The way Sartok rubbed up against the rock seemed in part ritualistic, in part orgiastic-in a way that he was finding increasingly distracting. He was beginning to wonder if she had any role to play in the planet's throwing a tantrum. The weather anomalies had picked up to just shy of biblical proportions. The intersection of energy lines in the earth leading up to the mountain were starting to throw up vortexes of their own.  

Sartok moved away from the rock, dancing, pulsing, and gyrating in trance, clearly adept at channeling these energies through her body for God knows what. But today she was supposed to be acting as a way off this planet. So presumably she was readying to teleport the both of them out of there. What attunements that meant to her underlying physiology exactly he couldn't say.  

"It's go time." 

Dargan noticed the weather closing in on them from all sides. They hadn't a moment to lose. He said, "I'm fine without the verbal cues. Just do it already."  

In a flash of lightning, they were gone.  

* * * 

For moving half way across the universe, both the transit and arrival felt anticlimactic in the extreme. "Where are we, besides far far away?" 

"We're wherever the great spirit feels we need to be. If it is your destiny to be supreme lord over all these gods of war, then this is the next step in your journey. If not, then it's probably just as well you find out now so I can be home in time for dinner." 

"The great spirit?" 

"Some other time."  

The jungle was lush and alive-a little too alive for Dargan's taste, especially with all of those lifeforms unknowns. A tropical world; he could drink the air more readily than breathe it. She looked more disoriented than him, made uncomfortable by the new surroundings. Probably the price she paid for being more rooted in time and place than Dargan could ever hope to be. And she had just been uprooted. Her people must have descended from nature devas or some such, what they would have referred to as tree lovers in his day. Before they decided to take their game to the next level. 

Nervous and unsettled, she shifted back into male form, her defensive guise.  

"Can I ask you to stay in female form?"  

She took a couple calming breaths to help her process the merit of the request, then shifted back. "Probably a good idea. I'm more receptive in this guise, less guarded, and we need to tune in the new environment and what we're up against in a hurry. There'll be plenty of time to be guarded later." 

"Is there anything you can tell me about this world, using that shamanic sense of yours?"  

She had been throwing furtive glances at every migrant sound since they landed, trying to focus her mind in on what mattered and ignoring the rest. She was merely multitasking by talking to him and he figured he had at best ten percent of her attention.  

"There's magic here - lots of it. A preponderance of chi." 

"The energy surges flowing through the planet are more pronounced?" 

"Yes, that makes more energy available for the creative musings of the lifeforms here. Makes it easier to manifest whatever's on their mind. Though it doesn't mean they're any more in control of their minds." 

"Wonderful. You want to take the lead or should I?" 

"Don't be in such a hurry to get somewhere you may not want to be."  

When he glanced back at her impatiently, she pressed on ahead of him, parting the palm fronds with caution. 

"I find bold works best; animals can smell fear on you." 

Judging from her stealth maneuvers, attempting to walk without stepping on so much as a twig, she was even better at ignoring him in female form. Dargan smiled to himself. Weren't they all? 

He noticed his feet sinking into the rich soil. The place reeked of fecundity, all right. What wasn't blossoming was fruiting. What wasn't glowing from sheer effervescence was on the move. Vines were crawling up trees right before his eyes. Let's hope they were content to hug the trees, Dargan thought. Creatures scurried constantly in his peripheral vision, though never in his central vision. Could they be that keyed to his lines of sight? They displayed a stunning level of adaptiveness for such low-level creatures. He hoped they were lower down the evolutionary chain. 

The atmosphere was refreshingly cool for what otherwise looked to be a tropical jungle. The humidity was tolerable at this pace, but no doubt insufferable on the run. No need to pack food, either; that much less dead weight to carry. And it wasn't the kind of jungle through which they had to hack their way with a machete. The droppings of the giant trees did well to thin the uprising of new saplings, perhaps in the same way pine trees did back on Earth by making the soil too acid and inhospitable for competing life. He'd take fighting here over combat on that barren rock they left behind them in some other quadrant in space. Dargan wondered how Sartok had survived there five days, far less five hundred years. Another question for another time. 

They were being watched, and tracked. Dargan wondered if Sartok had picked up on it. Surely she must sense something with her nature goddess bent. He wouldn't be surprised if she was talking to the thing telepathically, telling it to hold off. Or, at least, that was what he hoped.  

"Who's following us?"  

"Don't know. But whatever it is, it's no fool. I sense intelligence on par with our own." 

"It's moving high in the trees."  

"So long as there's just one, I doubt it will attack. Though it appears to be herding us toward something." 

"An ambush?" Dargan arched his wrist a certain way, triggering the sheathed knife under his sleeve.  

"Put that away. Let's not rile the locals until we know what they're capable of."  

"Sound advice. But I'm slowing with age. You'll forgive me for trying to stay one step ahead of a knife to the back the best way I can."  

In a fluid sweeping motion of her arm, she brought her palm around to face him, fingers outstretched, and sent him flying back a good ten feet off the concussion wave she emitted from the small of her hand. She telekinetically sent the knife flying into a rock, wedging it all the way to the lip of the blade.  

"I'm glad you think so highly of me that you're certain I'll do fine when the time comes without my weapons," Dargan said. She was staring at her palm, as mystified as he was. He realized she had managed to put some of that abundant energy coursing through the planet to good use, however unwittingly. "You adapt quickly. Can't say the same for myself." He groaned as he brought himself to vertical.  

The orangutan-man that had been following them made his appearance just short of Dargan catching his balance. He loped down from the trees, putting himself on two feet on the ground, what was an unhappy situation for him, as it made him more vulnerable.  

"You're ugly," Monkey Man said. 

"You're defenseless," Dargan replied. "Wanta trade?" 

He yanked the knife out of the stone with his nano-enhanced strength.  

"Just when I thought it was going to be two against one. A nicely laid trap. Of course, I hardly need to rip it from your hands. I can just rip your arm from your body."  

Dargan had no doubt he could. He placatingly sheathed the knife.  

"What is it you want on my world?"  

"We're big on recruiting warriors willing to risk all to topple the empire and crush Nero before he destroys any more life, being wholly unworthy of it himself." 

"Yes, news of his elimination of over a billion souls on Tromidor has already reached us." 

"How?" 

The ape showed off the Singularity phone concealed neatly by the profuse hair on his body. An ape with an S-phone, Dargan thought. You don't see that every day.  

It was a way for them to fight a coordinated war even without a space armada. There was more liberation in that S-phone than monkey man could fathom. But how had he come by one? They were so rare; they were more rumor than fact. Few engineers existed anymore with the technical knowhow to construct one; yet more evidence of human devolution post Earth going Singularity, and leaving the unlucky stragglers behind. 

"Let me guess. She's the smooth talker of the group." Dargan and Sartok both stifled a smirk on that one. They were starting to bond with Monkey Man.  

"You have a name, or can I just call you Monkey Man?" 

"If you want to keep trying to get a rise out of an ape that would have no trouble pinning you to the ground, Monkey Man will do just fine."  

"His name is Veritas. The trees whisper his name. The wind carries it on her lips. The very ground resonates to it. Such is his greatness."  

"She really is the smooth talker." Veritas eyed her suspiciously. "You acclimate to our world quickly." His mind was racing for an explanation. "Could it be? No. You're supposed to be extinct." And yet he had already decided she must be the mythical creature he'd heard of from legend. "This encounter has turned out to be more than a minor annoyance, after all. Follow me."  

"Can I take this to mean you'll join us?" 

"No. This means we'll have you for dinner, rather than have you for dinner. Your madness you'll kindly take with you when you leave before it infects anyone else. Should it, I'll kill you myself." 

With that, he disappeared into the trees. Sartok darted after him on foot, running as fast as she could. "Did anyone bother to ask me if I was in shape for a foot race?" Dargan did his best to keep up, already panting after the third step. And sweating. He hated to sweat. For a field general he had a peculiar habit of not wanting to feel uncomfortable in battle. That was the whole point of genius, to let other people do the sweating. And then it occurred to him. You're nano infested, you damn fool. Pick up the pace. Soon you'll be too old to remember your name. 

He heard Sartok's voice in his head. You are but fifty. Why do you whine so?  

Lady, thirty for a soldier is old. Get out of my head and into my loins. She fell silent. Well, you got it half right.  

Dargan ran faster, but Veritas and Sartok were already gone from sight, leaving him no choice but to follow by tracking them. Luckily, Sartok was not running in stealth mode. The soil left good tracks. Branches easily broke or tore here. Staying on the trail would be child's play.  

At least, that's what he thought until he noticed the creature in front of him that looked like it wanted to eat him. And, at three times Dargan's size, with fangs bigger than his knife, it was likely to get its way.