Solae couldn't be absolutely certain, but she was willing to bet a substantial sum of currency that every navigational alarm that was still functional was illuminated on her console. There were more lights flashing than were at Lord Armon's last 'singles' party (not all the attendees were actually unattached) and that was quite the achievement. While the interface had been designed such that they did not clutter the screen with their insistent flickering neon yellow or ominous red, it was more distracting than helpful, and even the seasoned multi-tasker was having difficulty keeping their data at the edge of the vision while also focusing on piloting the [i]Bonventure.[/i] Only time would help her efficiently track all the information at her fingertips. Learning a language was a wholly different process, but much like any skill it required practice and familiarity, something she was sorely lacking with her task at hand.

"Next time I'm picking the landing site!" she yelled out over the roar of wind outside. Because they were no longer utilizing the auto-pilot, which was not programmed for natural disasters like the typhoon were currently in the midst of, the marquise was manually steering the vessel. In each hand was a rod outfitted with a serious of sensitive pressurized buttons. Had they been in a luxury vehicle the manual system might have been orbs or a hologram but this was far from cutting edge; the mixed metallic and electronic instruments were not designed for comfort but utility alone. Ergonomic sticks would have been twice the cost and smugglers apparently thought it was an extravagance not worth investing in. Truthfully she could not blame them. No one save the unlikely couple would be desperate and foolishly courageous to dive into a hurricane of this size and intensity. The criminal deviants would have never found the need for this situation because they would never have reacted the same way as the two aristocrats.

"Lady Solae, the angle of descent..." Mia began to warn. One hexagon-shaped icon on her console was an offensive shade of orange that outlined their anticipated trajectory if the thrusters were not adjusted. Solae was not an expert but she could tell at a glance that pushing their spacecraft into the ground nose-first would not preserve the integrity of the hull nor do them any favors. The cockpit would presumably absorb most of the impact and be heavily damaged. There was much the diplomat could risk but Rene's safety was not one of them.

"I see it Mia!" she called out in frustration. Veteran members of the most prestigious branches of the military would have difficulty managing this particular landing. Solae was no longer convinced she wanted to remain the pilot- not if she was going to endure this sort of situation in her very first foray into this skill. She had volunteered with the anticipation that they would have selected a spot on the third of the world not currently concealed by black clouds. Stubborn, willful, and proud as she was, this sort of trial by fire undermined both her faith in her natural abilities as well as eliminated what enjoyment she might have reaped from a less horrifically stressful scenario.

Cyclonic winds whipped the sides of their craft and battered the exterior with equal parts precipitation and debris from the nearby land masses. Their landing site would survive the monstrous storm but she had doubts whether the residents of the planet would; if Mia had been correct that this was unprecedented occurrence they may be ill-prepared for the devastation. They had just fled from the corpse-laden world of New Concordia and now they may be very well walking into another land of death. Before her eyes she saw her hopes of digging through archives washed away with the tidal surges. If the governmental buildings were not underwater they would soon become hubs of activity, bustling with citizens of the Stellar Empire who were victims to Mother Nature, and who would all instantly recognize the marquise from the bulletin blasted sector-wide.

"I'm not convinced this is better than sitting in space and being shot down," she admitted with gritted teeth. Surprisingly Solae found she was irritated not only with her own shortcomings as a navigational novice but also with her current company- both Rene and Mia- for making her go through such an unforgiving subsection the troposphere. Rationally she was quite aware that the rotation of Panopontus on its axis was not anyone's responsibility but it was easier to direct her anger at entities than ecosystems without consciousness.

"Mia, divert the power from the thrusters buffering our descent and redirect that energy to keeping our side-to-side stability!" she ordered.

"But Lady Solae," the artificial intelligence began to protest.

"We're going to let gravity carry us down the rest of the way to avoid using too much fuel," she explained, "so I also need you to be prepared to route power back to those thrusters when we are at approximately three thousand meters above the target. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Lady Solae," Mia said with a reluctance that belied the simulated entity had reservations about this plan- as much as she was capable of having anyway. Standard programming was to value the safety and health of the humans over all else. Far too many doomsday media predictions had made engineers overtly paranoid their creations would turn on the biologically living if not given at least a half dozen protective directives.

What had been a chaotic, yet controlled, descent became the [i]Bonventure[/i] hurtling towards the ground with a stomach-lurching speed as it blazed through hundred, then thousands, of meters in seconds rather than minutes. The strategy had the benefit of keeping them from going off-course in latitude or longitude but at the cost of achieving enough velocity that the gravity throughout was lost in their reckless freefall. As the sky howled by Solae kept her fingers wound tightly around the rods and held her breath both to help maintain concentration and keep herself from vomiting. Their altimeter's numbers were a blur as they disappeared in a wink; had it been a physical dial rather than a fluorescent digital readout it may have spiraled quickly enough to break. Eight thousand feet. Seven thousand. Six. Five. Four. Three! The vessel jerked violently and, despite bracing herself, Solae was mildly concussed as her head bounced on the back of her economical seat.

"Hold on!" she called out to Rene just in case the harness proved insufficient for the rough landing. She rolled her thumbs and pressed with her ring fingers and pinkies into grooves as she yanked up the bulky nose of the freighter. The pane was covered in rolling fog and heavy rain that almost eliminated visibility entirely. It was radar that was being relied upon for topographical readings necessary to land rather than [i]actually[/i] crash and kill them instantly. The [i]Bonventure[/i] unceremoniously finished its journey through the typhoon as it, still bucking under the steady hands of Solae, finally met the ground. Impact was far less substantial than anticipated and it did not take the diplomat long to reason why: the same downpour that accompanied the malevolent gales had made the soil into a mud pit rather than an impregnable tightly packed wall of dirt. They wouldn't be going anywhere until the sun re-emerged and dried the surface substantially.