Brave New Worlds

someone else.
    Jordan aimed the machine's shovel at a yellow control box on the wall and drove into it with such force that the metal shovel blade slashed through it and into the soft rock in the wall. the gaffers and waterhammers were free.
    There was a burst of white steam from beside the vehicle as Waterhammer regained control of his tool. Gaffer freed the hoses and followed behind as Waterhammer aimed his tool forward and leapt onto the tracks for the ore train. He stopped, turned toward Jordan, and held his hand up in a fist.
    Jordan felt the adrenaline jolt as it hit his bloodstream and scratched energy against his muscles. He turned the loader and drove onto the tracks. Water-hammer nodded, and Jordan hit the accelerator. The loader lurched forward, up the tracks, toward salvation and the word.
    Jordan could see the track appearing from the blackness of the mine shaft as his loader rolled forward. He could feel unfamiliar vibrations in his seat. He knew a train was coming, but he knew there was a vibration within himself as well. He imagined the vibration was burning, an intensity he had never known.
    In an eye blink an ore train was upon him. It plowed at full speed into his shovel and drove the loader backward. Jordan was thrown out of his seat. His body crashed into the gauge-panel and windshield of his cab. The loader door flapped open against its hinges. He shook his head. The pain started as an annoying itch, then crescendoed to an intolerable explosion.
    His vision blurred. He tried to see out of the front window of the loader. Wetness dripped from his forehead and stung his eyes. Through the fog of pain and blood, he could see men leaving the train. Maintenance men. Surface men. Men with weapons.
    He heard Thomas's words, "They can't terminate us all. "
    Jordan pushed himself backward onto the seat and smashed his foot down onto the accelerator. The loader lurched forward. Its shovel cut into the small train. The train yielded, twisting and rolling off the tracks as the shovel mangled the metal in front of it.
    A maintenance man in white overalls and a blue helmet appeared in the loader doorway. Jordan saw the man level a particle gun toward him. There was a blast of white from behind that turned into a dark mist. The maintenance man fell from the loader in two pieces as the white blade of water slashed again. Jordan leaned over and looked out of the loader door. The uniformed man had been cut in half. His feet and arms twitched as a blotch of dark liquid widened around him. Jordan had seen so many gaffers and waterhammers in the same condition. The sight held no significance to him.
    Unconsciously, he tapped the command to signify a dirty load.
    There was another burst of white. With a single twist of his waist Waterhammer had cut across the ranks of men escaping the train. Then he trained his water blade on the train and sliced across it. Jordan took a breath, and manipulated the loader's controls. His mind filled with Thomas's words as he worked the machine unconsciously. He pushed the train pieces aside with his mechanical arms and legs. Man and machine.
    "Tiger," he thought. "I am the tiger burning bright. " His arms and legs shook.
    Waterhammer trotted up the tunnel firing his tool as a weapon. Jordan watched him disappear into the darkness. He took a breath, and felt the pain in his head sink to his chest and open a void. An emptiness opened in him again as he watched the gaffer follow Waterhammer up the tunnel freeing the hoses, disconnecting and reconnecting them to new water sources as they moved.
    Fearful symmetry.
    Jordan followed them and kept them in the flaming life of the vehicle headlights. Waterhammer destroyed the yellow control boxes that he found mounted on the tunnel walls. They came to a junction of tunnels where a group of men were returning from a shift at the mine face.
    The men stopped and watched as Jordan rolled past. He held his fist up with one finger extended.
    "Run. "
    Then they were past the junction and back into the shaft.
    Jordan rolled forward and upward. And suddenly there were men all around. Waterhammers and gaffers. They marched along side Jordan's loader. Some were curious and threw question signs in the men's sign language. Most just followed. At each junction in the tunnel they met more men who joined them.
    Jordan forgot the pain in his head. He wiped the blood from his eyes and kept the headlights from his machine trained forward. Waterhammer cut into a