Two miles down, my dashboard blared light seconds before the ground shook.

I grabbed the console edge to stabilize myself - there’s no stabilizing a ten ton machine with your bare hands.

We tilted up until I feared we would capsize. Screams filled my cabin over the com-link as I delicately wriggled into my hazzsuit. The slightest move might be the end.

“Tecka, report!”

My assistant drove the Alkalinewash truck that came after my Acidwash dissolved the rock, and our other crew picked up the ore.

Silence, except the background of thinning screams.

“Qnoge! Abod! Tip!” I called the names of my drill, scoop, and dump drivers.

“Qnoge here. What the …?”

“Abo…” a weak cough came from the scoop.

Silence.

“Flipping emerg light.” I activated the secondary illumination.

“Whoa!” Qnoge gasped.

On my right, the rock I had just blasted with acid dripped and oozed, ready for the drill. On my left, a river of the same ooze. Boulders tumbled in the current, already rounded and polished. Then a scoop somersaulted in their wake. Not Abod, I reasoned. He was behind me, responding the best he could. A fifty ton dump truck nose emerged in the roiling river, then disappeared out of view.

The flow originated behind us, closer to the entrance. The back end of my crew had been taken with it. The main tank of acid lived 500 feet below the surface. Something had ruptured it and the acid took the path of least resistance. The bottom of our mine was half a mile down from us. I tried, but couldn’t calculate how much acid it would take to pool and swallow us.

“Abod. Keep talking to me buddy.”

“Fell over. Hit my head.”

“Are you stable? How close to the river?” I strained to see him. “Qnoge! Turn on your light. What can you see?”

Qnoge’s light amplified the distance and the wreckage we could see. “Scoop’s dangling over the stream, but the cabin is secure on the bank. Blood on the cabin window. Is that …? Whoa! Whoa!”

“What?” I screamed back.

Qnoge breathed heavily. “Scoop got caught by debris. Almost took him downstream.”

I fired my engine. “Let’s get Abod in here with me.” I had the most room in my cabin. “Qnoge, you operational?”

He fired his engine and gave me a thumbs up.

“Hug the wall. Give me room to get by.” I reverse-maneuvered past on the width of my vehicle between the drill and the river. “Qnoge, call out. Who’s alive down here? Can Upstairs hear us? Abod, you got your mask on?” The fumes from all the acid would eat our lungs in the first gasp.

Silence.

Ten minutes later I had my scoop driver hooked up to life support in my cabin. I backed my truck against the wall as far from the flow as possible.

Qnoge reported Quincy’s full crew a mile west on our level, and scattered lone survivors, two of which were 100 feet below us.

“Tell them to get to higher ground.”

“Chief,” Qnoge pointed from his cabin at the acid river. “Level’s going down.”

I leaned over. The acid had cut a channel in the rock, lowering the level but not the volume. No more large debris floated down. Our trucks were proof against the acid, but not forever. If something big got stuck in the channel … I didn’t go there.

Quincy, was on the mine entrance side of the river. Would my arch rival help me build a bridge?

“Talu, what’s all the fuss?” Quincy sneered. He hated that I was the chief down below. “I felt a little rumble.”

“You heard the screams.” I sneered back. “You see my visual. It’s going to take a lot of digging to surface. Only one thing on our side. Unlimited supply of acid.”

“Oxygen’s limited. Three days.” Quincy reported reluctantly. “Alkaline reservoir was only three quarters full.”

“Get your hide over here and start digging.” I cut him off. “I’m going recon with my driller to find survivors. The medtruck is” - I glanced at my dashboard - “on your side, a mile down. Go fetch it, hear? I don’t want anyone farther down than this.”

“What if I can’t reach the med truck, Matron Bossypants?”

“Report when you get stuck. I’ll report when I find survivors.” I offered to salve his ego. “We’re a team in a disaster. Maybe we’ll all die together. Get our names written in the stars side by side.”

Quincy grunted. He had the same training I did.

“Qnoge?”

“I’m with you, chief.”

I smiled. We fired up and rumbled deeper.

Fourteen hours into the disaster, six drillers, four scoops, eight acid trucks and one alcalinewasher held nineteen operators fit for work, three on life support, and five injured passengers. The carnage left by rock slides crushing machines that the river didn’t wash away left me sick. Quincy never found the medtruck.

We made a plan for a channel through new rock well away from the former acid reservoir. We didn’t want to go near ground zero. We tunneled just two trucks wide, two high. We rotated four drillers on, two off, four acid trucks on, four refilling from the river. The higher we got, the farther we had to travel. The scoops never got a break, but the abandoned alkalinewasher driver and injured passengers stepped up so at least the drivers rested.

All work stopped at the first crackle.

“Chief Talu reporting.” I replied.

“Chief Quincy reporting.”

Upstairs took our role call and our coordinates. They would begin digging above.

Sixty nine hours into the event, as Upstairs called it, our crew met theirs. We transfered to a trimvolo for the flight to the surface. We drank the oxygen tank dry.

The press crowded the surface station. “What kept you going?” a reporter cried.

Quincy stretched and smiled. “Didn’t want my name in the stars next to” - he winked at me - “The Chief here.”