The trees are so dense they hide the sky and everything that is not five feet in front of me. I scan for tracks, seeing little paths where deer and other small animals have made their way through, browsing on the low foliage.
It is peaceful here, another little world inside a world. I could be tempted to let my guard down and enjoy the natural beauty of a prehistoric Earth, but there are vicious Galactor peons here, waiting to ruin it, so I can’t.
“WELL HE SAID HE WOULD COME BACK!”
They weren’t hard to find.
Apparently, the Galactor tactical approach is to sit in the middle of a forest and scream at each other. I can see two of them through the trees. They both seem to be naked, as I was when I arrived. Apparently, clothes don’t make it through time holes.
Crouching down, I listen to find out what their nefarious plans are. Something disgusting and vile, I imagine. I want to simply slaughter them, but listening in gives me the chance to figure out how many there are. If I kill these two, but leave one alive to run, that will make this entire process that much harder. Sometimes going slower makes things go faster.
Galactor is not a species like us scythkin. They are a corporate alliance. They have several different species working together under their umbrella. The murketeers manage the paperwork, but for fighting, they employ the warboys, a species comprised entirely of male members who reproduce by inseminating females of other species with fully formed zygotes. They are a threat to this planet in more ways than one. A scythkin could never impregnate a female human without killing her. A warboy can simply implant the proto-fetus inside her and have it gestate in the usual way. That would be truly disastrous.
Warboys have, occasionally, in the past, proven to be something of a match for scythkin. They are very large, almost twelve feet tall. They do not have any sharp blades or edges, but they do have a thick, very hairy, almost impenetrable hide. They come in a wide range of colors. The ones I am looking at now are sleek, black, and shaggy. They almost look like animals, save for the crafty intelligence which burns in their dark eyes. Their musculature is very evident under the pelt which covers them and makes clothing pointless in most cases, though they usually wear uniforms anyway. The same could be said of scythkin, though I always liked to wear clothes when I had enough mental energy to worry about what covered my body.
I knew that warboys were the most likely Galactor creature I would encounter down here, but I am still not pleased. I had hoped that it was a weaker member of the Galactor alliance, something easier to dispatch. These animals tend to be lumbering, cold beasts, wading through their enemies without concern for their own well-being. They have to use weapons to be truly dangerous because they lack our natural offensive capacities. They don’t even have sharp teeth capable of tearing flesh. They have no fangs, and they only eat plant material. I am not worried about them hurting me. I am worried about dispatching them quickly, and ideally, without them ever knowing I was there.
It is strange to hear them arguing. Usually they grunt at one another if they say anything at all. They must be very worried to be shouting and carrying on like this. I tell myself that I am not worried about my ability to kill them. They are isolated and I am sharper than I have ever been, ready to do what I have to in order to make my way home.
“They’re never going to see that signal,” one is saying to the other.
“Yes, they will. It’s huge.”
“It can be as huge as it wants to be. It’s probably more than two million years in the wrong direction.”
The warboy on the left sighs and throws his bit meaty arms in the air. “That theory again, Wencel? We are not on ancient Earth.”
“There are stone age humans here. Where else could we be?”
“Stone Age isn’t specific enough a place in time to be found. The stone age lasted over three million years, and then five thousand years later, there were people using cellphones. So even if you’re right, it doesn’t help. Galactor isn’t going to be able to pin-point three of us down here in the middle of time, and even if they could, they wouldn’t waste the resources.”
I can hear their desperation. They are stranded, just as I am, and just like I am, they are desperate for rescue. But they do not have a clutch the way I do. Nobody wants to rescue them. To Galactor, they are nothing but losses to be cut. They have probably already been scratched off the cosmic accounting spreadsheet somewhere in the future.