----- Chapter 5 : The Kink in the Wind and the Way -----
Once her eyes had adjusted to the dim light conditions she found she had entered the cave system that pervaded much of the mountain range directly north of the colony. She had read much of the survey team's reports, she knew that almost none of the caves lead to the surface, her best bet would be to make way to the geothermal power plant located at the far-end of the cave system north-east of her current location.
The first section was made hazardous due to the numerous lava flows, no doubt caused by the earthquakes, that had resulted in plenty of backtracking, but she had soon learned to spot the signs of explorers that had gone before her and so progress became swifter. What she had not expected was resistance from the creatures she encountered in the caves. They seemed overly aggressive and would attack her in preference over other creatures.
Further progress through the caves saw a change in scenery, the path she had chosen led her close to the surface, pools of water and trees and plants flourished here and there were holes in the roof allowing sunlight to flood in. Sunlight! So it was day but what day, had she travelled all night? Her body felt heavy, wearied from the distance and continuous combat and her hunger was only barely held back through strict rationing of the Mates she had forgotten to remove from her personal storage inventory. But escape was not possible here, the steep rock walls presenting a challenge to great.
Pressing on deeper saw more evidence of Pioneer technology, security barriers and mines serving to hold back subterranean intruders. Despite these inconveniences, her pace had quickened in response to the approach of the familiar. It was during her rush onwards that she had almost missed an oh-so familiar hum and there it was... a pillar identical to the one from the forest save for a few main characters. This had got her thinking about what this could mean. Clearly someone else had built them, but whom? And for what purpose? She knew that there was some significance to these pillars and perhaps the key lay in the cryptic symbols that adorned their surface. She was now glad that she had captured images of the first one, it might give her opportunity to discern some meaning from them later.
It would still be many hours before she would arrive at her destination and her heart had nearly stopped when the formidable security doors of the facility had not opened immediately. Exploration of the power station proved to be difficult, doors, lifts and other electrical systems seemed to be faulty on a near random basis. These failures had also meant that creatures roamed the corridors giving her no time to seek rest. It was during her time spent roaming the many floors that she realised that like the Central Dome there was no sign of any of the colonists. It had seemed like they had vanished without a trace, playing some giant game of hide-and-seek, ready to pop out and reveal themselves at any time.
Rico had been unsurprised to discover that all service elevators to the surface were inoperable, it had seemed fitting given the chain of events that had occurred so far. She had weighed up her options, of which there were three. Stay here in the facility, there was food enough to last her months probably and she could section off a suitable area and defend against the wandering creatures until a search party from Pioneer Two arrived. The second was more risky, fight a way back through the caves risking another encounter with the dragon and hope to climb out to the Central Dome. Her final choice and most likely of all was to find a functional terminal and see if there was some kind of service shaft she could scale to the surface.
When she had finally got her hands on the schematic of the station she was dismayed to see that the shaft was around a kilometre in height, but at the lowest floor there was a dock area for the underground river that the power station drew water from. A lucky break at last! Docks meant boats and the river must end somewhere, she would ride it out.