Beneath the Red Sand

30 || Chapter Thirty

I thrash around in bed, a scream dying in my throat as I'm pulled out of a terrifying nightmare of suffocating. Is it my imagination, or has the air become thinner, harder to breathe?

Whether we have enough oxygen or not, a thick cloud of tension and despair hangs over breakfast in the commissary. No one speaks, as much to conserve air as from having nothing to say. In silence, those of us in the excavation team make our way to our training site, suit up, and head out.

Noah and I, along with Ian and Bill, are tapped to work with the team retrieving minerals to convert into oxygen. By the end of the day, the team working in the alien habitat is not much closer to getting the oxygen level stable, and tempers flare when we gather together for the evening report.

"Kassi, your analysis of the minerals is way off," a blonde girl on the mining team says. I forget her name, but she was one of the early ones cut from the excavation team and had to settle. She sneers at me, enjoying a feeling of superiority at being right. "We're not going to get near enough oxygen from all this as we need. Measure it again and tell me I'm wrong."

Except, she is wrong.

Her name returns to me, and I smirk right back. "Fine, Alice. I'll prove it. Oh, and by the way, are you telling me you measured your part incorrectly, then?" My voice comes out in more of a snap than I meant it to, and our commander puts a hand on my shoulder, warning me to lay off.

He studies our calculations with laser focus and finally nods. "Assuming the accuracy of your measurements, this is the best estimate we can give. We've bought ourselves about another week of oxygen at most, give or take. A lot of other factors we can't account for will play into how much oxygen we'll get out of this in practice. Let's try the measurements and calculations once more, to confirm."

"Sorry for snapping," I tell the team commander, so bleary-eyed I can't see straight. "I'm spent." With movements as careful as I can manage despite double vision and shaky hands, I try my measurement again and ask everyone else to confirm I have it right.

"Okay, good," the team captain says, giving a thumbs-up. "Now let's test what we have for the alien habitat."

Inside the structure, Alice scoops a spoonful of the newly mined mineral into a spare alien core. The engineering guys must have had a go at repairing it because the ancient thing looks new and polished to perfection. We watch as the material ignites inside the central hub. Tendrils of light flare out from it and light up computer panels and ignite a whirring sound. Air flows, and lights turn on throughout the habitat.

"Okay, oxygen rising to five percent, six percent," says the second in command, the woman who is our leader's partner. "Eight percent. Temperature is fifty degrees and holding stable. Atmospheric pressure rising to within tolerable limits."

"Good," Noah says. "Now let's see if it can sustain."

"Oh, we can't rely on that," our team captain says. "Tomorrow we could see the same numbers as we did yesterday. Until we have two weeks of consistent readings, don't get your hopes up."

"We have to make this work," I say. "I mean, this may be our one option. Otherwise, we don't have enough time to stop whatever's doing this to us."

The team captain looks into my eyes, and he must read the worry turning around in my stomach like another sandstorm has wreaked its havoc in there, because he puts a hand on my shoulder and says, "We're going to. Do you know why? Because I believe in us."

I wish I could have his certainty, his confidence, and optimism. All day, I've been trying to push aside the thoughts that this could be it, that no one will manage to fix the oxygen system either in our habitat or in this one, and we'll slowly asphyxiate.