The sky was screaming.
That was Tom's thought as he destroyed wave after wave of Cragolo. The aerial battle had been dragging on for hours now, the constant lasers, explosions, plasma blobs and flying ships making an almost deafening cacophony.
While they still had many more Cragolo to kill, they were doing much better than the forces on the ground. For every Cragost the ground forces killed, three soldiers lost their lives. The situation was even worse when you considered that the ground forces started this battle outnumbered five to one.
It became so bad, the Kraken had to divert much of its firepower away from the Cragoloss to support the troops on the ground, and many Firebirds had to do the same. The result was the aerial forces losing ground as well, steadily being picked off by the Cragoloss and Cragolo. Tom knew he had to turn the battle around, or it would be a devastating defeat or pyrrhic victory. Glancing at the Cragoloss, he had a crazy idea.
Swerving out of the way of incoming plasma blobs, Tom maneuvered around the battlefield, dodging around Firebirds and Cragolo alike. Any Cragolo directly in his way, he shot down. His destination? The Cragoloss.
Tom knew from mission briefings that the Cragoloss had closable holes all along themselves for entering and exiting. The Cragoloss would only accept Cragost and Cragolo inside them and would close the holes afterward, but Tom had an idea for that as well.
Activating his ship's cloak, he flew around the Cragoloss a couple of times, waiting for an opening. Suddenly, what he was waiting for occurred. A hole about as big as three houses opened on the left flank of the Cragoloss, allowing three Cragolo to fly out, one behind the other.
Tom barreled full speed into the hole as it was in the process of closing, just barely making it inside before it became too narrow to fit his ship through. Landing his ship, he deactivated his cloaking system. He kept his shields running, however. Tom didn't exactly expect the ship to be here when he got back, but a man could hope.
Disembarking, Tom looked around. The walls were writhing, raising and lowering as the beast breathed. He knew the creatures needed to breathe, but scientists estimated they were able to hold their breaths for months at a time, which was what made space travel possible for the Cragost. There were several holes throughout the area, leading to hallways and rooms made of the same fleshy substance.
Casting his psychic senses out, Tom was temporarily blinded by the enormous amount of life he sensed. 'It must be from the Cragoloss,' he realized. After a small bit of effort, he managed to start "ignoring" the Cragoloss, allowing him to zero in on several hundred lifeforms throughout the rooms he could sense.
Some of which were heading his way.
Tom took his Vega SV off his back. Before the hint of a Cragost's eye stalk turned the corner, Tom ducked behind his Shadow Jumper. He waited for the Cragosts to enter the room, before pushing off the ship's side, turning to the group, and opening fire.
As he did so, he utilized his TK while they were distracted to set up soundproof barriers around them, preventing their screams from echoing throughout the living ship. Tom killed them within seconds, before they could even close the distance between them.
Using the same tactic to muffle his footsteps, Tom made his way through the city-sized organism, avoiding patrols the whole while.
'I find the heart of this thing, or its brain or something else vital to it, and I bet this whole thing goes down,' he thought to himself.
About twenty minutes after he started, he sensed a room with what seemed to be a large clump of life forces within. Making his way to it, avoiding another three patrols, he pressed his back against the doorway's right wall, taking a quick look inside for hostile Cragost. What he found was definitely worse.
Walking inside the room, he looked at the expansive cage in it, with bars of bone. Within the cage were over seven hundred humans and Fildenen, packed so close together they didn't have an inch in any direction to move. Their dull, vacant eyes, dirty faces, ragged clothes, and bodies so skinny one could see nearly every bone within painted a sorry picture indeed.
None of them so much as glanced at Tom as he entered the room. Walking closer, he noticed many of them were missing eyes, hands, arms, toes, or bits of their stomachs. Many were even bleeding profusely from what could only be bite marks.
Tom had found the Cragosts' food source.
Stepping up to the bars, he asked "how could the Cragost do this?" One of the humans inside, a man with brown hair and green eyes, looked up at him. Tom asked the question again. The man didn't respond, his gaze indicated he didn't even understand what Tom was saying.
Tom knew the entire Shyviate Collective had only two languages, English and Fildnenon, and every citizen knew the first. The only conclusion, then, was that these men and women had been under Cragost influence since birth, grown purely for food. Tom had thought he had seen the worst the galaxy had to offer, but it seemed there were still surprises in store. Tom tried several more times to initiate conversation with them, but none of them said anything back.
'I can't very well help every single one escape if they're all unarmed. At most, I could defend fourteen or so…. But these people don't seem to want to live either way.'
Coming to a decision, he turned his back to the cage. Killing the Cragoloss was definitely the easiest way to end their misery. He didn't have enough energy mags for all of them.
Continuing through the labyrinth of the creature's innards, Tom eventually made his way to what seemed to be an important room. Pressing his back against the corner of the wall, he glanced down the hallway, seeing two blue Cragost guards.
These seemed to be a new strain of mutant, with their right pincers replaced by blades about three feet long, made of what appeared to be blue bone. This stuck out to Tom because he had read various studies on the Cragost, all of which detailed them as boneless invertebrates. Instead, their insides were nothing but muscle, tendons, and organs.
Tom threw up a soundproof barrier around the two, a short, sustained beam going through both their heads shortly after. When the bodies dropped, Tom dropped the barrier, jogging into the doorway they were guarding. Inside, he found what he was looking for: a beating heart as tall as a five-story building, and thrice as wide.