Independence Day: Resurgence: The Official Movie Novelization (32 page)

“Not really,” Isaacs admitted.

Okun moved from image to image, wanting to touch them, feeling the knowledge start to pour into his head and open up spaces of comprehension he had never imagined he’d be able to find.

“This is going to catapult our civilization forward by thousands of years. Our understanding of space-time, physics, fusion energy, wormholes…”

“Calm down, honey,” Isaacs said, and he sounded worried.

“I don’t want to calm down!” Okun cried out. This was the greatest thing that could ever have happened to him. Who could be calm at a time like this?

* * *

Outside, Area 51 was a war zone. The alien fighters were focused on the destroyer cannon, and with little aerial support, the ground crews couldn’t defend it for long. A final salvo from swooping fighters destroyed the turret mount, sending the cannon itself toppling straight into the outside wall of the prison wing.

The impact crushed half of the wing. It shattered the interior walls, and the bay window looking from the prison monitoring station into the cell blocks themselves. Alien prisoners spilled out of their destroyed cells.

“Command!” one of the panicking techs shouted into the comm. “We have a breach!”

“How bad?” Adams asked.

The tech looked into the shattered rubble. It was crawling with aliens. “At least two dozen, sir.”

“Under no circumstances can they see the sphere,” Adams commanded. “Do whatever it takes!”

One of the prison techs went to a weapons locker while the other shut and locked the doors to the isolation chamber. Inside the chamber, Okun watched the sphere turn itself off and settle to the ground.

“That can’t be good,” he said.

The two frightened prison techs aimed their blasters toward the broken windows. They couldn’t see the aliens anymore, only hear the echoing sound of their shrieks.

“Did you hear that?” the first one said. It sounded to him like they were getting closer, but he couldn’t tell from what direction.

“We need backup down here! Now!” the other shouted into the comm.

* * *

Patricia kept a constant stream of fire focused on the queen, but her shields were still holding up. The school bus was going to be a flattened wreck in seconds.

“All pilots, target the queen,” she said. “Unload everything you’ve got!” They did so, and their combined power staggered the huge extraterrestrial, starting to overload her shield. It was wearing down under the constant barrage, but she recovered and kept after the bus.

* * *

Inside, all of the kids were staring out of the back windows, watching her get closer and closer. Nothing was stopping her. They were quiet, realizing that this wasn’t an adventure anymore. Their lives were actually on the line.

The queen recovered from the latest fighter barrage and gathered herself. Then she leapt into the air, vaulting over the bus.

“That thing just jumped into the air!” Henry shouted.

David couldn’t quite hear him. “What did he just say?”

“Something about jumping!” Julius shouted.

David turned to ask Henry to repeat himself just as the queen landed a few yards in front of the bus with an earth-shaking impact. David swerved so hard that for a second he thought the bus was going to tip over—but after going up on two wheels it righted itself, and he kept going.

Overhead, alien fighters arrived to defend the queen, forcing the human fighters to break off their attack and defend themselves. Knowing she was taking her life in her hands with all the hostiles around, Patricia made one last direct run at the towering creature, hitting her with everything the hybrid fighter had. The shield flickered, absorbing the worst of the damage—but then it fizzled and sputtered out.

“Her shields are down!” Patricia shouted. Alien energy beams crackled past her, but she stayed focused on the primary target. “Open fire!” Banking hard, she hit the queen with another staccato burst of fire, but she’d come in too low. The queen leaped up and, with a swipe of one arm, tore off part of her fighter’s tail. Patricia started to spin in a tight descent, unable to see her surroundings through all the smoke from aerial explosions.

Then the ground was coming up fast—she knew that, but she had to time her ejection just right or she would shoot toward the ground, probably get her chute tangled in the plane, and be smeared all over the desert. Not her preferred outcome.

She struggled to get her plane under control, before determining that it wasn’t possible, and trying to gauge the pattern of her crazy spin. She thought she had it.

No time to make sure.

She pulled the eject lever, and was blown free of the crashing jet.

* * *

Floyd saw Dikembe react to something he heard over the base radio, and when Dikembe took off for the inside of the base, Floyd followed.

“Hey! Where are you going!?”

Dikembe didn’t answer. Floyd figured it out soon enough, though, when both of them got to the isolation chamber. It was sealed shut. Dikembe stabbed the intercom button.

“Open the door!”

“Your backup’s here!” Floyd added.

Through the window they saw the chamber open from the other side… the side facing the prison monitoring station. Smoke poured through, and within the smoke they saw an alien, dropping the lifeless prison tech it had used to key its entry.

The creature spotted the sphere as Okun and Isaacs turned and froze in terror. Floyd felt the pulse of a telepathic message flash through his brain. It didn’t hurt him, but Okun was much more vulnerable to them.

He seized his head and doubled over in agony.

* * *

Out on the salt flats, the queen stopped. Then she turned, breaking off her pursuit of the school bus and lumbering fast toward Area 51.

“She’s headed your way!” David called into the radio. What was going on? What had she heard? This wasn’t good. If she’d somehow learned of the real sphere…

He hauled the school bus around and headed after her, the roles of cat and mouse suddenly reversed.

“And why are we following her?” Julius demanded, right up next to the driver’s seat.

“Stay behind the yellow line, Dad!” David snapped.

* * *

Patricia made it safely to the ground, but was stuck in her ejection seat. Abruptly the queen made a turn straight toward her. Wrestling with the damaged flight harness she kept fighting, even though the alien’s immense feet were stomping closer and closer…

She wasn’t going to make it.

Then out of nowhere an alien fighter shot into view, peppering the queen with cannon fire and knocking her off balance. The step that would have crushed Patricia to jelly instead smashed down just a few feet away, and then the queen was gone past her.

The alien fighter looped and darted around the queen, blasting away at her damaged shield. Then there was another one, also firing. The shield still flickered, stopping some of their fire but not all of it. Smaller explosions blossomed along her biomechanical suit. Still she kept coming.

How was this possible? Why were the extraterrestrials firing on their own queen? Could they rebel against her? Or had Levinson figured out some way to get control of some of them? Did it have something to do with the sphere?

A lot of questions, and no answers. Patricia wasn’t going to get any answers, either, as long as she was trapped in the ejection seat. She returned to working the buckles, looking back and forth between them and the battle.

Suddenly the fighters careened out of control.

* * *

The alien message had momentarily crippled Dikembe as well. When he recovered, he turned to Floyd.

“She’s coming.”

* * *

Inside the isolation chamber, Okun and Isaacs saw two aliens with blasters come up to the glass. They raised the blasters, and Okun took Isaacs’ hand, resigned to his fate.

He was happy, in a way, that at least he had awakened in time that if they were going to die, they could die together.

The aliens opened fire, shattering the glass as Okun and Isaacs dove for cover.

* * *

Outside in the corridor, Floyd couldn’t tell exactly what was going on, but knew it was bad. It was time for action. It was time for Floyd Rosenberg to prove he was more than a bean counter, more than an observer while everyone else hogged all the heroic glory.

“Out of the way!” he shouted, and even though Dikembe didn’t move Floyd blasted the control panel. The door opened and Floyd unleashed a barrage from the blaster, shooting his way in with barely any idea of what he was shooting at. Blaster fire pocked the walls and blew out computer monitors, filling the room with smoke.

As it started to settle, Floyd looked around. All the aliens in the room were dead. He couldn’t believe it! He’d actually cowboyed his way into a rescue, and shot all the bad guys! Dikembe walked up behind him.

“I told you I’d figure it out,” Floyd said, maybe a little smugly.

Then he was jerked off balance as an alien tentacle snaked around his legs and pulled him to the side. He screamed, losing his blaster and flailing around, trying to get a grip on the smooth floor—but Dikembe was there, machete blades flashing out to sever the tentacle and then stab the life out of the wounded alien.

After that, it was really quiet for a moment. Dikembe studied him carefully.

“You talk too much,” he said.

* * *

Okun poked his head up from behind a research console.

“Baby, we’re saved!” he said.

Isaacs’ answer was a low agonized groan. Okun rushed over to him and saw that an alien blast had torn though his chest. He knelt beside Isaacs.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he said firmly.

Isaacs reached up to touch Okun’s face. “I love you so much,” he said, his voice weak. Shock was already setting in.

“Hey. We’ll get you to sick bay and fix you up,” Okun said. It was a bad wound, but the Whitmore Hospital was the best. They could help. He had to believe that.

“It’s too late,” Isaacs said. “Just… stay with me.”

Okun shook his head. “Don’t say that.” It couldn’t be true. He couldn’t have just awakened only to have Milton die on him. No.

“It’s okay,” Isaacs said.

What
, Okun thought. What was okay? “Who’s gonna water my orchids? Who’s gonna comb my hair? Who’s gonna remind me to put pants on?”

Isaacs smiled through his agony.

“You always made me laugh,” he said, his voice fading. “I’m so happy you’re back.” Then his eyes fluttered closed and he died in Okun’s arms. All Okun could do was watch him go, and think of the twenty years that the aliens had taken from them before they had returned to take Isaacs forever.

“More are coming!” Dikembe called out. He was watching through the broken windows.

Okun jumped up, his face a stony mask. It was the first time Dikembe or Floyd had ever seen him without a smile or a look of boyish wonder.

“Give me that,” he said, and he snatched the blaster out of Floyd’s hands.

“But, but that’s mine—” Floyd protested. Dikembe sheathed his machetes and picked up blasters from the dead aliens. He threw one to Floyd and they fanned out in the isolation chamber, guns trained on the door.

A moment later the aliens poured through the doorway and all three opened fire.

Without the destroyer cannon, the ground forces manning the approach to Area 51 did their best, but their small-arms fire couldn’t stop the queen. Battered as she was, she reached the complex of buildings and strode directly toward the prison wing. There she started tearing into the roof as the remaining hybrid fighters made firing run after firing run.

Her armor took everything they could throw at it, but she was weakening and appeared to know it. With a gesture she drew all of the alien fighter craft in around her, thousands of them, sending them into tight spins that surrounded her like a moving shield. The base forces fired at it, destroying some of the ships, but there were too many for their fire to penetrate and reach the queen.

“What the hell’s happening?” Dylan shouted. The world outside spun past.

“She’s using all her fighters as a shield!” Jake called back. That included the ship they were in.

“We gotta get out of this tornado!” Jake could barely hear Dylan’s voice over the sound of the vortex.

“Every tornado has an eye, right?” Dylan yelled back. “If we want to get a shot at her, we gotta get up there.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Charlie said over the comm. “We have no manual controls left!”

“Does this thing have a fusion drive?” Jake asked.

“Are you
nuts
? It’s made for outer space! Down here we’ll burn up!”

Aha
, Jake thought. “So that’s a yes. Just a short burst. I think it’s our only chance.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “Our only chance to die.”

A burst of interference from the radio was followed by the voice of a command center tech officer.

“Two minutes until Earth’s core breach…”

“Dylan, you’re ranking officer,” Jake said. “It’s your call.” They were spinning so fast that Jake could barely move from the g-forces, so he almost didn’t see Dylan’s smile as he spoke.

“You nearly killed me once,” Dylan said. “I survived that. Rain, are you in?”

“On three,” Rain said, all business.

Dylan reached for the fusion drive switch. “One… two…”

The fusion drives were designed for burns across thousands of miles at accelerations way beyond what a small, light ship could withstand against atmospheric friction. It was entirely possible that when Dylan and Rain hit the switches, their fighters would break apart into little fireballs, quickly lost in the tornado of spinning fighters.

“Three,” Dylan said.

“Aaaaaahhhhhhh!” Charlie screamed as the two craft burst straight up through the wall of fighters, tearing a path through the queen’s shield, moving so fast that the air seemed to burn and glow outside the cockpit windows. Jake’s vision went red from the g-forces, and even over the roar of the destruction around them he could hear the roaring of blood in his ears.

As quickly as they’d flipped the switches on, Dylan and Rain flipped them off again, but in that split second they’d shot two miles into the sky.