way worse. I looked at the security cameras again, which showed the other two gems, and consulted my assistant once more.
"Yarbis, is this planet suitable according to the perfection hypotheses?" I asked with a sliver of hope.
Yarbis stayed silent for a couple of seconds while finishing processing the atmospheric and geological data of the environment.
"Affirmative at 98%, my Silica," he replied, now in a more formal tone.
I let out a long sigh, ducked my head a bit, and smiled to myself. For the first time in a long time, I felt like things might actually work out. Maybe this wasn't as bad as I thought.
Pearl approached with that gentleness only she possessed, moving through the chaotic debris of the cockpit as if she were floating. She placed a delicate hand on Sapphire's shoulder, who gave a slight flinch, her shoulders tensing before letting out a long sigh and calming down.
"Are you okay, Sapphire?" Pearl asked, her voice full of a genuine worry that echoed in the silence of the ship.
Sapphire stared down at her own hands, rubbing her knuckles with a nervous tic that Pearl had learned to recognize after so many nights of talks and confessions in the dim light of space.
"More or less..." Sapphire whispered without looking up. "I think I saw someone familiar on that screen. Someone who shouldn't be there, let alone doing what she was doing."
Pearl gently squeezed her shoulder, offering that anchor Sapphire needed so badly when her future vision got blurred by anxiety.
"If you want to talk, you can talk to me. You know there are no hierarchies here, no courts, no Diamonds. It's just us," Pearl reminded her with a sad smile.
Sapphire remained silent as they stood up. They walked together toward the greenhouse area, the place that had become their personal sanctuary. Pearl immediately knelt next to a pot that had flipped over during the evasive maneuver, starting to arrange the soil with infinite patience. Sapphire sat beside her, helping her pick up some fallen leaves from a light-blue flower that matched her skin.
"I'm not ready to say her name yet, Pearl," Sapphire finally said, her voice barely a whisper. "It's like, by talking about her, I make her more real in this present. But I promise you this: if I'm ever ready to get it out of my system, you'll be the first to know. No one else."
Pearl looked up, and their eyes met. They didn't need any more words; the time they had shared tending to that little garden in the middle of the void had bonded them more than any imperial decree. Pearl nodded, accepting the pact, and then pointed to the small fish tank Silica had installed so proudly.
"Look, the fry are okay," Pearl said, trying to lighten the mood. "They look dizzy, but they're swimming again."
Sapphire approached the water and dipped a finger in, letting one of the fish brush against her cold skin. For a moment, a small smile appeared on her face.
"They're strong," Sapphire murmured. "Like us. I guess surviving the impossible is becoming our specialty."
They stayed there for a good while, in a emotional and healing silence, fixing bent stems and making sure the life inside that glass tank kept flowing. Meanwhile, I watched them from the cockpit cameras, feeling a lump in my throat. Seeing them like that, so vulnerable yet so united, reminded me why every burn on the ship's hull and every single pixel of my memory was worth it.
End of Chapter 22.