Garrett went straight back to his apartment. There he once again reloaded his ammunition. He wondered about how he would solve the problem with the dragon.
I only injured it when I destroyed that handgun. That same handgun could kill dozens of other beasts but not a damn dragon. What I need is an armor piercing weapon. Could I design one of those in Montague's lab?
The next day Garrett went through the forest to the outpost outside the protected area. He had to wait for an hour for the red light near it to turn off, time which he spent firing on beasts with his photon rifle from the roof of the structure. However, eventually the red light was gone and Garrett headed up to Montague's lab.
"I think you'll be interested about what I did yesterday."
"What is that?"
"I went down to the forest searching for some hunters who had been lost."
"Did your new gun work?"
"It was very effective on almost anything?"
"What was it ineffective against?"
"I found a new teleporter right outside Pioneer One. This went to an underground cavern."
"That is an amazing discovery! What is there?"
"I could not look. I found all the dead hunters. They had been killed by a dragon."
"There are dragons?"
"Yes. There is one big dragon."
"That's interesting. You know, there were dragons back on Coral, our old home planet."
"Do you know how I can defeat this one?"
"With a photon weapon since the burning damage penetrates deep, you have to just keep shooting at it until it sustains enough damage."
"That isn't quick enough. I propose that I make a weapon like what we used back on Earth against armored vehicles."
"What kind of weapon is this?"
"This is a black powder rifle of a high caliber. It is larger than even the machine gun I made before, and it fires a much larger round at a much slower rate. This round is also much more powerful than the machine gun's rounds, and they are filled with explosive."
"This sounds like a fantastic weapon."
"Could I spend some time here and design this?"
"Yes, but if anyone comes you must conceal your work and head back down the teleporter."
Garrett opened up the design program on the computer and began designing the gun he wanted to make. He decided that he would make a gun as opposed to the normal antitank weapon, which was a rocket launcher, since the rounds would be smaller and faster to fire and reload. He created the gun to be a large and heavy weapon. It would be slow to fire and have incredible recoil, but he did not intend to use it against masses of enemies that he could dispose of with lesser weapons. Garrett decided that this gun would be a large rifle, with a five foot barrel with a blowback design. It would have a thirty millimeter bore, but instead of having the small powder charges like in grenade launchers, which lobbed their shells at low speeds, the cartridge was essentially a scaled up rifle cartridge. The gun was semi automatic and featured a large composite stock with an attached bipod. The shells themselves were over four inches long and filled with not high explosive, but the chemicals that were in the photon guns since they seemed to be more powerful, and the casings were nearly a foot long. The clips were also extremely large, and the bolt had a simple pulley system built into the back of the stock since the gun would be nearly impossible to cock without it.
Garrett selected the feature to start building the gun. He walked over to the device that built the guns and picked up the heavy rifle. It was extremely large, of course. Garrett now made ten of the clips for the gun, as well as enough ammunition for the ten clips. He also made five more drums and belts for his machine gun. Satisfied that he was ready to fight off the dragon, Garrett headed back through Montague's teleporter and into the forest. There, he decided to try out the rifle. He stepped onto the top of the building and sighted a distant Hildebear. Garrett fired the rifle, and it was better than he expected. The roar of just one shot cracked through the forest. The barrel recoiled, but even with that feature the recoil of the rifle nearly knocked Garrett off balance. He watched the round fly into the giant monkey. It struck and there was just a flash of light in that spot and a column of debris rising two dozen feet into the air. The Hildebear was destroyed completely.
Satisfied, Garrett switched to his machine gun and headed through the forest to the protected area near the dome. Garrett pushed his way easily through the enemies until he met up once again, to his surprise, with Helen and Anthony.
"Are you trying to fight the dragon on your own?"
"That is the only way I can think of getting to rescue all those people."
"Well I'm coming with you."
"You weren't able to do anything last time with that machine gun, so what do you think you can do now?"
"I have a better gun."
"Let's see it."
Garrett took out the massive rifle that he had been keeping stored. He could see through the looks on Helen's and Anthony's eyes that they were convinced that he did indeed have a better gun. They continued forward through the remaining few rooms remaining in their path in the forest. Garrett stayed in the rear with his photon rifle to conserve the ammunition of his better weapons.
Finally Garrett stood on the platform of the Pioneer One dome. He quickly reached the teleporter. There, he took out his immense black powder rifle and went down the teleporter. This time he knew that the dragon was coming. Garrett once again moved to the door and lay down in front of it. His rifle was aimed at the hole where the dragon was inevitably going to come through. Soon the dragon came, making the same entry it did before. However, once it landed Garrett searched for a good target to shoot at. He wanted to go for a head shot, but was concerned that the sloped head would merely deflect the shells. There were no good targets from the front view of the dragon.
"Helen, Anthony."
"What?"
"I need you to go around the side of the dragon. Then if it turns to attack you I will be able to get off a good shot or two at it."
Helen and Anthony began running across to the dragon's side. Garrett continued to watch the dragon through the scope of his gun, which was now zoomed out due to the close range. It seemed like an eternity as Helen and Anthony passed through the scope and to the side of the dragon. The dragon began to turn, and Garrett waited. He waited until the dragon had turned almost to a right angle, and he squeezed the trigger. A cloud of smoke erupted from the barrel of the gun as a glowing round leapt out at the dragon. It struck it in the side and exploded. Garrett could see glittering bits of scale flying in a dazzling array from the side of the dragon, with bits of flesh intermingling with them. However, the dragon was still standing. It roared, and let loose a wall of flame at Helen and Anthony. Garrett did not look to see how they fared but he fired off another shot at where he had struck it before.
The second shell struck the dragon where the first shell's explosion had cratered the flesh and left blood dripping down the dragon's side. The second round penetrated the skin there and then exploded. Garrett was relieved to see flesh and other gore from the dragon fly out from its side. The dragon had stopped spewing flame at Helen and Anthony, who had managed to dodge the brief attack. Garrett saw the dragon collapse from its feet, its side penetrated deeply with a crater. To Garrett's surprise, the dragon, like everything else on the planet, began to rapidly decay. Within a matter of a minute there was nothing more than a large pool of liquid left where it had fallen.
"Okay, let's start moving these people up to Pioneer Two."
"Shouldn't we try to revive them first with moon atomizers?"
Garrett mentally smacked himself in his head. He had forgotten about the healing items completely. He searched through his inventory and found that he had ten of the moon atomizers. Garrett went around and revived eight of the people. Helen revived the other seven there. Everyone left quickly without saying anything to anyone. Garrett figured that getting knocked down and then revived was an embarrassing thing. Garrett decided himself to head back up.