Exotic metal melted into hissing, sizzling molten slag as Thragg tore through the walls of the alien ship at a velocity that was approaching the speed of light. He could've gone much faster, of course – much much faster – but he was far too close to the planet he was protecting and any faster and he'd end up igniting the entire world's atmosphere, killing everyone he was supposed to be saving from these aliens. Still, it never got old, Thragg mused, watching the burning debris scattering all around him, turning into superheated accelerating shrapnel. The transfer of energy was enough to reduce the entirety of the vessel into smoldering ruin, even through the barest impact. After all, the thing he slammed into was almost ten kilometers in length.
The explosion sent great globs of slag and shrapnel scattering through the entirety of the Rangdan fleet, immediately destroying several others. Curiously, Thragg mused, the aliens did possess something of a shield, one that absorbed and neutralized kinetic energy on a wide scale. To overload it, a weapon of immense power was required – or, simply, one that did not unleash destruction through means of kinetic energy, like lasers. Unfortunately for the Rangdan, their shields could only absorb a very limited amount of kinetic energy – limited, at least, compared to the sheer physical force a Viltrumite could unleash. And so, their shields, advanced and powerful they might've been for lesser beings, shattered like glass before him, offering Thragg the same amount of resistance as wet paper might've. The only reason he even felt it was because it brushed back his hair.
But that was it.
Thragg continued soaring upwards. That was only the first ship, after all, possibly their strongest, seeing as there were no others that even came close in terms of size. Around him, a great blazing torrent of fire and dust and slag and ruin raged as the shattered shrapnel and debris exploded upwards and into the coming fleet. Many other ships were caught and destroyed immediately in a shower of death and metal, though others just barely survived, likely due to their shields, which flickered and hissed, overloaded. Thragg's eyes narrowed as he punched through one of their larger vessels, one that'd housed a large number of slave aliens and a few humans, all of them dying in the explosion that followed shortly afterwards, their corpses charred to ashes and rent to dust, alongside their masters.
He felt no remorse for killing them, only pity. These creatures, these people, had been taken against their will, implanted with horrific machines and made to fight in endless wars as nothing more than... chaff. If anything, him killing them was a mercy, because no one deserved the fate the bore over their shoulders. And, really, their deaths came so quickly and so utterly that none of them would've even had a moment to process it; one moment they lived and, suddenly, they were dead. Such was the power of a Viltrumite. Though, in truth, if he did feel anything, it was shame; all this power could've been wielded with far greater responsibility, to protect the weak. And, instead, for thousands and thousands of years, they used that power to dominate, conquer, enslave, torture, abuse, and destroy. Briefly, Thragg thought back and wondered if the Viltrumite Empire had ever created anything, even just a single thing, that might've bettered creation in some way and fell short.
One by one, the alien vessels fell in a fiery ruin, blasted apart as Thragg passed through them with all the force of an asteroid hurling across the vastness of space close to the speed of light, carrying enough power to turn the surface of planets into little more than molten slag. A ship, no matter how advanced its shields might've been or how powerful its hulls, stood absolutely no chance. Before Thragg, the strongest of the Viltrumite Empire, whose fingers held more strength and energy than any asteroid flying through space, the alien ships folded. He technically didn't even need to attack, Thragg mused. All he had to do was fly really fast and all of them shattered around him – the standard Viltrumite operating procedure for dealing with enemy fleets for thousands of years, requiring no change simply because it worked.
And it worked extremely well. The bodily strength of a Viltrumite meant that they themselves could become projectiles that were faster, stronger, more durable, and a whole lot more powerful than any rocket.
Within the span of a single second, Thragg had already ravaged through hundreds and hundreds of ships, many of them torn to shreds by the shrapnel and many more reduced to their constituent molecules as Thragg passed through them. If he was being honest, it was laughably easy. The Rangdan vessels, numerous though they were, hardly put up a fight. To them, it was an invasion, a force to conquer an entire planet and turn its people into slaves. To the humans, it was the greatest defensive war they'll ever have to fight, a war for their home, their planet. To him, however, this was little more than pest control, the act of taking his foot and bringing it down on upstart creatures that thought themselves the masters of the fate of others.
And yet, no words could describe the magnitude of his rage at the mere thought that these insects had taken the life of his beloved Nareena. A part of him, a part he'd buried, but was now threatening to rise and crawl back out of its grave, wanted to prolong the suffering of these aliens, to torture and mutilate them until their minds broke under the pain. But to let his lesser self loose meant spitting on the memory of his wife. And he was still the father of Argall and Thragg swore to serve as an example for his son, an example of restraint and discipline. And so he kept it buried, caged, hidden and locked away, never to see the light of day ever again.
But he'd be lying if he claimed that t wasn't at all alluring.
And then, something absolutely gargantuan moved in the shadow between the stars, almost immediately catching his attention.
There, Thragg noted through the burning debris and the bowels and corpses of dead ships, a second mother ship, one that was over twenty kilometers in length, twice as large as the first he'd destroyed. Strange. That hadn't been there earlier. Did it just arrive? Or... no. It hadn't moved until very recently, a fraction of a fraction of a second ago. And it was so large that its black hulls gave it the appearance of empty space. But when it moved and when its shadow began to devour the stars around it, only then was its true and dreadful self unravel, a titanic vessel, seemingly made entirely of darkness.
Thragg's eyes narrowed. Was this not an expeditionary fleet, then? Or did the Rangdan simply prefer to begin their invasion with overwhelming force?
Though it irked him to even think it, these humans were lucky that he was here, that these aliens had done the biggest mistake they could've done by killing Nareena, lucky that he and he alone had experience in engaging entire empires and reducing them to ashes and rubble by himself.
Because the people of the planet below could not have been able to defend themselves against thousands of ships with somewhat advanced weapons and a seemingly innumerable number of slave troops to field; unless these Iron Men truly were so devastatingly powerful as to be capable of immediately turning the tide of war, then Thragg saw no hope for victory, likely not even with his son's inventions, simply because they had no space-capable vessels of their own – not unless they began repurposing all the derelict ships in the scrapyards, but, as far as Thragg was aware, the humans weren't doing that. And, in every war, whoever ruled the skies and space was the victor; ground troops hardly mattered if death rained from above at the whim of the opposition.
Honestly, the more he thought about it, the stranger the whole planet and its people actually seemed. Nareena thought the same thing, a bewilderment she revealed to him long ago. How come their technology was so advanced and yet so primitive at the same time? How is it that no one had truly made use of and created wondrous innovations from the bits and pieces of incredibly complex machineries found in the scrapyards. By her reckoning, all the necessary parts to actually build working, space-worthy vessels was already there and yet... no one did it. Not a single inventor of the hundreds of inventors among the sister-cities ever once thought to venture out of the planet. Was it a conspiracy of some kind by the Grand Council of Cities? Was everyone just too retarded to try? Was it connected to the Geomantic Web and the Iron Men? Even the history of how humans ever came to this world was muddled at best and downright impossible at worst.
Whatever it was, Thragg agreed that there was something wrong with the planet itself. His best guess? It had something to do with the Iron Men, who supposedly slumbered beneath the cities, waiting to be roused by the Rite of Reanimation.
Just another mystery, Thragg figured, one of many.
Hundreds more awaited destruction, hundreds of vessels already halfway in their tombs, unaware that death itself had come for them. Motes of golden and crimson lights bathed his form as millions of pieces of burning debris flew with him. Thragg roared, but, in the vacuum of space, no one heard him, just as his enemies screamed with no one to hear them as he tore through the hulls of their ship and out the other side. It was the same for each of them and the cascading explosions of debris and wreckage only grew larger and larger with every passing second, surging outwards and away from the planet's atmosphere and into the rapidly waning fleet. Thragg had to wonder, for a moment, as he tore through another troop carrier of some kind, if the Rangdan could even perceive him now, if their sensors could detect him before he destroyed them.
Probably.
Not that it mattered. Because if they could have defended themselves somehow, then they already would have. It wasn't surprising, however, simply because Thragg had done this exact thing almost a thousand times already, bringing death and ruin and destruction to thousands and thousands and thousands of alien ships in wars that spanned several planets and galaxies. This really wasn't anything new. The only difference now, he figured, was that the Rangdan had incurred his wrath, tempered though it was by his love for Nareena and his memory of her. It held him back.
Another moment passed, another flash of fire and ruined bits of metal, and, just like that, the fleet of thousands was gone, reduced to ruin, a hailstorm of debris surging out into the void, towards the twenty-kilometer long vessel that'd lingered far behind them. Thragg turned his full attention towards the alien mothership and wondered if he could waltz right in, instead of destroying it outright, and figure out the location of the Rangdan home planet through their databanks, assuming they had any. It certainly seemed far more efficient than waiting for his son and the other Scrappers to finish interrogating the captured Rangdan Warrior, who probably wouldn't even speak. And, even if it did speak, even if it could feel pain or fear, there was little hope in it actually revealing the spatial coordinates of its home planet; if it truly was a warrior, then it wouldn't just reveal such an important piece of information to its enemies, not even under the threat of death and torture.
Though, Thragg admitted, there was still a slim chance that it would sell out its entire species; after all, he'd seen it happen many times before, cowards who were too weak to stand by the rest of their people. Of course, they were somewhat rewarded their treachery by bowing their heads to the Viltrumite Empire and aided in the subjugation of their race, and that reward was almost always a quick death.
Scowling, Thragg flew towards the mothership vessel. One way or another, he was going to end this.
AN: Chapter 13 is up on (Pat)reon, where the Iron Men finally wake up. (I honestly can't wait to write more about them.)