"What a shitty way to start my assignment." Corporal Al Brock thought to himself as he climbed out of his escape pod. He had been on the fast-track to a promotion back in the Core Systems Military but had wound up running afoul of a hardass General during a wargames trial that hadn't gone as well as he'd hoped. The General had made a blunder, but rather than accept fault for his own shortcomings, had dumped the blame on Al. The General had plenty of clout and so there wasn't much Al could to do contest the results. So when he was told he was being reassigned to the Outer Reach for an extended stay on a long-range listening post, well, there wasn't much he could do in protest except suck it up and make the most out of a bad situation.
Only, it started out as a bad situation, and got worse. The world he was sent to was called Teldura, a recently discovered jungle world that had been colonized by a joint scientific and military task force. The military used it as a forward operations base and listening post, while the science team used it as a means of researching the local life and cataloging it for further research.
While he wasn't happy about the situation, he was looking forward to his new assignment in a way, and looked at it as an opportunity for growth and was determined to make the most out of a bad situation. However, things went from bad to worse when as his transport ship exited slipstream outside of the world's orbit, a catastrophic reactor failure occurred. A reactor meltdown was imminent, and the captain gave the word to abandon ship. The ship had barely anybody else onboard and Al rushed towards one of the nearest escape pods, and waited a few minutes for others to join him inside. None did. When the computer warned him that the reactor was about to meltdown, he closed the interior hatch and jettisoned from the ship. A matter of moments later he caught a glimpse of the transport erupt in a blinding fireball as its fusion reactor exploded against the blackness of space.
Things became hazy after that, as the escape pod began adjusting for re-entry into Teldura's atmosphere. Al passed out, and by the time he came to, the pod had already soft-landed on the planet's surface. He climbed out of the pod and surveyed his surroundings, noticing he had landed in the middle of what appeared to be a meadow, full of wild and exotic flowers, the escape pod's parachutes sprawling over some of the surrounding fields.
The escape pod carried radio equipment, a distress beacon, MREs, and other life support systems. Al tried to reach the outpost on his radio, but got nothing back but static. Either something was wrong with the outpost's communications equipment, or something was causing interference. While the distress beacon had been activated, there was no telling how long he would have to wait until help arrived. According to the EEVs telemetry, it had tried its best to land as close to one of the scientific outposts as possible, roughtly 30 clicks north of his current position. Most of the topographical data showed that it was mostly level forest between here and there.
The planet's speed of rotation was roughly 20 hours, so ten hours of daylight and ten of night. If he managed to average three miles an hour on foot, he should manage to arrive there by nightfall. So Al took stock of his gear and supplies and slept over the course of the evening, setting his alarm clock to wake him at 03:00 hours. It was stll dark out, and the local sun wouldn't rise for a few more hours, but it gave him a head start on his trek to the outpost.
He'd already planned his strategy out for the trek ahead based off of the map data he'd looked at. He'd intermittently jog/sprint starting out while the terrain was still open and flat, and then slow down once he reached the more wooded areas. In some spots it cleared out and there he planned on speeding up again, trying to go as fast as he could until he reached the more wooded areas. His thinking was that the time that it took to slowly make his way through the woods would be made up for by running through the more open areas. Hopefully he'd be able to arrive at or close to the outpost before darkness had completely set. And if it took too long, he had a few clearings in mind to set up a camp at so he could hold out till dawn broke.
According to the reports he'd read, the planet had a minimum of fauna and what little there was, was unremarkable, so Al had little fear of the local wildlife, but still was driven to maintain vigiliance at all times and to expect the unexpected.
Al's trek started off on a high note as he made quick progress, as he galloped across what mostly seemed like plains of grass. The "grass" didn't have the give or consistency of grass, but he ran across it all the same. Eventually he reached the first wooded area, and here was where things became truly strange. The trees were not like normal trees, and instead of having leaves or branches, there were giant logs full of interconnecting vines and what appeared to be pinecones protruding from their trunks. It was somewhat unnerving to observe.
Al blitzed through the woods faster than he expected since the "trees" were the only real plants in the wooded area. There wasn't much else as far as flora went to slow him down or having to cut through. Eventually he made it to the next open area and began rushing through it as quickly as he could. Once again he arrived at another wooded area, only this one was a lot different from the last one.
For starter's this one had more than the trees populating it, there were also strange looking plants on the ground, mostly growing at ankle-level, but there nonetheless. Al slowed down to take care not to overlook potholes or stumble into a ditch or even a pit. As he made his way through this area, something began to nag and unnerve him, and he wasn't sure what it was. He couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, and he found himself lookng over his shoulder more and more to make sure nobody was following him. He kept thinking his paranoia was foolish, but his instincts told him that it was unwise to ignore what his gut was telling him.
Eventually he arrived at another clearing and once again he took off sprinting. The sun in the sky had already reached its peak and was beginning to make its way downwards. Al was confident he could make it to the outpost before dark, and even if he couldn't, he could set up camp at another clearning near the outpost, and perhaps radio for help.
Eventually he reached another wooded area. This one was more thickly populated by both trees and plants than the last area, and something about it made his stomach churn. He tried his hardest to push the apprehension out of his mind, but still the thoughts of nervousness lingered. He pressed forward carefully. The light beginning to dwindle, but he was still confident he could make the next clearing in time to at least set up camp.
Time passed, he continued to make his way across the wooded area, but he didn't reach the next clearing. The glowing green star in the sky continued to sink, and Al began to feel his nervousness quicken. Eventually he resolved to set up camp somewhere relatively defensible before night finally fell, and he found such a place in a small clearing in the wooded area. He gathered up some "twigs" and other wood and lit it up with some accelerant and pitched a small tent. He heated up one of his MREs and ate in the relative quiet of the wooded area. The planet didn't really have much in the way of animal life, and what little there was amounted to little more than rodents and small birds, neither of which Al had noticed on his trek north.
He decided that he'd be better off stopping here than going any further in the dark. He made sure to stoke the campfire to last while he slept, then climbed into his tent and pulled his sleeping bag over himself. While he was still feeling that pang of paranoia and nervousness, he surprised himself by going to sleep almost immediately and hoped that his sleep would be an untroubled one.
His sleep was unencumbered by any thoughts, but at some point he found himself dreaming of being naked in a barracks full of soldiers, and being shocked that the other soldiers were themselves naked and slapping him on his backside and groping his cock, which was throbbing hard despite spending his whole life never once getting a hard on at the thought of fucking another man. His dream continued with the General showing up, completely naked save for wearing his dress jacket, his cock blood red and throbbing, jutting from a patch of blonde pubic hair and his balls, massive and weighty, and he demanded that Al get on his knees and suck on them.
Al refused, but the other soldiers kicked the back of his knees and forced him down into a kneeling position before the General. The tip of the cock was at his face, and Al resisted with all his might despite it touching his face and prodding at his lips. Someone grabbed his nostrils and closed them, and soon he was struggling to breath, and finally he opened his mouth wide to breath, and the cock entered his mouth, warm and wide, and began driving in and out vigorously. There was something wrong, Al thought, this wasn't normal, he shouldn't be dreaming about this. One of his earliest erotic memories was getting off to 20th Century vintage 70s porn. Taxi Girls. He wasn't into guys. Something was WRONG.
Al woke up suddenly, and realized that he couldn't move. His body was being pinned to the ground and his hands were bound together in front of him and his legs were being held down while he was inside his tent. He looked around and saw he was being held by what appeared to be vines that wrapped themselves around his wrists and ankles, pulling his body taught enough so that he couldn't move or resist. Other vines suddenly swept into the tent and reached under the canopy and ripped it from the ground. Al could see that that the clearing was being illuminated by a pair of bright white moons in the sky. The vines from what he could tell were coming from some of the nearby "trees".
He struggled against the vines and tried to pry his hands loose, and with startling ease the vines wrapped themselves around his wrists and ankles and held fast to him even harder than before. "What the hell is going on?!" Al cried out in a panic.
