A bright yellow light streaked down from above. There was a surge of power and my instruments went haywire. Alarms started going off, indicating engine failure.

“My aircraft is going down,” I reported. Communications were fried, so there was no response.

Power shut down altogether and I started to spiral across the sky. I tried aiming for a forest down below, hoping it would cushion my landing. It was some kind of forest, at least. It appeared green.

I brushed through the trees and braced for impact. My head hit the controls hard and I was knocked out cold. When I woke up, it was nighttime.

“This is Hitchens. Do you copy?” No answer. “Damn it,” I said to myself. I unbuckled, popped the hatch, and fumbled my way outside. My head rang and my chest felt like it had been completely flattened and blown back up again.

I looked up at the sky and there was no sign of them. There wouldn’t be for at least another week. I was all alone on a reconnaissance mission, so they had expected me to go dark eventually. “That’s alright,” I told myself. “I can survive a week.” When they do come, they’ll come armed to the teeth and in huge numbers. They wouldn’t forget about me. I had faith.

I grabbed a weapon out of the back. I noticed I turned up the ground pretty good on impact. Rocks and dirt were shoved aside in my wake. Trees had come down. There was a clear hole through the forest where I came through that stretched right on out to the sky. The stars twinkled. They were different. Still, it reminded me of home.

If there’s one thing I learned in training it’s that you have to stay moving in survival situations. You stay put, you’re screwed. Move or die. Plus, if anyone or anything had seen me coming down from the sky, they’d be curious. My flier was a giant fireball.

I readied my weapon and snuck into the woods, leaving the clearing behind. I had no sense of direction; I just knew I had to move. I figured I could at least try to do what I came here to do.

As I made my way deeper into the forest, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of unease. It doesn’t get nearly this dark at home, I kept thinking. I pushed forward—every step arbitrary and necessary.

The forest had to end somewhere. Eventually, it would open up and I could follow the glow of city lights from miles away. What I would do when I got to the city was a problem for another time. Surely, I would stand out and I couldn’t risk being seen.

That was not a problem in the forest, though. Even if there were people around, it would be far too dark to notice even the most distinct features. It was only going to get worse before it got better. The forest was getting darker and thicker as I went deeper, and the sounds of wildlife that usually comforted me were absent. All I could hear now were my own footsteps crushing the leaves and twigs beneath me, and the chattering of small animals in the distance. It was as if they were gossiping behind my back, like they knew something I didn’t.

The feeling of being watched by something much bigger than those little chattering animals sunk in. I moved faster, faster. With every fork in the path and every tree dividing the way, the choices I made were reflexive and blind. The dense foliage in the night was blue on black. It was a smokescreen in a hall of mirrors. Until finally, I could make out a clearing up ahead.

I hurried over to it only to be disappointed by my own ship, sitting there in the deep scar it made upon the land. I rolled my eyes from the edge of the treeline and groaned in silence. This whole time I was going in one big circle. It occurred to me that I might be better off staying the night and moving on with my mission in the morning when I can get my bearings.

I noticed the hatch on my flier was down, which was odd because I remembered leaving it open. Just as I made a move toward my flier to get a closer look, a figure emerged from the hatch. And another. I hid behind a large rock at the tree line, keeping them in sight.

They were certainly humans. They stood up tall and had long limbs. Their movements were slow and their voices were deep. I had never seen a real human before, only pictures.

They were speaking, but it was pure nonsense. I touched my earpiece, turned on the translator, and listened closely. The translator scrambled through several different languages before finding the right one.

“I just have this weird vibe, you know?” one of them said. “Like we stumbled onto something sacred. All those markings in there…who knows where this thing came from, man.”

“I don’t feel too good,” the other one said, holding his abdomen. “We shouldn’t have touched that thing. It’s probably some high tech government ship, just leaking radiation all over this place.”

“The government!?” the first one responded. “You think the government can make this thing? No. No. This is alien for sure. Just look at this clearing. It’s a perfect circle, bro. Aliens are always thinking about geometries and shit. It’s always like a map to the stars or something.”

The human made a move to the edge of the clearing on the other side of the ship. I scurried around the rock to keep them in sight. They both froze and looked at each other and then looked in my direction. I hid behind the rock.

“Did you hear that?” the one with radiation sickness said.

The other one spoke in a whisper that I couldn’t hear. I remained behind the rock, hoping they would be more afraid of me than I was of them. There were footsteps rustling grass and leaves from the other side of the rock. I held my weapon close to my chest. One human jumped out around the rock. I squared up and aimed my weapon, but the other human kicked me to the ground from behind before I could fire. I dropped my weapon and lost it in the darkness.

I rolled over onto my back. I was three quarters their size. Before I could get back up, they attacked me. I had no chance without my weapon. Instinctively, I curled up into a ball and took blow after blow. They kicked and stomped; their feet were huge. My shell was for protecting me while I sleep inconspicuously on the forest floor, not for full on attacks by a species significantly more powerful than me. It barely held up. One of them got my tail pretty good.

They must have stopped at some point after I passed out from the pain. When I came to, they were back by the ship trying to figure out what to do.

My whole body ached. My fur was ruffled. I could barely hold my head up straight. One of my four hind legs wouldn’t bend right.

“That thing was like a six-legged raccoon,” one of them said. “Obviously alien.”

“It was like an aardvark. It was too earth-like. That thing is a freaky government experiment and if we tell anybody what we saw, they’re gonna wipe our memories or some crazy shit. I don’t want to get involved. Uh-uh, not today.”

I rolled over onto all six and quietly felt around for my weapon.

“What the hell is a giant intelligent six-legged raccoon-aardvark hybrid government experiment doing flying a spaceship?” the first one said, as if his point was proven. “Alien.”

I kept reaching around and loudly smashed a twig. I looked back at them and they were looking over at me. They jumped into action and I felt around faster. Finally, I grabbed the metal handle, rolled over onto my back and fired a shot at each of them from the ground. Mid-sprint, their flesh burned to a crisp and disintegrated, leaving nothing but bones falling to the ground, just as it was designed to do. I sprung backwards as one of their hands landed on my tail.

The pure white skeletons in front of me laid there, lifeless, and I let out a big sigh of relief. I got up onto my hind legs and limped over to my flier, holding the weapon tight. I climbed in and tried closing the hatch before checking to see if the ship would start up again, but the door wouldn’t close all the way; the frame was bent out of shape.

I got the power on, but the engines wouldn’t start. There was at least static over the radio. “This is Hitchens,” I said. “Do you copy?”

“Hitchens,” a voice came over. “This is the mother ship. What’s your location?”

“Unknown. Engine failure occurred. I went down in a forest.”

“Understood. Send up a light signal. We’ll search every forest near your last known location.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“We’re going to need all the help we can get. From the reports we’re getting, these humans are harder to kill than we thought. We might have to recalibrate our weapons.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” I told him.

“Over.”

I sat back and flipped a switch on, shooting a beam of light into space. That’s when I glanced over at the rock I was hiding behind and noticed something off. The skeletons weren’t there. I squinted harder at it thinking it was just too dark, but there was no hint of bones in sight.

And then, a skeleton jumped onto the front of my ship. It’s black holes for eyes stared at me. I froze. That’s when I realized the hatch was still cracked open. I wedged it open and tried slamming it shut. Over and over. But it just. Wouldn’t. Close.

I opened it again and the second skeleton came out from the woods, grabbed it in midair and held it open. It looked down at itself and at its free hand and over at the other skeleton, mystified by what it was experiencing.

I let go of the hatch door and grabbed my weapon. I fired at the one holding the door. The skeleton glowed blue, and every time I shot it it glowed brighter and brighter. He squeezed its free hand in a fist. There was no flesh, but I could see a menacing smile. It ripped the hatch door clean off. The one on the front of the craft stepped up with a heavy foot and shattered the windshield.

Immediately, I curled up into a ball, clutching my weapon. They grabbed me and threw me onto the ground outside the ship. They kicked and punched an already fragile body. I’m not sure if it had something to do with the energy of the weapon or just the fact that there was no flesh, but every blow struck deeper. I was desperate for a way out of this.

That’s when I got the bright idea. It was risky. There was no reason to think it would work on me the way it worked on humans. But I had no choice—it was too much. While I was still curled up in a ball, I fumbled around with the weapon, got it aimed at my chest, and pulled the trigger.

There was a fiery pain that ran deep into me. It was excruciating. I clenched every bone in my body and tightened up my ball. There was a purifying, electrifying sensation throughout my body. Everything went black.

My eyes didn’t open, they just turned on. My furry tail wasn’t furry anymore. I didn’t feel any pain. There was no flesh to feel pain.

It was too dark to see anything curled up in my ball, so I uncurled and looked at myself. My entire body was just bluish-gray bones.

The other two were still kicking me from the back, but I held my ground firm. I looked at the gun, wondering how this was possible. It kept my bones going when my flesh wasn’t there. Sometimes I wonder if it just turned my flesh into raw energy—like it’s still there but we just can’t see it.

I figured if the gun worked once, there was no harm in trying it again. I aimed it at my chest and pulled the trigger. I could feel the raw power coursing through me. My bones moved with the energy of a thousand stars.

I jumped up and smacked them both across the skulls with my paddle shaped tail. They were brushed back, but unaffected. I felt no pain. They felt no pain. None of us knew how to kill the other. It was a standoff.

One of the skeletons slapped the chest of the other and pointed into the forest. They both ran off, realizing there was nothing more to be done there.

I got back in my ship, feeling rejuvenated. I tried to call out over the comms, but no sounds came out, so I sat and waited.

It wasn’t too long before a saucer flew down from the sky. The rescue party got out and flashed a light on me, horrified by what they saw. I curled up into a ball to indicate I wasn’t a threat, as is customary on our planet. I rolled over to them and uncurled, letting them take a closer look.

They were hesitant at first, but they approached me. They shined a light in my eye sockets and up and down my body. They looked at themselves and compared. They asked questions, but I couldn’t give answers.

They scraped and squeezed my bones. I knew that would be the beginning of endless poking and prodding, and tests and experiments. That would be torture for any other being, but if it meant helping the war effort, so be it. I would sacrifice myself a thousand times over. These humans won’t know what hit them.

Besides, I couldn’t feel pain. How bad could it really be?

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