White Crystal Butterflies | Wattys 2021 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Three

I give up trying to reach the floor and pull my feet up onto the blow-up armchair. The shift tips me sideways into one marshmallowy arm, which groans. "Krüger? What's your report for the day?"

He stays slumped back on the couch. "I checked the low-gravity anemometers, but they're fine. That was most likely another atmospheric anomaly yesterday, but we haven't had enough of them yet to start building a comprehensive dataset. When are we going to start doing field missions?"

"Soon." So the wind blips aren't an error. My heart sinks, but I keep my face neutral. "Anything else?"

"That's it."

"Liu?"

She tugs her braid. "Dea and I finished reworking the broken oxygen mask. The melting-bucket works fine now, and it's pulling the oxygen right from the water, not the air. And it fills the reserve tank when we turn it on. Now we just have to test it outside."

There it is. I've been waiting for weeks for this to drop. "No."

She blinks, like I slapped her. "Chief, it works. We can have a spare on hand; we only have to run it on a person for—"

"And that is why I'm saying no. Under no circumstances will you test this on a living, breathing person under my watch."

Her eyes flash as she sits up. "Why? You said you wanted another working mask after this one broke. Now we might have one. Why can't we test it? The atmosphere outside isn't toxic; we know that already. If we can just—"

"No." In spite of myself, my pulse has quickened, exerting a faint pressure on the backs of my eyes. Stay calm, Alex. The room seems to have sharpened and blurred at the same time. "An extra mask is not worth letting someone endanger themself just to test some contraption that worked in the lab. We have rules here for a reason, and that reason is safety. This violates both unnecessary trips outside and putting anyone in known danger for a trivial reason, which are two of the most fundamental rules I have in place here."

"Trivial?" Liu's voice rises. "Chief, it's an oxygen mask! We've been one short for weeks! Sure, maybe it's not needed right now, but what if another breaks? What if we have to evacuate the Pod? We won't have enough for all of us, then. Do you count that in 'safety'?"

"If everyone follows the rules, we won't ever find ourselves in that situation."

"You can't predict that!"

There's a ringing in my head now, half-muting Liu's voice. I fight to keep my breathing level. Liu starts to list off "accidents" that could happen, all of them dangerous, and all of them preventable. I have Kwon scan the ground ahead and around us for cracks six times a day. I have my watch set to give me an alarm when conditions outside hint at inclement weather, so we can move to higher ground. I had Kwon make sure the Pod could keep running even if it got buried, with all its external equipment destroyed.

I've fought for safety features people said were overkill. Equipment the Hub didn't want to spare a larger shuttle to ship. I've done everything to ensure those "accidents" don't happen to us, and that we can survive them if they do. Every rule I have in place supports that. I won't have another trainee's death on my hands.

Liu stops for breath.

"My answer is still no," I say.

"Is this just another excuse to keep me from going outside?"

It's my turn to blink. That's it? After all the conversations we've been through, that's what she's thinking? Yes, it's another way to keep her in the Pod. This is her first time so much as stepping into a spacesuit on a planet that isn't Lumiuk, Dara's home base and as safe as a sidewalk. I did this professionally for sixteen years.