Having narrowly avoided the beam of destruction that cut across space, Djibril and the officers and crew on the distant bridge of the Doolittle still stared fixedly at the screens, utterly unable to believe what they had witnessed. The death ray fired by ZAFT's unknown new weapon had skimmed right past the edge of their radar detection range, and in an instant, reduced countless allied warships and friendly units behind them to drifting cosmic dust.
"Colonel Sutherland... what... kind of joke is this?!"
"Don't panic! Stay at your stations! Get me the positions and damage reports of the remaining ships, now!"
Also gripped by shock, Colonel Sutherland barely held the situation together through the discipline expected of a commander. Listening to the frantic distress calls pouring in from the surviving vessels around them, utterly stripped of reason and composure, he bit his lip until it bled, barked back at them, and issued a dead-serious order to every CIC operator. Thanks to the overwhelming force in his voice, the crew finally regained their senses and threw themselves sweating before their instruments.
Seconds later, death reports detailing the devastating losses suffered by each fleet began reaching Sutherland one after another. Djibril, seated beside him, the Blue Cosmos leader who normally always looked down on everyone from above, could no longer take in those grating casualty figures.
His face was pale as wax, his eyes bloodshot as he stared at the coordinates where their main force had been densely deployed moments earlier, and where now not even a single intact piece of metal remained. The flagship serving as the vanguard and the main warships of similar class had all vanished amid the spectral readings. Sutherland, who had only just put on a show of strength while issuing orders to the crew, now turned