Independence Day: Resurgence: The Official Movie Novelization

by Alex Irvine

  “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?

  32

  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 off
icers 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.

  * * *

  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!”