Independence Day: Resurgence: The Official Movie Novelization (21 page)

* * *

The evacuation order issued by Earth Space Defense got to the salvage ship
Alison
at absolutely the worst time.

They had just received a visual showing a World War II-era freighter that had been torpedoed off the Maldives, years earlier, with what Captain McQuaide suspected was a hold full of gold. McQuaide and Boudreaux—his tech specialist who was operating the remote submersible—took pictures of the shipwreck. His radio operator Ana-Lisa stuck her head into the room.

“They’re ordering all ships out of the area, Captain!” she said.

“
Putain
,” Boudreaux swore.

McQuaide tapped the monitor. “There’s a hundred million dollars’ worth of gold on that ship. If they think I’m going to leave it, they’re out of their minds.”

His first mate, Jacques, called from the deck. “Captain, you better come see this!”

McQuaide left Boudreaux to his work and went out onto the deck.

The sky had disappeared. From horizon to horizon, the vast hull of an alien spaceship loomed behind a roiling layer of fiery clouds.

Suddenly McQuaide understood the evacuation order. He crossed himself reflexively… but he wasn’t pulling
Alison
out. Not just yet.

* * *

Jasmine moved through the chaos in the hospital hallways, trying to coordinate evacuations, and find out where Dylan was. He’d been on the Moon, she knew that much, and she knew the Moon Base was gone. One of the nurses had told her that she saw Legacy Squadron flying before the base was destroyed, which gave Jasmine hope. If Dylan had made it into the air—well, vacuum—anything was possible.

She turned to a nearby TV, where a newscaster was talking over a graphic plotting the trajectory of the invader.

“It seems the alien ship is making its way over the Middle East. These are the latest images sent by Al-Jazeera…”

The graphic disappeared, replaced by shaky footage of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building on Earth, being torn free of its foundations and coming apart as it was sucked up into the burning clouds above. Next the same scene was repeated from Singapore, Dubai… All over Asia and the Middle East, the alien ship was uprooting and destroying cities just by passing over.

God
, she thought.
What will happen if it actually decides to attack?

* * *

Jake was concocting a plan to break free of the alien ship. He didn’t know what that plan was, exactly, but he was busy concocting anyway. Sooner or later the gravitational grip would have to lessen, or else it would end up covered with bits and pieces of the Earth. Surely the aliens didn’t want that. If they’d wanted a collision, they wouldn’t have slowed the ship down. So, Jake reasoned, there would come a chance to escape. He wanted to be ready.

He also wanted it to be worthwhile. It had occurred to him that the piece of wreckage from the spherical ship might not have survived reentry, so he’d sent Charlie back to look at it.

“Give me some good news, Charlie,” he called out.

“It’s still there!” Charlie answered.

Excellent
, Jake thought. So he hadn’t commandeered the tug and risked death for nothing. Now he could concentrate on figuring out how to get the hell out of there. Behind him, he heard Floyd Rosenberg ask Charlie a question that had in fact been on Jake’s mind, as well.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that they’re back on the same day, twenty years later?”

“It’s quite simple, actually,” Charlie said, as if he’d spent a lot of time thinking about it—which maybe he had. Jake wouldn’t be surprised. “Orbital mechanics. If they’re using wormholes, our relative position in the rotation of the galaxy could be a factor. June 30th, 1908, the Tunguska Blast, July 3rd, 1947, the Roswell crash, July 2nd, 1996, the Invasion.” He paused, thinking it over. “Or it could just be a coincidence.”

Got it
, Jake thought.
Orbital mechanics. Coincidence. Same diff.

“Uh-oh,” David said. “That’s not good.”

Out of the window they saw that the ship wasn’t just dragging along pieces of the Moon and the mother ship anymore. Dozens of passenger jets appeared below them, spinning up from the ground and breaking apart as they got closer to the vessel or collided with each other. A massive hangar emblazoned DUBAI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT in English and Arabic rose with them.

One of the planes was close enough that Jake could see the panicked faces of the passengers inside. It was a sight he would never forget.

* * *

The new hybridized Air Force One got from D.C. to Cheyenne Mountain in the time it used to take to go from the capital to Baltimore. President Lanford and her entourage fought through fierce mountain winds toward the massive steel doors embedded in the rock face. Inside was the most secure facility in the world.

“It’s touching down over the Atlantic,” Tanner said after a brief consultation with one of the aides.

Lanford needed more detail. “Which part?”

Tanner paused. “All of it, ma’am.”

My God
, she thought. “We have to expect major seismic activity. Issue an evacuation order for every coastline.”

“There’s no time,” Tanner protested as the door finished swinging open.

“Just do it! If we save one life, it’ll be worth it.” Enough people were going to die, Lanford thought, anger welling up inside of her. Too many already had. Every single life had to be treated as the most precious resource they had.

The presidential entourage walked into Cheyenne Mountain and the steel doors swung shut, sealing them inside.

* * *

“We’ve just been given a full evac order!” Jasmine called out as she raced down a hallway. She had already been moving out every patient who didn’t need to be there, but now she had to empty the entire building, and fast. “We have less than twenty minutes to get every patient out of here!”

“We still have two in surgery,” one of the charge nurses said, consulting the operating-room schedule.

“Get them into post-op as fast as you can!” Jasmine answered as she turned into a nearby delivery room where a young woman was in the middle of having a baby. She was alone. Jasmine swore that when she found out who had abandoned her, there were going to be some job openings, if not criminal proceedings.

“They just left me here!” the woman shrieked. “Please don’t let my baby die!”

“I got you, honey,” Jasmine said, examining her. The baby had already crowned. “Your baby’s going to be just fine, but I’m going to need you to push, with everything you got!”

The woman screamed as the next contraction hit and she pushed with everything she had. Jasmine looked over her shoulder. She had scissors, blankets, the whole delivery setup in place. She could do this herself, as long as the mother-to-be didn’t have any complications. If she did…

Jasmine refused to think about that. As the young woman’s scream trailed away, she worked the baby’s head free.

They might just make it
, she thought.

God
, Jake thought.
How much bigger can you build something?
It didn’t seem impossible to him that when this ship landed, it would tip the Earth off its axis. It was that big.

Some of the debris sucked up by the ship’s passage over Asia started to fall away, and the tug also started to move.

“What goes up must come down…” David muttered.

Sourpuss
, Jake thought. “We’re free!” he shouted.

“We’re upside down!” Catherine said.

“Don’t worry,” Jake said. “We’re in a controlled dive.”

David gripped the armrests of his chair, his flight panic back in full force.

“We’re falling!” he cried. “It’s called
falling
!”

Jake eased the tug away from the alien ship and maneuvered through what seemed like a never-ending barrage of obstacles appearing from the clouds. After the shock of seeing the fleet of passenger jets destroyed, it was almost an anticlimax when Kuala Lumpur’s famous Petronas Towers appeared out of nowhere—except they were aimed right at the tug. Everything seemed to be flying in every direction, as if the vessel had scrambled gravity, instead of just letting them all go.

He gunned the tug’s engine and did a barrel roll between the two towers just as the sky bridge between them collapsed and they crashed into each other. Pieces of the Moon and human cities pounded against the tug’s exterior. Nevertheless, Jake could tell they were moving. They were free!

A moment later they came out of the debris field, and Jake was shocked to discover that they were above London. A giant statue of Buddha had decapitated Big Ben, and the London Eye toppled toward him as he kept the throttle maxed out, hauling the tug out of the ship’s gravity.

“Hold on!” he bellowed, and everyone else screamed, too, like they were on some crazy roller coaster as they shot under the falling wheel and breasted a huge wave of spray from the Thames. Jake turned away from the river, heading southwest over the city, at last free of the alien ship.

Hey
, he thought.
Turns out I was right. We actually
are
headed for Area 51.

Pushing maximum speed for the thick atmosphere at sea level, Jake rocketed across the Atlantic Ocean toward the east coast of the United States. Above them, the alien ship stopped its descent. Huge landing petals, each one a hundred miles long, began unfolding from its underbelly and descending toward the surface. It was awe-inspiring, and also freaking terrifying, and Jake couldn’t wait to get out from under the ship and see the sun again.

Behind him he heard Catherine crying.

“Are you okay?” David asked.

“My mother lives in London,” she said quietly through her tears.

David was silent for a moment. “Maybe she made it out,” he said, even though none of them believed it.

His phone rang. Frowning, David answered it.

“Dad! Where are you?”

* * *

As soon as David answered, Julius started right in.

“David! This is definitely bigger than the last one!”

“You can see it?” David’s voice crackled through a bad connection. “Where are you?”

“On my boat, where else?” What was he going to be doing? Selling books? Going to fancy anniversary celebrations? No. And not catching fish, either.

He’d gone out on the boat to avoid people and catch fish, but he had only managed one of those things. At least he’d been by himself, but even the pleasure of solitude was ruined when he turned on the radio. Every station he could get was broadcasting the big shindig in Washington.

“The world has turned today’s twentieth anniversary memorial into a victory celebration,” a radio announcer had said, going on and on as Julius Levinson floated in the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas coast. He was irritated, and not just at the guy on the radio.

At his son who never called.

At the people who never bought his books.

At the fish who never bit.

“And what a day for it,” the announcer added. “All weekend we’re looking at blue skies for most of the Gulf.” Julius cast again, and retrieved. Behind him in the cabin sat boxes of his book. He carried them everywhere he went.

“That
verkackte
celebration!” he shouted at the fish who weren’t biting. “You know that they didn’t invite me? Me! My son just saved the world. Twice! And that’s the thanks I get.” He quieted down before he went on, feeling a little self-conscious about yelling, even though there was no one to hear him. “Instead I’m here talking to fish. They never bite. If I want fish, I have to go to the fish store.”

* * *

An hour or so later he’d changed the station, not wanting to hear anything more about the celebration. He’d also given up on fishing and was in his cabin frying a steak on the small stove. Maybe it jinxed him, bringing so much extra food on a fishing trip, but it was sure as hell better than being hungry.

The radio crackled in the middle of a song that had been popular when Julius was younger than David.
Must be a storm somewhere
, Julius thought, remembering the weather report from a while ago. “Schmucks can’t even get the weather right!” he groused as he saw dark clouds through the cabin window, distant in the east.

Stepping out of the cabin to get a better view, Julius understood right away that there had been nothing wrong with the weather forecast. The clouds were full of fire, roiling as something immense, spanning much of the horizon, moved within.

“That’s not bad weather,” Julius said out loud. He’d seen it before. “I have to call my David.”

But first he got the boat moving.

* * *

“Listen to me,” David said when Julius caught him up. His voice was deformed and wobbly, almost robotic from the interference. “You have to get to shore as fast as you can—Dad?”

“I’m here!” But the cell connection failed. Julius shouted into the phone for another minute, then gave up.

Looking back over his shoulder toward the alien ship, he watched the landing foot extend, unfolding out and down, wider than… he didn’t know. Bigger than anything he’d ever seen. Miles wide. When it hit the water, the wave it created looked like it could crest over the Eiffel Tower. Julius kept the throttle rammed all the way open. He didn’t know how fast the wave was moving, but it was faster than he was. He had to try to ride it out somehow and hope he could drift down the back, instead of getting caught inside of it when it finally broke over land.

He buckled himself into his fishing chair as a nearby oil rig bent and tore apart. Farther away a tanker disappeared into the wall of water.

Julius somehow made it to the top of the wave, riding incredibly high. There were buildings approaching. How long had he been doing this? He’d lost track of time. It was hell being an old man.

Still riding the wave, the boat surged through the first rank of high rises. The buildings flashed by on either side, one of them so close Julius felt as if he could have snatched a takeout menu from one of the windows slipping by.

What city was this even? He didn’t recognize it, and he didn’t have time to figure it out, because after that first near miss Julius wasn’t so lucky the second time.