Elizabeth packed her bag and whistled happily as she waved to her parents, telling them that she would write, as they looked on in a mix of dismay and relief. They assumed that "Gypsy" as she preferred to be called; would be back in no time flat, having got her wanderlust out of her system to become a respectable member of the family, to perhaps take over the family's business, Manajo Entertainment Company, the foremost Echo programming entertainment company on Dresden, her home planet.
Two days later Gypsy landed on the Pandoran sands, and walked off the space shuttle onto the tarmac towards the one remaining bus stop, a piece of steel haphazardly sticking out of the dirt at a 45 degree angle with "Bus Stahp" written in what she hoped was red paint. She didn't have long to wait before a ramshackle bus pulled up, to take her on her way to the nearest settlement.
"Get in, get in, I don't have all day, give me your pass, and find a place to sit and be quiet. Don't mind my driving, the roads a bit bumpy." A roly-poly man with an Eastern European accent laughed as he collected Gypsy's ticket, and opened up the baggage hold in the bottom of the bus for her stuff. His eyes popped open as he looked at the cage which held a rather ugly looking bird that looked like a cross between an eagle and a crow. "Nice bird, it would be good eating."
Gypsy scowled and thanked the man, while the bird squawked in indignation at the man's suggestion of it was food. The bus driver gently set the cage into the hold and shut the door, and walked up to the entrance of the bus. With a mighty laugh he yelled into the wilderness "LAST CALL TO BOARD THE PANDORAN EXPRESS!" and he echoed into the cliffs, with no reply.
"Well, best be off then."
Gypsy followed him onto the bus and walked down the aisle. The bus was empty, which she found as a relief. She wanted to relax. She raked her shoulder length brown hair and settled down into her seat, which creaked as she sat.
The old travel brochure she had picked up had mentioned that Pandora was as of 25 years ago a newly colonized planet with hardly any infrastructure to speak of, save for the fact that the military company Dahl had come looking for an alternative fuel source rumoured to be in the planet's crust named eridium, which they hoped would power their space vehicles instead of the old nuclear fission reactor engine cores. Uranium was quickly becoming a sparse resource.
Gypsy was drawn to the planet for another reason, one she cleverly "forgot" to mention to her parents. One of her friends whose parents were in the planet's military force, had access to more ECHOnet channels than she did at home and one day they were just cycling through when they came across a short blip that maybe lasted 20 seconds, in Morse code. Gypsy's friend translated the code for her, and it was some sort of a distress call. Gypsy's interest was piqued, and she took out all her savings and had promised to write her parents as soon as she was able.
Gypsy sat down next to the window of the bus, and with a nod, Marcus whistled and climbed up the stairs of the dust battered bus, and turned the ignition and the unmistakeable smell of diesel exhaust filled the air.
"And we are off! Welcome to Pandora!"
5 hours later:
Gypsy wiped her eyes and stretched her neck, as she was rather rudely woken up by the bus driver telling her it was her stop.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming!" She yelled as she yawned, standing up and stretching making sure she didn't leave anything behind, grabbing her bag at the top of the rack, and ran up to the front of the bus.
"Driver, my birds in the baggage hold." He nodded and got out and took out the cage.
"Thank you for riding the Dirt Express, welcome to Fyrestone, enjoy your stay and try to stay alive, I ain't interested in picking up yer carcass!"
"I'll try not to ruin your day then, sir. Thanks a bunch!" Gypsy smirked and waved at the driver as he drove off, and took in her surroundings.
To Gypsy's left she could see the remains of a small building that presumably used to be a diner or truck stop of some sort. Bowls and broken cups littered the floor as she walked in. She saw an open fridge door, and with a sigh, she realized there was no food inside, only some ammunition.
"Interesting... This could come in handy..." She saw some lockers and cash boxes lay haphazardly around in the sand, some open and some closed, and in deciding that the diner was abandoned, she got busy with searching for whatever she could find. Curiously enough, she found $10 in two cash boxes lying on the floor, and 4 clips of ammo sitting on top of some papers inside one of the lockers along the wall.
She stuck the cash into her bra, and the ammunition into her pockets, and unfolded the papers to see if they were of any interest. One was a shipping notice from the Dahl Corporation detailing requisition orders of supplies, and the other was a recruitment poster for an organization called The Crimson Raiders. Gypsy noticed writing on the back, and her mouth dropped open.
To whoever reads this:
You're probably here to finish what we started. There isn't much to see as we had to leave in a hurry. Take whatever you see, you'll need it. Avoid going down the road unless you have a death wish. Don't be fooled. If you came to answer our call, then keep your wits about you, and make your way to Sanctuary, if it still exists... There may still be drinkable water around here somewhere...
-M
Her eyes glanced down to the end of the page where half of a signature was written, curiously ended by a wash of dried red ink... Or maybe it was blood. She stuffed the note into her shirt and continued on, gathering more ammo and cash.
As she left, she nearly tripped over a loose floorboard and caught herself before she sprawled onto her face. She pulled the floor board up and it broke with a crack, revealing a box in a little compartment.
Gypsy sat on the ground, and pulled the box into her lap, it sure was heavy! She opened the rusty lid with a squeak and sucked in her breath as she found a combat knife inside, with another note and some more bullets.
"Find the robot" was all it said.
Gypsy reasoned since so much ammunition was around, there must be guns available somewhere. She put the floorboard back in place as best she could and walked outside, noticing the sun was about to set.
Having cased out the inside of the building, she walked outside around the perimeter, and discovered an old weather beaten military footlocker with "DAHL CORP." spray painted on the side.
She opened the clasp on the footlocker and whistled to herself, finding some more ammunition and a Vladof bolt action sniper rifle. She slung it onto her right shoulder and cooed at Cutthroat. Now if she only knew how to shoot it.
Walking around to the front of the building again, to her left she could see a road that went east, and to her right, the road curved and presumably continued on to God knows where. Right in front of her beyond the road, she could see endless cliffs and sand stretching into the horizon, with windmills laying still in the Pandoran breeze. "That's odd. Wouldn't they be spinning?" Gypsy thought, and shrugged, and looked back up the road, noticing a fence haphazardly constructed out of rusted sheet metal and old parts.
Cutthroat squawked, bringing Gypsy's attention back to the present, and she knelt and opened the cage, letting Cutthroat climb up her arm to perch on her shoulder. "I guess you probably don't need your cage anymore, eh buddy?" Gypsy smiled and left the cage at the entrance.
She walked through the old gate that curiously was left ajar, and took care that the rusty metal didn't cut her as she squeezed through the gap. She saw a sign that said "Welcum too Fyrestone!" and shook her head at the spelling.
She explored the deserted town which kind of unnerved her. She wondered what the hell happened here. It looked like everyone had left in a hurry. All the numbered buildings were locked up tight. She tried a door and the knob was stuck shut.
Gypsy walked through the settlement for a while, acquainting herself with her new home and she found a place to sleep under a lean to starting a fire as the sun went down.