Rebate King: Every Beauty I Spoil Makes Me a Billionaire

Camilla was quiet for another moment.

”You do this often?” she asked.

”I’ve done it twice since I got it.”

”Twice.”

”The first time was when I abandoned it before impact. The second time is now.”

She stared at the aircraft.

”You are going to be an interesting travel companion, cultivator.”

”I get that a lot.”

They walked toward the plane together. The wind buffeted them both. Camilla moved with the fluid, unhurried grace of a Royal Blood who did not feel the cold as an ordinary being felt it. Stan moved with the calm, focused efficiency of a man who was ready to be somewhere warmer.

He unlocked the aircraft. He extended the boarding stairs. He stepped aside and gestured her up.

She hesitated at the base of the steps. One long, pale hand rested on the aluminum railing. Her fingers pressed lightly against the cold metal.

”It is warmer inside?”

”Much warmer. Pressurized, temperature-controlled. It’ll feel like a room.”

”A room that flies.”

”That’s the general idea.”

She climbed the steps and he followed.

The cabin was exactly as he had left it, the pressurized air still comfortable, the seats still upholstered, the small courtesy lighting still glowing gently in the corners. Whatever else the inventory did to objects it stored, it preserved them at a level of fidelity that made the transition feel like a magic trick even to someone who had done it twice.

Camilla stopped just inside the doorway.

She looked around.

She touched the leather headrest of the nearest seat with her fingertips. She ran a hand along the polished wood inlay of the cabin bulkhead. She looked up at the small overhead lights and down at the carpeted floor and along the row of small oval windows lined up on either side of the fuselage.

”This is a room,” she said quietly. ”You have installed a room inside your flying machine.”

”That’s about right.”

”For what purpose?”

”Comfort. Long flights. You’ll see.”

She followed him toward the front.

He slid into the pilot’s seat. She settled into the co-pilot chair beside him with the careful, precise motion of a person who was not entirely sure what any of the surfaces around her were designed to do and was determined not to touch the wrong one.

Her red eyes tracked the cockpit with the same focused, cataloging attention she had applied to everything else. The control yokes. The throttles. The multi-display flight computer. The smaller auxiliary readouts that governed the various subsystems. The rows of small labeled switches on the overhead panel. The rudder pedals under Stan’s feet.

”This is your era’s version of an tamed beast, but you create a flying metal.bird that isn’t actually alive.”

”More or less.”

”It has many more instruments.”

”Modern flight requires more information than gondola flight did.”

”I would imagine.”

She reached out. Her hand hovered over one of the throttle levers, not touching it, tracking the shape of it in the air.

”What does this do?”

”That controls the engines. Power output.”

”And this?” She indicated the yoke.

”Steering. Pitch and roll.”

”Pitch and roll.”

”Which direction the nose points. Which way the wings tilt.”

She was quiet for a moment.

”You understand all of this.”

”I understand all of it.”

”Instinctively?”

Stan considered.

”Something like that.”

She let her hand drop back to her lap. She looked at him for a long, weighing moment, the way a Royal Blood looked at a mortal who kept doing things a mortal should not, by any reasonable measure, be able to do.

Then she smiled.

”Very well, cultivator. Fly your bird.”

Stan ran the pre-flight checks with the calm, methodical rhythm of his installed pilot mastery. Every system reported nominal. The engines started smoothly, first the port, then the starboard. The turbines wound up to their idling speed with the familiar low hum of aviation-grade machinery, a sound that seemed to fill the cockpit and press outward against the small oval windows.

Camilla went very still.

Her head tilted slightly. Her red eyes narrowed at the instrument panel.

”That sound...”

”The engines.”

”It is inside the machine.”

”It’s the machine breathing.”

”Breathing.”

”Something like that.”

She listened for a long moment.

”...Acceptable.”

Stan turned to her.

”Buckle in. Takeoff is going to be a little rough. This isn’t a runway.”

Camilla arched an eyebrow. ”Rough.”

”For you? Probably not at all. For me? A little.”

She smiled and reached for the seatbelt.

She examined it first, turned the buckle over in her fingers, tested the give of the strap, watched the way the metal tongue slid into the receiving latch when she pressed it in. The small click of the mechanism seemed to please her. She adjusted the shoulder harness with the same unhurried precision she seemed to apply to everything.

”Your era,” she murmured, ”loves its small clever objects.”

”Toys, or small clever objects whatever you call them, keep us alive.”

”So they do.”

He rolled the aircraft forward on the snow.

The Bombardier’s takeoff performance was rated for prepared runways. It was capable of unprepared surfaces in emergencies, but the polar ice, wind-packed but uneven, with the subtle roughness of natural glacial terrain, was going to test the airframe’s tolerances in every possible direction.

Stan compensated.

His pilot mastery, drawing on the full range of adverse-condition takeoff procedures that had been installed in his mind, worked the throttles and the control surfaces in a continuous stream of small, precise corrections. The aircraft shuddered as it accelerated. The landing gear absorbed each impact with the compressed groan of a system operating at its outer limits. Stan felt the yoke fight him briefly as a crosswind gust tried to yaw the nose off the takeoff line.

He held the line.

He pushed the throttles further forward. The engines climbed from a hum into a roar. The airframe trembled around them. Loose snow blew up around the wheels in a fine white spray that the wind snatched away almost as fast as it appeared.

Beside him, Camilla’s hands settled loosely on the armrests. She did not grip. She did not brace. She simply watched, head slightly tilted, mouth slightly parted, red eyes moving between the horizon and the flickering readouts on the panel with the quiet fascination of a being who was, for the first time in a very long life, watching a mortal move a mountain of metal by pulling on a small stick.

He pulled back at the exact moment the aircraft’s ground speed crossed the minimum takeoff velocity.

The Bombardier lifted off.