*
There was no such excitement aboveground at Area 51. The effort to evacuate the refugees had begun in an organized fashion. A dozen or so people at a time were ushered inside and took the elevator down to the underground scientific complex, where they were being housed in the long clean room. But as soon as the sinister shape of the city destroyer became visible on the horizon, the camp broke into a panic. People ran into their trailers, searching for one or two last possessions to take with them, the last handfuls of their former lives. The soldiers organizing the elevator shipments were overwhelmed and, in the confusion, precious moments were lost.
Alicia, rampaging through the Casse motor home, couldn’t decide what to save. She’d already sent Troy running inside, promising to meet him soon. The door of the trailer swung open. Philip poked his head inside.
“Alicia, let’s go! They’re coming!”
“I know!” she yelled, picking up the first thing she saw, a large duffel bag filled with dirty clothes. She slammed against the walls trying to drag the heavy bundle toward the door. Philip jumped inside and took hold of the bag, giving her a moment to calm down.
“I’ll take the bag,” he said soothingly. “This is kind of a crazy first date, isn’t it?”
Alicia smiled and took a breath. He’d successfully brought her back to her senses. “Okay, Romeo, where are you taking me?”
Philip hoisted the bag onto one shoulder as they stepped out into the sunlight. Without letting Alicia see him do it, he glanced up to check the position of the approaching warship. All around them, panicked people scrambled in every direction, shouting for family members, sprinting for the open doors of the hangar. Alicia came outside and calmly put her hand in Philip’s. She liked this game, pretending this was a normal Sunday afternoon and that this delightful gentleman caller had invited her out for a stroll. While the confusion continued around them, they created a small island of serenity, walking across the sand toward the hangar as if they were strolling along the banks of a springtime river.
Their fantasy was abruptly ended when a hand landed on Alicia’s shoulder and spun her around. It was Miguel, covered with sweat from running all over the area. With a wild look in her eyes, he demanded to know, “Have you seen Russell? I can’t find him anywhere.”
*
Unseen by any of the people heading toward the shelter, something moved through the sky. Completely invisible, moving at the speed of light, it was picked up by the base’s radar dishes. It was a radio signal, instantly decoded by the machines in the war room. Flashing on the screen dedicated to monitoring radio contact with David and Steve’s ship were the words UPLOAD COMPLETE.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Grey said, admiring David and Steve’s work. He got on the radio. “Eagle One, this is Base. The delivery is complete. Engage.”
“With pleasure, Base.”
Whitmore was flying the lead position in a formation of the thirty fighters. When the clearance came, he gave the pilots on either side of him a visual signal, then accelerated. The others followed his example, increasing their speed for a bombing run on the city destroyer and buzzing over the top of many slower planes in the process. The bay doors at the bottom of Whitmore’s jet split open, allowing the first of his three AMRAAM missiles to drop down. Still in its launch harness, the laser guided nose cone computed its flight and locked on to the spot Whitmore had selected on his HUD. He punched one of the buttons and the missile blasted away.
Grey’s voice came over the radio. He was tracking the flight of the missile on radar. “Keep your fingers crossed,” he rasped.
“Come on, baby,” Whitmore said, watching the missile speeding away.
A quarter mile from the surface of the megaship, the AMRAAM exploded harmlessly, seeming to detonate in midair. The shields were still in place.
“Nothing,” one of the rookie pilots said, breaking onto the airwaves. “It blew up on the shield, didn’t make a scratch.”
“That’s it.” Grey had seen enough. “Eagle One, disengage immediately. I want you out of there ASAP.”
“Negative!” Whitmore shouted into his radio. “Maintain your formation.” Although they were now less than two miles away, the president continued to hold his squadron on a collision course with the side of the vast invader ship. Without announcing what he was doing, he allowed the second of his AMRAAMs to dip into the air. He locked a target area not far from the tall black tower at the front edge of the ship, then launched it. The missile shot away and, within seconds, arrived at the same spot where all the others had met an invisible dead end. Nothing happened. The pilots lost visual contact with the AMRAAM. It seemed to disappear, but there was no time to wonder where it might have gone because the jets themselves were quickly approaching the deadly quarter-mile perimeter. Then something took them all by surprise.
A huge explosion flared up, biting deep into the side of the destroyer. A large section of the ship, the size of a city block, ruptured like brittle clay, then exploded in flaming pieces toward the ground.
The war room erupted into wild cheers. Even General Grey, the model of vigilant self-constraint, swung his fist through the air, delivering an imaginary roundhouse punch to an alien jawbone. For the next thirty seconds, the excited pilots, whooping and hollering, made the airwaves unusable, prematurely celebrating a victory they had not yet achieved.
As order began to restore itself, Whitmore led his squad of fighters in a long downward loop that eventually carried them back to their original attack position, several miles from the front of the still advancing ship.
“We’re going back in,” he announced. “Squad leaders, take point.” As they’d planned, the top pilots spread themselves out in a long line. Then, slowly but surely, the others tucked themselves in behind their group leaders, who led them away to their attack positions.
When the massive ship was encircled, the attack coordinators in the war room sounded the battle cry. From every direction at once, the squad leaders led the charge toward the enemy. Not understanding how to attack, the inexperienced pilots began breaking ranks to “improve” their positions rather than diving or climbing. Bombing an airborne target, even one as large and slow as the destroyer, was trickier than it looked, and three-quarters of the missiles flew wide of their mark. Only about thirty or so of the missiles, mostly AMRAAMs fired by the seasoned airdogs, found their target.
Some of the rookies lifted their planes high above the destroyer while others dipped below it. All of them moving toward the center at once, their main concern became not running headfirst into one another. In their confusion, they spit an orgy of Sidewinders, Silkworms, and Tomahawks into the air. Those with heat-seeking guidance systems locked themselves onto friendly planes weaving through the line of fire, then chased them down and killed them. The aerial battle was quickly degenerating into mayhem. But the true battle hadn’t yet begun in earnest.
Then, the moment they all feared arrived. The portal door on the gleaming black tower pulled open and a swarm of the nimble gray attackers belched into the sky. After rising high into the air as a group, they flashed off in different directions to begin hunting down the earthlings.
*
“RUSSELL!”
The scream traveled as far out into the scrub desert as the distant roar of circling jet engines would allow. Miguel had come to the far end of the parking lot cum refugee camp searching for his stepfather when he heard what sounded like a sonic boom. He spun around to face the approaching city destroyer. Although he didn’t know the first thing about air warfare, he was positive the last-chance air force which had recently lifted off the very runway where he now stood wasn’t doing it by the book. Looping around aimlessly, swerving at the last moment to avoid midair collisions, flying too slow and too close to the ground, he had little confidence in their ability to repel the city destroyer. But the second he heard the boom, he knew one of the missiles had connected. Within seconds, other missiles began to fly. He would have stayed to wat
ch this awesome and unlikely spectacle, but he had to find Russell before the huge ship was overhead.
Miguel was guessing that his stepfather had found a patch of shade where he could feel sorry for himself without being interrupted. And chances were, he’d brought a bottle to keep him company. He was probably somewhere nearby and probably badly wasted. He might even have passed out. The boy knew he should be angry. Once again, Russell’s irresponsibility was forcing the boy to protect a family he was reluctant to call his own, but instead of anger, he felt sure Russell would be killed unless he reached the safety of the underground labs.
His search came to a sudden end once the pearl gray attackers swarmed into the sky. Every instinct told the boy to run for cover, and to run as fast as he possibly could. Throwing a glance over his shoulder, he saw a large detachment of the alien planes break off from the main group and head straight for Area 51. They were right behind him and coming in fast. He sprinted through the camp as laser pulses began tearing it up. RVs exploded and flipped off the ground. At least a hundred people hadn’t made it into the hangar. They hid themselves behind their vehicles, or went running in zigzags across the open space separating the last trailers from the hangar doors.
Miguel heard a series of blasts strafing the ground behind him and dodged to one side at the last minute, jumping behind a pickup truck. The doors to the hangar were forty yards away, across a wide open stretch of pavement. Bodies littered the territory he had to cross. Inside, he could see soldiers and a woman in a white blouse, waving people inside. The woman spotted Miguel cowering behind the truck and waved to him frantically, beckoning him inside. She had dark hair and dark eyes, and for a moment, Miguel thought he recognized her. Too frightened to think, Miguel darted out into the open in a mad dash. Weapons fire tearing into the earth around him, he put his head down and ran for all he was worth. Leaping over bodies, he focused on reaching the woman in the white blouse. He made it. He raced through the big steel doors just as the soldiers were rolling them closed. The last one to make it inside, he followed the woman to the elevator, which was crowded with injured people waiting for the ride downstairs. A loud blast rocked the huge steel structure. The front doors had been blown out of existence, taking the soldiers along with them.
Connie, the woman in the white blouse, pounded hard on the button inside the elevator and waited through the eternity it took for the doors to close. Laser blasts were raining down on the hangar, and just as the last bit of light disappeared between the closing doors, the entire structure gave way and began to collapse.
*
Steve slammed the engines to their highest rev and shook the steering apparatus so hard David was sure he would snap the delicate steering handles out of their sockets.
“Try something else!” David yelled. “Just get us out of here!”
“Can’t you see I’m trying? I can’t shake her free. These clamps are too strong!”
Steve let go of the handles, stood up, and paced to the back of the cabin, trying to clear his head. By the time he came back moments later, David was putzing around on his laptop, looking for some way to help free them from the docking mechanism. Desperate, Steve began randomly flipping switches on the instruments the scientists had been unable to identify. When he had exhausted all the options, he returned to his pilot’s chair and flopped into it, defeated.
“This is not the way I thought it was going to end. I pictured a balls-out dogfight, taking nine or ten of these little weevils down with me, you know?” He glanced over at David, who was obviously disturbed by that vision. “Well,” the pilot continued, “at least we got the virus into mama’s system.” Both men jumped halfway out of their skin when the blast shield growled to life, lowering itself from the windows. “What are you doing? Don’t let ’em see us!”
David put his hands in the air. “It’s not me. They’re overriding the system.” Steve hit the deck, hiding himself behind the instrument panel. David, who had developed an instinct for protecting his computer at all times, slid gently down the front of the chair until he too was on the floor. When the shield was all the way down, the two men stared at one another, wondering what to do next.
“Take a look.” David pointed up toward the windows.
“Be my guest,” Steve countered. “You take a look. You’re the curious scientist.”
“I’m a civilian,” David declared proudly “I believe it’s your duty as a marine to…” he fumbled for the word, “…to reconnoiter the enemy position!”
Steve gave him a look as sour as month-old milk. With deep reluctance, he turned his head sideways and inched slowly higher, determined to poke nothing more than an eyeball over the top of the dashboard. Like the view from a periscope, it took Steve a moment to realize what he was looking at. Standing behind what appeared to him to be a thick sheet of crystal, because of the way it refracted the light, was a group of large-headed, big-eyed aliens staring straight back at him.
“Ahhhh!” He landed on the floor, trying to stay as low as possible. “Damn! There’s a whole bunch of them standing around out there.”
“Did they see you?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean did they really see you, get a good look at you?”
“Yes! There are twenty or thirty of ’em looking this way!”
“Then, Steve,” David asked calmly, “why are we hiding?”
Setting his computer carefully to one side and taking a deep breath, David peeked outside. Sure enough, the ghostly creatures were staring back at him with giant black eyes. After peering nervously around for a minute, he uncoiled himself and stood straight up, strangely relaxed. More and more of the aliens were crowding into the control room behind the glass. Soon, he knew, they would come through the tubes to reclaim possession of their long lost ship. He looked down at Steve with a defeated grin.
“Check and mate.”
*
The lights died, then flickered back to life as the energy of another blast shot through the electrical circuits and shook the underground labs at Area 51 like a sharp, two-second earthquake. The muted rumble of more distant explosions pulsed through the earth with a constant roar, terrifying the thousand people crowded shoulder to shoulder in the clean room.
“Julius!” Connie spotted her father-in-law standing to one side of the elevated walkway running the length of the room. She jostled her way toward him through the crowd. “Julius, are you all right?”
“Me? I’m fine.” He had appointed himself temporary guardian of a group of children separated from their parents. Connie recognized two of them: the president’s daughter, Patricia, and Jasmine’s son, Dylan. “Of course, we’re all a little scared by the noise,” Julius announced loudly, “but we’re not too worried because we know we’re going to be okay. Right?” he asked the kids.
“Right!” the children agreed in one voice.
Connie couldn’t believe it. In the middle of this frantic madhouse, which might have been a scene from London during the worst of the Blitz, doddering old Julius had managed to calm these children who should have been screaming bloody murder. She was more convinced than ever that the man possessed some kind of magic. Another blast plunged the room into a moment of darkness, reminding Connie that she had to keep moving.
“Stay safe,” she said when the lights returned. “I’ve got to…” She pointed off in the direction of her business.
Julius only nodded and gave her the slightest wave of the hand, his concentration on the children. He had work to do also. As Connie left, he unfolded a yarmulke and set it on top of his head. He had the children join hands and asked if they’d like to hear a song one hundred percent guaranteed to keep them safe. They said they would, and he began to recite from memory a prayer from the Torah, singing in fluent Hebrew that would have astonished David had he been there. Opening one eye, he spied Nimziki watching him from nearby. Julius didn’t much care for the man, but could sense he was lost.
“Join us,” he called to the secretary of
defense.
Nimziki, terrified, wanted someone to sit with, but he only shrugged and called back, “I’m not Jewish.”
“So what?” Julius chuckled. “Nobody’s perfect!”
*
“Miguel, did you find him?”
Connie, standing on the walkway, looked into the dual pits of wall-to-wall refugees and saw a girl of about fourteen shouting over the top of the noise in her direction.
“I’m still looking!” a male voice yelled directly behind her. Connie spun around and found that the boy with the long hair, the last one to make it inside, was following her through the clean room. “Stay where you are,” he shouted to his sister. “I’ll come back and find you.”
Alicia nodded then sat down again, taking her place under Philip’s comforting arm. She lifted her head to look him in the eyes. “If I die today after finally finding you, I’m going to be really really pissed off.”
He smiled broadly, leaning down to kiss her.
Connie muscled her way through the room, Miguel shadowing her every step of the way.
*
Although its exterior armor had been battered and torn, the giant ship had sustained no significant damage. Scarred and smoking, rocked by the initial round of bombing, it had nevertheless continued inexorably forward, single-mindedly pushing toward Area 51. It was intent on crippling this last remaining pocket of resistance in the western United States. For a brief moment, it had seemed as if the humans might triumph, that their minuscule explosives might peck away patiently at the fifteen-mile wide ship until it came down. But since the stingray-shaped attackers had swarmed out into the electric blue morning, the ship had sustained almost no further damage.
Their hands already full with controlling their planes, many of the inexperienced pilots went hysterical when the alien attackers began systematically removing them from the battle. Despite Grey’s pleas for calm, most of them squandered their last rockets with wild shots at the attackers. On the radar screens, the men in the war room watched the last of the missiles sailing away into the desert.
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 28