Red Sea

But lacking any other suitable options, I ended up joining a trading company. It was a different group from the diplomatic corps, primarily populated by the upper class. Initially, I was somewhat withdrawn, repeatedly dwelling on having left the military. However, meeting former colleagues who had been discharged long ago and were now working helped me somewhat escape that sense of disillusionment. They were all from lower-class backgrounds, friends whose promotions had been blocked, leading them to leave early in search of new paths. Despite having attained higher ranks than them, I had ultimately chosen the same path. This caused me a slight unease, coupled with a dark thought that often arose: did they truly know the truth about the society they lived in? But I never spoke of it during our drinking sessions. I simply drank until my memory faded, indulging in alcohol I neither enjoyed nor excelled at.

Jake, discharged at 45, spent two years traveling to a single planet. The Nangka planet was one of the closest to our home planet. When I first went into space, I couldn’t sleep for days due to the tension, but humans are creatures of adaptation, and I soon got used to it. Later, I even became so accustomed to zero gravity that I suffered greatly after landing. Regardless, successfully completing the trade boosted my confidence in my new work.

After a three-month break, my next assignment was planet TA457 in the Centric system, home to the Thermos. It was farther than my first mission, but more importantly, I was going alone. The distance meant fewer personnel could be assigned, and the Thermos were generally friendly towards off-worlders and other species, so there wasn’t much to worry about.

Their peculiarity was that despite being members of the Galactic Federation, they lacked the technology to leave their planet independently. Being advanced enough to negotiate with the Federation yet technologically underdeveloped was quite unusual. My mission was to offer them humanity’s technology in exchange for the planet’s abundant resources. Rumors of a special sulfur mined on the planet and traded elsewhere suggested the contract would be easy to secure.

However, because the Thermos couldn’t leave their planet independently, no one had ever seen what they looked like. Therefore, once the contract was signed, transporting the resources would be solely humanity’s responsibility. The few Thermos seen outside were those who had left their home planet on trade ships, and their small number made them difficult to encounter.

All Jake knew was that the Thermos were larger than humans and had a total of six limbs. Still, knowing they had a language system and a civilization, I reassured myself, recalling how friendly the Nangka had been on my previous mission. The journey to a new planet was always melancholic and lonely, yet simultaneously exciting and frightening.

Waking up, Jake warmed up a packet of coffee. While near-lightspeed travel was achievable, warp drive proved practically impossible. Near-lightspeed flight was the extent of humanity’s capabilities. We hadn’t yet reached the point of safely exceeding the speed of light.

While discarding the empty coffee packet, Jake spotted a light source outside and, with childlike joy, pressed himself against the window. It was Centric. The star that perpetually illuminated the Centric system shone brilliantly. Even though I knew stars were burning gas clouds, shattering the romance of stars, seeing one shine so brightly in the darkness always lifted my spirits. And next to it, a tiny red dot, visible to the naked eye. Jake was certain it was his destination. The new planet was truly approaching.

*

After another week of travel, Jake approached the massive planet. Up close, the Thermos’ planet was enormous and red. Even with the naked eye, the endless swirling red atmosphere was visible. As iron and sulfur were its main products, the planet was entirely red. I wondered if humans could breathe on a planet of that color, but it was a target chosen after considering factors like gravity, water availability, and breathable atmosphere, so it was a needless worry.

Landing was scheduled in a few days. Finding the optimal landing site would take a few more days, and Jake needed to report to the home planet and contact the Thermos planet.

It was questionable whether the Thermos could receive transmissions on the Federation’s common broadcast frequency, but obtaining landing permission was standard procedure. Having only heard about the Thermos from a few aliens who had visited the home planet, humanity knew nothing about their level of civilization. The fact that we hadn’t even managed to obtain a single image, despite our advanced optical technology, was proof of this. However, many planets traded with the Thermos, including the Nangka, and during my visit to the Nangka planet, I had seen firsthand the incredible efficiency of the strange sulfur imported from this red planet. That alone made approaching this unknown species worthwhile.

The ship was at its closest approach to the planet when it suddenly shook. A temporary atmospheric instability caused a powerful gust of hot air to erupt from the planet. Realizing his position was precarious, Jake sat at the controls to manually move the ship to safety. But the sudden atmospheric surge surged, rising high enough to engulf the ship. Then, pulled down by gravity, it swept Jake’s spaceship along with it.

“Damn it!”

He’d lost control. As the ship plummeted at an incredible speed due to gravitational acceleration, Jake noticed flames erupting on the outer hull and muttered a curse. While there was safety design for crash landings, an accident was an accident. The spaceship became a giant fireball, streaking across the sky towards the ground.

“Ugh!”

The temperature inside the ship also began to rise. Now, besides the hazy red atmosphere, large mountains and numerous black pillars were visible. Confirming they were approaching the ground, Jake coughed from the heat, released the controls, and donned the emergency landing safety gear. The heat was so intense that his face was red and sweat poured from his body like broth.

“Emergency! Emergency!”

Ignoring whether he could transmit a signal to the home planet while engulfed in flames during an emergency landing, Jake followed the manual. It was natural for his methodical nature. In seconds, he would crash into the ground with his spaceship. Praying for a safe landing without injury, Jake clutched the dog tag around his neck. He had no god to believe in, and he was no longer a soldier, but in this hopeless situation, the dog tag acted as a lifeline. He had touched it so often, believing his youth and his decision to come this far weren’t in vain, that it was worn and tarnished. Clutching the dog tag, he closed his eyes.

A loud bang and a violent jolt followed. Even with his helmet on to protect his head, the impact was unavoidable. The cramped space turned upside down, and Jake hit his head inside the ship. Outside, nothing was discernible except the crimson flames and the similarly colored earth. Amidst this, what he thought were black pillars writhed and moved in the firelight. They all had the shape of giant humans, but they were entirely black and still overwhelmingly large. Seeing them up close made their size truly apparent. Seeing giant human figures, easily over two meters tall, lumbering through the inferno instinctively filled him with disgust. Things of an impossible size acting like humans. For a moment, Jake wondered if this was hell, then lost consciousness. It was the last thing he saw.

*

“Ugh… ah… ah, ah, ugh…”

He couldn’t open his eyes. Jake felt thirsty. He desperately wished for a bucket of cool water, struggling to open his eyes. His eyes stung as if someone had rubbed salt in them, causing him to groan involuntarily. The moment he felt the air was terribly dry, he realized his lips were cracked, his mouth parched, and his voice barely audible.

“Hmph, ugh!”

Someone was groaning. Annoyed by the faint echo of the groan, he lifted his eyelids, realizing his body was violently shaking. The groan was coming from him. Startled, Jake tried to understand what was happening.

Even with his eyes open, it was pitch black. A faint light somewhere allowed him to discern some shapes, but his brain refused to process the information, as if overloaded.

“What, what is this…, ugh!”

His hands and feet were numb. It was more accurate to say that after regaining consciousness, sensation was gradually returning from his extremities. The violent shaking of his body made his vision blurry. In the darkness, Jake’s eyes met a bright red light. Could it be called an eye? It lacked eyelids and pupils, emitting only red light—a bizarre structure that pulsed unpleasantly from time to time.

“What the…, haugh!… Ah, damn it!”

It was like his frozen body was thawing. When sensation returned to his limbs and finally all his senses, Jake cursed, horrified by the flood of sensations. He was naked. Only the dog tag, a symbol of hatred and love, remained, fluttering on his chest with each rhythmic vibration.

The owner of the eye he’d just seen was holding his legs apart, inserting something into his anus. He couldn’t even guess how large it was, but it tore into his flesh, pushing his entire body upwards, causing him to convulse before sinking back down. His muscular chest, which could be described as ample, heaved with each crushing blow from the hot interior. Realizing he was being pistoned, Jake retched and struggled to escape, but he couldn’t move, left to be violated.

“This, how, khugh… ah, stop, stop it!”

The more sensation returned, the more vivid the feeling of something violently tearing into his lower body became. He didn’t know how long it had been going on, but it was clearly something large and crude, so much so that he was afraid to look. The tearing pain and burning friction were relentless. All he knew about his assailant was that it had pulsing eyes and an overwhelmingly large body and penis. He had prided himself on his strength and training, but he couldn’t escape the creature’s grasp, unable to even twitch. He felt short of breath. Each gasp brought a burning column of fire through his abdomen, making it impossible to take a full breath, causing him to cough.