The wind hit.
A cone of displaced air slammed into the platform and everything on it - a concentrated gust that bent the nearby branches backward and sent loose objects skittering across the steel surface. Saffi's hat - a small, practical thing she'd worn against the morning sun - lifted from her head and launched into the air.
Raizen's hand snatched it. Reflexive, fast, his fingers closing around the brim before it cleared his reach. He held it out to her without looking, his eyes still on the aircraft.
It was compact. Smaller than the Echelon's stealth transport, roughly the size of a large truck, its hull a pale grey that caught the sunlight and turned it silver. The wings were in the back - extendable, folded now, their surfaces showing now multi-colored, steel vibrant from the high-speed flight. Four thrusters faced backward. Three more pointed downward, controlling the vertical hover, their output producing the low, continuous hum that vibrated through the platform's steel surface.
The side door opened. Gull-wing, hinged at the top, rising upward and outward in a single smooth motion that was simultaneously practical and theatrical, like an opera raising its curtains.
Leaning on the door frame, one arm draped over the rising panel, hip cocked, sunglasses catching the direct light from the hole in the sky -
Alteea.
White shirt, one button open at the collar. Loose tie, the knot pulled down to the second button. The pencil skirt, tailored, the same one she wore to Echelon meetings and combat briefings and apparently also to aircraft pickups at the edge of forest cities. The sunglasses were new - dark lenses, silver frames, sitting on her nose with the casual precision of someone who'd put them on because they looked good and was aware of both facts simultaneously.
"Hello, darlings!" she called, her voice cutting through the thruster hum with the bright, effortless projection of someone who expected the world to hear her regardless of ambient noise levels. The thrusters were surprisingly silent, you could even have a normal conversation close to the aircraft. "Ya lot miss me?"
Raizen looked at Kenzo. Kenzo looked at Raizen. They both had doubting looks on their faces. If this was really Alteea's surprise, then it was a really… Tame one.
From the aircraft's base, a metallic slab popped out, but it was barely enough to step on. Raizen stole a quick look at Saffi. She took everything in quietly, with her analytical face on. She was probably calculating the amount of thrust it would take to blast this machine at subsonic speeds, then figuring out the approximate weight of the aircraft, then figuring out if the thrusters were the model she initially thought about, or if it was another type of engine that Alteea or another engineer at the Heart cooked up, in the surprisingly short time that she was gone.
Alteea looked at the metallic stub. She frowned, then waved her hand, a gesture that said something like "Hold up, something's less flawless than I have initially planned. This hurts my ego, so I'll be right back" and went back in the front end of the aircraft, in what looked like the cockpit.
After bashing a few buttons so aggressively that Raizen could see the micro-adjustments of the whole aircraft need to do in order to stabilize, Alteea stepped out with a visibly annoyed face. She raised her leg, and with all the force she was capable of – more than Raizen would have anticipated – she kicked the stub.
Her heel hit steel with a metallic clink, and the force was so big, the whole slab bent.
Then, as if it learned its lesson, the metallic stub emerged from the aircraft's belly, then lowering, creating slightly-bent-at-the-end stairs.
As always, Alteea's "Kick It 'Till It Works" method worked.
Raizen looked down at the bent stair. Then slowly up, to Alteea's sharp heels, then to her big hat she wore like an umbrella. "Is this gonna hold me?"
"Pff, of course!" Alteea leaned on the doorframe again. Then she added, under her breath, as if she was personally disappointed. "Those stairs were the only thing I didn't design…"
Alteea then ushered them inside the way a host ushers guests into a party - urgently, enthusiastically, with the implicit suggestion that every second not spent inside was a second wasted on an inferior experience.
"In, in, in - come on, don't just stand there looking at it, get IN -"
The interior was compact and weirdly comfortable. Eight seats, arranged in facing pairs along the cabin's sides, each one padded with material that looked military-grade yet felt like something you'd find in a really expensive five star hotel. The walls were lined with storage compartments and instrument panels, and the cockpit was visible through an open partition at the front - a pilot's seat surrounded by screens and controls and the organised chaos of a workspace used by someone who knew exactly where everything was and would personally want revenge if you moved something even a small bit.
As they boarded, a figure stepped past them heading out. Dark formal wear, clean lines, posture straight - Solomon. The Ruler of Neoshima, carrying himself with the composed authority that his title demanded and his age had no business supporting. Beside him, Osamu - quiet, watchful, the Phalanx – now bodyguard – the Ruler's permanent shadow. And behind them, a Warden in full uniform, their presence explaining the formality of the departure: Solomon was here for Alan's coronation. The transfer of one city's ruler attending the crowning of another's.
Solomon nodded to Raizen as they passed. A small gesture that contained acknowledgment without requiring conversation. Raizen nodded back shyly, not knowing how he should act in situations like these.
They were seated. Saffi at the edge of the seats, Raizen beside her. Kenzo across from them, his frame occupying one and a half seats' worth of space despite the designers' best intentions. Eiden beside Kenzo, already closing his eyes, the man's ability to fall asleep in any vehicle within thirty seconds of sitting down apparently extending to experimental aircraft, his posture straight, his gloved hands folded in his lap.
Alteea stood in the cabin, one hand on the ceiling, tapping slightly with her feet with the contained excitement of someone about to show off something she was very proud of.
"So," she said, "this aircraft doesn't fly."
Kenzo opened one eye. "We're in the air."
"Technically, yes. But it doesn't fly the way other aircraft fly. There are no aerodynamic lift surfaces - the wings are for stability, not lift. The entire system works on differential pressure generation. The thrusters create a high-pressure zone beneath the hull and a low-pressure zone above it, and the pressure differential holds the aircraft aloft. No wings, no angle of attack, no stall speed. It hovers and can reach speeds that would tear a conventional airframe apart, because the forces are distributed through the pressure field rather than the structural frame."
She said all of this in one breath, her eyes bright, her hands gesturing as if sculpting the pressure differentials in the air in front of her.
"And - the best part - no nausea. The pressure field extends into the cabin, so the occupants experience a fraction of the actual G-forces. You could pull six Gs in this thing and feel like you're on a gentle turn."
Kenzo closed his eye back and leaned onto Eiden, who shifted uncomfortably, but didn't comment.
"Wake me up when we land."
