I know dirt. I know the way it smells after a rain in West Texas and the way it feels when it is dry enough to choke a horse. Down here, there is no dirt. There is only silt and grease and the weight of the whole world trying to push you into a pancake. I am five miles down in a tin can called the Sol. It is a research station: but it is really a coffin with lights.
I was a demo man for the Army once. I blew up a bridge in a valley before our boys were across. I heard the screams over the radio. I can still hear them when the room gets too quiet. That is why I took this job. Nobody wants a man who breaks things: except when things need to be broken in the dark.
My chest felt tight. It was not just the water. A metal hunter was out there in the hall. It was a drone: a cold piece of clockwork built to kill anything that moves. It moved like a shark and thought like a trap. I could hear its rotors humming through the steel walls. It sounded like a giant mosquito looking for a place to bite.
I had three charges left. If I did not blow the support beams: the station would rise to the top. It was carrying a sickness in the lab. If that sickness hit the air: everyone on the surface would be coughing up their lungs by Tuesday. I had to bury this place. I had to make it stay down in the mud.
The drone clicked. It was in the room with me. I tucked myself behind a heavy crate of salt. My heart was a hammer hitting my ribs. I felt a cold sweat on my neck: even in the freezing water of my suit. The drone swept a red light across the floor. It was looking for my heat. It was looking for the life in me so it could put it out.
I looked at the support beam. It was thick and rusted. I needed to get the charge on the base. I moved. My suit groaned. The drone spun its head. It saw me. It fired a spike that hissed through the water. It missed my ear by an inch and slammed into the crate. The salt spilled out like white blood.
I scrambled across the floor. I felt like a bug under a boot. The drone was faster. It dived. I kicked off the wall and felt my leg catch on a sharp edge of metal. My suit hissed. I was losing air. The fear hit me then: a coldness that started in my stomach and moved to my fingers. I was going to be folded like a card table by the pressure.
I reached the beam. The drone was coming back for a second pass. Its red light was blinding now. I jammed the charge into the joint of the beam. My fingers were shaking. I could not breathe. My lungs felt like they were expanding like a panicked pufferfish.
I clicked the timer.
The drone was right on top of me. I could see the little spinning blades. I could see the lens of its eye. I did not run. I grabbed the drone with my heavy gloves. It fought me. It felt like holding a wild hog in a pen. I jammed my welding torch into its gears. Sparks flew. The water boiled around my hands.
The drone screamed: a high: metal sound that hurt my teeth. It started to smoke. I kicked it away and dove for the hatch.
The first charge went off. The floor jumped. The sound was a giant fist hitting a drum. Then the second one blew. The walls began to groan. They sounded like a big tree snapping in a windstorm. The water started coming in. It was not a leak. It was a wall of cold: hard power.
I climbed the ladder to the escape pod. My leg was screaming. My air was almost gone. I looked back and saw the drone sinking into the mud: its red light flickering out. The whole station was buckling. The metal was twisting like a tin can in a man’s grip.
I hit the button on the pod. The door slammed shut. I felt the jerk of the motors as the pod shot upward.
Through the thick glass: I watched the Sol disappear. The charges blew the last of the beams. The ocean floor opened up and swallowed the sickness. The weight of the deep sea crushed the station into a ball of scrap. It was gone. The bridge I broke all those years ago: the people I let down: they felt a little farther away.
I hit the surface an hour later. The sun was coming up. I popped the hatch and smelled the salt air. It was not the dirt of Texas: but it was close enough. I leaned back and let the sun hit my face. My heart was still fast: but it was a good fast. I was alive. The world was safe. I sat there in the middle of the big: blue empty and I started to laugh. It was a loud: ugly sound: and it was the best thing I ever heard.