More than 800 fighters suddenly turned around without warning, and the bizarre sight immediately left Lieutenant General Skarrid aghast.
"What's happening? Contact those pilots immediately! What the hell are they doing?" Skarrid barked.
"General, none of our pilots are responding! And... some pilots in the same formations as them have reported no abnormalities," the communications officer said.
"The same formations? You mean some pilots within a formation have gone wrong, while the others are completely unaffected?" Lieutenant General Skarrid asked. "Any other patterns?"
"None identified so far, General," the communications officer replied.
Skarrid's gaze darkened as he stared at the fighter group that had suddenly turned around. "Shoot them all down!"
"General! At least 600 of them are our own pilots!" the adjutant warned.
"The moment they turned around, they stopped being ours," Skarrid said. "Launch another ten fighter squadrons. Make sure none of those 800 fighters gets anywhere near our warships!"
"Yes, sir!"
The Fleet Commander's orders were immediately relayed to every warship. Every point-defense turret in the battle group began turning toward the bizarre fighter formation and opened fire!
Countless lasers and missiles streaked toward them, exploding into innumerable fireballs amid the fighters! The fighters seemed to have no awareness of evasion and flew straight into the barrage. Dozens were destroyed in the first instant!
The brutal scene gnawed at the nerves of the Republic Navy soldiers aboard the warships, but orders were absolute. They kept pressing buttons, controlling the turrets and firing without pause.
At that moment, the Republic fleet's second wave of fighters had already reached the battlefield. All fighters had updated their friend-or-foe identification codes, and the well-trained pilots followed their orders, launching missiles at every target identified as an "enemy fighter."
Hundreds more fireballs erupted. In barely more than ten minutes, fewer than half