A broken star

[Reeves]

A broken star.

That was what remained of the Alabama's bow. Perhaps broken wasn't quite the right word either, it had been sawed off as if by a drill. Under her Captain the warship had pursued a particularly belligerent flight of Xenos into the Georgia ice field. Her wing of fighters making quick work of the barely functioning Startrackers and their occasional Eagle flight leader.

Pride.

That's what it was that doomed them here today, pride from the fact that each time the ivory winged birds fanned out, the almost bronzed and rusted frames of dissidents came apart like a failed ideology. All the nest had to do was stay close to the flock, extend their range just that much further to quell this rabble. Hardened pillars of ice were no particular problem either, it seemed as if the band of Xeno raiders were content to lead the Alabama directly to their base of operations. Or so the Captain supposed.

When it became apparent what was actually happening, it was far too late to do anything about it. A series of explosions had torn a hole in the hangar deck, sent the masters and their ivory birds out into space, to become a ribbon of dust trailing this path of miscalculation back to its source. Forced to stop and negotiate with a groaning frame in order to coax the machine of war into a retreat was perhaps even worse of a choice. The thermal signatures of the explosives were entirely concealed by the ice, so little did the Captain know he was already at its edge and that a cause born into poverty such as the Xenos could only muster so much in the way of fire. To turn around, that simply brought the hulk into contact with explosives the ship had been so fortunate to avoid. Presenting the engine systems with an offer they could not refuse - to die.

This is the position the ship's Captain and crew now find themselves in. An exchange of glances before the questions start. "Status." It seems like a waste of breath to even ask. "Engines are offline, our fighter screen choked to death two klicks behind us from the first series of explosions. The guns are still live and the shield is holding, but the systems keeping it up are shorting out. Damage control can't keep pace, we're beached here, pillars of ice wedged deep into the spine of the ship." As articulate as the report was, it was entirely correct. Even if the Captain refused to take defeat as an answer. He believed that they could hold this position, even in their sorry state and repulse further attack wings until a rescue force could arrive. But underestimating the conviction of their enemy had been the first and final mistake that fortune would offer them. It must have been the initial wave of attackers just before they breached the field's first rocks. One of the craft that had rammed itself into the warship's hull to seemingly no avail. It became apparent almost three hours later in the present that the fool had taken the communications array with him, while the structure was intact the system certainly wasn't, with the range of any messages they could send not so much as gracing Toronto's vicinity.

The radar still functioned without issue. An armada of contacts closing in for their kill. "Sir they're coming back around." A sigh was the first answer of the man leaning over tactical displays, adorned by the blue and gold of Liberty's ever so dignified Navy. "All power to weapons, we die as we lived."

Pride? Again? "Crippled and wedged between jury-rigged explosives?! You bastard! You've killed all of us!" The final protests of a service woman who knew she'd be pink dust when that wave of angry, destitute and broken people cleaved through them again. And this time without the protection of any escorts, not even the token of a squadron of Guardians to act as deterrence. A protest that didn't matter, because the order was ultimately honored, an hour of struggle and pain, defiance for the sheer symbol of it. The sharp blade that gave the ship its nose drifted away in the distance, having flipped over in the time since the Alabama's desolation. The lone star peering back at its gradually shattering body, inverted in distress.

A broken star.