Independence Day: Resurgence: The Official Movie Novelization Page 10

  He also wanted to get a look at the big cannon, which was the base’s primary reason for existing. It loomed over the stark landscape near the central command tower, its barrel angled up and away from the horizon. At the moment it was pointed more or less at North Africa, but from what Dylan understood it had full 360-degree coverage of the space between Earth and the Moon, with an effective range of hundreds of kilometers.

  Part of him wanted to see it in action, but he also knew that if they ever had to use it, that would mean another war. Earth didn’t need that. They’d barely made it through the last one.

  He steadied the fighter into its final approach, feeling the anti-grav engines readjust to the counter-force of a planetary body. They continuously readjusted their thrust and lift to account for the fundamental behaviors of gravity. Since the pull decreased with the square of distance, it had picked up quite a bit in the last few thousand kilometers as the Moon’s influence took over from the zero-g interval after Legacy Squadron had left Earth’s gravitational field.

  The hangar had designated spots for each of the fighters, and as Dylan had expected, it was in perfect condition. Not a mote of dust anywhere to be seen, except what the fighters kicked up and brought in with them on their landing approach.

  Each of the ships set down as gently as could be. He ran a system shutdown and waited just long enough to make sure it checked out. Then he pulled off his helmet and popped the cockpit open. The air was dry and smelled faintly of machine oil and cleaning products.

  He swung himself out of the fighter, noticing that the base had Earthlike gravity. That was a useful bit of tech they’d taken from the aliens. A long-term presence on the Moon was made a lot easier by normal gravity. If they’d had to put a base there in one-sixth gravity, there could be serious consequences for the health of the crew and officers.

  As his boots hit the floor, Dylan looked around and saw the other pilots disembarking, as well. Several of them had never been up here before, and even those who had were taking in the progress Lao and the crew had made in recent months. The base was just about fully online.

  At the moment, however, most of the ground crew had abandoned their posts to swarm around the pilots. Dylan signed an autograph here and there, and posed for some pictures, but he noticed one difference right away between the Moon and Earth. Down at Area 51, he was one of the main attractions. Not here. This was a Chinese base, run by a Chinese crew and Chinese officers, and as far as they were concerned Rain Lao walked on water.

  Dylan didn’t understand a word of Chinese, but he could tell adoration when he heard it. Rain looked a little embarrassed by the attention, but he could see she enjoyed it, too. And why shouldn’t she? All of them had worked hard their whole lives to get where they were. They’d earned everything they’d gotten. Legacy Squadron didn’t have any pilots who weren’t the best of the best, no matter what their last names happened to be.

  He passed her on his way into the base proper.

  “When you’re done being a superstar, meet us for the debrief.”

  She shot him a look, but was overwhelmed again by the attention and couldn’t find a quick response. That wasn’t like her. Usually she was among the sharpest at coming up with stinging replies.

  Cutting through the chatter, Dylan heard Commander Lao’s voice. In English, no less.

  “Do I get an autograph too?”

  “Uncle Jiang!” Rain ran over and embraced him. The ground crew’s response was quite a bit different, though. All of a sudden they all remembered they had somewhere else to be.

  Dylan moved on, too. Let Rain have her moment. He would have to meet with Commander Lao soon, but it had been a long flight. He wanted to stretch his legs a little first, and let the initial excitement die down.

  * * *

  Commander Lao looked his niece up and down, amazed at how far she’d come. Her youth had been troubled, and he had feared for a while that she would fail to live up to her potential. His fears, it seemed, had been groundless, but in this rare instance Lao was perfectly happy to be proved wrong.

  “You look more and more like your mother,” Lao said, as the crew started working on the fighters.

  Rain rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing a girl wants to hear more than that.”

  He nodded at the other pilots. “You holding your own with these cowboys?”

  “Please,” she scoffed. “They’re the ones who need to hold their own with me.”

  “Where’s Captain Hiller?” he asked.

  Rain glanced around. “Maybe the mess hall,” she suggested. “That’s where most of the pilots are heading.” After the flight, they were hungry and in need of some time sitting around doing nothing.

  He nodded, and gestured for her to lead the way.

  * * *

  Jake knew Legacy Squadron had landed, but he hadn’t felt like watching the fighters come in. It was too hard to see them, and know that he should have been up there with them.

  He was good enough. Everyone knew that—but you couldn’t cross Dylan Hiller and make it through the program. That was just a fact of life. Another fact of life was that the last thing in the world Jake felt like doing right then was watching everyone celebrate the son of a hero.

  So he took a carton of Moon Milk from a vending machine and sat down to look at his lunch. Maybe he would even eat it. He was still deliberating when Charlie rushed up to him.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said.

  Jake gave him a look, like, Where else would I be?

  “I’ve got good news,” Charlie went on, ignoring the look.

  “What is it?”

  “The pilot China sent is my future wife.”

  Jake gave him another look.

  “Seriously,” Charlie said. “I think my heart exploded.” He put a hand on his chest as if to make sure. “She’s perfect. Her eyes, her hair, it’s like our spirits were communing…” He stopped talking, and Jake saw him tracking something over near the mess hall entrance. Great, he thought. Just great.

  “He just walked in, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did,” Charlie replied in a wary tone.

  Wonderful, Jake thought. All I want to do is get on with my life, and I can’t even do that because Captain Perfect has to drag his ass all the way to the Moon and show up in my mess hall. He’d known it was coming, but it didn’t make it any easier.

  He didn’t want to make a scene, though, and he didn’t want to be a drag on the squadron’s big moment. The best thing to do was leave.

  “You’re not gonna finish this?” Charlie asked as Jake got up. He didn’t wait for an answer, grabbing Jake’s carton of milk. “This is the only thing I’m gonna miss from this cold rock,” he said, and he downed it.

  Jake had to pass near Dylan to get out of the mess hall, but he kept his eyes straight ahead and pretended he wasn’t seeing anything. Don’t mind me, he thought. Just the loser making way for his famous one-time friend. It didn’t work out that way.

  Dylan stepped right in front of him. He didn’t say anything, just stood there.

  Jake stopped. The mess hall chatter stopped as everyone present saw the two of them, face to face. They all knew the story. It was legendary among ESD spacers, and had percolated out from there. Jake felt like it followed him around, and would his whole life.

  He’d had it. He’d tried to do the right thing and leave, and here was Dylan, deliberately not letting it go. Hadn’t he already won? He was flying point on Legacy Squadron, and Jake was a mailman. Did he have to show Jake up now, in front of the people he had to work with?

  This wasn’t Dylan’s world. He was a famous tourist here, but when he was gone, Jake would still have to deal with everyone watching on a daily basis. He’d have to hear their snide comments and feel their scorn.

  All right, he thought, when Dylan kept staring at him and standing in his way. If this is the way you want it, this is the way we’ll do it.

  “Mind moving?” he asked quietly
. “We both know what happens when you get in my way.”

  Dylan kept his eyes locked on Jake’s for a long moment. He bit his lip. Jake could have turned around, gone the long way, past the other tables—but he wasn’t going to do that. He’d committed. He’d called out the star of Legacy Squadron, and he wasn’t backing down. Not now.

  Jake never saw the punch coming, but he felt it. A light flared in his head and he felt himself hit the floor hard. It was a good shot, a straight right to the face. Jake tasted blood. Then he sat up, and saw Dylan staring down at him.

  “Been waiting a long time to do that,” Dylan said.

  Charlie had seen the whole thing and now he ran over and helped Jake get to his feet. Jake shrugged him off, not wanting Dylan to see how badly the punch had shaken him. He could barely keep his legs under him, but that wouldn’t last.

  “Morrison!” Commander Lao stood in the doorway. Jake didn’t know how much he’d seen. “What’s going on here?”

  He walked up to Jake, standing next to Dylan. Both of them stared hard.

  It felt just like it had when everyone had blamed him for the tug crash. Nobody cared about the burst of white noise that crippled the tug, and nobody was going to care that Dylan had started this just to show him up. It didn’t matter. When you were Dylan Hiller, you got your way.

  “I asked you a question!” Lao snapped.

  “These floors are really unpredictable,” Jake said evenly. “Be careful, sir.” He turned slightly. “Dylan, great seeing you.”

  He could feel his lip swelling. It was split pretty good. Jake wiped the blood away and started for the door, brushing past Dylan on the way. He could have sworn he saw regret on Dylan’s face, but it didn’t matter. Whatever. Jake was going to take his fat lip back to his room, crank up some tunes, and contemplate life.

  Blamed for the cannon accident even though he’d saved everyone’s lives, girlfriend mad at him, then his one-time pal busted his lip in front of all his coworkers… it had been a hell of a twenty-four hours.

  “Captain Hiller,” he heard Lao say behind him. “I’m so pleased to have you here. I once had the honor to meet your father…”

  Blah blah blah, Jake thought. Lao would love this scenario. Captain Perfect shows up the chump who once imagined he might be a space pilot too, but couldn’t even fly a tug. But everyone was wrong about Jake.

  One of these days, maybe he’d show them.

  20

  Charlie gave Jake a little while to cool off—by which he meant sulk—and then he headed back to their quarters to do what he privately called a “Jakervention.”

  Jake was a good guy. Charlie liked him, and admired him, and certainly owed him for the way he’d helped him out back when they were kids. Jake had been a big brother to Charlie when the kid had badly needed one. But Jake also needed to get out of his own head once in a while. He got all wrapped up in self-pity sometimes, and it was up to Charlie to get him out.

  So he kicked around the base, checking out the knockout Chinese pilot. Rain Lao. What a name. What a woman. The fact that she was Commander Lao’s niece deterred Charlie not one bit. Maybe she was out of his league, but how would he know until he gave it a try? It was the truest thing anyone had ever said to him.

  “You gotta shoot to score.”

  That was one of the volunteers back at the orphanage, on one of the occasions when they’d dragged all the kids out to get some exercise. Charlie liked playing soccer, but he wasn’t very good at it, and after he’d had a couple of chances to score and muffed them badly, he’d stopped trying. He passed every time. Finally the volunteer, an older guy named Leonardo, came over to him.

  “Oye, Charlie,” he said, “you gotta shoot to score, man. Don’t you ever want to score?”

  Charlie did. After that, he’d still been lousy at soccer, but he’d decided it was better to try and fail than not try at all. That was one of the few life lessons he’d taken away from the orphanage.

  Most of the others had to do with Jake—and later, Dylan and Patricia. So here he was trying to help. He opened the door and saw Jake staring at the wall. Music was playing in the background, some classic rock tune from thirty years before Charlie was born, and on the screen was the helmet-cam footage from the accident. Jake always watched it when he was depressed. Charlie knew it by heart at this point—Jake cutting too close on Dylan’s left, the sharp metallic bang of their wingtips touching, then Dylan shouting that he was ejecting…

  Charlie waited until it was over. Then before Jake could start the video over again, he spoke up.

  “You okay?”

  Jake didn’t say anything. This was bad. He’d had a rough couple of days, what with the tug incident and now the Dylan thing.

  “I was so close to punching him back,” Charlie said, making a fist.

  “I think you made the right choice,” Jake said, with a ghost of a smile.

  Aha, Charlie thought. Progress. He plopped next to Jake on the couch. “When is he gonna let it go? It was a training accident. I mean, yes, you did almost kill him, but that’s why they have ejection seats.”

  “I went too far,” Jake said softly. “I just wanted it so bad.”

  “It was never gonna be you. The world doesn’t work like that. He’s—” Charlie couldn’t find the word right away. What did you call a guy like Dylan Hiller? “He’s royalty. We’re just orphans, Jake.”

  Charlie knew Dylan had lost his father, too, and then his stepfather. His life hadn’t exactly been a bowl of cherries—but there was a long, long distance between having a heroic pilot adopt you and see you through to adulthood, and the kind of childhood Jake and Charlie had experienced.

  “When they dropped me off at camp,” Jake said slowly, “the last thing I said to my parents was that I hated them. Two days later, L.A. was incinerated. They saved my life.”

  There were a lot of ways to go with that, Charlie thought. Jake’s parents hadn’t meant to save his life, after all. They’d just wanted him to go to camp. Charlie hadn’t even been at camp. He’d been a toddler at day care when the aliens killed his parents at their jobs. He and Jake had met at an orphanage school, Jake with his big dreams and Charlie just trying to survive. He was small, and smart, and maybe had a bit of a big mouth, and life at the orphanage was hell.

  Then one day Jake was there, chasing away the worst of the bullies. He was that rare thing in Charlie’s life, a big strapping kid who also had a big heart. Once Jake got involved, the worst of the bullying stopped. Charlie could go through his days without fear of being beaten, or worse. In return, he’d figured out something he could do to help Jake.

  Study. Jake had dreams of being a pilot but the top-flight—so to speak—tech schools weren’t exactly trolling the orphanages for their next generation of the best and brightest. Still the dream kept Jake going, so Charlie jumped in. And it worked! Jake got into the Area 51 flight-prep academy.

  The problem was, Charlie hadn’t finished school yet. If Jake left him at the orphanage, Charlie was going to be in for a serious shit storm. Five years’ worth of stored-up frustration his tormentors were just waiting to take out on him. So Jake came through again.

  He found a place where they both could live, and Charlie found his way into the Academy’s engineering track. After that, they’d been inseparable. Jake had saved Charlie, Charlie had saved Jake.

  Then the Dylan Hiller thing had happened.

  It was stupid, but they’d both been stupid. A simple exercise, scored by the observing officers deciding which cadets would move on to the next round of Legacy Squadron training. Jake tried to cut in on Dylan as they flew through a canyon, and in the ensuing collision Dylan nearly died. Because Jake was Jake and Dylan was Dylan, guess which one of them got scrubbed out of the higher program, and reassigned to space tugs?

  The orphan without the famous last name.

  To be fair, it was Jake’s fault. He should have yielded and taken his chance the next time they ran the drill. Problem was, Jake wanted
the win as badly as Dylan, and he had a chip on his shoulder as big as his whole life. He was never going to back down.

  Things had ended with a hundred-million-dollar burning wreck, and everyone had pointed fingers at Jake. Competitive fire was part of the pilot personality, but Jake had gotten carried away, and he knew it.

  The worst thing about it was that it had ended their friendship. They’d all been friends. Jake, Charlie, Dylan, and Patricia Whitmore—who also wanted to be a pilot. She was already gone before the Dylan incident, dropping out to take care of her father, but her relationship with Jake had survived. So had her friendship with Dylan.

  For a while, they’d been a fine little surrogate family, Charlie thought. But then…

  That got him thinking about parents again. About how neither he nor Jake had any, and what Jake had just said about how his parents had saved his life.

  “I’m glad they did,” Charlie said. “’Cause you’re the only family I got.”

  Jake nodded. He was too far down to perk all the way back up, but Charlie could tell he was helping. So, true to form, he started joking around before everything got too serious.

  “And don’t beat yourself up, man,” he added. “Enough people are doing that already.”

  Then Jake did smile. There we go, Charlie thought. Another successful Jakervention.

  21

  After they’d spent all night trying to figure out what was going on in the newly reawakened alien destroyer, Dikembe brought them back to his house. All of them were still riding the wave of energy from their discoveries. David knew he should be tired—he hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours—but sleep could wait. His brain needed to solve problems, not dream.

  Catherine, of course, related everything they’d seen to her scholarly work on the alien consciousness and its relationship with the human mind. As they walked from the two trucks toward Dikembe’s compound, the monumental shape of the alien destroyer casting a long shadow over the savanna, she brandished her tablet at him, pointing at a series of drawings.