Chapter One

The Gem With No Name

The solitary Gem had no name. She'd never been given one, nor had she asked for one. When someone needed to identify her, they usually called her 'X-E0053' or 'The Rebel'. Then there were those who felt particular animosity towards her, and they called her 'The Mistake'. She didn't answer to them. Instead, she fought alone, against an unsurpassable foe - the Diamond Authority.

She fought the hierarchy, wherever and whenever she found it.

This time, though, City 7-3 had been ready for her.

Gems didn't breathe air, but stopped to catch their breath when tired. It didn't make sense for their physical hard light forms to need to breathe deeply; that was only an artificial means of regulating their form's energy requirements. It cost little energy to stand still, essentially doing nothing more than projecting their form. From there, it drained a Gem of some energy to move and work, more than that to fight, and considerably more to win. Some Gems naturally produced enough energy to sustain a strengthful form capable of extended combat; others only produced enough to sustain a thin but still deceptively lithe form capable of that same extended combat; some simply weren't capable of strength or combat.

Homeworld Security therefore found X-E0053 extremely frustrating, because she shouldn't have been capable of combat at all, given her energy output. And yet they knew her by name, and had to set City-scale traps for her.

X-E0053 herself knew this. The crystalline Cities of Homeworld were never as impermeable as they seemed. There was always a way to sneak in, a guard or two to extinguish, a power source to stampede. There would be an explosion, and the City would consequently either lose power or be forced to drain more from surrounding areas. Eventually, X-E0053 knew, the Diamond Authority would be called into question. Disarray enough power networks, and even the most zealously loyal Gem would ask, "how much power do they really have, if they can't keep the lights on?"

But after 4000 years, even that method was getting difficult. In the past, stampeding one Generator Quartz would be enough to completely destabilize a City. Now, increased efficiencies meant that three City-size areas could be run just as effectively off of one Generator Quartz, and the other two were just being kept for redundancy.

Her latest target, City 7-3, was the third of a tri-City array. The third of three was always hardest, since Security would be tripled and waiting for something to happen. One strategy that had worked in the past was to simply move on to a different array, then hop between them and force a division of force. That had worked only as long as Homeworld Administration or Management didn't think something suspicious was up - which was to say, it worked well. But then there was the need to plan the logistics of transport and the need to establish different identities. Really, it was easier to get past Security at triple-alert.

City 7-3 was like most Cities, in that it was densely packed and designed for Labor Department Gems to have a place to rest and relax as much as Administrative Department Gems. Homeworld Gems had access to the conveniences and culture of Gemkind, moreso than offworld or frontier personnel; even the lowest-ranked Labor-class Gem had a place to socialize with friends on Homeworld, when a Gem of any class would be lucky to rest occasionally in the frontier. So, in general, a City like 7-3 would have a bunch of bulky Gems milling about, even when Security was trying to find a single Gem among them. The logistics of performing a search without simply extinguishing the population of a City and risking scheduling delays, meant that it was easier for X-E0053 to lose Security in one that out of one.

And it was a good time to do so.

X-E0053 was exiting the 7-3 Power Generation Plant the way she'd come in, leaving piles of extinguished Logistics Department Gems behind her. They would recover eventually, just not soon enough to stop her, and she'd made sure they wouldn't be caught in any explosions the stampeding Generator Quartz might cause.

The halls of a Power Generation Plant were narrow by City standards, and she was leaving through side-panels and access tunnels. It required her to crawl, a fairly easy thing for a Gem of her lithe build to do, and not get any of her short blue hair caught on power sub-lines that might be jutting out at a sharp angle. She'd arranged things so that it was all she needed to consider.

Her appearance modifiers - well, she couldn't recall what she'd originally been assigned, it had been so many busy eons ago, but now she used an orange worksuit with bare upper arms and elbow-length fingerless gloves. (The idea was, it left the part of her arms that she would flex open, and that would make it clear she was flexing on her own behalf when she flexed for strength. She'd completely forgotten about this reasoning in the present day, and would have thought it was silly anyway.) Over this, she'd layered on some thicker brown protective gear: boots, knee and elbow pads, forearm bracers, and a corslet. The corslet didn't cover her chest-position gem - stopped right under it, in fact - and lacked shoulder straps while also stopping at her waist but continuing just under it. This formation gave her some armor where she needed it without restricting her movement, yet could be covered or changed with relative ease compared to Security Department's standard gear, even fitting under it when she needed to make an escape.

It had never made much sense to her that, under the modifiers, her actual appearance was a pale meeting of red, green, and blue - but with a fraction less blue than red or green. When compared to her light blue gem, in her rare moments of curious vanity or loneliness, it seemed unusual if not outright strange. There were times when she wished there was another like her, and occasionally she felt a sense of envy on seeing sametype Gems fraternizing.

Moments like these were why she tried to keep busy. She could only push other Gems away when she stopped, so she had to keep moving.

And move she did! The last access tube came to an end, and beyond it was the rest of City 7-3 - now in nighttime, and quite dark on the unlit access roads. Beyond that was more to do, and beyond that, the end of the Diamond Authority, to be followed by the beginning of Societal Autonomous Self-Rule for Gems. The end of castes. The end of tyranny. The end of Era Two; the start of Era Three.

So thinking, she kept on going, carefully replacing the access grate she removed earlier to hide her tracks.

The general darkness of the access road suddenly burned away as spotlight generators snapped on. She couldn't see the footsteps she heard, belonging to at least a couple of companies of Security personnel by the sound of it, but it was clear that they had surrounded her. The spotlights focused onto her, two on ground-based vehicles and two more on the rooftops of nearby buildings. Three or four voices shouted out orders, repeating "Mark target and hold!" mostly.

After a moment, the sounds of Security forming ranks stopped. The spotlights dimmed, likely just to show her what she was up against. Somewhere in front of her, a voice projector crackled to life.

"Unclassified Gem X-E-zero-zero-five-three! You are surrounded on all sides by Security Department personnel. Disarm and prepare for secured transport, or we will attack. I repeat - you are surrounded by two hundred Security Department personnel. You have no chance of a successful escape. Disarm and prepare for secured transport."

That was an Agate of some type, going by her voice. Not good, X-E0053 thought. Security was now deploying mid-level managers into the field against her, and giving them command of a battalion. Still stretched thin, but a sign that they were taking her seriously.

Worse was the makeup of that battalion. They had stun rifles but… the front line consisted of Rubies. That still made sense, but behind them were Peridots and Rutiles, nervous looking ones at that. There was even a Pearl in there, struggling to hold her rifle up.

So, that Manager Agate had gotten wind of an intruder presence, and pulled together what forces she could at short notice. Probably called Logistics and Transportation staff up and handed out rifles. The Rubies were a minority in this 'battalion', and looked new. Someone like herself, already used to Topazes and Fusions, could probably cut her way through them, even taking their firepower into account. But in the confusion, the non-combatants would probably hit some on their own side. If their lack of training was found to be at fault in any after-action report, Security would probably mandate training for any Gem with an even remote possibility of seeing battle - and that would make her job harder.

No, she couldn't fight them. She sighed, raised her hands, and took a step forward.

"Dr- Drop your weapons, X-E-zero-zero-five-three! This is your last warning!" the Agate commanded. The rifles already nervous-looking 'battalion' were pointing began to shake a little. They'd heard stories about this Gem, and were starting to remember them. So it came as a surprise to everyone to see X-E0053 stumble, and then fall onto her face.

That was the distraction she needed, and as a bonus it took eyes off of her gem. She fell onto her right arm, her left arm outstretched. As she fell, she summoned half of her personal weapon onto her right arm - the Grappler Bracer - and fired its wired grappling hook. It latched into a wall somewhere off to her left, and before she'd even hit the ground the bracer was winding the wire, dragging her off to the side of the assembly and out of the spotlights.

Some Rubies, probably old Era 1 soldiers, realized what was happening and began firing while she was still just barely in the spotlight. By the time the rest of the battalion realized what had happened, they could only fire at where she'd been in the spotlight, at where the afterimage burned into their eyes told them she was.

While flying over the access road at speed, X-E0053 activated the other half of her weapon, forming the Grasper Bracer over her left arm. It had a couple of uses, but the obvious one was that it was functionally a large, rounded claw with variable adhesive control. For now, she was more interested in one of the other uses; locking it into position, she timed firing it at a wall parallel to her current trajectory, and…

SNAP - she was bounding off down another access alley, perpendicular to her previous trajectory, as she dissipated the grappling hook into its component light and energy. End result: she was now tumbling to a stop around a corner from that battalion of Security Department personnel. In the space of time it took for the managing Agate to realize what had happened and start giving out new orders, X-E0053 was completely out of sight.

...but still within a searchable distance. Security knew she was there now, even if they'd lost the element of surprise. That information would get disseminated throughout the Department (probably with some face-saving edits from the Agate) and they might learn from the experience, to build a better trap for next time. If the problem with assigning Administrators to a field mission like that was their lack of experience in conducting Security actions, the benefit was that there had been an uncomfortable amount of highly observant analysts who were witnesses to what she'd just done. And Administrators talked to each other - if there was any Department that would try to actually learn from their mistakes, instead of repeat the same thing over and over with an expectation of different results, it was Administration.

X-E0053's job had just gotten a whole lot more difficult in the future. Probably.

She did the one thing that made sense at the moment, as soon as she'd gotten her footing back: she ran.

The Bracer Combo, as she'd come to call it, was good for exploration, sudden escape, and sometimes battle; it was not all that great at stealthy abscondment, in the same way that Topazes were not great at hiding themselves behind Rubies. An unusual Gem swinging through access arterials, crawling up building walls, and spinning nets to trip up pursuers attracted attention in a City - and not the kind that outweighed the usual self-evident reward of 'action'.

But a running Gem? Even an unusual one just looked like she was in a hurry to be somewhere, nothing more. Especially if she was wearing a Laborer uniform like the one X-E0053 had just equipped over her own.

So all was well for her, for the time being. She'd completed her mission and evaded her pursuers. And, as a bonus, she got confirmation of her success when, peering out from a quiet nook near the edge of the City, there was a quiet bang from the Power Generation Plant she'd come from. The Generator Quartz stampeder she'd set up had gone off, and the City began losing power.

Lights died off first, in the buildings she could see. That was an easy enough problem for Gems to circumvent. But the loss of power would affect other things: transportation and logistics networks, Administrative central computation cores, Managerial command relays, Security systems… The City was, in the time it took to verbally list off what it now had to do without, now in the dark. The Diamond Authority had been powerless to prevent it, and the authority they derived from their power would be questioned.

Worse: it was clearly the work of a single Gem that was of a type of so little importance as to be unnamed. That inconvenient fact wouldn't make it into the official reports, and it didn't have to. A battalion of Security personnel had just seen it happen with their own eyes. Doubt had been created.

She didn't know how long it would take to 'win'. But each event brought her a step closer.

So thinking, she got up to leave her little nook, to leave City 7-3 under cover of blackout - and heard something crackle behind her.

She whipped around, Bracer Combo equipped, in a battle stance.

There was a small, pink crystalline communication device there, and a small hole in the wall that its little legs had carried it through. "X-E-zero-zero-five-three! How are you?" a disguised voice chirped through it.

It had found her, and so it needed to be shatte-

"-wait! Wait wait wait wait! If I wanted to rat you out, I wouldn't bother talking to you, and I certainly wouldn't use the 'quiet' setting," the voice said quickly. "But, you know, I don't have to."

There was probably more harm in ignoring whoever was at the other end, than in hearing it out. "...What do you want?" X-E0053 asked, tersely.

"In-formation," the voice purred.

"Why?"

"Can't tell you. Not yet anyway."

"Then you won't get it."

"That's too bad! Because the volume setting on this communicator goes up to 'klaxon'..."

"Fine."

"Oh, is that all? No questions?"

The voice's playful manner was grating, but it hadn't done something irreversible. For the moment, anyway. "Who are you?"

"Call me the Manager. Your Manager."

"Who do you work for?"

"Can't tell you that either. But for now, we'll call you the Agent. Our Agent."

" 'Our' agent?"

"Mmm-hmmm. You work for a group now."

"Why 'the agent'?"

"Protocol. Decorum. E-ti-quette."

"What's the difference?"

"Well, a Manager can produ-" The voice cut off, but resumed after a moment. "Sorry. Running on borrowed time here. But you see, I can produce results here on Homeworld, whereas an Agent, you…"

"...You want me to operate on another planet."

"Yup! Kind of an ask, but I'm pulling all the strings here."

"My existence is my own. And I will not make deals with you, 'Manager'."

"And you don't need to, A-gent. I can tell you that we're offering you a chance to do something bigger than just sa-bo-tage."

"Such as?"

"You've been working to subvert those above us, right? You don't spread terror so much as ...doubt. That makes you unusual. Singular. Peculiar."

"What do you know?"

"Just that you overload City power generators, without shattering any Gems. But that only goes so far. You know that, right?"

"Then what do you suggest?"

"You'll be our Agent on another planet, that's all. Granted, it's a gambit with a bandit, causing panic and a racket from some hamlet planet! Be a magnet for panic, a manic mallet as is your habit, and use your talent the way we've planned it. And we've even secured your transit," the voice said freely.

"Oh?"

"There are five Red Eye probes preparing to leave soon. Old models, Era 1. Big enough for a Gem to hide in. Here are their schedules; mem-orize them." The communication device projected locations and launch times onto the wall. Aside from being older models, there wasn't anything odd about them.

"And all you want me to do is get into one of these?"

"Of course! Just one will do."

"This is highly suspicious." It was interesting too, she had to admit. Worth checking out, at least.

"Oh yes, it could be a trap. Feel free to check the flight plan once you're inside, cover your tracks as necessary on your way there, don't tell anyone what's going to happen - if you feel like it."

"You could easily shatter me. Send me somewhere I couldn't come back from."

"Agent, perish the thought. We already know who you are and what you can do, so we know that wouldn't matter. We could throw you into a sta-r and you'd just come back mad."

"Know that I would."

"And? What is your answer?"

There was some time before the first Red Eye probe was set to leave. She could skip the first three and, due to how far apart they were from each other, have to decide between the fourth and fifth. Time enough, either way, to fully investigate them. And possibly figure out whether Manager could be trusted. "My own," she replied.

"Ha! Well, we'll be in touch. Good to finally talk to you! Now stand back, sparklie." And with that, the communication device's little legs folded up, pressing into its crystalline form until it shattered (kschh!).

The self-shattering communicator was new. X-E0053 occasionally 'visited' Science Department to keep ahead of the latest technology, and this was the first she'd seen anything like it. Which meant it was extremely new or top secret, and that meant Manager was highly placed. A Zircon, perhaps? That would explain the oddly pompous, deferential speech. But even a top Administrator like a Zircon would have trouble acquiring something like that on her own. There was probably some truth to her being part of a group of some sort.

The communicator, then, was identifying, but not so much that the group - 'The Conspiracy', she decided to call it - couldn't afford to leave shards of it lying around. There were simple ways to disintegrate crystalline material, after all, but they would leave telltale stains or marks. At a closer examination, the shards would probably be identical to some other common material, enough to throw off an investigation. Prototype next-generation technology then.

"Era 3 tech?" she whispered to herself. The coming legacy of the Gem race. It suddenly felt less far off than before. She picked up one of the larger shards. It was worth examining, if she ever got the chance.

Enough time had passed with her in that little nook. It was time to keep moving. She got up and sighed; she was 'The Agent' now. For someone who'd never gotten a name, she was picking up nicknames at a decent pace.

City 7-3 stayed dark. Power would probably be restored at some point in the future, but not soon. Its inhabitants would have to work in the dark for some time to come.