Chương 179: LOG-171.

Getting Azurite alone wasn't the hard part. It was finding somewhere within the increasingly crowded palace that wasn't filled with gossiping and bickering guests that proved a little more difficult. Thankfully, Aubergine proved especially useful in that regard, and after a few twists and turns followed by some guidance from the Pearl, I found myself standing in an oversized storage closet, even as my blue counterpart hastily took one last glance outside before closing the doors behind her with a sigh.

"Alright, we've got an interceptor-class vessel on loan from Flight sitting in a hangar across the planet, the festivities will be going on for the next while but the issues with the Warp pads being what they are, we'll need a cover story to actually get you to extraction, so I have several soldiers from Fight stationed nearby ready to engage in a false flag operation to…" The Gem finally slowed down as she noticed me wincing, a slight hesitation entering her tone.

"Is… is there something wrong? I understand it's a little bit rushed but you'll forgive me, forgive us if we'd rather not leave getting you out to the last second again. What happened last time shouldn't have happened, and I promise you Fawn won't allow it to happen this time-""I can't go."

The three words managed to almost visibly stun the rebellious aristocrat, her mouth opening and closing slightly before she smoothed her surprise over with a calm placidity that felt far more familiar than the vulnerable paranoia I'd just been exposed to. Blue eyes regarded me for a long moment, flicking from my own eyes to my lightform, my gemstone, my claws, and back again. Tensing slightly.

Likely has harboured worries as to whether I have been mentally compromised somehow, and is preparing to fight for her life if that turns out to be true. Slowly, I brought up a hand, watching Azuritre track my claws warily, before the other rebel blinked as I brought them up and gently pinched at my nose, letting out an audible groan.

"I can't leave because I have Pearls." There was a blink, before my counterpart slowly, hesitantly relaxed, tilting her head slightly as she did so.

"... Elaborate?" Bringing my talons away, I made a vague gesture at one of the walls, ostensibly towards the outside world, and practically ground out my next few words, each one feeling an extra link I was adding to an already far too long chain.

"I created a Batch of Pearls. Got to modify their initial starting code and everything. They're lovely, practically Fawn agents already, and if I leave now, like this, I would be abandoning them." My fellow operator only had one thing to say as I stepped forward, the singular word spilling past her lips as the distance between us closed.

"Oh." Understanding and immediately sympathetic. Guilt also plays into her reaction. It looks like she was forced to leave someone behind before. Then I was standing nearby with my claws on her shoulders, and I realised I was just slightly tall enough to loom over her while putting as much visceral pleading as I could into my voice.

"Azurite. Please. Tell me everything that I have missed, and then help me find a way to free my Pearls." — If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. I had wondered, back when I'd first been getting accustomed to my new role at the Reef, and when I'd first reinitialised contact with Fawn, what necessarily was stopping me from just… sending an encrypted message to them, one that could hopefully be passed along to Earth, and eventually my loved ones. The answer was paranoia.

Endless, all encompassing, and entirely justifiable paranoia. My allies' own compartmentalisation working against my favour, essentially. Widespread faster than light communication was a luxury available to the Great Diamond Authority that remained specifically dependent on the essence provided by the Diamonds that ran it, piggybacking on their inherent multi-dimensional nature to produce communicators that could broadcast to each other across entire galaxies.

New ones were being produced constantly, of course, but they remained expensive to create, and with the Fawn infused Crystal Gems being what they were, they were only willing to use such things in a way that they couldn't possibly be traced back to Earth, and didn't hold the risk of potentially being used by Imperial forces to find other rebel operated communicators. The solution was the aforementioned paranoia.

With the apparent industrial capacity of Flight and its constituent organic races being brought to bear, new personal communicators, with new protocols, were developed.

Each one, being both a treasure and extremely valuable strategic and tactical asset, then went to either agents or prospective allies within GDA space, linked only to the main nodes acting as the equivalent of a server network back on Earth, with no actual way to re-link or connect them to any other communicators so that Imperial Gems couldn't get their grubby mitts into the network.

Combined with additional functionalities like gemstone scanning, appearance reflection to avoid appearing unique in public, borderline alien passwords and encryption, and internal self destruction protocols that were effectively on a hair trigger in terms of activation, the Crystal communicators were one devious piece of tech.

They couldn't be made from Pink Diamond's essence either, ostensibly to avoid drawing far too much of the wrong kind of attention, which made production even slower, and working examples even rarer. The key component to their creation, Blue, Yellow, or White essence, needed to either be bought, stolen or salvaged from Imperial holdings.

The reason I couldn't talk to my friends, to my family, and tell them that I was alright was because the only branch of Fawn that was currently aware of my existence didn't have a Crystal communicator. Which meant the best they could do was send either a courier directly to Earth, which would take time, or seek out another branch which did have an FTL connection to the planet's onsite communications arrays, which would also take time. It made the silence and relative isolation…

understandable, if no less unbearable. Still, what mattered now was that with the subtle threat of a potentially unsecure network out of the way, and word of mouth finally being an option, Azurite was able to tell me everything, in exactly as much detail as I would have liked. My first questions had been personal, of course. But to my immeasurable disappointment, the Coordinator hadn't actually gotten a chance to visit the planet personally, so all she knew was either second or third hand information.

It meant, irritably, that I would just have to find out how my friends were doing some other way. Still, that left the… bigger picture, to obtain information on instead. As had been hinted at previously, Earth was a rebel state in hiding. Fight, Flight, Fawn and Freeze had been unified as much as one reasonably could unify such disparate insurgent factions. Countless alien races with interests in shattering the Authority were also tentatively putting their support behind the emerging faction.

It was all but official. The Crystal Gems were finally back, and now stood in the semi-public eye as the core of an alliance of rebels that were building up into something that could conceivably resist the Diamonds directly. And the Empire didn't know anything.

No, instead the behemoth of an interstellar polity was trapped in a silent cold war with itself, one that was looking to go hot very, very soon, as the Yellow Court continued to make steady encroachments outside of its jurisdiction, its Diamond placing fleets and armies in key locations, all in preparation for something, whether it be a secession attempt or an outright coup being impossible to determine until the fighting actually began. The unstable Warp network was a sign of that.

Being the titan of industry and progression that they were, Yellow's colonies produced most Warp pads that were then placed around Imperial space, with massive facilities on their surfaces working to connect the subsequent spiderweb of FTL tunnels in such a way that they could allow transit from one world to another.

A spiderweb which was slowly being chipped away at by someone, and judging by the fact that Azurite swore up and down that Fawn had nothing to do with it, the culprit was likely the very Peridots that managed those Warp centers, no doubt under order of their Diamond. It meant that linked travel would soon prove unreliable.

One would either need to travel through the Warp via a starship, sling themselves around with a vessel bearing a gravity drive, or find themselves stranded in whatever region of space they were unlucky enough to be stuck within once the war finally went hot. Which left my situation to deal with. A Reef full of Pearls that needed rescuing, a rebellious Overseer, and a single cell of Fawn.

Thankfully, the organisation's compartmentalisation, despite working against me in some regards, could also prove extremely useful in others. Namely in the fact that the entire cell dedicated to extracting me was all under Azurite's complete command, without answering to anyone else who needed to approve new orders. Soon the jubilee would reach its twilight stage.

I would enjoy the dancing and singing from the Larimars, endure Pyrope's stressed out speeches and posturing, and maybe even give a speech of my own to further solidify the Reef's support of Blue Thirteen's very first Atoll. From there, I would likely sneak a hint to Aubergine in regards to Larimar's little issue, endure a bit more politicking from the aristocratic class, ensure Nacre One knew my expectations, and probably spend the rest of the metaphorical night being bored out of my mind.

And then I would leave, return to the Reef, greet my Pearls, and start preparing them for what was to come. Sure, redirecting the efforts of Azurite's cell from a high stakes extraction to an eventual heist upon one of the Gem Empire's oldest and most highly regarded White Court worlds would have been suicide, by any normal standard. But the Overseer of the Reef actively sabotaging any possible security efforts and defensive measures in order to make such an operation prove as smooth and seamless as possible? Well…

that simply didn't feel very normal at all, now did it?