Final Days of the White Flower II book 3, Chapter 0

Hey! This is probably the only one of these chapters I'll be posting directly to the patreon. Like the previous books I'll be gathering these together in batches of ~10 chapters each, but to start with I wanted to show everyone the Chapter 0 of this book as it stands right now. Some violence, not really any sex. Comments appreciated! (But please remember this is a rough draft, I don't need grammar edits at this time)

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FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

The door to Moani’s alcove zipped open. To no surprise, her older sister Je Ki stood there, a look of concern crossing her ears. Moani whimpered and buried her face right back into her tear-stained pillow.

Je Ki said nothing at first, just entering the small cubicle and shutting the door behind, then sitting down on the edge of Moani’s bed and placing a paw gently along her back. Moani was long done sobbing, but she didn’t feel like getting up, either.

“Do you want to tell me what this is about?” Je Ki asked. She had her sister were both similar orange colors, but Je Ki’s coat was far dimmer and more mature; despite only being ten years Moani’s elder, she always acted more like a mother than a sister. “Chief Commander Rei was very concerned about you. You’ve been talking about nothing other than joining the academy since you were five.”

Moani sniffled and pulled her face away from the pillow, setting her cheek down on it so she could talk. “…I didn’t want to fail,” she said.

“So you skip out on the exam and run back to your room crying?” Je Ki huffed. “Moani… You keep using that as an excuse. I know you better than that; you are, as far as anyone can tell, a super genius. You’ve never failed an exam you didn’t put your mind to. They want you on the bridge—four years from now, you could be Science Chief, Computer Chief, Second Commander, anything. Sure, if you did miss a single problem, you’d beat yourself up over it afterwards—we really need to work on that, by the way. But when it’s all said and done, I’ve never known you to be afraid of trying.” Je Ki scooted closer, placing her paw between Moani’s shoulders. “So what’s this really all about?”

Moani took a deep breath. Her mind had been a scramble of emotion, it was so hard to piece together. She didn’t often fall apart like this, and trying to pin down what it was really about seemed like raking at the dark. But she tried to put it into words anyway.

“It’s bigger than just the test. I… I want to be an officer. But then I start overthinking it. Things go wrong all the time. What if there’s a radiation leak, and there’s no time to put on a rad suit and I’m the only one who can go in and shut it down? I would be terrified then. I’d almost certainly mess it up, if I managed to even… force myself to go to my death, anyway.”

“You’re more practical than that,” Je Ki said, spearing down the weakness in Moani’s explanation instantly. “What if that happens anyway? You don’t have to be an officer to face death.”

“You know what I mean. With the officer corps, it has this additional layer of honor on top of everything. And I don’t… I don’t feel like a very honorable person.” Moani sniffled and finally turned around on her bed, so she was face-up and facing her sister directly. “How do you do it? How do you face ultimate failure and just… do it anyway?”

Je Ki turned her feline face down at the floor of the small bedroom, barely large enough for the single bed. After her birthday a week from then, Moani would move into a proper clan apartment, when she officially became an adult, and be nearer her sister. But at the moment it felt like a long distance relationship, where Je Ki had to travel all the way down to the Older Kit Rooms just to comfort her. Moani always felt like it was a massive imposition, on top of being such an overly-emotional kit.

“Honestly?” Je Ki finally replied. “Whenever I’m about to face something dangerous… I think of you.”

Moani didn’t say anything. It was a pat answer, one that Moani wasn’t sure she really grasped. Who would willingly throw themselves to their doom when they still had loved ones alive?

“I mean it,” Je Ki said, noting the distaste crossing Moani’s tear-stained eyes. “It’s only difficult to reconcile when it’s abstract. ‘Oh, the ship may blow up!’ That’s impossible to truly wrap your head around, even if you’re a genius.” She tapped Moani’s nose gently, and Moani ears blushed bright red. “A ship is far too many moving parts, too many factors of good and bad, too many vagaries; if you tried to do the honorable thing for the sake of a whole ship of geordians, you’d have to keep a ledger. But if I think, ‘the person I love might die’… well, I can’t simply not try. Even if I failed, I would rather fail than live with regret.”

There was that word again. Failure. Moani pictured herself trying and failing to save Je Ki, but wasn’t it really just as terrible an outcome if she failed than if she never tried at all?

“I don’t know if I could do that,” Moani said.

“I believe you could,” Je Ki said. “It just takes time. And hey, it’s not like signing up for the academy means you’re instantly dropped into a war zone. Bad things don’t happen that often on gate ships.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“I have to be, I’m your older sister.”

Je Ki tilted Moani’s head up and kissed her, which Moani returned rather weakly—geordians frequently exchanged kisses as a show of affection, but Moani wasn’t sure how affectionate she was feeling at that moment. Sensing Moani’s hesitation, Je Ki then wrapped her arms around Moani like she was still half her sister’s height, and helped her all the way down so she was laying on the bed flat. Moani turned, tucking her knees back toward her chest, her tail curling around herself. Je Ki slipped behind her sister and wrapped her arms around Moani warmly.

“Don’t you have a meeting to attend?” Moani asked, paw resting on her sister’s.

“Yeah. But you’re important, too, you know.”

Moani hated being sang to before bed like a kit, but the instincts were powerful. Je Ki purred, letting her full chest press into Moani’s back as she sang, letting the vibrations from her chest pass from one body to the next. Moani’s blood warmed, and she relaxed anyway.

In the light of the towers
O’er the Bay of Black Sand
When the stars fled the sky

We were there by ourselves
And we danced with the moon
You were here by its light

But the clouds overcame,
And you started to fade
You said “I have to go”
As you met with the shade
And the air felt so cold
As your body left mine
I could only cry

“The things we have known,
We will know them no more”
You sang as you flew
‘cross the dark pounding shore

And yet there I thought
As your fingers left mine
Came the flash of a smile
From the depth of your eyes
And then you were gone
And we danced there no more
But it won’t be long

“Why do so many songs have to be sad?” Moani asked, closing her eyes.

“Oh, there’s many happy songs,” Je Ki said, giving her sister a squeeze. “But do you really want me to sing The Dancing Furrhin?” Even though Je Ki couldn’t see the face Moani made from behind, she must have felt it because she giggled. “No, I thought not.”

“There must be a happy song that isn’t childish and cloying,” Moani said.

“If you find one, tell me and I’ll sing it to you.”

Moani yawned. “I’ll do that. You can go, sis. Don’t be late.”

Je Ki gave Moani one last kiss before opening the sliding door and stepping back out through the Older Kit Commons, and there through to the hall. The door slid shut automatically, and Moani closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, still feeling Je Ki’s voice ringing in her chest. It was so warm, so close. It was so hard to remember that feeling of completeness and love when she was scared, but she could definitely feel it right then. She’d have to tell her sister in the morning that maybe she did have more to think about.

—

A loud roar shook Moani awake. She sat bolt upright, blinking at the dim clock at the foot of her bed, which read 0:3:3:5:: and counting. Barely three hours after the night turnover. Moani wondered for a moment if she’d just imagined the explosion that resounded through her chest. Then it happened again, the bed and walls rattling. Moani quickly pulled her strand from the holster on the wall and texted her sister.

What’s going on?

A full moment passed before another explosion rattled the doors. No response at all. Was Je Ki even awake? She might have been in trouble. Moani got to her feet and forced open the door, not waiting for the gears to open it for her.

Several other kits had the same thought, climbing out of their private alcoves and rubbing their eyes sleepily. They congregated around the flat activity table in the middle of the nursery commons, tails curled around their legs in worry. All of them were far younger than Moani herself, averaging half her own age.

“Moani?” asked Shogi, a pale yellow geordian barely five. Despite the dim light of the room, his pupils had narrowed in fear and his ears laid flat against the back of his head. “What’s going on? What’re those noises?”

“I don’t know,” Moani said, breaking open the emergency equipment latch and pulling out a case of supplies from the wall next to the main door. “But you all need to stay here, wait for Nanny Usi. I’ll go have a look and see if it’s safe.”

“I’m scared,” said another kit.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Moani lied. Something ate at the pit of her stomach, but she couldn’t reason out what the explosions could have meant. They didn’t seem like anything she’d experienced before.

Another one rattled the walls. The kits began to wail, but Moani shushed them. “You’ll be safe in here, don’t worry.” And she left with a med case slung over her shoulder as she slipped into the hallway. The lights rattled and dimmed around her.

Je Ki wasn’t in her bed at the fifth officer commons, and the bridge had been abandoned. The ship was far too large to check its every single corner, so Moani took her strand from its holster and checked the social media feed. Technically, she was still a kit and not allowed an account for another week, but she’d bypassed the lockout years ago.

Post after post of massive confusion, very little answers, there weren’t even any photographs of debris from explosions. But then she spied multiple posts in a row witnessing that the gate had shut off.

The gate is off?

More than one agricultural worker on the ring decks assumed the explosions were something to do with the gate failing. Moani didn’t think so, a catastrophic explosion on the ring would have likely been far, far louder than the chest-rattling she’d experienced. But if the gate was down, that meant Trinity was down, and Moani didn’t recall any talk of Trinity maintenance happening.

Of course, issues could have arisen with any of the three parts of the trinity—the gate, drive orthe recycler, and it would have shut off the other two. It was one of the ways that the krakun made sure that the geordians couldn’t disconnect themselves from Krakuntec and hop their way back to their own homeworlds—regardless of if the descendants of criminals would be welcome back at all—or otherwise defect.

But there was technically a fourth, noncritical part of the trinity, the operating station that ensured a smooth shutdown and could bring all the parts back online together. And if Je Ki, a lead engineer, were anywhere, she’d probably have been there coordinating the investigation. So Moani floated down the gravity wells down to Trinity Control.

But as Moani was slipping between giant tanks as a shortcut to the hallway on the other side, she suddenly spotted strange movement and stopped, her back firmly planted against the wall. Did she really see that—that movement? That color? Before she talked herself out of it, saying she’d clearly mis-seen a geordian in the dim light, they appeared again.

Ringel. Short, knees haunched as they walked, distinctive ringed tails lifted high into the air. It was hard to even really get a good look at them in the dull light because of the disorienting stripes on their fur. Both wore face masks, because of course ringel couldn’t breathe the air. And both of the ringel held rifles.

Savior of Vata, help me! What were ringel doing on a gate ship? The only thing Moani knew about ringel was that they frequently operated as pirates, and—well, that seemed as obvious an explanation as any.

Moani quickly ducked down into the small gap between hallways, trying to lower her profile as far down as she could push it. Her heart thudded in her chest, arms quaking, but she stifled her breaths. She had to think. Pirates were attacking the gate ship. How many were there? Was anyone in danger? The rifles seemed to indicate so. There had to have been something she could do about all of this! But she was completely unarmed, and there were two ringel standing there—even with surprise, and them weighing slightly less than her, Moani would have been overpowered quickly.

One of the ringel chattered something unintelligible to the other. The other lifted the rifle up and with clamor. Moani had to pinch her ears down to her head to keep them from ringing. Three shots straight down the hallway were met with geordians shouts echoing along the metal walls.

THUNK. Moani stifled a gasp as a long knife suddenly sank dead center into a ringel chest, just under the sternum. The ringel yelped, staggering, and collapsed to the deck. The other swore something in their language, but paid little attention to the death of their partner, only yanking the rifle from the dying one’s paws before sprinting back the way they came.

One of the security personnel appeared from the left. Moani recognized him, Anai, a massive golden yellow geordian who lost his right eye in a brawl some years ago and never got around to replacing it. Moani thought at once to shout something—but wasn’t sure she had good reason to interrupt. If she made herself known, Anai would be obligated to protect her, and he didn’t need the additional distraction. The security guard knelt over the ringel’s spasming body, kneeling down to yank out the knife. Dull-colored blood spilled from the alien’s chest.

Moani had to choke back her bile at the sight of it.

“Anai!” came Je Ki’s voice from down the hallway. “Leave him!”

The security headed back the way he’d come, but Moani couldn’t stay where she was. Taking a long look at the dead or dying ringel on the floor coated with dark blood, Moani then ducked into the small gap underneath the tanks that split the hallways. She couldn’t get all the way to Trinity Control on her belly, but she didn’t need to—before she got there, she met with the sounds of geordians conferring with one another.

“What do you mean back out?” That was the voice of Assistant Security Yuin Ar.

“They aren’t going to stop attacking,” Je Ki said. “We locked them in here with us! They don’t have a way out of this system anymore except by reopening the gate.”

“Then let them,” Anai said. “The krakun can’t punish all of us.”

“Han Ra thinks we can stop them,” Je Ki explained. “We’ve just secured one of their landing pods, Airlock Fifteen. That’ll get at least twenty of us on one of their ships, but they aren’t going to leave unless we give them a way out of here. So we might just need to let them into Trinity Operations, make them think they punched through our defenses.”

“We aren’t going to be able to fight them on their own ship,” Yuin Ar explained.

“We can’t fight them now! We have zero defense and they’re—“ Another explosion rattled the ship. Moani scrunched into herself, hoping the tank above her body wasn’t about to loosen and fall and crush her.

Her sister resumed after it was clear they weren’t about to be sucked into space. “The only other option we have is to let them blow us up.”

Moani slapped her paws to her mouth to shop the sharp inhale from resounding through the ship. Scuttle the ship? Why would they do that? Pirates usually just wanted to steal… didn’t they?

Yuin Ar huffed. “Has the chief commander considered that?” Moani almost gasped at the sheer brazenness of the comment. “Even if we manage to regain contact with Krakuntec Prime, they’re going to kill us all for our betrayal.”

Savior of Vata, what’s been happening on this ship? Moani wondered, eyes wide.

“I’m not giving up like that,” Je Ki exclaimed, hurt wallowing up in her voice. “I have a sister I am honor-sworn to protect. I’m not making that decision when there’s still something we can do.”

Moani whimpered. She didn’t like being someone that other people had to protect. It made her feel utterly useless, and if there was one thing she hated, it was being useless.

Especially when her sister needed her help.

Crawling back under the tanks, Moani found her way back to the dead ringel on the floor, the sticky pool of pale blood spreading even further. The ringel did not move, but it was just as well. Moani winced as she reached in to put fingers on something dead—which she’d never done before. But the corpse was still fairly warm when she expected it to already be ice cold. Holding her breath, she felt around the base of the ringel’s air mask, and pulled the latch, unlocking it from the alien’s face.

Many such helmets from the outside galaxy were mass-produced and generic. She figured she had twenty minutes to adapt the helmet so it worked with a geordian’s atmosphere, and another ten to get down to Airlock Fifteen before her sister did.

—

Because on a normal day the Gowan Bau never had more than ten security guards for ten thousand crew, the geordian forces were spread uncomfortably thin. This made it easy for Moani to duck past the two guards holding stolen rifles, and slip up the ladder into the Airlock Fifteen operator’s booth. From inside the bay, she could without being seen make her way to the open airlock doors, apparently hacked open by the pirates.

Immediately beyond, the shuttle sat wide open. The inside was rather bare—small seats with belts covered the walls and the space in the center. As Moani wrapped the breathing helmet around her face, she considered that there was something off about all of this. Surely if the geordians captures a pirate shuttle, the pirates would know, right? But, there was a lot of confusion in the midst of a battle. She had to assume the Computer Chief already figured out some way to trick the pirates into taking the shuttle back.

Of course, that would have meant that the pirates didn’t just land aboard the Gowan Bau within the last hour—that was far too short a time to get inside an unknown pirate ship’s computer systems. Had they been here for a while? Maybe it was one of those secret trade deals that had just broken down. In any case, it wasn’t Moani’s concern—stopping them was.

The top of the shuttle revealed a covered shelf, probably to hold additional equipment. It was too high up to see over entirely, which would make it an ideal hiding spot, so Moani climbed up the nearest guard pole and slipped into the rack.

She opened up the medical case she had with her, having managed to stuff it full of additional equipment she’d scrounged on the way down. Some canisters of condensed azane compound seemed the most appropriate, since there was no telling how long she’d be trapped on the pirate ship. Most common species breathed some form of oxygen mixture, but ringel were strange in that they breathed straight oxygen with few additives. At least it would be easy to adapt to.

As Moani waited, she went over in her head a number of things she could do to help the fight—formulas for explosives using common medical chemicals, her paw-to-paw combat training, and picturing in her head holding a rifle, or a pistol—an act she’d never done before in her life as both were forbidden on the Gowan Bau—and shooting ringel with precise speed and agility.

You’re not going to be alone. You can do this.

Even so, Moani had nearly nodded off in the hour it took before geordians started swarming into the shuttle craft. Moani held her breath, leaning over the edge of the shelf to just peek down at the gathering below. Apparently a number of geordian officers had acquired, by whatever means at their disposal, ringel rifles, and all wore more-appropriate-than-hers fitted breathing helmets.

Je Ki entered with at least twenty others. Moani had to resist the urge to call out to her sister, lest they kicked her off the shuttle for her own good.

“Are you sure this will even help anyone?” Je Ki asked Second Commander Han Ra. “They could just leave a mine behind, destroy the entire ship.”

“Then we have to be fast,” Han Ra said. “Erren, hail the Jet Black Sword. We’re soldiers making an early retreat.”

Barely anyone put on buckles as the airlock doors closed and the shuttle launched from the airlock. Moani’s heart rapidly pounded in her chest, to the degree she hoped no one could hear and spot her up there. Yuin Ar went between each of the officers and showed them in turn how to properly hold and fire a rifle. No everyone had one. Anai insisted he was perfectly fine with just a case of as many knives as he could get his paws on.

Je Ki sat down on the bench just across from where Moani peeked down. She sat uncomfortable, twisting her legs this way and that, unfolding and refolding her arms, turning her tail every which way. Moani wanted to go down there and embrace her sister tight, to let her know it was okay, they were going to get through this. But she couldn’t. Moani was supposed to be safe on the Gowan Bau. Her presence would only bother Je Ki all the more, not comfort her. Moani stayed still in the shadows. She’d follow behind later when the geordians managed to gain a foothold on the pirate ship.

Some minutes later, The shuttle rocked to a stop. Moani had no windows or cameras by which to see, so didn’t know where exactly they would have landed. She held her breath, then remembered to seal her helmet, as the azane levels on the shuttle would deplete rapidly when the doors opened.

Everyone stood up in a staggered formation, those in front kneeling, those behind standing, rifles readied at the door to shoot any ringel who approached first. Je Ki held her position, reserved in the back near the cockpit, and Moani was thankful she wasn’t on the front lines.

The doors hissed open, the opening starting from the top and lowering its way down as a ramp platform. Moani watched the air puff slightly as two different mixtures met—but something was wrong. As the door lowered gradually… the air mixture was too cloudy. That shouldn’t have been the result of—

Moani gasped. She rose up on her knees to shout.

“It’s a trap! Close the doors!”

“Moani?” Je Ki exclaimed from the back row.

It didn’t matter. A ringel somewhere outside shouted a command, and a wall of yellow-green plasma bolts shot straight through the shuttle doors. None of the geordians wore even a millimeter of armor—hot plasma ripped through bodies like paper, bodies hardly even protecting the rows furthest back. Blood painted the interior, a thin streak slicing across Moani’s faceplate. She gasped, her voice tightening as though she were choking on what air she swallowed, and shrunk down into the corner where the rack met the beveled ceiling.

Two or three geordians managed to return fire, but another wall of plasma stopped them entirely. Nothing on the floor moved. Blood and plasma burns covered the walls everywhere in the small slice of the shuttle where Moani could see.

Shuddering, arms clasped around herself tightly, she could not make herself look over the edge, to see what had become of her sister or anyone else.

—

The crate shifted out of the way, and Moani raised the pistol up immediately. The violet-colored ringel wearing a longcoat gasped and backed away. Moani, shaking, couldn’t tell if the pirate was male or female—they seemed to have both key features, but that wasn’t uncommon for ringel. It didn’t matter. The ringel was a sack of meat and needed to die.

The ringel blinked. Moani’s paws shook heavily, training the pistol at the ringel’s chest, but… did nothing.

“Shit, the rumors were true! One of you did get aboard…” the ringel said in their own language. They cast their gaze at Moani’s spot on the floor, covered in the missing meal bar wrappers and empty canisters of azane, which at this point Moani had refilled over a dozen times. The ringel looked down at the gun, like they were ready to leap out of the way. But when no shot was forthcoming, the ringel lowered their eyes. “You… you can’t even bring yourself to shoot me.”

“I can, I will,” Moani muttered in Ringelese.

“Shit!” The ringel laughed a hoarse laugh. “You already know how to speak Ringelese? You’ve been aboard for like, what, two weeks?”

“I learn fast,” Moani said, tears filling her eyes and threatening to block her vision. “And you’re going to be dead soon if you don’t… if you don’t…”

“What?” the ringel said, stepping forward. “You can’t shoot me. You’d get what, one dead ringel? Then the others will come in and blast you dead. You know killing me won’t change anything. The Gowan Bau is gone, girl!”

Moani knew it. She didn’t even see when they left, but it was likely that the pirates left none alive. What was that saying? The dead tell no tales?

“Hey,” the ringel said, lowering a paw to Moani. “I have nothing against you in particular. You seem pretty smart. You’d have to be to survive two weeks on a ship that doesn’t even provide your air.”

“M-my sister said I was… a genius…” Moani mumbled through her helmet.

The ringel laughed. “No kidding? I believe her.”

“You killed her!”

The ringel’s ears sank. “Probably. These things happen in space, though. I don’t have anything against your sister, I’m sure she was great. But you don’t wanna die too, do you?”

“No,” Moani whimpered.

“We could use someone resourceful like you,” the ringel said, paws spread open. “We’ve been going through a bit of restructuring since someone who shall remain nameless, and also dead, botched the last job. Hell, Jain’s been looking for someone new to teach. I’ll probably have to convince Sinon not to shove you into an airlock, but… hey, if you want to jump in one by yourself, by all means, I’m not gonna stop you. But you seem like you could be useful, and we can’t afford to be picky at the moment. I’m giving you a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Put the gun down.”

Moani’s arms felt locked. But she couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger—every time she tried to close her finger, all she saw was blood. Je Ki deserved revenge, every geordian who died on the Gowan Bau did. This pirate did not deserve to live.

And yet, Moani could not bear to throw her life away. She’d already lost weeks ago. Did her honor even really matter anymore?

Yes it does, Moani thought, tightening her paws around the grip. There was still such a thing as justice.

But Moani didn’t want to die. She swallowed, and tried to bury any thoughts of Je Ki down as far as she could push them. That was the old life. This was the new.

Moani lowered the gun, then dropped it. It rattled on the floor.

“Please,” she whimpered. “Please. I’ll do anything. Just don’t kill me.”

“Okay, okay,” the ringel said, then offered a paw. “The name’s Inzari.”

“You’re the new Quartermaster,” Moani said. She took Inzari’s paw, and shakily stood to her feet. “I heard it on the intercom when I first crawled aboard.”

“Really sharp memory, there,” Inzari laughed. “Yeah, I think Jain would really like to meet you.”

“I won’t have to hold a gun, will I?”

“No, but you’re thinking in the right direction. Come on, you can stay in my quarters until we arrange something more long-term for you. You’re not squeamish about surgery, are you? It’ll be better long-term than wearing that helmet all the time.”

“I’ll adapt,” Moani said, wrapping her arms around her chest as Inzari led her out. “I have to.”