Ilva Drossen
Ilva Drossen is a red deer and a TransZoo captain in We Can Fix Pawbert, introduced in the W-Series in command of TransZoo 106, the Department of External Relations charter that brings Perkins and Botasky home from Vladifrostok. She is the mammal who gives Luther the right seat of an Airbison A320 for half an hour over open ocean, and when it emerges that her crew oxygen has been sabotaged, she spends the last seconds of thought she has pulling her own mask off because he tells her to.
Background
Drossen is mid-career, with nine thousand hours behind her and, until this flight, every expectation of as many again. The coffee at her left elbow goes unfinished, her two half-grown calves look out of a photograph tucked into the side-window frame, and she keeps her flight deck quiet. Her first officer is Ansel Quirke, whose habit of talking himself through his own actions she has decided not to cure.
Series History
W-Series
In "Souls on Board" she catches Luther in her jumpseat taking notes on her checklist flow, reads the manifest note about his simulator time, sends Quirke to eat, and turns the airplane over to him properly, with the formal exchange of control, at thirty-eight thousand feet: heading changes, a step climb off the automatics, the size of his inputs corrected one word at a time, and the verdict that he has a light touch. When the aft cargo smoke warning fires she silences it, confirms both loops, orders the aft suppression that spends both bottles, calls the PAN PAN, and sends Luther aft with instructions to say contained and not fire. Seven minutes later the smell comes through the ducts, she goes to masks and declares the MAYDAY with eleven souls on board and two who cannot get themselves out, and that is the last transmission she makes. Quirke slurs and goes over first. Told by the wolf behind her that the mask is bad, she drags it off with a hoof that no longer knows its work, gets out that the autopilot is in on heading select, and slumps against the side window beside the photograph of her calves. Neagley lifts her out of the left seat through a fourteen-inch gap, O'Donnell finds a pulse and puts her on the therapeutic oxygen bolted down for the rabbits, and she rides the ditching strapped to his spare litter frame with her jaw held forward, coming off the aircraft on it and off the boat second. She wakes three days after the water with a hypoxic brain injury, a year of rehabilitation ahead of her and, probably, the end of her flying career, and reaches for a mask that is not there. Luther visits on the fifth day, with her calves on either side of the bed, and answers the only question she has: she did it right, it is all on the recorder, and yes, the window was extremely loud.
Key Relationships
Luther Pawthorne
She spots the pen in his paw, laughs at his account of a simulator package that teaches its students not to attempt a landing, and gives him the airplane anyway, and then stops watching the instruments to watch him. His voice is the one she obeys with nine seconds of usable cognition left. He is the visitor who brings nothing to her hospital room, because everything a mammal could bring seemed wrong to him, and who tells her the oxygen was sabotaged and her conduct is on the recorder. He does not tell her that the social worker who sat with Quirke's family was his husband.
Ansel Quirke
She lets her first officer's under-the-breath narration stand, sends him off the flight deck to eat so a passenger can fly, and says his name, once, as the mask takes her. In the hospital, once Luther has told her she did it right, his name is the next thing she asks about.
Key Quotes
| Quote | Context |
|---|---|
| "Say contained. Don't say fire." | Sending Luther aft after the cargo smoke warning ("Souls on Board") |
| "Autopilot's in. Heading select. Don't touch the—" | Her last words on the flight deck, mask off, before the hypoxia takes her ("Souls on Board") |
| "Did I do it right?" | To Luther, from her hospital bed ("Souls on Board") |