Risk of Rain: Bailout

Chapter 1: Opening Gambit (Part one)

"Alright, does everybody understand the plan?" The Captain queried over the radio built into everyone's suits. Carrie didn't answer, but listened to the declarations of approval from some of her 11 other crew members. She didn't clearly understand why anybody wouldn't understand the plan. Land on the planet, look for people who might have been stranded there, and bring them back to the UES Space Travels. This plan had been told to them many times, so she definitely had it down, but appreciated the Captain's reassuring that she wasn't working with idiots. Back at the boot camp she trained people at, there were so many of her coworkers she'd wish would just do their job effectively. Being a woman lower on the hierarchy,  she felt like all of her drastic efforts were constantly overshadowed. With this job, she'd not only get paid a good amount, but have her efforts recognized, and possibly find her brother, a hotheaded miner who was last seen on the UES Contact Light.

Suddenly, her pod started shaking. A robotic voiced boomed over the speakers in her pod. "Pod launching is imminent. Please brace yourself for ejection." Carrie sat down and strapped herself in with the hyperspeed-resistant seatbelts. "Ejection countdown commencing. Ejection in T-minus 30, 29, 28..." Carrie rolled her eyes in her yellow visor, waiting for the countdown to end. "24, 23, 22, 21-" 

There was a CRASH, and the pod shook a lot harder than the first time. "There seems to be an error with the vessel. To keep you from launching off the designated course, the ejection sequence will accelerate. Pod ejection in five..." Carrie looked around her pod for a second. No damage. Good. 

"Four..." Carrie tried to look out the little window on her pod, but her seatbelt kept her from getting a good angle. At her sitting position, she could see smoke, so she knew there was commotion close to her.

"Three..." Carrie knew it was a bad idea, but she had to make sure that her crewmates were safe. She unbuckled her seatbelt and pressed her visor against the glass. She saw smoke coming from the Safe travels, but not from the pods in front of her. The had numbers on them, and the pods were arranged in a two by five fashion, with one extra pod at the end. Carrie was the first pod, so she could only see pods three and four. One of the pods that was in the back of the formation was on fire, but because there were other pods in front of it, Carrie couldn't pinpoint which.

"Two..." Carrie shoved herself back into her seat, and struggled to put the seatbelt back on.

"One..." At the last second, Carrie buckled her seat belts and put her hands on her armrests, bracing for the ejection.

"Zero." Next thing she knew, Carrie was falling through an atmosphere to an unknown planet. While falling, she managed to get a glimpse of the pod that was on fire through her window, seeing it spin out of control. It ended up rolling down a mountain and fading out of view. A few seconds after she saw that, she felt a sudden THUMP , and noticed she stopped falling. She unbuckled herself, got up, and pressed a button on the pod door in front of her. The door hissed  and unlocked the hinges, opening to show Carrie a green landscape with circular, towering stone ruins and plenty of mesas, plains, and canyons, and chests everywhere.

This was the real deal. She was into thick of it. Out of the frying pan, and into the fire. In the first act.

You could even say she was faced with the opening gambit.