Independence Day: Crucible (The Official Prequel) (4 page)

“Near the big hangar, your beta target,” Control informed him.

“Yeah, well beta just became alpha,” he said. He turned and sped toward their second target, about four klicks away. He was halfway there when another missile leapt up to greet him. “Well, this is gettin’
way
too real,” he said.

He got a lock on it, launched one of his air-to-surface missiles, and broke hard to the right. This time he really did almost pass out, but he knew he couldn’t stop pushing. Without knowing exactly what the other missile was, he couldn’t be certain of its capabilities—but it was big, much bigger than his Maverick, which meant that it should be slower and less maneuverable.

It also had a head start.

He banked again, as he saw the blips on his radar rush toward convergence. Then he knew he had to eject. He was reaching to do it when the concussion hit him.

His first thought was that it was all over.

His second was that he was still thinking, and the F-18 was in the air, albeit completely out of control. He managed to kill the roll, but the stick was half dead in his hand, and the plane was becoming increasingly less responsive. He was in a dive and had a date with the dirt in about ten seconds.

Cursing, he ejected, knowing he had probably waited too long.

Jasmine
, he thought.
Dylan
.

There hadn’t been enough time.

* * *

“Okay, Munchkin,” Patricia’s father said gently. “I think it’s time for bed.” He reached for the remote on the bedside stand.

“Please, Daddy,” she pleaded. “Just one more?”

“You’ve already said that twice,” he said, “and I’ve given in twice. Anyway, you’ve seen all of these ten times.”

That was true. Patricia remembered that, not so long ago, there were all sorts of things on TV. Now they just had a few video tapes they watched over and over again. She liked it anyway, and looked forward to nightly TV with her daddy, because it made her feel safe. Like nothing had changed.

Even though everything had changed.

He turned off the television.

“Can I stay in here with you?” she asked. “I don’t want to go to my room. I don’t want to be alone.”

He nodded, sighed, and tousled her hair. “Sure,” he said.

“And can we leave the bathroom light on?” she pleaded.

“Yes ma’am,” he said. He got up and turned off the bedroom light, turned on the bathroom light, and half closed the door.

“Daddy?” she said. “When do we get to go back to our old house?”

“Patricia,” he said, very gently. “Haven’t we talked about this?”

“I know,” she said, “but I really want to go back there. I’m tired of being underground.”

“But we can’t, sweetheart,” he said. “Not yet. Our old house is gone—but you know what? We’re going to build a new one, right where it was before. You just have to wait a little while.”

“How long?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve already talked to some very important people about it, and we should get started soon.”

“Nobody is more important than you, Daddy,” she said.

He smiled. “Well, I’m glad you think so, but everyone is important, you know. Now get some sleep.”

She settled under the covers, closed her eyes and tried to imagine what their new house would be like. Maybe they could have a trampoline room this time. But no matter what else the new house had, there was one thing it wouldn’t have.

Mommy. Because Mommy was asleep, and she wasn’t going to wake up.

Patricia wept a little, but quietly. She was tired, and soon fell asleep anyway.

What woke her, she wasn’t sure at first, but then her father screamed again, and she knew. He was sitting straight up in the bed, and his eyes were open, like he was staring at something horrible, but there was nothing there.

“Daddy!” She grabbed his arm, and felt her heart pounding in her chest. He didn’t look at her, but he didn’t scream again—he just sat, breathing hard, looking at nothing. His lips were moving a little, but he wasn’t saying anything.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Are you okay, sir? Sir?”

“Daddy!” Patricia said again.

He blinked, and put his hand to his forehead. He looked down at her, and over to the door.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Just a nightmare. I’m alright.” He patted her arm. “I’m okay,” he said.

* * *

Hiller was still trying to sort up from down when something tried to knock all of his guts out. Everything went very white, like an overdeveloped photograph, and for a moment he couldn’t remember what was happening. Then it came back to him and he groped for his sidearm. The air was thick with the stink of burning jet fuel.

As his sight came back and the spinning in his head slowed a bit, he managed to detach his parachute and begin to get his bearings. With any luck, he had come down on the Russian side of the situation.

No, it seemed he’d used up a lot of his luck escaping the alien mother ship.

He had landed on the roof of a two-story building, which was probably the only reason the ETs weren’t swarming all over him. He lay flat, trying to assess the situation. The air was so full of smoke, there was at least a chance he hadn’t been seen yet, and he wasn’t in a hurry to help them spot his location.

He didn’t see any F-18s. He hoped they hadn’t all been blown out of the sky.

Through the smoke, he saw aliens, lots of them, decked out in their exoskeletons. Still no sign that they knew of his whereabouts, or that he had even survived. Maybe he hadn’t used up all of his luck after all. Now all he had to do was travel unseen through a few hundred aliens, reach the perimeter, and not get killed by friendly fire.

All good.

He scooted closer to the edge of the roof for a better look, and found himself looking down on the roof of a lower part of the building. For a few seconds he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Part of it was an anti-aircraft rocket launcher—not an alien weapon, but Russian-built. The launcher and its operator were facing away from him, but as the weapon swiveled to the right, he understood.

The operator was human, but an alien crouched behind him, holding him with the tentacles that sprouted from the back of its exoskeleton.

In 1947, an alien craft had crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, and for forty-nine years scientists had been studying the alien craft and the bodies of the creatures that had piloted it Because the creatures lacked vocal cords—and for several other reasons—the investigators early on speculated that they communicated by some sort of voodoo-telepathy bullshit.

They were only too right.

Not only could the aliens use it to communicate, they could use it as a weapon. The alien Hiller himself captured had nearly killed President Whitmore and put the lead scientist on the project—Dr. Okun—into a catatonic state he still hadn’t recovered from. This one was flat-out controlling a guy, like a puppet master.

He reconnoitered the rest of the rooftop and found that the other four sides presented him with a two-story jump. He was banged up enough as it was, without risking a twisted ankle or even a broken leg. He would do it if he had to, obviously, and the clock was ticking, because it was already well past noon. The aliens could see better at night than he could, due to night vision built or grown into their suits—the science guys were still trying to figure that stuff out. So he had to make a move sooner, rather than later.

* * *

He’d been waiting no more than ten minutes when he heard jets coming. When he saw them, he felt like whooping for joy, but then he noticed that of the nine they’d had at the start of the day, he now counted only three.

He was a little less excited when it occurred to him that they were coming to finish the job they had begun before the missile attack—and he was sitting pretty much on the bullseye. Moving quickly, he checked his sidearm and scrambled over to where he could see the anti-aircraft gun and its hybrid operating team.

The “crew” was in motion, tracking one of the approaching Knights.

“Oh, no, I don’t
think
so,” he said. He dropped the ten feet down to the lower roof and started sprinting toward the launcher. It felt good—he was tired of hiding. The alien started to turn at the last second, whipping a tentacle toward him, but he already had it in his sights. He put four bullets in its face before it went down.

The man slumped to the rooftop. Hiller was afraid one of the rounds had hit him, but the Russian was still alive, and Hiller didn’t see any wounds. He grabbed the fellow and started dragging him across the roof. When he got to the far edge, he heaved the soldier onto his shoulder.

“This is gonna hurt,” he said, and he jumped just as the F-18s screamed overhead. A missile took out the rocket launcher and most of the building. Hiller hit the ground with the weight of two men—a sharp pain in his ankle caused him to buckle and fall. Debris rained down, but he and the Russian were protected from the explosion, which hadn’t taken down the far end of the structure.

“I knew it,” he groaned. “I
knew
that was going to happen.” He rolled over and tried to stand, hoping the ankle wasn’t broken.

The Russian was already on his feet. His eyes were wide, ice-blue. His hands were gripped into fists.

“
Tchort
!” he screamed. “
Tchort v moi golovye
!”

Then he backed away, turned, and ran.

“Yeah,” Hiller said. “You’re welcome.”

The F-18s had made their pass—smoke and flames were everywhere. Hiller began to limp as fast as he could toward the allied lines. After about a hundred yards he hunkered down behind what was left of a wall and looked back.

The flash of green energy that disintegrated the concrete about six inches from his face wasn’t encouraging, and he ducked way down. He couldn’t be sure how many were following him, but thought he’d spotted as many as three.

“It’s a cakewalk,” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ but a cakewalk.”

He sprang up and ran for the next cover, a cluster of buildings another twenty yards away, trying to ignore the grinding pain in his ankle. If it wasn’t broken, he thought it was doing a damn good imitation.

He came under fire just as he ducked behind the nearest structure. He looked back and saw them coming over the first wall, about ten of them. They were gaining on him.

“Oh, no, fellahs,” he said. He picked one and started squeezing off rounds. His first two kicked up the dirt, but then he got two solid hits on one of them, and it staggered. The others came on.

He looked toward the United Nations positions. All that separated him from them was about two hundred yards of open ground. About a hundred and ninety-nine too many.

He changed clips and waited for the aliens to get closer, determined to take a few more with him.

Then he heard the thunder of low-flying jets. He threw himself flat behind the building as the oncoming enemies vanished in a blaze of napalm. Even with concrete protecting him, the heat was shocking. He smelled something burning and realized it was his own hair.

When it was over, he climbed painfully to his feet and continued toward the Russian lines, turning now and then to make sure none of the aliens had survived to follow him.

They hadn’t and they didn’t.

As he approached the allies he lit his cigar, thinking that lately he had spent way too much time walking away from fires.

The sea the Romans had once called “Our Sea” had been a busy place for millennia, but now it was dangerously awash with craft from aircraft carriers to rafts made of plastic jugs strapped together.

Dikembe shuddered to think how many hundreds or thousands must be dying daily there on the Mediterranean, fleeing death and destruction only to encounter more. The captain of the yacht, a Belgian named Jaan, gave orders to rescue those nearest to drowning, but drew the line at a hundred, a quota they quickly filled.

Without Hailey and the crew, Dikembe was acutely aware that he would probably be among those masses doomed to reach the bed of the Mediterranean rather than the farther shore they sought. When it was time for him to go, he expressed his thanks to her as best he could.

“You could just stay on with us,” she suggested.

“I appreciate that…” he said, “and everything else. But—”

“You need to get home,” she said. “I know. If I knew where my parents were, I’d be there so fast…”

“I truly hope they’re okay,” he said.

“Me too,” she said. She leaned up and kissed him.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ve got a little present for you. It’s not really mine to give, but in the shuffle, I don’t think it will be missed.”

The “present”—to his delight—turned out to be a motorcycle.

* * *

Algiers was rubble, so they dropped him in Tunis, where he began the dangerous, dubious business of crossing the Sahara.

The days blurred together. Few of the roads he traveled were paved for any great length, and many were little more than tracks. Finding fuel was at times challenging. He had American dollars, in addition to his pounds, which some people were still accepting. At other times he had to perform chores to fill up. On those occasions he felt more honest.

Most of the great cities on the African continent were on or near the sea, so the interior hadn’t been as severely affected, especially the rural regions. Life went on for many people as it had for centuries. In some villages he was met with great hospitality and offered food, drink, and shelter, even when the people had little for themselves.

There were hot spots, places where old tribal grievances were stirring up, just as there had been before the aliens came. Some borders were virtually unmanned, others were heavily guarded, and a few seemed to have shifted. On the way he heard a great deal of rumor and few facts. Nairobi had been destroyed, and Kinshasa, of that he could be fairly certain. The rest he took with a grain of salt.

At the end of a week, home was close enough he could almost smell it. The last of his journey took him through a mosaic of woodland and savanna. It was well into the wet season, and the enormous sky was always changing. Rain and wind bent the tall grass in long waves, like a restless pale green sea. Golden spears of sunlight struck through the charcoal hearts of the clouds. Come early afternoon, a double rainbow arced across the heavens. In the far distance, amongst the storm clouds clinging to the horizon, he thought he made out a peculiarly regular shape, almost like a vast, shallow dome. He thought that it might be the smoke of a massive grass fire, obscured by the clouds and distance.