Once Garrett was back at his apartment it was late in the day, he just felt like falling asleep. The next morning, however, he felt like he was ready to go back down on the surface. He quickly reloaded ammunition into the partially spent belt of his machine gun, and into the clips that he had expended from his Kalashnikov, and went up to the Hunter's Guild. There he looked again through the missions he could choose. There seemed to be an ever increasing number of rescue missions available.
"Can I take more than one mission at a time?"
"I don't think anyone has done that before."
"Can I or can I not?"
"I guess you can get the rewards for each quest you complete if you complete the objectives for several quests."
"Okay. I'm going to try to wrap up as many of these rescue missions as possible."
Garrett went down the teleporter. He decided that he would take out his Kalashnikov since he did not suspect coming across large numbers of beasts if he was staying inside the grid defended area. He did not think other hunters of a more normal upbringing would think to go outside the boundaries of the secure area. Garrett continued through each section around where he had teleported down. In one of the areas there was the other teleporter that went closer to the dome, but Garrett ignored that until he had checked the entirety of the forest area. He did not see any people there while he was down there, so he went through the teleporter. Garrett continued through several of the partitioned roomlike areas that were near the dome, but he did not come across any enemies there. There were only pools of blood where the rapidly decaying bodies had rotted away.
Garrett stepped into a room and saw two hunters hacking into a group of beasts. There were at least six or seven boomas and dogs surrounding the group, and Garrett could see that they were about to become the next two victims.
"Duck now!"
Garrett changed to his machine gun. He flipped off the safety and set it to full automatic. He crouched by a nearby tree branch that was jutting from a stump, resting the bipod on the stump. Garrett put the group in the iron sights of his gun and mashed the trigger. Rounds sprayed rapidly from the muzzle of the gun, and Garrett swept it slightly from side to side to make sure that each of the beasts was hit. Garrett fired over half of his clip and stopped. All of the beasts had either fallen or were falling.
"It's all clear!"
Garrett quickly switched to the cool barrel on his gun and walked over to the two hunters. They had not been hit by the barrage of gunfire fortunately, but they still seemed to be in shock from it. Garrett recognized one of the hunters as Helen, the HUnewearl who had been in the party to recover him and Jackie.
"Hello, Helen. And who is this?"
"I'm Anthony, a HUmar."
"Nice to meet you."
"Thanks for saving our asses."
"It's not a problem with my little friend here."
"What kind of gun is that?"
"This is a light machine gun."
"You mean it has light damage?"
"No, it can be pretty destructive."
"I mean light damage like the light attribute."
"Oh. No, it is just a machine gun that is lightweight and man-portable."
"So it does regular damage."
"By my standards, yes. By yours, no. It doesn't use photons."
"Are you down here looking for someone?"
"I'm looking for anyone that people set up quests to find."
"You want to join us?"
"Sure. I can take care of any enemies at long range."
"Please don't. Just let us get the experience. You can shoot them, but let us hit them too."
"Then that is just a waste of ammunition for this."
Garrett swapped his machine gun for his photon rifle and continued to follow Anthony and Helen. He fired occasionally at enemies with the accurate rifle, distracting them from the hunters up close who were cutting into them with their swords. After going through several more rooms he reached the warp up to the platform. There were still no signs of people. However, Garrett pointed out on the platform that there were a couple hunter items sitting on the platform that were not from any boxes there or beasts that they had slain. Helen picked them up. They were nothing out of the ordinary, but where they were was not right.
Garrett moved into the next area of the platform. This was the one with the door, which was still stuck closed. However, there was also another teleporter past this door.
"Where do you think that goes?"
"I don't know. I didn't see that there before."
"You want to go through?"
"We didn't see anyone else along the way so I guess we have to. And this is new, so there might be some good things down there."
"Okay then, we'll go. But I don't know what's going to be down there, so if things aren't good then you fall back to the teleporter and I'll cover you."
Garrett switched to his machine gun and stepped onto the teleporter. Helen and Anthony stepped onto the teleporter and activated it. Soon they appeared in a cavernous underground dome. Garrett flinched slightly as he saw bodies strewn about the ground. He hoped that they were in a comatose state from their armor's hardware but did not know for sure. Garrett walked to a nearby body. The body was that of a FOnewearl. Her cane was thrown just out of reach, and she had a light pulse. However, Garrett was most concerned about the terrain around. As opposed to a cave which he would have expected, which would have been extremely dark and damp. This cave was not wet at all. It was bone dry, and it reminded Garrett of the desert expanses of northern Africa. It was also not very dark. Light emitted from the remnants of small fires, where the soil itself had been burned. There was also light from around the teleporter, and from around a door at one end of the cave. Garrett could count at least eight bodies in the room, at least that he could see. It was dim in the room, so Garrett couldn't see any of the farther off bodies.
The teleporter suddenly closed. Garrett checked and it said that it was an emergency shutoff due to nearby hostiles. Garrett could hear a faint sound now, which was not unlike the sound of an approaching tank battalion. The noise was a grating, groaning noise that Garrett could feel more than he could hear.
"Everyone get to the door!"
Garrett followed Helen and Anthony as they ran across the middle of the room. He swept his gun from side to side and hoped that he would be pointing in the right direction when whatever was coming arrived. Helen saw a large crater and walked over to it. This, however, was not a crater. This was a hole which extended into blackness hundreds of feet down. Garrett pushed her away from the edge, forcing her toward the door with his gun's barrel. He himself looked into the hole. This amplified the noise, so Garrett knew that this was where whatever was coming was coming from. Garrett continued to back away from the hole and toward the door. However, the door too was locked. Garrett arrayed Helen and Anthony on his sides, and he himself got prone, resting himself and his gun's bipod on the hot, sandy soil covering most of the area.
Garrett waited for a few minutes, but was not disappointed. In a heavy shroud of dust, something large broke through the hole. However, the dust settled quickly under a downdraft. Garrett looked up from where he expected to see something, on the ground on the side of the hole, and was startled to see a huge beast. This beast landed, and Garrett realized that it was like a dragon right out of a video game or movie. Garrett immediately adjusted his aim and mashed the trigger. The rounds flew from the barrel of his gun, and Garrett saw the dragon shake its head as the rounds struck. However, the gun clicked empty. Garrett noticed that the dragon did not seem to have taken any damage. Instead it merely was alerted to Garrett's presence.
"Both of you try to break open that door!"
"How do we do that?"
"I don't care how!"
Garrett stored the empty clip and belt and loaded a new clip onto his machine gun. The dragon began to head in his direction and he decided to hold his fire. Right behind him, Helen and Anthony were trying various things to make the door open. Garrett decided that it was best to distract the dragon. He got up and began running along the perimeter of the cavern. Once he had gone off to the dragon's left, since it was still heading toward Helen and Anthony, he again went prone. He aimed again at the dragon's head and opened fire. He fired two short bursts and the rounds hit their mark. The dragon turned and began lumbering toward Garrett. He fired another long burst into the front of the dragon's head, but was dismayed as several of the rounds deflected up off of its sloped head.
The dragon reared its head back and to Garrett's surprise a line of flame leapt from its mouth toward Garrett. Garrett jumped to the side, hitting the ground near a body. He knew the person, a RAmarl, was still alive so he grabber her by the neck of her armor and draped her over one shoulder. Garrett brought this body, now running slowly, to Helen and Anthony and put it down there.
"If you get this door open, get anyone you see here out through there!"
Garrett moved back out to engage the dragon. Now he knew he had to watch out for its breath and therefore just kept it turning in his direction from an uncomfortably close range with quick bursts from his machine gun. He knew he didn't have much ammunition; he only had about one hundred fifty rounds left and then he would have to resort to his Kalashnikov, which was not nearly as strong.
Could one of the handguns exploding injure this dragon?
"Get everyone out to the edges of the cavern!"
Helen and Anthony ran from the door and began dragging the roughly fifteen bodies that Garrett thought there were out to the edges of the cavern if they weren't already there. Garrett began to fire the handgun at the dragon. He fired slowly and repeatedly, letting the dragon get closer to him the entire time. The handgun finally began its final stage of overheating, and Garrett threw it at the dragon. The handgun hit the ground several yards in front of and to one side of the dragon, but the sandy soil caught it and prevented it from getting any closer. The handgun exploded, about fifteen feet from the dragon's head. Garrett watched the white flash and shockwave emanate from the strangely powerful explosion of the gun. As the scattered sediment settled, Garrett was dismayed to see that the dragon was still alive. He could see that it was injured, there appeared to be a crater the size of a dinner plate in its neck where some shrapnel had hit it.
"How are we supposed to get out of here now?"
"I have one more handgun. Get those bodies away from the door!"
Garrett took out his other handgun and he began firing at the dragon. This time he backed away toward the door. Once the handgun finally began burning, Garrett dropped it next to the door and began running. He kept running as the he saw the room light up from the explosion. Garrett jumped as he was caught in the shockwave, and tumbled to a stop twenty feet away. He got up and quickly ran toward the door. The blast had forced one of the two sliding doors in several feet, leaving a gap that a person could easily step through.
"Forget about the bodies for now! We can come back for them when we are ready to face this thing!"
The three stepped through the door. They were now in a much smaller cavern chamber. There was a door on the other side of this, which slid open to an expansive cavern that indicated there was much more ahead of that. Fortunately, though, there was a teleporter here. Anthony quickly set this up to take them to Pioneer Two, and the three stepped onto the teleporter and were soon in Pioneer Two.