A Breaking Point

[Yaoquizque]

Junko did what she could to divert the gunboat but its crew was clearly focused on an objective that was not related for now with her death. They wanted the trinket collected by the Bretonian in New London.
She should have listened to everyone advice and gotten rid of it in the closest sun... Now it was too late.

She watched the gunboat get in position for an orbital bombardment and realized Archer would not be able to make it. Pushing the Marauder to its limits, Junko entered in Sprague's atmosphere with a non optimal penetration angle.
Her efforts to locate the ship did not result in anything positive as the gunboat was bombarding a localized area on the planet surface. Did it simply get vaporized by the merciless strikes coming from the orbit?

The bombardment stopped as quickly as it started. Interferences caused by high atmosphere was preventing her from knowing if the gunboat was still there or already left.
Were they waiting for them to reveal their position? Or for their scanner arrays saturation to decrease enough to detect them? As tempting as calling Archer was, Junko was not brave enough to take the chance. She attempted to reduce her ship's signature to the minimum by switching to passive scanning and by lowering the engine to the minimum acceptable thrust.

Where was Archer? It was hard to see anything conclusive in this mess. Fire and dust was all there was. After having spent half an hour ruining her eyes on what was left of Sprague landscape in this area, Junko eventually sighed and looked at the sky. Were they still there? She bit her lower lip and at last switched her array back to active scanning.

The trinket was displaying a strong energy signature during the trip. With some luck...
Here. The feedback was very clear. Did the ones in orbit detect it too? There was no time to waste regardless.

The Marauder eventually reached the location, the woman emitting a gasp at the sight of the site. She eventually located an artificial structure between the rocks. The ship. She had now to find somewhere safe enough to land and to check if that egg contained Archer or a corpse.

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