Independence Day: Resurgence: The Official Movie Novelization (20 page)

* * *

Inside Jake’s tug, he piled into the pilot’s chair as Charlie got out of the way.

“We gotta move!”

“Not without that piece!” David said from behind him. Through the tug’s cockpit windows, Jake saw the alien ship coming even closer. It was on a collision course with the Moon, and it was big enough that Jake wasn’t sure which of them would survive the impact.

But they might just have enough time to swoop under it and nab the piece of wreckage. The derring-do of that idea appealed to Jake. Also, if David Levinson thought it was that important, it probably was.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Jake said. “Charlie, get on the arms.”

Shooting him a glance that said
Are you fucking crazy?
Charlie strapped himself into the rear turret that controlled the tug’s gripping arms, while Jake gunned the tug into a sharp turn back toward the spherical ship’s wreckage. Huge chunks of falling debris from the old mother ship exploded around them as each hit the surface.

None of the falling pieces had hit the precious thing, whatever it was. Jake pulled the tug into place over the top of it and hovered there. Charlie extended the arms and drew them in around the wreckage.
Almost there
, Jake thought. He’d never wanted anything as badly as he wanted Charlie to get that thing on board, so he could fire the fusion engine and get them the hell out of there.

The tug lurched as falling debris hammered into it. Jake swung it back around and steadied it. The alien ship was closer, way too close. Jake felt like it was going to squash them any second. Charlie got the arms out and Jake held the tug perfectly still…

Kachunk!
The arms closed around the piece of wreckage.

“Got it!” Charlie called.

Jake slammed the thrusters to full speed and the tug leaped up and away just as a huge piece of the alien vessel plowed into the surface right where they’d just been. He hauled ass away from that spot, pieces of debris bouncing off the tug as he took a direct approach to Somewhere Else.

“Please stop hitting things!” Floyd Rosenberg shouted.

Sure
, Jake thought.
You bet. No problem.

The alien ship was so big that it seemed to have its own gravity. Huge chunks of the Moon, torn loose by its proximity, tumbled toward the tug. As the gargantuan vessel scraped along the surface, even more of the landscape was torn loose and sent hurtling in every direction.

“There’s a flying mountain coming right at us!” Charlie screamed.

“I am aware!” Jake dove out of its way, pushing the tug to the absolute limits of its maneuverability.

“This is gonna be tight!” he said. The tug eased under what was, indeed, a flying mountain, barely skimming over the Moon’s surface and emerging just as the mountain ground itself to pieces upon impact. The alien ship continued its inexorable progress toward them.

“Now would be a good time to kick in that fusion drive!” David suggested.

“There’s too much debris!” If he fired it now, Jake knew they’d be moving too fast to avoid all the pieces of the Moon and the mother ship pelting the lunar surface. They had to get underneath it and away.

The alien ship ground along the Moon’s surface, tearing up new mountain-sized pieces of rock and flinging them out in front of it. Then Jake saw daylight—or more accurately, starlight. Open space between the bottom of the ship and the surface of the Moon.

He went for it, and they made it, just barely, the tug roaring only a few meters from the hull of the alien ship with the precious piece of wreckage still gripped firmly in its cargo arms. Then they slowed down.

Jake gunned the engines.

Still they slowed down.

What the hell…?

Finally he understood. The alien ship was dragging them back, holding them in its own gravity as if the tug was just another piece of debris. He struggled with the controls, trying to ease them free of the ship’s pull, but it wasn’t working.

“Shit! I can’t get free!”

“Jesus, it has its own gravity!” David marveled. “It’s pulling us in.”

“What does that mean?” Catherine asked. Jake wasn’t sure what she meant. The answer seemed pretty clear to him.

“It means we’re going for a ride, lady,” he said.
But maybe not for long
, he added mentally, as he saw the Moon Base cannon powering up and pointing right at them. They were about to take their shot at the alien ship, and everyone aboard the tug had the misfortune to be right in the crosshairs. “They’re gonna shoot at us,” he added, in case everyone hadn’t already figured that out.

“That’s good, they should shoot at us!” Levinson said. He leaned into the radio and shouted, “Shoot at us! Stop us!”

“So this is how I die!” Charlie shouted.

Jake thought maybe this time he was right.

The cannon’s blast was a green flash that blinded them to everything else for a moment. Then it vanished. Everything vanished. For a split second Jake thought this was what it was like to be dead… then the world reappeared, and he figured out what had happened.

Just like last time, in the War of ’96, the alien ship had shields that could handle human weaponry—even if that weaponry had been “borrowed” from the aliens themselves.

Then why did it work on the spherical ship
, he wondered.
If it was made by the same aliens, why didn’t it have the same shields?

Jake hoped they would live long enough for him to ask David about that. Right then, he wouldn’t have bet on it.

* * *

“Arm the primary and fire again!” Commander Lao ordered in the Moon Base command center.

Dylan had cut the feed from Washington, D.C., figuring it was more important for Legacy Squadron to coordinate with the Moon Base and possibly Area 51. He was filled with a fury so deep it was as if he had always been carrying it, and was only now letting it out.

On the twentieth anniversary, they came
back
?

The alien ship, still moving on its inexorable track around the Moon, opened a portal in part of its hull. Thousands of moving parts rearranged themselves, revealing a monstrous cannon, larger than the Moon Base’s turret weapon by a factor of… fifty? A hundred?

The scale of it beggared the imagination.

Come on, Lao
, he thought.
Fire that cannon. Maybe they have to let their shields down to use their weapon.
He and the rest of Legacy could only watch uselessly as the alien ship shifted its aim, pointing directly at the Moon Base. Rain Lao shouted something in Chinese. Dylan recognized the name Jiang—her uncle Lao’s name…

Then the alien ship discharged its cannon, and the Moon Base disappeared in an explosion that tore away a kilometers-long swath of the Moon’s surface.

Through his initial shock, Dylan realized they had to act. They couldn’t hit the ship, not if its shields could handle the turret cannon. More importantly, they now had the expanding field of debris to contend with. Away to his left, one of the squadron’s fighters veered to avoid a spinning chunk of rock the size of Long Island—and didn’t quite make it. The flash of its explosion was tiny next to the massive new asteroid.

Rain’s fighter was going in a straight line, like she didn’t even notice the debris. Another nearby fighter got caught by two pieces and couldn’t make it between them.

“Rain! Watch out!” he shouted. She was about to collide with another piece.

Nothing.

Dylan dodged through the debris field toward her and fired, blasting the enormous rock into a thousand smaller pieces that fanned out around her. Her fighter angled to one side as she snapped out of it. On the comm he could hear her crying.

“There’s nothing you could have done,” he said, knowing it was useless. Yet it was true. Against that ship, there was nothing any of them could have done. “Rendezvous at Area 51,” he ordered, and Legacy Squadron shot away from the alien ship, away from the gaping wound in the surface of the Moon, toward Earth.

All of it, gone so fast. They had all been so proud of what they’d done, and the alien ship had erased it in a single shot. Dylan hoped the brain trust back at Area 51 had some ideas, because if they didn’t, the second alien war wasn’t going to end as well as the first. The aliens had upped their game.

Could the human race do the same?

The crowd on the National Mall dissolved into a screaming mob. Agent Travis helped Whitmore get into a limo. Patricia hung back, staring at the huge screen. It had gone blank. The feed from the Moon was gone. That could only mean the Moon Base was gone.

And Jake was gone, too.

“Patricia!” Travis shouted. “We have to leave!”

She climbed into the limo and Travis squealed away toward the White House. They arrived as President Lanford and Secretary Tanner were being rushed toward the hybrid choppers Marine One and Two, their engines whining and rotors cutting the air. A military aide was briefing them as they ran across the South Lawn.

“You mean it’s gonna ram us?” Tanner said incredulously.

“It’s projected to enter Earth’s atmosphere in twenty-two minutes,” the aide answered. “If it doesn’t alter its current velocity, it could crack our planet in half.”

“Initiate the Orbital Defense System. Throw everything we’ve got at them.” Lanford didn’t have much faith it would work—not after what had just happened on the Moon, and Mars, and Rhea—but they had to try.

The aide ran to execute her order as she and her entourage boarded Marine One. As she got on board, Lanford saw Tom Whitmore, with Patty and Agent Travis, climbing into Marine Two. Then they were in the air, and she had a moment to plan for what she would have to do next.

* * *

Jake and Charlie and the rest of the group on the tug—including Dikembe, who had recovered from his episode and was staring stone-faced out of the cockpit windows—had a great view of the approaching line of orbital defense stations as the alien ship approached them. They were Earth’s near-space line of defense, a geostationary ring of cannon turrets just like the one that had been installed on the Moon.

The tug was still stuck to the bottom of the alien ship, but their comms were working, and they had an open feed from Area 51. An officer was in the middle of issuing firing orders.

“All orbital defense cannons, power up your primary weapon and prepare to engage.”

David got Adams’s attention. “General, you have to make sure the cannons fire simultaneously.” They wouldn’t be powerful enough to do sufficient damage otherwise.

“Will you be able to get clear in time?”

“Don’t worry about us,” David said. “Just stop them.”

“Copy that,” Adams answered after a brief pause. “All orbital defense cannons initiate simultaneous countdowns.”

Each orbital station boasted a small crew to maintain and aim the cannons. Within seconds, the lead officers on each station reported back.

“Ready to fire.” A tech down at Area 51 started the countdown.

David nodded at what they were hearing.

“Good,” he said. “We’re coordinating our attack.”

“What’s good about that?” Charlie yelled. “They’re gonna shoot at us again!” But they never had the chance, because just as Charlie spoke, a barrage of energy beams lanced out from the alien ship and annihilated the entire picket of orbital turrets.

* * *

Shortly after lifting off from the South Lawn, Marine Two landed between Air Force One and a looming hybridized C-130 Hercules transport aircraft. Travis had his Secret Service earpiece pressed tightly into his ear as he listened to a report from somewhere. He turned to Patricia, who was staring out of the window, feeling empty from the loss of Jake.

Why had they fought the last time they’d talked? Now she would never—

“Jake’s alive!” Travis said. “He’s with Director Levinson. They’re on their way to Area 51.”

Tears of joy filled Patricia’s eyes. She couldn’t believe it. All that destruction, the entire base gone, and Jake had survived? Maybe that was a good omen. They got out of the car and headed toward the Hercules, which was going to Area 51. Air Force One, with the president, would be on its way to the nuke-proof command center at Cheyenne Mountain.

Lanford and her staff were passing the limousine as Patricia got out.

“Madam President,” she said, “can you take my father to Cheyenne Mountain?”

“Yes, of course,” Lanford answered.

Whitmore shook his head. “I’m coming with you, Patty.”

“Please, Dad, you’ll be safer there,” she protested, but he was already walking toward the C-130. She gave up and turned back to the president. “Good luck.”

President Lanford nodded somberly. “Good luck to us all.”

They separated then, and Patricia wondered how many of these people she would see again.

* * *

Jake had perhaps overstated things to the lieutenant at Area 51 when he said they were on their way. That depended on their being able to get free of the alien ship, which wasn’t yet a done deal. He’d just wanted to make sure Patty knew he was okay, and what did it hurt to spread a little optimism around?

God knew they all needed it.

The front of the alien ship had started to breach Earth’s atmosphere, glowing red from the resistance. Violent cloud fronts began to roil along the ship’s leading edge. The tug shook so violently that Jake started to wonder if it would survive. Reentry was a lot easier when they weren’t attached to an object five hundred miles wide.

“Director Levinson,” Floyd Rosenberg said. “For the record, I will definitely recommend to my superior that you have all the money you need to make them go away.”

David didn’t even look at him. Right then, with giant pieces of lunar debris disintegrating into fireballs around them and an alien ship on a collision course with Earth, money was the least of their problems.

* * *

“Sir, the alien ship has entered the Earth’s atmosphere over Asia!” an aide reported as Lanford and her staff climbed the stairs to Air Force One.

Another aide chimed in. “We’re getting reports it’s slowed considerably.”

“Finally, some good news,” Tanner said.

“Not exactly. The slower it gets, the more gravity it seems to gain. The ship’s gravitational pull is fighting with Earth’s, creating some… side effects.” The aide showed them a tablet with video feeds from ESD fighter jets scrambled out of European and Asian bases, and Lanford realized just how euphemistic the phrase
side effects
had been.