Thragg passed through the force field, a whole section of which cracked and shattered around him as though it hadn't been there at all, as though it hadn't been powerful enough to shield the mother ship from hundreds of metric teratons' worth of kinetic and thermal energy, the power to punch through worlds. And yet, to Thragg, it was nothing. A stiff breeze met him as he passed, but nothing more than that. His eyes briefly glanced at the petal-shaped shards that scattered around him, likely the remnants of the mother ship's force field. Massive guns turned towards him and unleashed projectiles the size of cities. With but a simple gesture, he batted them away, each and every one of them, and sent them hurling down into the dark abyss of space.
More weapons turned to him, none of them built for the sole purpose of attacking such a tiny target as him, but they fired anyway, unleashing storms of gargantuan slugs, arcs of cackling lightning bolts, blobs of plasma, and even magnetic pulses; just a single one of these projectiles would've been enough to ruin even the largest of cities, flatten the most expansive mountain ranges, and carve scars across the surface of worlds. And still, not a single one of them could reach Thragg, the projectiles and ejections having nearly zero effect on his body, the strongest body ever conceived by Viltrum, one that'd allowed him to, albeit very briefly, bathe upon the surface of a star. Thragg did, however, avoid the ones that would've destroyed his suit, seeing as Argall created it for him, but that was it.
Grunting in annoyance, Thragg sped forward and placed himself firmly between two massive cannons, a place where they couldn't fire or even aim at him, though he was still fairly certain that the mother ship could still detect his presence; he'd be surprised if they weren't constantly monitoring him now, considering he just destroyed thousands of their ships mere seconds ago. Thragg hovered forward and placed his right hand against the ship's hull, which, by his estimation, was at least fifty meters thick, made entirely of some exotic form of metal that he'd never heard of or seen before, incredibly dense and likely just as heavy, which explained why it maintained quite a distance from the planet. If he had to guess, the mother ship just barely had enough energy to keep itself anchored onto a fixed point in space, preventing the immense gravitational forces of cosmic bodies from just ripping the ship apart and dragging it down.
Thragg reached forward and ripped out a chunk of the hull, which he then hurled into the void. And then, with his other hand, Thragg ripped out another and another and another and another, and so on it went until he simply ran out of metal to grab onto and, instead, before him was an open space that appeared to be a massive hangar of some sort, filled with the slumbering forms of much smaller vessels, each one bearing the appearance of a slumbering chitinous monstrosity. Thragg hovered over the ships and, at a glance, figured that there must've been hundreds here, maybe even a thousand.
So, the mother ship was a carrier-type, then – very dangerous. That meant it would never be truly alone, even if it was caught in an ambush, thoughts its sheer mass meant it would be an easy target for anything that was fast enough to avoid its main guns. Luckily for the humans, this ship wasn't going to survive for very long once he acquired the necessary coordinates; it was a little too dangerous for the inhabitants of that planet, who – for some odd reason – had no means of space combat or travel.
A loud groan echoed as one of the smaller ships got sucked into the hole he'd made in the hull, whereupon they wrinkled and tore themselves apart, before they were violently ejected. Another, larger ship followed, which also suffered a similar fate, but slower. The next one was large enough that it ended up plugging the breach when a section of its own hull was sucked into the hole.
A portion of the nearby wall hissed open, creating a massive opening, from where a large contingent of what appeared to be Slave Soldiers poured forth. These ones, Thragg noted, had thruster modules attached to their backs, allowing them to traverse the open space of the hangar, which apparently did not have its own gravity. There were thousands of them, Thragg mused – a paltry number.
"I'll make it quick." Before any of them could even use their weapons, he surged forward. A chop here, a kick there, and a punch in between; each attack ended their lives immediately, the greatest mercy he could've possibly bestowed upon them. He did note, however, that a great majority of them were humans, women and children included, which was both cruel and inefficient. The rest simply died when he passed by them, the air bursting around him like great and thunderous colorless explosions that tore their bodies apart into pieces. Thirty seconds, Thragg mused; it took him thirty seconds to kill a thousand Slave Soldiers.
And now, a thousand corpses, accompanied by torn limbs and body parts, floated around in the hangar, painting the ships with the color of blood.
Was he getting rusty?
He used to be much faster.
Or, perhaps, he was simply hesitating after holding himself back from violence for so long?
Ah, that was it, he realized; he'd grown weary of violence.
Then... was it an improvement?
Thragg's head snapped upwards when the portion of the wall that'd previously opened hissed and quickly began to close. Before it fully could, however, he rushed forward and tore through the meter-thick slab metal plates, each one likely weighing thousands of metric tons. Ahead of him was a dimly-lit corridor, tall and wide enough for a large army to pass easily through. In fact, an army marched straight for him, a thousand more Slave Soldiers, ready to die at the behest of their alien masters, who couldn't even be bothered to fight with them.
"Pathetic." Thragg whispered.
The word, however, had not been aimed at the slaves, but at their cowardly masters, who chose to hide themselves rather than face him and die. To be certain, their fate would not have changed, either way. But, at the very least, they would've died with some manner of dignity had they chosen to come out and fight him head on; instead, they sent out their masses of slaves, like pathetic worms.
Although, Thragg had to admit that it was entirely possible that the very concept of honor and dignity in battle simply did not exist for them as it didn't for many other races. After all, these Rangdan might've been a collective hivemind of some sort, billions of beings comprising a singular living organism. In which case, they were likely simply acting based on what was and what wasn't the most logical and most efficient method, nothing more and nothing less. And, in this case, sending out the slaves to die first in an attempt to stall for time seemed like the most logical option.
He took a single step forward and surged through their center at close to the speed of light, the sudden burst of speed weaponizing very air around them and tearing them apart limb from limb and shredding their flesh from their bones – aliens and human slaves alike died in a shower of blood and gore, but they did so instantly, never having felt even the slightest amount of pain as they were splattered against the nearby wall, becoming little more than flecks of red ruin as Thragg passed by them, a thousand slaves dying at once.
Thousands more came at him, the walls hissing open as more and more lobotomized aliens and humans were sent to stall his advance. Their masters were growing more desperate, Thragg mused, repeating the same action and hoping for a different outcome. It was the height of stupidity and madness. They hadn't even bothered to send out even a single Rangdan Warrior. Only their slaves were sent to die. Pathetic. But, perhaps, it was unfair of him to hope for more, to hope that the Rangdan would've, at the very least, presented themselves as honorable and noble foes who lived and died in battle, instead of slaving cowards who stood by and watched as others waged war for them. Then, at the very least, he could've accepted their slaying of Nareena as a fair kill, no matter how much it hurt him to even think it. But no. They did not appear to care for or adhere to any concept or code of honor. And so, Thragg mused, no quarter would be given.
Hovering briefly over the floor, Thragg surged forward at a speed that approached the speed of light, shredding apart an entire section of the alien ship as the particles around him tore themselves apart and blasted outwards, creating a chain reaction of molecules destroying each other in a blinding flash of cascading lights, annihilating everything that was caught in its path, organic and inorganic alike torn apart so utterly and so completely that almost nothing was left of them.
The entirety of the mother ship shook, massive cracks appearing all across its hulls, its interior caverns breaking apart in a wave of ruin and fire. But Thragg heard no screams of terror or shouts of alarm as portions of the gargantuan vessel simply broke off from the whole. Instead, there was only silence across the ship. The entire length of it, Thragg mused, looked just about ready to snap in half as pieces of its hull and interior corridors vanished in a wave of destruction, its two ends slowly groaning and threatening to separate. And it would have if not for the anti-gravity shields that kept it isolated from the gravity-fields of nearby planets and stars.
Unfortunate. But he still needed to gather some information about the Rangdan home world before he allowed the titanic vessel to fall apart. So, as satisfying as it would've been to simply destroy it, Thragg held himself back.
And so, he stopped, bringing the trail of destruction and annihilation with him to a screeching halt, though the cascade of ruin continued for what seemed like several more kilometers. Before him was a dark, featureless gray wall, burnt black by the heat his flight had brought about and severely cracked and malformed. No passages on either side of him, save for the one behind him, which led back to the hangar. No, this wasn't a wall, was it? It didn't even seem as though the architecture of the Rangdan made use of walls; instead, everything was a door or a window, capable of opening or closing a moment's notice. With that in mind, Thragg reached out and plunged both of his hands into the wall before him, before pulling back and ripping off a huge chunk of it. Interesting, Thragg noted as the organic metal material seemed to groan and scream in pain; it was oddly flexible, he mused, but also incredibly durable. A weaker Viltrumite would've found some measure of difficulty in ripping it apart. Not him, though Thragg would admit that it did take him some effort, which was strange.
Though, with a shrug, Thragg tossed away the portion of the wall he'd ripped out before reaching in and grabbing even more of it, which he then tore right off, the wall screaming and hissing and groaning as he hurled it over his shoulder. And, as Thragg reached out to tear off another chunk, the wall gave way, hissing open before he could grab anything. With a shrug, Thragg stepped forward and, as he did, several more walls hissed open before he could ever reach them, a hundred of them. Well, that was certainly interesting. Was the ship alive?
He flew forward, intent on finding the vessel's command station, where he'd probably find the commanding officer, alongside the high-ranking Rangdans, or whoever and however else their society was structured. At the very least, Thragg was certain that there had to be someone or something of great importance somewhere in the ship, some form of commander or king. Thragg flew until he reached another dead-end. This time, however, he was faced with an actual gate, ornate and incredibly advanced, even at a glance, covered in numerous, interlocking layers of force fields and other esoteric defenses. The gate itself was decorated with hundreds of bones and skulls, sunk deep into the material so that only bits and pieces of it stuck out, likely taken from the corpses of those they'd taken for slaves.
Thragg's eyes narrowed. This wasn't something he could take lightly. The shields were so thick that he'd need to use all of his strength to break through, which wasn't something he'd done in a very long time. But that would take a while, because he would also be forced to break through every single shield, one at a time. And he was rather certain that he did not have that much time on his hands.
Alternatively, however...
Thragg flew back until the distance between himself and the gate was around five kilometers, which was enough for his purpose. Breathing in, Thragg surged forth like blazing meteorite, sailing across the cosmos, igniting the air around him in a great flash of white hot fire, melting and burning everything that was even remotely close to him. Whatever lay on the other side of the gate, he mused, was in for a very rude awakening. Time slowed to a crawl as Thragg accelerated and, for an infinitesimally brief moment, flew faster than light itself.
And destruction followed him.