Interning on the Aronnax

Shallow Breaths

A/N: I had a ton of fun rewriting this part, even if it came out much longer than I planned. XD

The Aronnax was running out of oxygen too quickly. While her parents blamed the malfunctioning electronics, Fontaine knew the truth. Kaiko was calculating the air for four people, unaware of a fifth person in the ducts. Because of Finn, they were using air too quickly.

"No," Fontaine thought, shaking her head. "It's not Finn's fault."

"Fontaine?" Kaiko said. "How do you feel?"

"I'm fine," Fontaine said, smiling at her mom's image on the console. "Just focus on the servos."

It had been nearly an hour since Kaiko started working on the engines. At least the oxygen levels were still holding steady.

Until Ant tapped the console.

"Ant!" Fontaine and Will screamed as the oxygen levels abruptly dropped.

There was a click over the comms, then Kaiko said, "Trying the engines now."

Fontaine held her breath as the Aronnax shuddered, then hummed to life. Everyone cheered.

"Nice work, Kaiko," Will said.

"Way to go, Mum!" Fontaine said.

Fontaine shoved the joysticks forward. The Aronnax jolted, then moved forward. The tentacles across the main view port loosened.

"They're letting go!" Ant said.

The main port was completely clear in seconds. Fontaine let herself smile, then Kaiko was suddenly yelling.

"Back off the throttle! Back off!"

Fontaine jerked her hands away from the joysticks.

"The engine's overheating -thermostat's shot. We can only run them at minimum speed or they'll seize," Kaiko said in a rush.

At Kaiko's orders, Fontaine carefully nudged the Aronnax into motion with as little power as possible. She frowned when she felt the Aronnax's direction.

"We've stopped climbing," Ant said.

Worse, they were going down.

"At minimum power, the squid are going to drag us down," Fontaine said in frustration.

"Kaiko," Will said. "We have to get the engines back up."

"Working on it," Kaiko said, sounding frazzled. "We should be fine, as long as nothing else goes wrong."

"I really think we should ban sentences like that on this submarine," Ant warned. "Every time we-"

An alarm cut Ant off, followed by Kaiko saying, "We have a fire!"

"There it is," Ant said, closing his eyes and pointing at the speaker.

A chilled silence fell over the bridge. The past few hours had been a series of, "hope nothing worse happens" and it seemed like the absolute worst thing had just happened.

Fontaine looked away from her slumped brother. "That fire is going to eat up the last of our air!"

"Kaiko, I'm coming!" Will said, then darted to the door. He stopped abruptly and pointed at Fontaine and Ant. "Both of you, get to the Moon Pool room. If this gets any worse, I want you ready to abandon ship."

"How?" Fontaine asked. She turned the chair to fully face Will. "We can't go outside with those squid! We wouldn't last two seconds!"

"We'll find a way to draw them away," Will said.