A Breaking Point

[Cat]

- Don't tell me I'll have to do it the second time today!

Linn sat in the pilot's chair, sweating and holding onto the control wheel. Her ginger hair obscured the view at times, but she didn't care: she just flew her shuttle, the Pathfinder, like there was no tomorrow. All she could see now was the planet in front of her, that was rapidly increasing in size. Planet Sprague, her home away from home.

Most ships rely on planetary docking rings to compensate aerodynamic heating and other factors, so entering the atmosphere of a planet without using a docking ring is always a gamble. Lucky for Linn, the Pathfinder was a Voyager-class shuttle, designed with all kinds of countermeasures for the adverse effects of atmospheric entry. However, few people tried to enter atmosphere at full speed, and that's exactly what Linn Archer was about to do.

- Hold it together, baby, hold it together!

If it weren't for the polarized glass of the Pathfinder's cockpit, Linn would've been blinded by a wave of heated gas that surrounded her shuttle as it entered the atmoshpere.

The artifact in the shuttle's cargo hold didn't help either: it emitted all kinds of known and unknown energies, not to mention that weird purple glowing. Those emissions have already rendered the Pathfinder's stabilizers non-functional and messed with the controls. That left Linn out of options and made her go for full-speed landing.

"What have I got myself into..." - Linn thought as the heat wave slowly dissipated, revealing the endless barrens of Sprague and a space port in the distance. But Linn knew she wouldn't make it to the spaceport this time. As the Pathfinder bolted towards the canyon several kilometers outside of spaceport, the events of the last couple of hours flashed across her mind in one vivid image...

A flight to New London... Meeting Junko Sanada, an old acquaintance from Kusari ... She now works for Borderworld Exports, who would've thought... A random weird Zoner babbling something about the great spirits and their knights... Rheinland forces appearing in New London out of nowhere and assaulting a Bowex transport...

One of the Rheinlanders explodes... I instinctively hit the tractor beams... The Zoner wants the artifact I tractored... Junko tells me to keep it... Both refer to it as some power cell... I decide to take it to Sprague... Ajax Solutions Inc., my employers, should know what to do with it... The artifact goes active and starts glowing... Have to land fast... Hair obscure the view... Sprague, my home away from home.

And then the Pathfinder crashed.