Independence Day: Crucible (The Official Prequel) (22 page)

He could do this—and he could do it with passion and conviction.

“Okay, boys,” Patricia said. “That’s it for today. Let’s take it back to the crib, nice and easy.”

* * *

Once back on the ground, the three of them posed for a picture next to Dylan’s craft. Then they went out for a beer.

“To our first flight,” Dylan said, and they all raised their glasses. “A hell of a good time. Let’s hope our scores are good.”

“Good?” Jake said. “They’re gonna be great.”

“I got us a little off-course—” Dylan began.

“Two degrees,” Patricia said. “It’s nothing.”

“I can’t wait until we get to take them into space,” Dylan said. “Those things are awesome.”

“I’m definitely in love,” Jake said.

Dylan glanced at his friend, then at Patricia, wondering if Jake was still talking about the H-7s, or if he had moved on to another topic.

Patricia still had the boyfriend, right? Still, Dylan felt a little dip in his mood.

He wished powerfully and suddenly for the person he most wanted to share this with.

“Guys,” he said, “excuse me a minute. I need to make a phone call.”

“Sure,” Jake said. “We’ll be here.”

* * *

Jake watched Dylan step outside. When he turned back to Patricia, he saw the smile had abandoned her face.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

The smile came back, but he knew it wasn’t real.

“It’s not the time,” she said. “Tonight’s our night.”

“Come on,” he said. “We’re wingmen now. Wing people? Wing somethings.”

“It’s going to sound stupid,” she said, “and typical.”

“I doubt that,” Jake said.

“Dale and I… kind of broke up.”

It was a hard moment for Jake, because what he actually wanted to do was get up on the table and dance. It took every ounce of willpower not to grin like a lunatic.

“Well, that’s huge,” he said. “You guys have been together since high school.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Six years.”

“Oh, crap,” he said. “You’re not crying. Don’t do that.”

Even with the tears, though, she didn’t look sad. If anything, she looked angry.

“Actually,” she said, “we didn’t ‘kind of’ break up. Last week when we talked, he told me he loved me, and all the usual stuff, how he couldn’t wait until I was home on leave. Yesterday he told me he was engaged to someone else.”

“No, he didn’t!” Jake said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Apparently he’s been seeing her for a while.”

“Man, I am so sorry,” Jake lied. “That guy is an idiot.”

“Well, I was in love with him,” she said. “What does that make me?”

Available
, Jake thought.

“Steadfast,” he said. “You could have had your pick of any guy in the Academy.”

“Oh, stop it,” she said.

“And Dylan—”

Now she did look a little sad. “He’s too much like my brother,” she said. “Listen, don’t tell him about this, not yet. I couldn’t handle it right now if… if he tried to, you know…”

“Yeah,” he said. “I get it.”

He realized that probably went for him, too. Did she know? Had he let on? Dylan was kind of obvious, but Jake thought he had his feelings under control, and he knew it wasn’t a good idea. Two officers, in flight school together. In fact, it was a really bad idea.

Take two steps back, Jake boy
, he thought.
Maybe three.

* * *

The phone rang twice before she picked it up.

“Hi, Mom,” Dylan said.

“Hey, baby,” she replied. “How’d it go?”

“It went good,” he said. “I think it went great.”

“That’s my boy,” she said. “And I know you’re not hot-doggin’.”

“Keeping it simple,” he said. “Staying safe. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Doing really well, keeping busy. In fact I go on shift in about an hour.”

“Well,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you how it went.”

“You know I always love to hear from you,” she said. He thought he heard a faint catch in her voice, and a long silence followed.

“Mom?”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I was just thinking how proud—how proud your dad would have been of you.”

Dylan felt his own throat constrict, remembering the H-1 prototype, reaching toward the sky, hurtling up like a reversed meteor—and then a sky full of light, and incomprehension, denial, grief. In a nanosecond, the man he called his father had ceased to exist, and an entire planet went into mourning.

“Damn, Mom,” he said. “Now you’re gonna make
me
cry, too, and I’m out with the guys.”

“What makes you think I’m crying?” she said. “And don’t use profanity. I raised you better than that.”

“I think I heard a ‘damn’ from you every now and again,” he said.

“You do as I say, not as I do,” she said. “Anyway, you go be with your friends. You don’t need to be calling an old lady on your day of triumph.”

“It’s a small triumph, Mom, if even that.”

“Son,” she said, “you celebrate it all—the little ones and the big ones. It’s called counting your blessings, and sometimes that’s what gets you through. Now go on.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m looking forward to that.”

* * *

From the other side of the room, Dylan saw Jake and Patricia leaning across the table toward each other. They appeared to be in a deep discussion about something, but when he walked up they turned his way.

“The president call again?” Jake asked.

“No,” Dylan said. “Someone much more important. My mom. What’s up? Looked like you guys were deciding the fate of the world.”

“Well,” Jake said. “Sort of. We took a vote while you were gone.”

“What vote was that?” Dylan asked.

“That whoever wasn’t in on the voting should buy the next round.”

“Damn, I missed
another
vote?” Dylan said. “It’s like this happens every time I leave the table.”

“Looks like it,” Jake said. “You know what I’m in the mood for? That really expensive beer they have on tap here.”

“I actually think they have a thirty-year-old single malt behind the counter,” Patricia said.

“I’m thinking a really expensive Irish Car Bomb,” Jake said.

“First off,” Dylan said, “you can’t technically make an Irish Car Bomb with Scotch. Or IPA. And B, if I’m buying, I pick the drink.”

“Oh, crap,” Jake said. “This could be bad. It’s not going to have fruit and a little umbrella in it, is it?”

“Jake,” Patricia said. “Don’t provoke him.”

About four minutes later, as Jake stared at his Singapore Sling and she at her Jaeger shot, Patricia poked a finger at Jake.

“I told you not to provoke him,” she said.

Dylan smiled and sipped at his own drink.

“The Scotch was a good idea, Patricia,” he said. “Smoky, peaty—nice. How’s that Jaeger?”

“It’s cough syrup,” she said.

“I call it democracy in action,” Dylan said. “So, what next?”

“How about a little pool?” Jake said.

“Oh, no,” Patricia said. “Absolutely not. I see either one of you near the pool table or the dart board or even Ms. Pac-Man, I’m calling it a night right now.”

“Patricia, this isn’t like in the Academy—” Dylan began.

“I know it’s not,” she said. “This is flight school, where any little thing can get you washed out. And I am not getting sent home because you boys can’t control your testosterone.”

* * *

“President Whitmore?”

Thomas Whitmore realized someone had been trying to get his attention for a while. He shook his head, but it wouldn’t clear.

“Yes,” he said. “Who is it?”

“Agent Vega,” the man said. “Sir, you weren’t answering. I took the liberty of opening the door. I was worried that something had happened.”

“No,” Whitmore said slowly. “Agent Vega,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Vega was a short, compact man with a big man’s presence. He was staring at him uncertainly. “You’re okay, then?”

Whitmore realized several things at that point. He was in his pajamas, standing in the bathroom of his house in Virginia—but it seemed to him that a minute ago he’d been somewhere else, somehow. He also realized that Vega was staring past him, gaping at the mirror above the sink, where Whitmore had been carefully smearing shaving cream.

“Does this look right to you?” Whitmore asked him.

“Sir?” Vega said. “It looks like a circle.”

“It does,” Whitmore said. He shook his head. “It’s not right.”

“No sir, I guess not,” the agent said.

“What time is it, Agent Vega?”

“It’s just after ten in the morning, sir.”

“Didn’t I have that thing at nine-thirty?” Whitmore said.

“Yes, sir,” Vega said. “That’s why I was becoming worried.”

“Right,” Whitmore said. “I guess you would. Is there any coffee?”

“I’ll have Ms. Tallman bring some,” the agent said.

“No,” he said. “I’ll have it at the kitchen table.”

* * *

After his coffee and some apologies over the phone for missing the breakfast meeting, he went for a run, and in the daylight, in the fresh air, he began to realize how out of it he had been. How long he had been standing at the mirror.

The nightmares were getting worse, too, more vivid. For long years—for almost a decade they had nearly gone away. But now…

He probably should see someone about it, he decided. If he was missing meetings, then it was time. He had a physical coming up anyway.

When he got back from his run, he’d put it on his agenda.

* * *

David arrived home late. The sun had long set into the desert horizon and the stars were clear and cold overhead. He pushed his bike into the hall and leaned it against a wall. Then he went out back to water the plants, his usual routine.

He stopped in front of the prize of his collection, a gnarled, thick specimen, the one he called
Old Man Leaning into the Wind
. He remembered it as he first saw it, the scrawny unpromising stick of sagebrush in his new pot. But David had been stubborn, and persistent. So had the plant.

“Hey, my friend,” he said. He took a pair of tweezers from his pocket and used them to trim it back a bit by plucking the delicate leaves and fine stems.

“There,” he murmured, when he was done. “Was that so bad?” He spread the tips of his fingers and brushed it very gently.

Once back inside, he reflexively took down a glass and reached for the Scotch, and then remembered he had poured it all out, months ago. The temptation to just finish the bottle, buy another one, and finish that had been too great. He couldn’t go down that road. He had responsibilities.

Instead he had tap water, and he sat alone on the couch and he felt her absence. The lack of Connie.

This time, saving the world wouldn’t be enough to get her back. He would have to rewind time itself, to the moment before the teenager in the SUV decided to send a text to his girlfriend, before he coasted through a red light at nearly eighty miles an hour. They had tried to comfort him by saying she probably never felt it, never knew what was happening. But he knew Connie would have wanted to see it coming.

Now Nevada had a new Senator, and he had a vacuum in him as big as outer space that he hadn’t even begun to fill.

The Gobi Desert dwindled below her as Rain pushed her fighter to the limits of the unassisted anti-gravity drive. The horizon became a curve, a dome, part of a circle, and then the great desert was just a sandy smudge on the continent. Blue sky faded to black, and the lights of deep space stared at her.

Space.

She had been flying for a year now, but this was her first trip out of the atmosphere, and she felt immensely privileged to be—at twenty-one—the youngest person, let alone woman, to go into space. The runner up was a Russian named Titov, who had been twenty-five.

Part of it, she understood, was the way China traditionally picked pilots for training. They were chosen in high school, based on various qualities, not the least of which was party loyalty. Training began immediately after high school. In many countries, like the U.S., this wasn’t true—four years of college were required before flight school.

Since Uncle Jiang took her under his wing, she’d had many advantages. Her father was a hero of the Alien War, albeit not a prominent one—just one of the scores who died attacking the destroyers. Her uncle was a highly placed government official. Most believed he would be given command of the moon base. And since arriving at Aerospace City her grades had been near perfect, her conduct spotless.

As far as she could tell, the “incident” when she was thirteen had somehow been forgotten, expunged from her record.

The fighter was all spaceship now—there wasn’t enough atmosphere to give the wings anything to do. She watched the moon rise as she continued to accelerate, and against the sphere of it she could now make out a silvery spot, tiny at first, but growing quickly in size as she approached it.

Eventually the shape of it was evident; the last of the gigantic transport vessels on its dawdling one-way trip to the lunar surface. The rest were already there being unloaded and pulled apart for use in construction.

She approached the giant ship closely so her onboard cameras would get a good look. Space was big, and she hadn’t come near the big ship by happenstance. It was a part of a mission that was largely public relations. She was to be not only the youngest pilot in space, but also the youngest to circumnavigate the moon.

As she whipped past the freighter, it flashed its floodlights at her in greeting.

Then it was behind her, and the moon was all she saw.

The first moon ships had relied on chemical rockets, their fuel both finite and heavy. They burned hard leaving Earth and then coasted, decelerating constantly as the Earth’s gravity pulled them back, going just fast enough to enter the influence of the moon’s gravity—at which point they began falling toward the moon. The trip took them about three days.

She had no such restrictions. Her ship had a power supply that was essentially unlimited. She could maintain a speed or even accelerate continuously, cutting the flight time from days to hours.

She wasn’t going crazy, though. There were still dangers—like the enormous debris field left behind by the alien mother ship, that either hadn’t yet been permanently claimed by the Earth or the moon, but had instead settled in a sort of tug-of-war zone.