Then they saw something else explode out of the clouds, and for many the nature of their world changed in a second.

It was a silhouette recognized across the world, fires blazing from gaping holes in the steel blue hull as the NACS Odyssey somehow leveled out over the Eastern seaboard and opened fire at fifteen thousand feet.

Every shot was like the hammer of the gods across the sky, blowing out the glass in dozens of skyscrapers and smaller buildings as the big ship rumbled past. Each thunderclap of destruction, however, was punctuated by a second explosion in the sky as one of the incoming trails of destructive flame exploded in turn.

The Odyssey had not been built to fly in atmosphere, however, and her enemies had held the high ground. Flaming trails of destruction rained down from above the iconic ship and slammed into her hull, making the flagship of the Confederacy shudder with each blow. The Odyssey listed to port, slowly heeling over, and with another flurry of hits from above, it dipped down and plunged into Long Island Sound.

That had been the beginning.

Strike Fighters filled the skies shortly after, throwing everything they had at the fire from the sky. It was an impressive show, but they were outnumbered and some of the falling objects inevitably struck the ground and delivered hammer blows of destruction to the living city.

For many that was when the nightmare changed from shocking to surreal, because true horrors rose from the craters, and New York became a battleground unlike any ever seen on Earth.

Amid the fighting, as the National Guard rumbled into the city to back up the local police, few noticed that the Odyssey had broken up on impact with the water and was now spread across much of the area. Some pieces had bounced, smashing into the waterfront properties and causing immense destruction themselves, while others had slowed and sunk deep below the surface of the sound.

The two immense drums of the Odyssey’s habitation sections had broken free and skipped along the water as they spun. One went south, crashing through Queens as it skipped off Eastchester Bay, and the other spiraled west. It splashed down just north of Roosevelt Island on its last bounce before it blew through a block of office buildings and came to rest in Central Park itself.

Wake up.

Again the whisper was lost in the midst of the chaos, dust and debris rolling over the city like the wall of a massive desert haboob engulfing everything in its path. The city was reeling from one shock after another, but it was a city that had some experience with emergencies, and it was waking slowly but surely to the events.

On the west side of Central Park, the Odyssey’s forward and command habitat came to rest, rocking gently on an uneven surface of fallen trees and crushed automobiles. The wails of sirens and aftershocks of impacts punctuated the local silence that descended as those who survived witnessing the crash stared in shock at the punctured, scarred, and crushed cylinder that had once controlled the greatest vessel ever built by human hands.