I think it just hit the ship in general, the impact rippling and buckling the ship to such an extent that even the rotary habitat drum got internal damage.

You can actually see the gashes, but with so much going on, it is understandable that they're getting lost in the details. I've tried to convey them sucking in nearby fires, though.

"Gashes" he says ...

[zooms in]

... ah, I think I see them now; they're smaller than I expected, I was wondering whether the lake above the first two speech bubbles was a hole with Earth's surface waters visible through it.

Elongated, which IMHO disproves them being the result of structural failure, so, rather the result of shrapnel or the like hitting the hull. Also, they're not all parallel, so they can't be the result of the primary impact (of the enemy weapon's beam).

Yep, the design decision of having a huge open space to look at has sure come back to bite them ...

Actually, it makes me wonder if it was targeted at the only (other?) Azinarsi in the area.

Also, wouldn't it be "section" rather than "building"? I mean, *everything* is part of one big "building" in a ship, right?

I suppose that people working in construction would call it a "section", or (more likely) several. (It's not unusual to pass through several "sections" on your way from the nearest entrance to your upper-floor flat, by way of them having been erected a couple weeks apart instead of in one go.) However, I'm convinced that a lay(hu)man would immediately use "house" or "building" for a multi-story construct separated from other such constructs by what looks like parkland and that would get a street number, if not several, of its own.

I mean, I live in a contiguous ferroconcrete whatamacallit that covers an entire block, and people still subdivide that into houses/buildings, loosely based on street numbers, common stairwells, "you can(not) get from here to there without going to the ground floor" or the like.

Hm. The Wanderer (IIRC that's what they're called in place of a proper name) never spoke up, unlike Zane (who talked to the away team), Mr. President of Protagonistan, Prof. Zelenkov, or Hekaht. They had no reason to use a "secret inaudible Azinarsi voice" to try to communicate through the radio link, either, and if their technological bodies were to release occasional neutrino bursts or somesuch, it'd raise the question why they didn't notice and identify the ghosts beforehand ...

Oh sure, it would raise a lot of questions, but there was QUITE the target-rich environment, and the enemy ship shot at a clearly less-military ship quite a distance away rather than any of the definitely-military ships in the immediate vicinity, following which said ships promptly (like "at the speed of light" promptly) turned said enemy ship into an enemy ex-ship.

Why would it waste that moment to fire at the ship aaaaaaaaall the way over there? What drew its attention? If it wanted to make sure it left nothing for them to investigate, a self-destruct of some kind would be much more thorough in nearly all cases, and if it wanted to just "do some damage" before getting destroyed, its primary weapon was clearly strong enough to knock off any one (or maybe even two, with the right line-up) of the nearest big targets and maybe get time for a second shot from having fewer enemies shooting it.

Not saying it is remotely the only explanation, of course - all of this is guessing right now (and for the foreseeable future).

It definitely isn't the only one. For example, this ship is where "High Command" is, which would be rather obvious if you can trace their radio communication (a.k.a. "traffic analysis"). Or outright psychological warfare - after all, there are "more then 15,000" aboard this Dawn-class ship, while the other models max out at 230 (Dominator class). Or the ghosts hope that all (military) Alliance ships above the Moon zip back to Earth to lend aid, giving whatever else is hidden under the regolith a chance to sneak off unseen. (I guess that that would need Kas to forget about the unmanned drones the Alliance military has, though.)

Or maybe their aim actually isn't that good and they wanted to hit something on Earth ... Whatever human site worries them? Or maybe a hidden base of theirs that they really don't want to leave behind intact to get rifled by Alliance analysts?

Or maybe their secret installation wasn't planetside but hidden amongst the swarm of human-made satellites (furtively replaced an inoperational human construct?), and the Dawn was just in the wrong place at the wrong time ... ? More than a bit of overkill if so, but. Maybe that ship gun of theirs doesn't have a dial-a-yield function.