Ines Baruk
Ines Baruk is a mongoose and a Zootopia air traffic controller in We Can Fix Pawbert, introduced in the W-Series. She is working Zootopia Center when TransZoo 106 declares an emergency, and she keeps the frequency for the whole of the flight, walking it from the Center to the Approach floor herself rather than pass the aircraft to another voice.
Background
Ines has eighteen years at a scope. She holds a rating and works to a procedure manual, and afterward she describes what she did for TransZoo 106 in exactly those terms. She has most of a shift behind her when the aircraft's first call reaches her, and the shift runs long past its end.
Series History
W-Series
In "Souls on Board" she takes Captain Ilva Drossen's PAN PAN, then her MAYDAY, and then a transmission from Dixon saying that both pilots are down and nobody aboard knows how to land. The pause she takes before answering is a second and a half long, the longest of her career on a live sector. Then she gives the flight deck her first name, puts the aircraft on a discrete frequency so that no one else can talk over them, and stands up the fire service, TransZoo operations and ZSI at once. She asks who she is talking to, and Luther answers as Rook, the name she uses for him from then on. She brings Odalys Kranz onto the second box. When Approach control is due to take the field she refuses to pass him to them and carries the frequency to the Approach floor in person, promising him that the room behind her will change and her voice will not; at 5:49pm she comes up from the Approach floor on the same frequency, and Luther smiles for the first time in an hour. She throws out the published arrival, which would cost nineteen minutes he does not have, and brings him straight over Tundratown across two weather walls. When Kranz asks what he has, Ines rules out Polar Straights and gives him Sandy Cove: eleven miles at his ten o'clock, shallow, sheltered on three sides, eighty-one degrees, with the freight terminal closed for the day. She turns him onto it and tells him that losing him on radar over the water will mean nothing at all. After the ditching her voice is still asking the flooded flight deck how it reads, and Luther goes back up the aisle to tell her they are down; the sound she makes on the frequency is one nobody in the room ever mentions to her, and her last transmission tells Rook to get off her airplane. Around midnight, off shift and in a plain jacket, she is on a bench by the elevators at Zootopia General with a paper cup, having come to see whether they were real. Pawbert recognizes her from the number of times Luther has said her name, hears her insist that all she did was give a mammal headings from a scope for fifty-one minutes, and tells her that his husband is asleep down the corridor because of a voice in his headset that never sped up. She asks about the first officer, whose voice she never heard, and Pawbert gives her his name, Ansel Quirke. She looks at them through the glass and goes home.
Key Relationships
Luther Pawthorne
She knows him as Rook, and for fifty-one minutes she is one of the two voices in his headset. He goes back up a flooding aisle to tell her they are down, because otherwise the controller at the other end never finds out, and he tells her twice that she came down the hall.
Pawbert Pawthorne
They meet once, on a hospital bench after midnight, and she has no idea who he is until he says her name back to her. He refuses her account of herself as a rating and a procedure and gives her the other one, and he is the one who tells her the first officer's name.
Odalys Kranz
Ines owns the airspace, Kranz owns the airplane, and neither of them ever says so. Kranz asks her what he has and questions her on the cove, and it is Ines who turns him onto it.
Key Quotes
| Quote | Context |
|---|---|
| "I'm keeping this frequency and I'm walking it down the hall myself. You will hear the room change behind me. You will not hear my voice change." | Refusing to pass TransZoo 106 to Approach control ("Souls on Board") |
| "Get off my airplane, Rook." | Her final transmission, after Luther reports the aircraft down in the cove ("Souls on Board") |
| "I sat at a scope for fifty-one minutes and I gave him headings. That's it. That's what I did." | To Pawbert, on the bench at Zootopia General ("Souls on Board") |