The New Plan

"Today, we face an Imperium that dominates the sky. Tomorrow, we will take the skies. The day after, we will rule our skies!"- General Harolda in his famous address after the completion of the newest Liberation aircraft, published on Channel 16 of Liberation television.

In the wintry, gray skies of the Helvenian Alps, Tarko, Kosoka and Rubi flew towards Mount Harul-kan. "Four hundred more kilometers," said Rubi, "base frequency is 145.6, tell the boss-man".

"Affirmative, setting up channel now," replied Kosoka. The glass of the cockpit was starting to fog up in the cold. Looking to the side of his jet, Kosoka noticed hoarfrost forming on his wings, "boys, I don't think we can stay here for too long, I'm starting to see frost."

"We can drop our altitude, it seems these F-23s don't perform well in extreme cold. We can perform a dive, maximize your thrust and hopefully residual engine heat will melt the frost," advised Tarko calmly.

"Damn Tarko, you know these things really well huh," said Rubi.

"Yeah man, you've never even flew in these kinds-a colds, how do you know what to do?" Said Kosoka.

"I read about it in the Sky Wolf's book, where he fought in the wintry tundra of Zhang Zu-li," said Tarko, "he mentioned a couple of things he had to do in those mountains to prevent the F-18 engines from freezing, I could go into more detail but-"

"Yeah smartass, no need for the nitty-gritty here, thanks for the advice," interjected Kosoka, "initiating dive maneuver now, Rubi, you can drop down as well."

"Noted." Replied Rubi.

Tarko was already positioned the lowest of the three. He liked staying low, it gave him a new view of the ground. Something about how it moves beneath the cockpit fascinated him, as if staring into a void, moving at lightning speeds.

The radio erupted, "Incoming, incoming" then three high-pitched beeps echoed in the cockpit, "this is Thread Worker, Thread Worker, can you read me?" Said the voice.

"Affirmative, Rubi reporting, mission success, we've acquired three F-23s, two clicks to drop point"

"Affirmative, redirecting to Boss Man." Said the voice.

"Hey boys, glad you're back! How's your little field trip?" A raspy voice with gruff machismo yelled out over the radio.

"We're almost at base, no injuries, you should've seen Tarko fly, my god it was beautiful." Said Kosoka.

"Well maybe you can tell me all about it when you get here, Screw Ball's excited to see the payload," said Boss Man.

"Aye-aye Boss Man," replied Tarko.

An hour passed. The three arrived at the Harul-kan base. They landed onto a steel platform situated on the face of the mountain reaching into its interior. It was an old war base during the Helvenia-Monogonol War two hundred years ago. The HLF repurposed it as the central headquarters, realizing the Imperium wouldn't try and investigate the snow field. The inside was populated with steel scaffolds holding the engineers at the upper-half of the cavern. The walls were stainless and made with coated with some metallic substance, there were characters painted, "DOCK-013" in bright-yellow. "Hey Kosoka, it's been a while," said a five foot eleven man, clad in a gray jumpsuit, goggles suspended on his forehead, a tar-black grease stain situated situated on his right cheek. He had a small metal plate on the right of his check which said "SCREW-BALL" in bold text.

"Screw Ball, what's up buddy?" said Kosoka, reaching out his hand to shake Screw Ball's.

"Ey you know how it goes, we can reverse engineer the jets in like about two weeks, in the meantime the Boss Man's lookin' for you boys, he's in the office right now, pacing as usual." said Screw Ball.

"We'll head there right now." Replied Kosoka.

The three reach the office and see a six foot two man, he was of a muscular build wearing a suit with a deep-blue necktie and a medal hanging from his jacket pocket. "Congratulations boys, you did the impossible!" He said, with an ecstatic shakiness in his voice, his eyes were wide and he was shaking quite a bit with excitement.

"I've got to tell you boys, with these new planes, great things are coming!" Said Boss Man, "we're going to send our modifications and plans to the production plant at Firovia-"

"Boss, I got a couple of suggestions for the new planes," interrupted Tarko, "there's a slight delay in the re-orientation mechanism, I think we should explore using a lighter material for the body, maybe an even more lightweight skeleto-"

"Take it up with Screw Ball Tarko," said Boss Man.

"You should've seen him though boss, he took down a Cavalry plan whilst under fire from AA guns and even a second plane, it was beautiful, like some goddamn ballet," said Rubi.

"Interesting... say, why don't you try going in the simulator, I'm curious about something," said the Boss Man.

"Yes-siree I can't wait to try it out," said Tarko.

"Anyway boys, I need some new pilots for the plan, and I think you three, with a little training can take on the job. We have big plans for now," said Boss Man, "once we have the plans and manufacturing settled we're going to mount two simultaneous assaults. One on a hangar east of Grisham, the other on a Cavalry base to the South, you boys can join in on the Cavalry raid. Our intelligence suggests that a Cavalry leader is in control of that area, their going to be piloting some new hardware, so I suggest you start training A-S-A-P. The operation should go down in a few months time, you'll be coordinating with another skilled pilot, his callsign is Dice and we attack synchronously, we can't let these two bases support each other. You guys will destroy as much hardware as possible, try not to die boys."

"Sir, yes sir!" All three exclaimed in a harmonious way.

"Now why don't we watch Tarko here take on that simulator."