Carrie surveyed her surroundings. This new planet seemed to have some geography that she recognize. There were canyons that were very, VERY deep, plains with grass, and some kind of circular ruins that towered far above her head. Carrie also remembered other things about the planet she was told, like that it had some sort of ancient technology, and breathable air. She patted herself down one more time, just to take inventory on what she had. She was armed with her trusty dual pistols, a few grenades...and that was it. In her suit were built in synthetic food and water pill dispensers, so for the first couple of weeks on this planet, she wouldn't die, guaranteed. But everybody in her squadron knew that if they wanted the search the bear fruit, they would need to find an external food source.

Carrie pressed a button on her suit that would enable communications. She knew it had limited range, but it was worth a shot to see if anybody was nearby.

"Hello? Is anybody there? This is crew member #1 requesting backup."

Nothing. She tried again.

"Hey, it's me, Carrie. Just wanted to see if anybody was nearby."

Then, she heard something. A string of short and long beeps. She knew exactly who it was. Rex.

Rex was one of the robots that Carrie was allied with. She had met it, but couldn't exactly interact with it much, since it spoke in Morse Code. It was three feet, six inches tall, but a more peculiar robot. It didn't have a humanoid physique, instead, it had four thin, spindly legs, and had one "eye" in between two of them.  Its "torso" was of a circular, pot-like shape, to inhabit the purple, viny, flowering plant that was inside. The two beings, the plant and the robot, cannot live without each other. Rex was an experiment. A test to see if a robot could protect an endangered plant species. Even though it did its job, it ended up not pleasing the scientists, and it was going to be terminated, but the Captain went and saved it, and in return, Rex is going to help him. 

"Oh, you. Alright, buddy, I'm one of the people who don't understand Morse, so, how about just answering yes or no questions. Do you see... giant circular ruins. One beep for yes, two for no."

One beep. Rex was in the general area.

"Alright, do you see a tall cliff? Cuz I'm on a cliff."

Two beeps. Rex must have been behind one of the mesas she saw. 

"Okay, I think I know where you could be. Stay in your general area, I'm coming to get-" Her sentence was cut off. She felt a row of teeth dig into the shoulder guards on her suit. She shoved whatever bit her off and whipped her head to face it. It was a purple, lizard-like creature, with a humanoid physique. Oddly, it had armor plates on its shoulders and knees. It seemed to be part of a species that was somewhat intelligent. Carrie swiftly unloaded some bullets into its chest, and it dropped dead.

"Whew. Sorry, Rex, some kind of lizard came out of nowhere and attacked me. I'm coming to you now. Don't die. I'm signing off." Rex chirped in approval. Carrie pressed the button on her helmet and made her way down the cliff she was on. On her way, she found more lizard men, but they didn't catch her off guard, so she was able to defeat them all. Something Carrie noticed was that the lizards dropped yellow coins when she killed them. Upon closer observation, Carrie noticed that these were the same coins she used back home. Why would this peculiar species use the same currency as hers?

As she explored, Carrie found some old, rusted chests. They seemed like they were from the UES Contact Light. She had an idea. She inserted a bunch of coins into the chest, and it opened, giving her...a bronze shield. An odd item to be on the Contact Light, but it would be useful nonetheless. She took it, and continued on her journey, opening more chests, and getting other random, but useful items. A dagger, and an energy drink.

Carrie was almost at the mesas suddenly, she heard noises coming from up ahead. Stomping noises. She turned around a corner to see an army of about five lizard men and an eight feet tall, burly stone golem with a red eye. The golem started to turn around, and Carrie ducked behind the corner for a couple of seconds. She turned back around the corner to see what all the lizards were doing. They seemed to be trying to pry open one of the escape pods that Carrie fell with. Specifically, pod number eight. She knew exactly who was in that pod. Lucia.

Lucia was of a large, muscular build, and one foot taller that five-feet tall Carrie. This made her perfect for her job: loading cargo. Some would say that her job is boring, but Lucia couldn't disagree more. Loaders were issued a complimentary fully articulate titanium exoskeleton that covers their arms and is capable of lifting 250 tons. Lucia wasn't all brawn, though. She was smart enough to equip her exoskeleton arms with a custom built grappling hook. This feat of extraordinary smarts is likely what caught the Captain's attention, and what caused him to recruit Lucia to the squad, giving her an iconic grey spacesuit with a blue visor and bottoms that were the same shade of yellow as Carrie's visor and suit. Lucia seemed like the type who could punch straight through the lizard army, so Carrie was a bit baffled on why she hasn't already.

The golem turned to face Carrie a second time, but Carrie hid a little too late. She heard its granite feet stomp towards her. She held her breath and closed her eyes, praying it didn't actually see her. When the stomping stopped, Carrie looked around the corner, only to be face to face with the giant creature.

"Crap."

It swung at Carrie with its big stone arms, but Carrie rolled backwards just in time, and started opening fire into the golem's chest. It seemed to barely faze it. Suddenly, the golem's eye started glowing. A tiny laser-the one you see on laser sight rifles-protruded from its eye onto Carrie's chest. Its eye started powering up; it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what that meant. Carrie ducked out of they way just in time to dodge the golem's laser. "Great. Laser golems. Why wouldn't they fire lasers?" Carrie knew that her normally shooting at it wouldn't do the trick, so she flipped a switch on her right-handed gun. This turned it from semi-automatic to fire in bursts. She opened fire into the golem, aiming for the head this time. She managed to hit it right in the eye, which exploded, sending the golem falling to the ground. Carrie had no time to celebrate, though, as the lizard men noticed the noise and were coming straight for her, shooting fireballs from their mouths. Carrie dodged the fireballs as she fumbled with one of her frag grenades. She finally pulled the pin, threw the grenade, and took cover behind a rock. The ground shook with the explosion as she saw one of the lizard men fly past her.

Carrie went back over to the unopened pod, and found out the reason why it was locked. The pod landed right in front of a large chest, so the door couldn't open. The chest was quite heavy, though, so Carrie put in her last few coins to open it, empty it out, and then push it out of the way. Right after she did that, the pod hissed as the door opened, revealing Lucia.

"Lucia! Glad to have landed with you." Carrie affirmed.

"Yeah, thanks for the help, flyweight." Lucia teased.

"I told you to stop calling me that."

"I will, once you prove yourself to be a welterweight. So, you learned anything about this planet?"

"A bit. There are these lizard men and stone golems, like you just saw, and they drop coins. There are chests everywhere, and we use the coins from the monsters to open the chests, which give us random crap."

"Oh. A chest was blocking the door..." Lucia turned towards to contents of the large chest. It was mostly random scrap metal and broken machines. She recognized one of the items. "Oh, hey, I know what this is!" She excitedly exclaimed as she picked up one of the metal machines. It seemed to be some type of white satellite dish.

"I've loaded a bunch of these. They're radar scanners. They're really heavy, but can be equipped on most spacesuits to scan somebody's surroundings. I think I can use this with my suit..."

Lucia put the satellite disk on her shoulder, pressed a button on it, and watched as her visor filled with icons and text boxes about the lifeforms of the landscape in front of her. "Wow...those are really big words." 

"What do you see?" Carrie queried.

"Just...a lot of science-y words and...hey, who is that?" Lucia spotted a small silhouette that seemed to have four legs and a plant on its back. "I think I see...Rex?"

"Oh, yeah. I heard Rex on comms. I told it that we'd meet up. I can take all the help I can get."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Lucia insisted. "We've got to find others if we want any chance of surviving this planet." 

"Don't oppose that logic. Let's go!" Carrie said, enthusiastically.

And so the two left, off to find Rex, and the rest of their squad.

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