"Fighter squadron, launch complete!"
"Viking fighters!"
"You're clear to launch. The flight corridor ahead is clear. Please be careful!"
"Roger!"
Inside King Pilaf's battleship hangar, General Shuu, the dog-headed commander, led dozens of small, shuttle-shaped fighters—usable both in space and within planetary atmospheres—out of the hangar at a roaring pace. Once they had emptied it out, Annie and Arale's two Viking fighters, parked at the very back and looking bulky, clumsy, and fearsomely huge, finally had enough room to launch.
"Hmph!"
"Honestly, they're so slow! They kept me waiting for almost ten minutes!"
Arale was extremely unhappy that they had only cleared the hangar's runway just now, leaving her and Annie to launch last. Judging by their speed, it seemed their Viking fighters wouldn't be able to catch the enemy's remaining spherical craft as it made an emergency landing on Mars.
Of course, despite saying all that, Arale excitedly started up the Viking's large fusion reactor. It began supplying powerful energy to the four low-pressure bypass particle turbines at the back of the fighter. The turbines provided thrust to the Viking, which was relatively massive in both weight and size, as its nose slowly turned toward the exit of the flight corridor.
Soon, Arale pressed a button in the cockpit, putting her fighter in a standby-for-takeoff state. She was prepared to wait until Annie launched and cleared the runway, then follow right behind her out into space.
"Hey!"
"Annie, can't you take out those pretty Gundams? These Viking fighters look so ugly and clunky. They're not pretty at all!"
Seeing that Annie had prepared to launch, Arale still wasn't ready to give up. She tried to persuade and beg her again.
It was true that not long ago, she had "accidentally" broken one of the little toys called a "Freedom