Independence Day: Crucible (The Official Prequel) (3 page)

Lei shrugged. “I don’t care,” he said. “Real, or not real. Maybe they can bring down the shields. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking. My job is to fly and fight, and die if it comes to that. I know myself, I know my enemy. I fear nothing.”

“Sun Tzu?” Lu said.

“I may be paraphrasing,” Lei admitted.

Lu nodded. “What have you named this one?” he asked.

“
Meifeng
,” he said. “Beautiful Wind.”

“That’s a good name,” Lu said. “A little odd—”

The radio crackled. It was time.

Lu bowed to him. “Good luck,” he said.

“And to you, my friend,” Lei said.

* * *

As the monstrous ship loomed on the horizon, everything seemed to slow down. They were coming from the east, and the sun was setting beyond the ship, so its shadow rose toward them. There was a bit of chatter, but most of the pilots were silent.

It seemed to take a long time to reach it, like walking toward a distant mountain.

Lei’s anger and grief were so closely tied together that he could not tell them apart, and both had been gnawing his soul away from the inside out. Now he felt almost quiet. He remembered his wife, brushing the lock of hair from her face. He remembered when they met, how young they were, how alive the world had seemed.

He thought of Rain, his daughter, of singing a lullaby to her as he held her by the light of a candle. Some part of him had been disappointed, of course. Under the one-child policy, a daughter meant the end of his father’s line—but she had been so beautiful, so quick and intelligent, that any discontent on his part had vanished, and he thought only of the years ahead, of watching her unfold, reveal herself, become who she was meant to become.

If they failed today—if
he
failed—that would never happen. His wife was already entombed in the ashes of Beijing. He would never know her touch or see her smile again, and maybe he would never see Rain again either.

But Rain was going to live. If he had anything at all to say about it, his daughter would grow to be a woman.

He was carrying missiles, so he had something to say about it.

“Fighters!” someone shouted, and ahead he saw flickers of green light as the alien craft disgorged from their carrier and began attacking the slender Chinese force.

“Come along,
Meifeng
,” Lei said. “Come along, my beautiful wind.” With a clear heart and terrible purpose, Lao Lei accelerated toward the enemy.

* * *

Dikembe awoke to cheering. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, wondering if he was still in some sort of dream.

“What the hell?” Hailey swore. She looked pleasantly disheveled and slightly cross.

But she smiled when she saw him.

“Hey, you,” she said. She looked around. “Not dead yet.”

He remembered Scotch and the sea air, and holding her. Her standing on tiptoe to kiss him…

Someone banged on her cabin door.

“Hailey, get out here,” the someone yelled.

Dikembe put on his shirt and slacks as Hailey drew on a T-shirt and blue shorts. Then they made their way to the deck, where a party was in progress, and fine champagne was flowing freely.

“What’s going on?” Hailey asked a young man with unfortunate sideburns, who was handing her a flute of Dom Perignon.

“What’s going on,” the fellow said, “is we kicked their asses.”

“The aliens,” Dikembe said dubiously.

The fellow pointed to a large-screen TV set up on the deck. It displayed images of the huge spaceships, crashed and burning. A glance around the little port revealed revelers in the streets.

Sideburns offered him some of the bubbly, and in a bit of a daze, he took it.

“Cheers,” he said.

* * *

The euphoria following the defeat of the alien fleet had a half-life of hours. Estimates put the death toll in England alone at more than four million, and more than a million were now homeless. The government was in a shambles, as were most governments everywhere.

Global mortality was guessed to be in the billions, and the aliens hadn’t been entirely defeated.

At least not all of them.

Their ships seemed to have all been destroyed, but in the areas where they crashed, reports were on the rise of encounters with armed survivors. In England that was mostly in the north, which only meant more refugees were headed for the south and for Europe, where many hoped things might be better. So Dikembe knew he had to work fast. The docks were already starting to get crowded. He needed to stay ahead of the next wave of refugees, or he might drown in them.

Hailey had disappeared. He spent a few precious minutes finding her. She was in a deck chair near the bow, well on her way to being drunk again.

“Hey, end-of-the-world buddy,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to say goodbye,” he said. “I need to find passage to Europe before everything fills up.”

She stood a little shakily and kissed him.

“Umm, last time I checked,” she said, “you were already on a boat.”

“Of course,” he said. “But I couldn’t ask—”

“You didn’t,” she said. “Anyway, we heard from the boss, who seems to have survived. We’re headed for Greece, but we’re not in a hurry. I think we can drop you somewhere convenient on the way. Algiers, maybe?”

“That would be—really good,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Cool,” she said. “You can bunk with me in the meantime. If you want. If you can handle the company. Or I can find you a stateroom.”

“I would be happy to share with you,” he said. “If you can stand the company.”

* * *

Mr. Marshall looked at them across the small fire. For a while, it seemed like that was all he was going to do, but finally he cleared his throat and began speaking.

“So I know some of you are scared,” he said. “So am I. I’ve been thinking what the best thing to do is, and for right now, I think we should stay right here. We’re about as deep in the national forest as we can get, and from what we’ve seen of the aliens, they seem mostly interested in cities. At least, that’s where they started. Up here, I don’t think we’ll draw their attention.”

“How do you know?” Hank asked. “We don’t even know what they want.” He massaged an ankle and winced as he spoke. He’d gotten tangled in some barbed wire on their hike back down the mountain.

“That’s a good point, Hank,” Mr. Marshall said, “but until we have more information, it just seems safer up here. We still have gas in the bus if we need to leave. In the meantime, we need to focus on surviving, on living off the land. There’s fish in the lake and food in the woods, and we have some supplies. We’re going to be alright.”

Jake raised his hand.

“Jake?”

“Mr. Marshall, how are my parents going to find me way up here?” he asked.

“Oh, jeez, kid,” Hank said. “Grow up.”

“Hank,” Mr. Marshall said. “There’s no need for that.” He turned his attention back to Jake. “I don’t know the answer to that. I only know that your parents would want me to keep you safe. Do you understand?”

Jake just stared at him. It was like no one grasped what he wanted. But he didn’t say anything.

Later he helped gather wood and drew water to be boiled for drinking. At night, they slept in the bus. The older kids managed to catch a few fish, but the food that was supposed to be in the woods seemed to be pretty well hidden.

Meanwhile, Hank was getting sick. His leg swelled up and he slept a lot, although he yelled in his sleep. When Jake was close he noticed that the leg smelled really bad. Mr. Marshall got more and more worried, and after five days he called them back together and told them they were getting back on the bus. He said there was a small town nearby that should have a hospital.

Jake was happy to be back on the bus, to watch the trees go by as it bumped along. If they were going to a town, maybe his parents would be there. If not, he might be able to use a phone to somehow find them. It was better than being in the woods, starving.

They drove a few hours, and then Mr. Marshall stopped the bus. He got out, and after a minute everybody else followed him.

They were still in the hills, but down below they could see the small town Mr. Marshall had been talking about—just a few buildings and a water tower. Only now the town was completely surrounded by cars, vans, and campers. Dozens of big green tents stood along one edge, near the highway.

“There must be thousands,” Mr. Marshall said. “Tens of thousands.”

“Aliens?” Marisol asked.

Mr. Marshall shook his head. “They must be refugees, like us,” he said. “See those tents? Those are army tents. So we still have an army.”

“That’s good, right?” Jake said.

“Yes,” Mr. Marshall said, looking out over the makeshift settlement. He didn’t sound completely convinced, though.

Still on the bus, Hank moaned.

“Back on the bus,” Mr. Marshall said. “Let’s hope they have room for a few more.”

“Oh, no you did not,” Steve Hiller shouted, banking hard to the left as a surface-to-air missile tore through the space where his F-18 would have met it, had he not noticed it in time. He needed to yank the stick back immediately to avoid colliding with the pilot who was supposed to be his wingman, but who was apparently oblivious both to the missile and Hiller’s maneuver.

“Wake up over there, Williams,” he shouted. “Do you see what you almost did? Do you see? Nearly banged up my sweet ride.”

“I’m sorry, Knight One,” Williams came back.

“Sorry, huh? Oh, well, that’s okay then. I ain’t mad.”

“Sir,” Williams said. “I—”

“It’s
alright
,” Hiller said. “We’re all okay. Just—try and have a little situational awareness over there. Know what I’m saying?”

“Yes, sir.”

Just then a spray of green energy stuttered by, nearly hitting his wing, and Williams turned hard to the left, even though he was in no danger from the attack.

“Newbies,” Hiller muttered under his breath. Most of the experienced pilots were long gone, killed trying to take out the destroyers—alien ships fifteen miles in diameter surrounded by energy shields that could stop a nuke. He had been among the first to attempt to take one down, and it hadn’t gone so well, but when it became clear it was a pointless exercise, the president had called off the attack.

Here, in Russia, they hadn’t accepted defeat as quickly, sending squadron after squadron at the alien craft, so by the time the city killers were finally taken out, they had no air force left to speak of.

That might have been one thing if their July 4th victory had been complete—but it hadn’t been. It still wasn’t certain how many aliens the ships had carried. Based on what he had seen in the mother ship, it might have been millions, and of those millions some fraction survived the crash, at least in some cases.

So his vacation—damn, his
honeymoon
—had lasted less than a day. Pilots were just too few and valuable to be idle.

Fortunately, the aliens that survived were pretty poorly organized, and with a little air support the infantry had mopped them up fairly quickly back in the States, killing or capturing the vast majority of the aliens in just a few days.

Other places—like here—things weren’t going as well. The city killer that destroyed Moscow had moved on to a more-or-less secret military installation, a holdover from Soviet times. A few thousand of the aliens were dug in, and without air support the Russian infantry was having a hard time cracking their perimeter. The destruction of the mother ship had deprived the enemy’s aerial fighters of power, but hadn’t affected their small arms, so they were still shooting green shit at him. That he was used to, but the surface-to-air missile—that was new.

They must have learned how to use human weapons.

He circled back in time to see another missile rise up from a mobile launcher.

“Gotcha,” he said. He painted the launcher with a laser and then fired an air-to-surface missile.

He watched it detonate with a satisfying bloom of smoke and flame.

“Okay, fellahs, let’s make another pass,” he said. As they made the turn, the surface-to-air fire intensified exponentially, becoming a hard green sleet. He heard Alvarez swear.

“Hang in there,” Hiller said.

“I can’t see anything,” Alvarez said. “My cockpit is compromised.”

“Pull up,” Hiller advised. “Get clear.”

“I can’t—” the other pilot’s voice cut off abruptly, and off to Hiller’s four o’clock, he saw Alvarez’s plane shred apart.

“Damn it!” he snarled, launching another missile into one of the buildings from which much of the enemy fire seemed to be coming. Then he pulled up. “Everybody get clear and regroup,” he said. “We need to think about this here for a second.”

“Knight One,” Control said. “Be advised. You have incoming.”

“Incoming? Incoming what?”

“Medium range surface-to-air missiles. Big ones, Krugs maybe, four of them.”

He checked his radar. “Yeah, I see ’em. Damn, talk about big guns.”

“I’ve got visual,” Williams said. “Holy crap.”

“One’s got a lock on me,” Knight Four said. He was trying to keep the panic out of his voice and not doing a great job of it.

“Keep your head,” Hiller said. “You’ve got a brain, it doesn’t.”

“Yes, sir.”

“See,” Hiller said. “One has a lock on me too. You don’t hear me gettin’ all panicky, do you?”

In fact, he didn’t feel too good about it. The damn thing was
fast
.

He made a hard break down and back toward alpha target, deploying flares as he did so. With any luck, flying back into the maelstrom would confuse whatever guidance system the thing was using. It also increased his odds of being fried by alien energy weapons, but at the moment that was the lesser threat.

He went so low he nearly plowed into the ground, then pulled up so hard the g-forces put black spots dancing before his eyes. It was worth it, though, because the damn thing went off in an airburst that leveled half of alpha target.

“Yeah,” he shouted. “
That’s
what you get!” His elation was short lived, however, when he realized that two more of his pilots were gone.

“Alright,” he said. “Where’d that come from?”