Independence Day: Resurgence: The Official Movie Novelization

by Alex Irvine

  * * *

  From the salt flats, David saw the first wave of alien fighters crest the range of mountains to the east.

  “They’re inbound!” Adams shouted over the radio.

  “Yes! I can see that!” David replied. He waved to the team. “We gotta go. Gotta move!”

  The alien ships flew over the trucks, hundreds of fighters… and behind them, in the distance but closing fast, David saw the huge shape of what could only be the queen’s vessel.

  * * *

  At Area 51, ground troops held their positions as the fighters closed in. They had visual now.

  So many of them, Floyd thought. How can we fight them all?

  Adams contacted the cannon crew. “They’re going to target the cannon first. We won’t be able to get too many shots off, so make ’em count.” Then the barrage began, the first waves of alien fighters strafing the Area 51 compound and concentrating on the visible defensive positions near the destroyer cannon.

  The whole area lit up in fire and thunder, annihilating many of the defenders in the first moments. Blasted around like rag dolls, the bodies of fallen soldiers littered the concrete, but they’d done what was needed—the destroyer cannon was online, and it spun up to fire. Its beam, capable of punching a hole through the Earth’s crust, slashed through the ranks of alien fighters, destroying dozens of them at a shot. Wreckage rained from the sky across Area 51.

  Inside the command center, Adams watched the queen’s ship move closer and closer. They had to wait until just the right moment, when she was close enough to make her move, but not so close that she could detect the real sphere. Adams waited, knowing that every second of hesitation was costing good soldiers their lives.

  At the last possible moment, he issued the order.

  “Send out the decoy.”

  * * *

  Patricia and the rest of the surviving pilots flooded into the hangar, headed toward the remaining fighters. It was time for the last stand, and she was grimly thrilled to be part of it. Then Travis stepped in front of her.

  “Patricia.”

  Whatever it was, she didn’t have time for it. “We’re wheels up.”

  “Your dad collapsed,” he said.

  Oh God, she thought. Have the aliens struck him again? What did collapsed mean? She looked over at her fighter, then back at Travis, agonized at the conflict between duty to family and duty to the human race.

  “Where is he?” she said.

  Agent Travis led her into a side office attached to the hangar. When they were both inside, he shut the door and locked it. Patricia looked around. Her father wasn’t anywhere in the room.

  “Travis, what are you doing?”

  He avoided her look, standing wordless in front of the glass door. Beyond him, in the hangar, Patricia saw her father in his flight suit, climbing aboard the tug. When Travis saw that she’d registered that, he finally spoke.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Get out of my way,” she said, going for the door. He stopped her, and in a different tone, almost pleading, she said, “Don’t do this.”

  “I can’t let you go,” Travis said. “He asked me, as a friend. As a father.”

  “I’m not asking,” Patricia said. When he didn’t move, she started throwing punches. At first he didn’t budge, but he wouldn’t retaliate either. She changed her tactics and shoved him to the side enough that she could yank the door open and run out into the hangar.

  Too late. The tug carrying the piece of wreckage with the decoy signal had already lifted off.

  “Dad!” she screamed uselessly, the sound of the engines drowning out her voice. Frantic, Patricia scanned the hangar. She had to do something.

  There was the fighter she’d been assigned, still warmed up but sitting idle. She sprinted toward it. The aliens had taken her mother. They had taken Jake. They were not going to take her father.

  * * *

  In the command center, Adams got notification that the tug and its escorts were in the air.

  “The convoy is en route!” he said to the cannon crew. “Give them cover fire now!” The queen was very, very close. If he’d been outside, he would have been able to see her approaching from the east.

  The destroyer cannon spun up again and unleashed a blast that tore a path through the alien fighters, clearing a space for the convoy. Flanked by fighter escorts, the tug surged through the space, Thomas Whitmore at the controls. “Here we go, boys,” he sang out, cutting into a tight roll just for the sheer joy of flying again. “I’d forgotten how much fun this is!”

  He was resolute, clear-headed for the first time in years. This was what he had been born to do. They hadn’t finished the job last time, but this time they would.

  Or die trying.

  44

  Okun watched impatiently as technicians finished replacing the isolation chamber’s glass shielding. The sphere rested inside, inert. The exact second they sealed the last glass panel, he radioed Adams.

  “General, we’re back in business.”

  Adams immediately called Whitmore. “Tom, we’re ready on our end. Activate the decoy transmitter on my mark.” He counted down to the moment of truth. If the queen didn’t bite on this diversion, their last best hope would be gone. “Three… two… one…

  “Mark.”

  He saw on the monitor that Whitmore, still flying over the salt flats toward the ring of trucks with shield generators, had activated the signal. Now they would find out whether it would work.

  * * *

  Inside the isolation chamber, Okun watched the sphere for a long moment and then decided he couldn’t resist. He walked over to it and held his hands close to its surface.

  “What are you doing?” Milton asked, sounding alarmed.

  “It’s isolated, so I’m going to turn it back on.”

  Even more alarmed, Milton reached out toward Okun.

  “Why would you do that?”

  Too late. Okun pressed his hands onto the sphere’s surface.

  “To see what else this thing knows.”

  With the same soft whoosh and deep thrum as the last time, the sphere activated and hovered at Okun’s eye level. He could feel it perceiving him, waiting for what he had to say. Milton stood next to him, frightened but curious—and loyal, too. Who else would have remained by Okun’s side for twenty years? Brought him orchids? Knitted him a scarf? No matter what else might be going wrong, no matter how dire the threats to humankind, Okun knew he had found the truest love a human being could find.

  One of these days he would tell Milton all of that, but right now there were more pressing things on his mind.

  “Excuse me, sorry to bother you,” Okun said to the sphere, “but I had a few questions. If you don’t mind.”

  * * *

  For a long moment in the command center, Catherine and Adams watched the queen stay on her path toward Area 51. They searched for any sign of a change in her course or speed, any signal that she had detected the decoy. Nothing.

  “Goddammit, she’s not taking the bait,” Adams said. He had no idea what to do next.

  Then the massive ship shifted. Adams caught his breath. He didn’t dare to believe it—but yes. It had worked. Catherine saw it, too.

  “It’s working,” she said. “She’s following the decoy!”

  * * *

  Out on the salt flats, where he was working on a shield generator to get it powered up and ready, David heard her excited shout over the open frequency.

  “We’ll be ready!” he shouted back over the sounds of the alien fighters attacking Area 51 a few miles away. More quietly, to himself, he added, “At least we’ll try to be.”

  * * *

  These new alien fighters are something else, Jake thought as he raced toward the front range of the Rocky Mountains. At this pace they were only a few minutes away from Area 51. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Patricia’s face. They’d made it out of the alien ship, man—that was going to be a great story.

 
An explosion off his wing rocked the fighter as the pilot flying next to him was blown out of the sky.

  “Shit! We got company!” Jake said, seeing a wave of alien ships coming after them.

  “We’ll lose ’em in the mountains!” Dylan dove low, skimming the tops of pine trees as they ducked into a narrow valley, alien gunships close on their trail. Another of the human-flown fighters disappeared in a fireball, pieces of it raining down into the creek at the bottom of the valley.

  Jake returned fire. There were more targets than he knew what to do with. He fired until he started to wonder if the turret barrel would melt, but still there were more alien ships funneling in after them as they swooped and dove through the peaks of the Rockies. The enemy had gotten around them, somehow, and were between them and the other side of the mountains, where Area 51 was. Dylan was going to have to do some fancy flying, Jake thought. He shot down another pursuing gunship and started hollering that they were going the wrong way.

  This appeared to give Dylan an idea. He accelerated up and over a saddle between two peaks, cutting back northeast. Jake almost asked him what the hell he was doing, then decided it didn’t matter. He’d have to trust Dylan to fly.

  All Jake had to do was keep shooting.

  * * *

  “Sir!” one of the shield generator technicians called out, tossing David a pair of binoculars. “You might want to see this!”

  The tech pointed, and David looked in that direction. He was astonished twice in a row. Once to see an old-fashioned yellow school bus heading right for the middle of the energy shield… and then, all over again, when he saw that the driver was none other than Julius Levinson.

  How had his father, who had been in the Gulf of Mexico the day before, managed to end up driving a school bus full of children across the salt flats? David really wanted to hear that story, but if he was going to, his father would have to survive. If he was inside the shield perimeter, that had a zero percent chance of happening.

  “Dad!” he shouted, dropping the binoculars. “Dad! You’re driving right into the trap!” Of course his dad couldn’t hear him. David ran toward the bus, waving his arms and shouting, trying to make himself unmissable against the monotonous background of the salt flats. He didn’t always like being taller than most other people, but it did come in handy when you wanted to get someone’s attention. He hoped it would work soon enough.

  * * *

  Watching from the head of the convoy, Whitmore saw the queen’s ship angle away from the main armada. Now she was on a course to intercept him. He judged her airspeed, and his own, and realized something.

  “We need to slow down, or we’ll overshoot the trap!” he said.

  They did, but although that put their intercept point right where it needed to be inside the perimeter of shield generators, it created another problem—namely, the queen’s escorts could catch them that much sooner. Within a few seconds the air around Whitmore was streaked with energy blasts and the flaming trails of falling fighters.

  Patricia was out there, but Whitmore couldn’t think of her right now. He had to stay focused and steady. He had to make sure the queen took the hook all the way into her mouth, so when he gave the tip of the rod a little twitch, there would be no way for her to spit it out.

  * * *

  It turned out Dylan did have an idea, and it was even crazier than Jake might have expected. They arrowed down the face of a mountain, up over another line of peaks, and then through a gap in the foothills.

  Ahead of them lay the city of Denver, half crushed under a city destroyer that had fallen in the act of extending its landing petals twenty years ago. Some of them were farther deployed than others, so it sat at an angle, like an awning over the city from Lakewood all the way out to Aurora, and Commerce City down to the Denver Tech Center.

  “Rain! Head under the destroyer,” Dylan called into the comm. “Let’s give ’em a tour of Denver.”

  “You want to fly under that thing?” Charlie’s voice was almost a squeak.

  “Why? You scared?” Rain needled him. He shut up. No way was he going to admit to her that, yeah, he was scared. Not when he knew they were so close to having a real date.

  He just had to live to see it happen.

  The two fighters arced under the wreckage of the city destroyer and the devastated ruins beneath. A lot of people still lived in Denver, but not right under the destroyer because nobody knew how long it would stay balanced as it was—partially on its few landing petals and partially on the tops of Denver’s tallest buildings. Millions of tons of alien ship balanced over the city like a cosmic sword of Damocles.

  Jake watched the ruins go by. He’d never been there before. Maybe he would come back sometime and be a tourist.

  The alien fighters followed them, still hot on their trail, but in the more confined airspace Jake had what the brass liked to call a target-rich environment. He got to work making it target-poor.

  * * *

  “For Christ’s sake, Dad,” David yelled as he ran across the salt flats flailing his arms around like one of those inflatable dummies he’d seen outside cell-phone stores. “I can’t be that hard to see!”

  He kept running, and a minute later the bus screeched to a halt. Right after that, Julius piled out, a delighted expression on his face.

  “It takes the end of the world to get us together?! Come give me a kiss already!”

  “Uh, Dad. Not now,” David said, looking at his hand-held monitor to track Whitmore’s progress and the queen’s course, as well.

  “You’re a lot taller than I imagined,” a teenage girl said.

  Julius beamed at David. “You’ll be happy to know I made a few acquaintances. Fans, if you can believe it.”

  “I’m a little busy right now,” David said, not looking up from the monitor.

  “Always working,” his dad griped. “You and I are going to have to talk.”

  “I said not now,” David snapped. “Look behind you!”

  Julius looked back. So did all the kids. There was the queen’s ship, looming over the salt flats, headed right their way.

  “Oh,” Julius said. “I see.”

  45

  Dylan and Rain raced through the maze-like ruins of downtown Denver, alien gunships in hot pursuit.

  “Focus all your firepower on the bottom of every skyscraper in the Mile High City!”

  Ooh, Jake thought. Good idea. “You hear that, Charlie? Let’s blow some shit up!” The two of them blazed away at the lower floors of the tallest buildings, while Dylan and Rain took them through eye-popping turns, staying just ahead of the alien ships. The weaponry tore through concrete and steel, gouging big pieces out of the buildings… and then it started to happen.

  Their lower floors undermined, with the incalculable weight of the city destroyer pressing down on them from above, the buildings started to collapse. The gigantic destroyer tipped down.

  The fighters’ engines ratcheted up to a scream as Dylan and Rain redlined them to get out from under the falling vessel. They made it by scant meters, shooting out into open sky as the destroyer pancaked the deserted ruins below it—and eliminated the last of their pursuit.

  “Pretty good idea,” Jake said when he’d gotten his heartbeat back under control.

  “Not too bad,” Dylan agreed. They cut west again, and hoped they would get to Area 51 in time.

  * * *

  As if Whitmore had invoked her, all of a sudden there Patty was, in a fighter of her own, matching his speed.

  “You didn’t even say goodbye,” she said.

  He didn’t bother to deflect it or beat around the bush. “You wouldn’t have let me go.”

  “You should have let me do this,” she said. “You’ve done enough.”

  Not quite, he thought.

  “You already saved the world once,” she continued with tears in her eyes. “You shouldn’t have to do it again.”

  “I’m not saving the world, Patty,” Whitmore said. “I’m saving
you.” He took a long look at his daughter, remembering her as a little girl in the Area 51 hospital a few miles behind them. All grown up now. “It’s good to see you flying again. Your place is in the air.” He was savoring the moment with her when the tug jerked and its controls stopped responding. Whitmore pulled at them and felt the shudder of some invisible force. The alien fighters veered off.

  “I’ve lost manual control,” he said. “She’s locked onto me! Patty, go!”

  Ahead of them, a hatch slid open in the underbelly of the queen’s ship. Patricia held her position—then Whitmore’s head snapped back and his eyes lost focus for a moment. Before she could react, he turned to look at her.

  “She’s in my head,” he said, his eyes haunted. “She knows it’s a trap!”

  The alien fighters that had left them alone when the queen’s tractor beam locked on the tug now angled in again, raking the tug with blaster fire. Whitmore got control back as the ship’s doors started to close.

  “Can you get me to the target, Lieutenant Whitmore?” he asked, with a look through the cockpit window. His voice was rich with confidence and pride.

  * * *

  Patricia steeled herself for what she knew was coming. There was nothing she could do. She knew what he would do, and she knew why, but she couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Her mother, Jake, now her father…

  But if there was anyone whose life had prepared him for this moment, and the ultimate sacrifice he was about to make, that person was Thomas Whitmore.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  Whitmore gunned the tug forward and Patricia kept pace, clearing a path through the swarming alien fighters. Ahead of them the doors kept closing, but the queen had bit hard enough on the hook that they were going to make it.

  “It’s your time now, Patty,” he said as they approached the doors. “I love you.”

  It was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do, but Patricia peeled away as her father piloted the tug through the closing doors, making it with scant feet to spare.