Independence Day: Crucible (The Official Prequel)

by Greg Keyes

“I know,” she said. “I’m going to hire some sort of chief of staff, someone who can make the minute-to-minute decisions.”

  “That’s what we’re doing,” Vega said. “Our job is to protect him, and not just from bullets.”

  “Can you honestly tell me you don’t feel understaffed?” she asked. “That you have this all under control?”

  He pursed his lips, and after a few seconds shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  She nodded. “You’ll vet whoever I hire. Maybe a retired agent? Let me know if you think of anyone.”

  “I’ll ask around,” he replied.

  * * *

  “Holy crap, Dylan,” Jake breathed. “We did it.”

  “Come again, Saber Two,” Control said.

  Jake cleared his throat. “Sorry, Control, that was just me sneezing.”

  “What he means to say,” Dylan cut in, “is that we’ve achieved orbit.”

  “Very good, Saber One. Proceed toward training course.”

  Jake glanced off to his right, where Dylan’s sleek fighter was a shadow against the larger shadow of the Earth, visible only by its running lights. The Earth wasn’t entirely dark, though—here and there were glowing patches, like distant jumbles of Christmas lights. He wondered what it would have looked like in 1995 when New York and Mexico City, Beijing, Mumbai had still been down there.

  He switched to their private channel.

  “Just to clarify,” Jake said, “holy crap, Dylan, we’re in space.”

  “Yeah,” Dylan said. “We are that. Patricia is going to be pissed off. Our first run upstairs while she’s on leave.”

  “She’ll get over it,” Jake said. “Once we explain—over and over—how awesome it was.”

  “Okay,” Dylan said. “Let’s focus on the mission now. No more small talk.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jake said. “I don’t see anything yet. Do you?”

  “Nope,” Dylan replied.

  Jake continued to marvel at the blaze of the heavens. An eye-hurting light appeared on the Earth’s horizon, and his cockpit glass adjusted.

  “Sunrise,” he said. He watched the bright point of the sun spread a crescent of blue, green, and white on the rim of the world.

  “I’ve got something,” Dylan said.

  “Coming from where?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “Those sneaky bastards,” Jake said. “Yeah, I see them now.” There were four of them, and they were coming straight out of the sunrise, making it impossible to spot them visually—but visually wasn’t the best way to see things up here anyway. They had instruments far more sensitive than the human eye.

  “Let’s get turned,” Dylan said. “Otherwise they’ll be all over our tails. Nice and easy, just like in the simulator.”

  It was nothing like the simulator. The bad guys weren’t pixels, they were drones programmed to behave like alien fighters. That was space out there, as well, and a really long fall if anything went wrong, as it had for the Chinese pilot a few months earlier.

  “I’ve got a lock on one,” Dylan said.

  “I’ve got the one on your three,” Jake said. He fired a burst, watched it stream into the rising sun. A stutter of green light from Dylan crossed his.

  “Hits,” Dylan said. “Shoot, there are two more coming from behind us.”

  “Your call,” Jake said.

  “Go get ’em. I’ll deal with these.”

  The wings of their craft were useless in space, of course, but the anti-gravity drive wasn’t, especially with a gravity well as big as the Earth right below. Jake’s craft whipped up and around. The attackers behind him were below instead, and closing fast on Dylan.

  “Yee-hah!” Jake cried as he dove toward the planet, firing his energy weapon. One of the enemies was rocketing straight at him now. Jake strafed the one on Dylan’s tail and then went into a tight turn, trying to avoid the simulated green death streaming by. Then they had passed each other, so near that Jake suspected they were about a meter away from causing the automatic safety gear to kick in. The ESD wasn’t in the business of losing expensive spacecraft in training exercises.

  Jake turned hard and kicked on the fusion drive, at the same time breaking and turning with the AG thrusters, reversing his course almost instantly. The acceleration compensators didn’t quite absorb all of the g-forces, so for a moment he felt as if he had an elephant sitting on him. As the spots behind his eyes cleared, he saw the bogie coming back down his throat.

  He fired.

  “He shoots!” Jake hollered. “He scores!” Then he turned to find Dylan and the other three attackers, but his screen indicated that all of them had been destroyed. They hadn’t, of course—drones were expensive, too.

  That meant Dylan was down.

  Jake was the last man standing.

  * * *

  Dylan hardly spoke on the way down, although Jake tried to draw him out a few times. Finally reentry and landing took all of his attention.

  It wasn’t until later, at the bar, with a drink in each of them, that Jake tried to nudge Dylan again.

  “Come on,” he said. “It was three against one, and you got them all.”

  “And they got me,” Dylan said. “That never happened in the simulator.”

  “Well, the real thing takes some getting used to,” Jake offered.

  “Yeah? You seemed to do just fine,” Dylan said, hunching over his drink.

  “Beginner’s luck,” Jake said. “Shake it off. Next time, right?”

  Dylan took another drink of his IPA.

  “What if I wash out, Jake?”

  He sounded serious.

  “What?” Jake said. “That’s crazy talk.”

  Dylan lowered his voice. “You know what killed my dad?” Dylan said. “It wasn’t the explosion. It was being Steve Hiller, the guy that did something impossible and saved the world. One of the guys, anyway. After that, he wasn’t just a guy, you know. He was the guy, and Dad took that seriously. He carried that weight even after it got too heavy for him, and he climbed into a ship he didn’t trust because that was what he was supposed to do.

  “Now that he’s gone… it feels like it’s all come down on me. Like if I fail, I’m not just failing myself—I’m failing everybody.”

  “Dylan,” Jake said. “Buddy. You aren’t going to fail. You’ll probably be first in the class. Well, second in the class—I’ll be first.”

  Dylan didn’t smile.

  “That was a joke,” Jake said.

  Now Dylan did smile, a little. “No it wasn’t,” he said, “but thanks.”

  “What was it you told me your dad always said? If you’re passionate about what you do, if you do it with conviction, you can never fail.”

  “Never fail him, is what he meant,” Dylan said. “I can passionately and with great conviction let everyone else down.” He straightened and leaned back in his seat. “God, Jake, I miss him,” he said.

  “I know,” Jake said.

  “Listen to me,” Dylan said, rolling his eyes. “This must sound really stupid to you. I mean you—”

  Yeah, Jake thought. At least you had somebody like that in your life, if only for a while.

  But that wasn’t what Dylan needed to hear at the moment, and Jake knew it. There was a flip side to that, too. He could barely remember his parents. That pain was far in the past. If he had been as close to his father as Dylan had been to his, and lost him—well, he had trouble imagining it.

  “It’s not stupid,” Jake said. “I get it.”

  Dylan nodded. “Thanks,” he said.

  “You’re just not used to losing,” Jake said. “You don’t take it well.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Dylan said.

  Jake nodded, then raised his glass.

  “We didn’t lose. As a team, we won. So here’s to the team.”

  “To the team,” Dylan seconded.

  28

  JUNE

  2013

  Dikembe locked eyes w
ith the man in the tent. Outside, the sky was weeping gently upon the savanna. The west was a cloud of orange light nestled on one side of a cottony gray vault.

  The man’s name was Weiss. He would give no first name, and he would not say for whom he really worked. He was stocky, blunt-faced with close-shaven hair that was nearly all black, despite the fact that he must have been at least fifty.

  When Dikembe began trying to collect men for the mission, he began outside of the country, quietly recruiting mercenaries, for two reasons. First, anyone he enlisted from his own country might be an informer for his father. Even if they were not, word might get around to someone who was. The second reason was that if they failed, at least it would not be his countrymen dying.

  As he recruited, Weiss had simply shown up. He did not seem like a mercenary, and did not claim to be. To Dikembe, he gave the impression of being more like some sort of spook—CIA or something. In the new world order he wasn’t sure how that worked. Whether he worked for an individual country or for the Earth Space Defense coalition.

  A lot of people wanted to get their hands on the ship. He was a little surprised Umbutu hadn’t ever actually been invaded.

  It appeared as if Weiss had been hanging around the area, waiting for wind of any sort of uprising or instability. Then he was just there.

  “I want to be perfectly clear about this,” Dikembe said. “I do not want my father killed. I want him taken out of the country, but he will be alive when this happens, and he will remain alive. Also, I don’t want any unnecessary deaths amongst my people. I will let you into my father’s compound and deal with what guards I can. You will come in, take him, and then we will leave.”

  Weiss nodded. “How many soldiers in the compound?” he asked.

  “On the order of thirty,” Dikembe said. “The exact number changes, and there are several checkpoints along the way.”

  “The trick will not be getting in,” Weiss said. “It will be getting him out. Have you considered using helicopters? I have several at my disposal.”

  “Do you have any with force fields?” Dikembe asked.

  “No. Such vehicles exist, of course, but no. That would make this whole thing much less… quiet.”

  “Then no,” Dikembe said. “My father’s guards are armed with energy weapons, and they will easily shoot down any air support.”

  “Even if your father is in the chopper?”

  “No, of course not,” Dikembe said.

  “Then can’t we steal a republican chopper to get him out?”

  “That’s worth considering,” Dikembe said.

  “Well, then,” Weiss said. “Let’s go over the photographs and consider our options.”

  * * *

  As he approached Upanga Umbutu’s rooms, Dikembe tried to remember better times, but it had become difficult. Those years seemed so distant, the images he was still able to conjure as antique as sepia photographs.

  He stopped before the little shrine that had been erected in the hall, dedicated to Bakari. He stared at the picture of his brother for a moment, recalling the last time he had seen him alive, his final words. What would Bakari have to say about what Dikembe was about to do? Would he be proud or ashamed—or, like Dikembe, deeply conflicted?

  He heard the chatter of gunfire begin outside. The two guards outside the door clutched their weapons.

  “The compound is under attack,” Dikembe told them. “You, go help secure the perimeter of the house. And you, Enzi—I must move my father to a secure location. Go and alert the helicopter pilot. Quickly.”

  “Yes, Prince,” they both said, and ran off to do his bidding.

  So far, so good. The mercenaries, to all appearances, were assaulting the gate. That would draw almost all of his father’s men to the front of the house. The helicopter pad was in the back.

  He pushed open his father’s door. The old man was standing in front of a mirror, dressed in his uniform. Dikembe was fairly certain he slept in it now.

  “They’re coming for us, aren’t they?” his father said. “They took my lovely Bakari, and now they have come for you, Dikembe. And for me.”

  “The helicopter is out back,” Dikembe said. “We will withdraw to the installation in the south. We can hold them off from there.”

  “I feel them,” his father said. “Like rats in my skull.”

  “Papa, come along.”

  His father’s eyes rolled about and his mouth worked without sound. Dikembe took his arm and guided him through the house, out of the back door, to where the chopper was warming up. He had to force him to duck down as they drew near. As he helped his father climb into the back, he saw that one of Weiss’s men was at the controls. His father did not notice, of course.

  So far, so good, he thought again. All according to plan. The helicopter lifted in the darkness. Dawn was only an hour away, but she was shy yet, still hiding in her damp robe of night.

  “I have dreamed many things,” his father said, his voice almost singsong, as if reciting an old epic. “So much has been foretold. The day of return is at hand.” He turned to Dikembe. “Do you understand?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Father,” Dikembe said.

  “At first we fought them, and believed with our souls that they were dead, and yet from beyond death they still hunted us. Their ghosts hunted us, stalked us from the shadows beneath our feet, in the waters, in the very temples of our skulls. They lay in wait for us beyond our borders, in the abhorrent world beyond, and for years I—even I did not understand. The wise men and women who counseled me also failed to understand. Only now, as I dream my waking dream, is all finally revealed.”

  His voice became soft and measured, the tone of it totally sane—if not for the words. It was like a man describing the garden in front of his house.

  “What is that, Father?” Dikembe asked. “What do you understand?”

  Dawn was breaking, a watery gray line in the east. They had probably already crossed out of Umbutu. It was all but over. He hoped that no one had died, but that was probably too much to wish for. He knew the blood would stain him forever, but he also knew he had done the right thing. Perhaps with help, his father could get better, become more like the man he had once been.

  “Hunter and hunted,” his father said. “Predator and prey. I thought they were our enemies, that they came here to kill us.”

  “They did come here to kill us, Father,” he said. “They slaughtered billions.”

  “No,” his father shook his head slowly. “They are our other halves. They are us and we are them. It’s only fighting that fact that causes the pain. We must rejoin them. Only then will any of us be whole again.”

  Although his words were mad, Dikembe felt a sort of creeping horror, because it also made a certain sense. If he just gave in to the voices…

  “No,” Dikembe said. “It cannot be true.”

  “But it is, and now they have come for you, as they came for Bakari, and for me. We shall all be complete at last.”

  The helicopter descended, approaching the treetops. Beyond, on a small field, Dikembe saw a circle of armed men.

  His father’s men.

  “I said once that you did not have it in you,” his father said. “I now see I was wrong, but all will be well, my son.”

  Dikembe drew his sidearm and pointed at the pilot.

  “Do not land here,” he said.

  Then he felt a sharp pain in his side. His father grabbed his arm, and with terrifying strength twisted the gun from his grasp. Dikembe felt a wave of weakness flow through him, and in shock, he realized he had been stabbed.

  The treetops were close. He hurled himself from the helicopter at the nearest one.

  * * *

  When David had last seen the moon base in person it had resembled a bunch of half-assembled office furniture more than it did anything coherent. There had been enough going on to declare it operational. Now, however, it was very nearly complete, although one key element was missing. The base was
laid out in concentric circles around a central hub. The hub contained a socket where one day, hopefully in the next few years, a gigantic cannon would be emplaced.

  “Set her down gently, will you?” he asked the pilot, a young woman named Celeste who wore her hair clipped short. She made him feel like if they got in a fight, he wouldn’t do that well. Not that she seemed angry, or mean. She just seemed… efficient.

  “We’re already down, sir,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. “That was very… smooth. Kudos.”

  Minutes later, in the hangar, he was greeted by a young man wearing the Chinese version of the ESD uniform and escorted to what would look like an ordinary meeting room were it not for the thick but transparent wall which afforded a stunning view of the lunar landscape—made all the more spectacular by Earthrise.

  It wasn’t anything he’d ever imagined seeing in his lifetime—not in person. It came up quickly, a ball of alabaster and cobalt, and unlike a rising moon, it cast no glow in the sky, since there was no atmosphere to scatter its light. It seemed smaller than a rising moon, due to the lack of an atmospheric lens on the horizon. It was beautiful, and lonely, and seemed to David as fragile as a glass Christmas ornament.

  “You know the first photo of the Earth from space was supposed to make us all forget our petty differences and join together. End war and all of that.”

  David turned at the familiar voice.

  “President Grey,” he said. “So good to see you. It’s been a while. I heard you were taking a well-earned rest.”

  Grey’s bushy eyebrows and what remained of his hair was now completely white, and he seemed to have shrunken a little bit, but his presence remained undiminished.

  “I was,” Grey said. He waved his hand to take in their surroundings “But I thought I had earned the right to see this, and President Lanford agreed. I came up on a transport a few days ago, with your advance crew. Eighty-two years old, and here I am on the moon. Seems impossible.” He nodded toward the airlock. “I watched you land. Thought I’d say hello.”

  They shook hands.

  “How are you, David?” the former president asked.

  “Oh, I’m doing alright,” he said. “Considering the fact that I’m in a little bubble of glass and steel surrounded by a vacuum, inundated by deadly radiation, and my insides feel like someone pumped them full of helium and champagne bubbles.”