The end of an Era?

[Zayne Carrick]

Direktor Draay's debriefing, present day
Codename: "The Fall", access restricted to: Oberkommando

Intruder in SOA uniform detonated some sort of advanced EMP device, which completely shot down Yggdrasil's bridge. And then carrier lost its orbit and started spiraling towards Tangier's surface.

Hull plating was burning off the falling carrier, engines were not responding, but Siegfried managed to stabilise the trajectory a bit using nothing but a bank of thrusters and its atmospheric drag fins.

"Allright, crew, this is Direktor Draay speaking. Our carrier has been sabotaged and we're falling to the planet. This won't be a landing, it will be a controlled crash. Repeat: a controlled crash from secondary bridge. But we will survive, because SOA doesn't die. SOA doesn't fail. SOA always prevails."

Every bone in Solveig's body ached with helplessness. Because she knew: that ship was a death trap. No one could land such a hulk, not even her brother. Each second that passed before its crash and burn was a miracle in itself, a testament to the gifts of a pilot who was once legendary-but when each second is a miracle, how many of them can be strung together in a row?

This is Siegfried Draay's masterpiece:

Many people say he once was best fighter pilot in the Army, but that's merely talk, born of the constant NeuralNet references to his unmatched string of kills in fighter combat. Blowing up rheinlanders and corsairs is simply a matter of superior reflexes and trust in himself; he has spent so many hours in the cockpit that he wears am Odin like his red mantle. It's his own body, with thrusters for legs and cannons for fists.

What he is doing right now transcends mere flying the fighter or commanding the capship.

The ship he's in is not only bucking like a maddened animal through brutal coils of clear-air turbulence, it's on fire and breaking up like a comet ripping apart as it crashes into a gas giant. He has only seconds to learn how to maneuver a carrier which has never been in atmosphere. Which was never designed to be in atmosphere

This is, put simply, impossible. It can't be done.

He's going to do it anyway.

Because he is Siegfried Draay, Direktor of SOA and the future of an Army.

He extends his hands and for one long, long moment he merely strokes controls, feeling their shape under his fingers, listening to the shivers his soft touch brings to each remaining control surface of the disintegrating ship, allowing their resonances to join inside his head until they resolve into harmony .

On the downbeat, atmospheric drag fins deploy; as he tweaks their angles and cycles them in and out to slow the ship's descent without burning them off altogether, their contrabass roar takes on a punctuated rhythm like a heart that skips an occasional beat.

And the true inspiration, the sparkling grace note of genius that brings his masterpiece to life, is the soprano counterpoint: a syncopated sequence of exterior hatches in the outer hull sliding open and closed and open again, subtly altering the aerodynamics of the ship to give it just exactly the amount of sideslip or lift or yaw to bring the carrier down without destroying it.

He will land this ship.

He will save his sister and men.

End of the debriefing.