I caught a Buzzard flight out to a village in the middle of nowhere, hours of listening to the engines drone and farmland pass by beneath us. Unfortunately, I was left alone with my thoughts, and that wasn't a pleasant place to be. When I'd seen that first Ruhar assault ship skidding across the potato field in my home town, the first thing to cross my mind, right after 'shit is this really happening' and 'why the fuck would aliens invade Thomsons Corners', was 'Game Over'. Hollywood movie bullshit aside, any species with the technology, resources and incentive to travel between stars was going to crush humanity like a bug. Forget about fantasies of plucky humans defeating the aliens on the ground. Aliens could sit comfortably in orbit and pound us into dust at their leisure. All the determination and human spirit in the universe wouldn't mean a damned thing if they could hit us, and we couldn't reach them. Even if we managed to retarget and launch nuclear-tipped ICBMs, those missiles couldn't reach high orbit, and any aliens would have to be totally blind not to see the blazing hot rocket exhaust. It would be shocking if an ICBM warhead got within a hundred miles of an alien ship, they'd probably not make it above the lower atmosphere. Game Over.

That wasn't only me disparaging humanity's prospects of surviving an alien invasion, that's what the Kristang had told us. The lizards had told a lot of lies, but in this case, they were truthful. They'd told the truth, to make us realize how much we needed the Kristang to protect us from the Ruhar, or so we'd thought at the time. The point was: humans stuck on the ground, aliens had the high ground of orbit and beyond. Game Over.

When I decided to try capturing an alien soldier, all I had been thinking was humanity needed intel about the invaders, if we had any chance at all of surviving in any fashion. And that I needed to do something, even if it was rash and stupid. And that I'd probably get killed, but since all of humanity was about to get wiped out, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, right?

Then, the Kristang cavalry came over the horizon, and we were saved. Damn, I remember that feeling, when we were being hunted by that Ruhar tow truck. My underwear was damp at that time, I am not ashamed to admit it, because my underwear was damp and my mouth was dry and my hands were shaking, but I stood my ground anyway. I was bracing myself to die in a blaze of gunfire, and then the sky twinkled again, and a miracle happened when that Ruhar dropship stood on its tail, and shot into the sky with a supersonic boom.

We were saved! All my fears were swept away. And I was grateful to our rescuers.

That was all bullshit.

This was worse.