These ships quickly broke away from the now slowly fleeing and chaotic Hegemony fleet formation and moved directly toward the incoming Void Fleet forces!!

A few individuals and the Exterminator itself noticed these movements and quickly alerted the fleet!! Even locking weapons onto these ships while relaying the information to Pact and the other high officers!!

"What is going on?!" the Vice Admiral, hearing this, frowned as he looked at the green signals within their fleet turning orange and slowly turning red!!

"Traitors…?" He couldn't help but think of this gravely!! But not reaching a conclusion, and seeing the commander not in a state to do anything, he took over and reached out to each ship that had broken formation and asked just one thing—

"What are you all doing?! Identify yourselves or suffer the consequences for betraying the fleet!!"

"Vice Admiral," came a calm voice directly addressing him. "I am Major Lieutenant Jude. My identification code is XXXX. My intention behind this sudden change of course is to hold back the enemy as much as possible with my near-dreadnought-class Bulwark battleship! To hold them until you escape far enough from their pursuit!!"

"Take this chance to repair the fortress' main FTL drive and take everyone with you!! And once safe… I wish for you all to not forget our sacrifice and take revenge!!" said the man before cutting off the channel!!

But the transmission quickly spread across the fleet!!

And everyone fell silent!!

While the Vice Admiral too was no different, feeling silent and bitter as he compared himself to this man Jude, who for the sake of others had prepared for such a sacrifice… something truly commendable!!

Just then, a voice rang out—

"What are you all dazed for?! Order the fleet to sprint ahead and tell the engineers and repair bots to quicken the repairs!!" Pact said quickly in a pained voice…

"Ahh!" The Vice Admiral snapped back to reality slowly and nodded before quickly beginning to issue orders to the personnel!!

And they listened with renewed vigor as they felt their hope return!!

And the ships alongside the fortress quickly pushed their propulsion systems to maximum and surged ahead, while their weapons similarly opened fire toward their backend, forcing the bee-like human starfighter corps to stay away and avoid harm!!

Doing their best to support the 'brave' officer Jude and his subordinates for as long as they could…

Meanwhile, within the massive 8-kilometer-long battleship called Bulwark, its commander Jude… or well, there was actually no one of that name alive within the ship!! And the same was true for the other members of the Hegemony fleet deployed within it!!

Heck, their bodies couldn't even be found!!

Standing within the command bridge of the ship was the 5th Shadow Division Major Lieutenant, Dusk!! And it was him who had just spoken with the Hegemony fleet Vice Admiral, making him and the others emotional…

"Hahaha!!" he laughed. "This was quite easy!!" Slamming his thigh, he said proudly!

Sitting on his left shoulder was a little fairy-like figure with cat ears, her arms folded as she said, "Oh, look at you, how proud you are!! You think your acting deserves credit to be proud of, huh, Dusk?! Don't forget it was this cat fairy that made it happen, hmph!!"

"Oh…" Dusk's laughter paused instantly, and his lips twitched slightly as he could only nod his head!!

Making Jeniffer quite happy seeing him nod like that.

Pushing that to the back of his mind, Dusk ordered, "Maximum propulsion ahead!! Let's quickly join the fleet!!"

"Yes, Commander!!" replied an operations officer of the 5th Legion immediately!!

And along with the rest of the ships in the group, they all surged ahead, rushing toward the 4th Battle Fleet's approaching mech divisions while bypassing numbers of starfighters, which naturally didn't attack them at all as they surged past.

Which did confuse the Hegemony fleet members who were paying attention to these 'brave souls' supposedly ready to lay down their lives for their safety!!

Though some felt something was wrong seeing not a single human starfighter attacking those ships under their 'brave' shoulder commander at all, and instead completely ignoring them… which was something that definitely should not have happened.

Pact also noticed this and had a weird feeling, but ignoring it, he ordered, "Maximum propulsion!! Let's quickly get out of the area of effect of the spatial lock device immediately!!"

Thinking that once out of this spatially locked zone, and with their FTL drives soon becoming partially functional again, he could escape, and then even if something went wrong, he wouldn't care anymore.

"Yes, Commander!!" said one officer quickly!

The fleet surged ahead even more desperately!!

The Vice Admiral, who was still looking at the small contingent of ships rushing toward the human mech forces, thought that just as they were about to meet, a fight would break out!!

But no…

Something similar happened as with the human starfighters…

They completely ignored those ships and rushed past them as if they weren't enemies at all, but instead one of their own!!

The clash that everyone expected between the volunteer force and the human fleet… didn't happen at all!!

Stunning them all…

They felt like something was very, very wrong.

"Something is wrong with those ships, Commander," he said to Pact!!

Who looked at it with a troubled expression but wasn't in the mood to say anything… or simply had nothing to say. It was already pretty obvious to him what was going on at this point!!

And indeed, as if to prove the thoughts he didn't speak aloud correctly, to the astonishment of everyone paying attention to it, a strange thing happened that in itself explained the oddity of the situation unfolding behind them!!

They saw the leading battleship, also known as the Bulwark, quickly turning around its massive frame after passing the small number of human mech troops!!

And its hull panels separated themselves, each being at least twenty meters long and seven meters wide, floating outward and forming a giant shield that covered the human mechs as they rushed toward them!!

While its weapon batteries quickly opened fire at the fleeing fleet!!

Taking a destroyer-class ship at the backend by surprise and quickly drowning it under dense attacks!!

"What the fuck?!!" reacted others, seeing a complete one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn happening instead of what should have happened!!

"Fuck!! Why are you attacking us?! It's the humans you should attack, not us, damnit!!" someone shouted over the comms!!

And as if hearing this and replying to it, the battleship that followed behind opened fire as well, targeting a battle cruiser at the backline!!

As the main battery, a heavy-class turbo super-laser beam-type weapon, along with hundreds of heavy plasma cannons, fired simultaneously at the battle cruiser at once!!

Shattering the cruiser's shields instantly under the dense attacks!!

From one of 'their own'!!

And following it, the main weapon of the battleship rushed forward and tore completely straight through its central hull!!

Directly hitting the massive energy core of the battle cruiser, damaging it and making it unstable instantly!!

Which expanded and exploded from within, consuming the whole ship!!

As shockwave ripples spread across the nearby formation, pushing the other ships and their shields almost to their limits!!

"Damnit!!" people within those ships cursed as they held onto nearby structures to avoid being thrown around while their ships tumbled under the shockwaves!!

"Fuck!! They are traitors!!"

"Fuck!! I wasted my tears and emotions on them!!"

"Shut up, the one above!! I even prayed for their success, hell!!"

"Person above, doesn't this mean you tricked us too?! You are a traitor as well, right?! Leader, get this person!!"

The other following ships, two more destroyers and six battle cruisers, also turned around, while the others passed through and moved toward the rapidly approaching 4th Battle Fleet!!

These eight ships opened fire, this time targeting the slow-moving and half-empty dreadnought Dusk's Propulsion Engines, which had already suffered damage previously!!

Two battle cruisers targeted its shields, which were also damaged and quickly collapsed!!

Another two battle cruisers, taking advantage of it, targeted the main propulsion of the dreadnought directly!!

And BOOOOOM!!

They took it down just like that!!

Another two battle cruisers targeted six to eight heavy destroyers that were moving alongside the dreadnought, and one could see ships landing within them!!

The launch ports of the cruisers opened, and salvos of hundreds of plasma torpedoes rushed toward the destroyers!!

The last remaining battle cruisers did the same as well, targeting two cruisers of the same class that had detached themselves from the dreadnought!!

And along with salvos of torpedoes, they opened heavy suppressive fire with their weapon batteries!!

And just like that, within only a couple of seconds, an entire section of ships numbering close to twenty or so were taken out of the equation!!

With the dreadnought itself losing thrust and even power, falling back with its fate unknown as to what could happen to it…