“We’re running out of firepower, General,” a technician reported, “and we’re not causing enough damage to the main ship.”
President Whitmore, surveying the chaos from 18,000 feet, concurred with that estimation. His squad of thirty planes was reduced to just eight. A few had been shot down in the first mad moments of the stingray counterattack. The others had been separated from the main group during the retreat. Taking a quick inventory, he learned that the pilots in his group had fewer than ten missiles left between them.
“Let’s make ’em all count,” he reminded them.
Connie had come into the war room to see if there was anything she could do. Standing behind Grey, she watched one of the radar screens showing a three-dimensional display of the huge city destroyer. Because some of the base’s primary radar receptors had already been destroyed, the image on the screen was incomplete, blinking on and off like a ghost. She felt a long shiver run through her legs up to her scalp when someone reported that the thing was directly overhead, then pointed out to General Grey some aspect of the torn, indistinct image.
Once he understood what the man was showing him, Grey snatched up the microphone and spoke to the remaining pilots.
“Attention! They’re opening the bottom doors and getting ready to fire the big gun. Somebody get down there and knock that thing out before they can use it!!”
Dazed and sickened by this news, Connie turned and walked out of the room, moving past Miguel, who had snuck in behind her amidst all the confusion. He stood to one side, keeping out of the way, and eavesdropped on Whitmore’s radio communication.
“Roger, Base,” Whitmore called. “I’ve got one AMRAAM left and I’m on my way.” He broke into a steep dive, pushing the engines into high thrust. “You boys keep ’em off my tail.”
His squad leveled off and cruised along the bottom of the ship. The airspace in front of them was crowded with jets and attackers flying in all directions. Weaving in and out of traffic at high speed, Whitmore angled his attack run so that his missile would slice between two of the huge doors which were lowering themselves over the desert. He activated his HUD and sighted on the tip of the giant gun, the huge diamond-shaped bulb from which the powerful beam was about to fire. Something flashed across his peripheral vision just as the AMRAAM launch mechanism lowered from his jet. Attackers arriving too late, he thought. As he reached forward to fire the missile, the F-15 flying a few yards to his right unexpectedly blew up into a thousand pieces. The explosion rocked Whitmore’s craft just as the missile blasted out of the harness, sending it badly off course. For a moment, he watched it speed away toward a collision with the hills.
“Damn it! Eagle Two, take point. I’ll drop back and try to buy you some time.”
“I’m on it,” the pilot returned, moving into the lead position.
Behind him, Whitmore and the other pilots were yelling out the positions of incoming attackers. The opening on the bottom of the city destroyer was apparently a vulnerable point, and as the squad moved in for their strike, a dozen of the stingrays swarmed to the aliens’ defense. There was so much confusion over the airwaves that the lead pilot never heard Whitmore warning him to take evasive action. One of the stingrays dropped in behind him, firing a steady storm of laser pulses. Another one of the F-15s, Pig’s Eagle Twelve, rushed past the rest of the American pilots until the nose of his plane was practically up the stingray’s tail. He pumped the alien plane full of .50-caliber shells, but it was too little too late. Eagle Two burst into flames, then exploded before its pilot could even lock down the targeting system. The wounded stingray peeled away toward the safety of the interior of the ship, but Eagle Twelve swerved with him, firing the whole time, until the ship fell to pieces, ripping apart in midair without an explosion.
“Nice work, Twelve,” the president said without much enthusiasm. “Now, does anybody up here have any missiles left?”
*
Connie stepped through the doors of the infirmary and felt like she’d left the frying pan for the fire. Uniformed soldiers and a few volunteers were still bringing bloodied civilian victims of the air raid on the camp into a room already jammed with people. They were laid out on the floor and propped up against the walls. Their moans were accompanied by the constant rumblings of the bombardment from above. As horrific as the moment seemed, Connie knew it was only a prelude to the catastrophe that was to come. All the screaming would end a split second after the mammoth ship hovering overhead fired its awesome destructive beam.
“Put me to work!”
She grabbed Dr. Issacs’s arm as he hurried past, carefully stepping over the bodies of the dead and wounded. By now, the bearded doctor was past the point of exhaustion. The only color left in his face were a pair of dark rings below his eyes. After a confused moment, he pointed into the next room.
“Help her,” he shouted to make himself heard. “She’s doing pre-op.” Then he continued on his way.
Connie moved through a doorway and found Jasmine cleaning up a patient who’d taken some shrapnel right above his groin. Despite the thick flow of blood and the exposed view of the man’s intestines, Jasmine was talking to him in a calm, friendly voice. When Connie approached the table, Jasmine immediately put a towel in her hands and showed her where to apply pressure to staunch the man’s bleeding. Normally squeamish at the sight of blood, Connie pressed down with the rag, keeping the patient’s internal organs from spilling out all over the table. Jasmine picked the last fragments of debris from the wound, cleaning it as she went.
“You’re pretty good at this,” Connie noted. “Keep it up and you could turn pro.”
“Thanks,” Jas smiled without looking up, “I like doing it and it’s helping me keep my mind off other things.” Connie thought she must be talking about the blast that was going to crush down through the roof any second, until she realized she was talking about her new husband. ‘This is a hell of a way to spend a honeymoon, don’t you think?”
“Huh? Oh, yes. A hell of a way,” Connie agreed absently. She looked at the man laying on the table. He kept raising his head to watch what was happening to him, his teeth chattering the whole while.
Dr. Issacs shouted into the room, “Okay, let’s get this one into the operating room.”
As an orderly took over Connie’s job, she smiled weakly at the man on the gurney, telling him without much conviction that he was going to be fine, just fine.
*
Several pilots answered in the negative. After a quick conference with his men in the war room, Grey returned to the radio. “Eagle One, proceed to Headly Air Force Base in Manitoba, Canada. We believe you have enough fuel left. We’ve radioed ahead and they’ll send an escort out to meet you. This will be your new headquarters, sir.”
Whitmore refused to break off the fight. They were so close. “Doesn’t anyone have any damn missiles left?”
The green beam that began the ship’s firing cycle spilled out of the huge firing pin, scanning its target. Whitmore knew it would only be a matter of seconds until the blast ripped down and chewed a hole in the ground where his daughter was hiding. He felt completely numb except for a wave of queasiness in his stomach. He didn’t want to stick around and watch.
“Eagle Squad,” he said with great reluctance, “let’s head north. Follow my lead, do you copy?”
“Sorry I’m late, Mr. President!” an unfamiliar voice shouted over a background of engine noise on the radio.
“Who is this?”
“I’m just here to help out.”
The president turned and saw the damnedest thing: an unsteady old red biwing aircraft that looked like something Baron von Richthofen might have flown during World War I. The ship was sputtering through the air, piloted by a man in a leather helmet. Strapped to the side with bungee cords and twine was something that looked like a missile.
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry, sir. I’m packin’.”
Russell had stolen the heaviest,
nastiest missile he could find. It was too heavy for the plane, and every time the wind shifted, it clanked against the flimsy wall of the cockpit with a frightening thud. A red light the size of a button flashed off and on, indicating the weapon was armed.
“What I need from you, sir, is to keep those guys off me for a few more seconds.”
Whitmore looked around and saw a fleet of the attackers diving in. The American pilots moved to engage them, laying down a barrage of cover fire to protect the wobbly old biwing. The plane continued lifting uncertainly toward the giant firing pin.
In the war room, all eyes were on the radar model of the ship, a small blip slowly climbing toward the origin of the beam, also visible on the screen. Grey grabbed the radio mike. “Pilot, identify yourself!”
“My name’s Russell Casse,” the pilot answered, “and I want you to do me a favor…”
“Who is this guy?” one of the technicians wondered.
“Russell!” Miguel rushed toward the soldiers gathered around the monitors. They caught him by the arms and held him back.
“…tell my children I love them very much.”
As one of the radio technicians spoke to the president and his squad, keeping them alert to enemy craft positions, Miguel yelled over the open microphone: “Dad! No!”
Russell couldn’t help smiling at being called “Dad.” He didn’t know if Miguel could hear him, but he yelled back over the radio, “I’ve got to, kid. You were always better at taking care of them than I was anyways.” Then he added, “This is just something I’ve got to do.”
He snapped off his radio and pulled the de Haviland into as steep a climb as the engine could bear without stalling out. He had the nose of the plane pointed at the side of the firing pin. The tail of the biwing disappeared into the opening as the president and the remaining fighters banked away, clearing the area. The green light suddenly disappeared. In two seconds, a white light would appear and a massive beam of destruction would fire down on Area 51.
“Hello, boys! I’m back!” Russell hollered at the top of his lungs. “And in the words of my generation: UP YOURS!!”
The old plane flew nose-first into the side of the firing pin, causing an insignificant explosion that puffed out the bottom of the city destroyer without appearing to cause any real damage. But just as the deadly white beam erupted from the bottom of the ship, it abruptly cut off again. The huge ship lifted up and away with astonishing speed. In the same instant, every attacker plane turned on a dime to follow it. The entire swarm raced away over the desert.
None of them got very far.
Beginning at the center of the massive city destroyer, a sharp explosion burst a hole through the domed roof, like a skull exploding outward from a suicide bullet. Russell’s bomb had set off a chain reaction that ripped through the body of the fifteen-mile-wide ship, melting the entire vessel from within. One after another, the thunderous internal explosions turned the monster in the sky fire red, exposing its internal architecture like an X-ray. Quickly, it was fully engulfed. Still in midair, it began to implode and explode simultaneously, incinerating itself into fragments, falling in huge flaming chunks to earth.
The chain reaction extended down to the war room, which erupted into a roaring victory cheer. They’d found a way to sink the impregnable alien battleships. Everyone went crazy, jumping into one another’s arms, pumping fists in the air, laughing wildly. Everyone, that is, except Miguel. As shouts of triumph filled the room, he quietly opened the door and stepped outside into a corridor full of refugees. They were confused by the discrepancy between his sad expression and the cheering going on behind him. Grey, permanently levelheaded, took one of the celebrants by the scruff of his collar, calming him down instantly.
“Get back on the wire,” he snarled, “and explain to every squadron around the world how to shoot these sons of bitches down.”
*
Steve thought he could hear the fat lady singing. Still sprawled on the floor, hiding himself below the dashboard, he reached into his breast pocket and removed the pair of cigars Julius had given him. He held one out to David.
“I guess there’s nothing left to do,” he said, handing over the smoke, “except nuke ’em before they come in here and do something nasty.”
David, still locked in a staring contest with the creatures behind the glass, nodded, coming to grips with the fact that he was about to die. Inspecting the cigar, he mused, “It’s funny. I always thought things like these would kill me. Okay, let’s fire away.”
Steve lifted himself off the floor and sat down in his pilot’s chair, trying to keep his eyes off the repulsive sight of the creatures straight ahead of him. He opened the cover plate on the black box and punched in the launch code. The LCD screen blinked rapidly, presenting him with two options: LAUNCH and CANCEL.
“Nice meeting you, man.” He reached across and shook David’s hand.
“Likewise,” David assured him. “And we almost got away with it.”
“Almost,” Steve agreed. “Ready?”
“Bye-bye, Fuzzy. Bye-bye, Blinky.” David waved to the aliens, giving them individual names. “See you later, Egghead, and you, too, Froggie.”
“Think they know what’s coming?” Steve asked, the cigar dangling from his mouth as he reached down to execute the firing.
“Not a chance.”
As soon as Steve’s finger touched the button, the floor of the tiny cabin kicked violently backwards, knocking both men off balance as the eight-foot-long missile shot away in a shower of rocket exhaust. Fire and shards of glass flew everywhere. By the time Steve and David could look up, the missile had penetrated the crystal observation window, crashed through the back of the observation room, and lodged itself into a distant wall, its rocket engine still spewing a jetstream of sparks.
Their artificially generated atmosphere impeached, the aliens behind the glass began to twist and expand horribly as their bodies were sucked in all directions by the vacuum of empty space. Their bulbous heads burst and splattered like kernels of bloody popcorn.
As this gruesome show, played itself out beyond the windows of the attacker, the clamps holding the ship unexpectedly released and the ship lifted several feet in the air. An explosion in the observation tower knocked the ship backwards. It skittered off an identical craft parked next to it and wobbled out into the open.
“We’re loose!”
“Doesn’t matter,” David said, “the game’s over.”
Steve checked the data from the black launch pad. Its digital counter showed the time remaining until the nuclear warhead self-detonated: 22… 21…
“I don’t hear no fat lady,” he said, jumping into the pilot’s chair and spinning the craft around. David had just enough time to jump into his chair before Steve yanked back on the controls, jerking the ship into a full-speed getaway.
“Forget the fat lady. You’re obsessed with the fat lady. Just get us out of here!”
Quicker that any human pilot could have reacted, a handful of attackers roared into pursuit. Although Steve hadn’t mastered his plane’s steering mechanism completely, he had no choice but to push it to breakneck speed. Swerving dizzily, he rocketed through the dimly lit maze of the mother ship’s interior. The pursuing attackers held off firing at their prey until it came to the mouth of the exit tunnel. Suddenly, they unleashed a flood of tracer fire, but they didn’t have the angle they needed, and Steve shot into the triangular passageway toward the exit.
“It’s closing,” David shouted, “the doors are closing.”
“I can see that!” Steve had enough to worry about without a sideseat driver. The exit at the end of the tunnel was growing smaller by the moment as three thick doors moved closer, sealing off their last hope for escape. Straining the controls to the breaking point, Steve milked every ounce of speed from the craft, roaring toward the closing porthole. He checked the black box:… 09… 08…
“It’s too late, they’re closed.” David watched the last few star
s disappearing behind the triangular doorway. When he saw Steve meant to try it anyway, he closed his eyes and held his breath.
They shot through the narrow aperture with only inches to spare.
“Elvis has left the building!” he screamed.
“Thank you very much,” David chimed in, lamely attempting to imitate The King.
Once they were out in space, Steve located the earth and steered the plane toward it… 01… 00.
The attacker continued to accelerate, streaking through space at several thousand miles per hour as its occupants stared at North America, perfectly clear but so far away. Then there was a flash of light so bright it seemed to come from the rear of their attacker. Steve and David had just enough time to look at each other with concerned expressions before the force of the blast moving through space caught them from behind. Like a loose board caught in the surf, their little ship rode the crest of the explosion, getting knocked ass over teakettle. Steve tried to steer through the wave of turbulence for a moment but then lost control as the explosion engulfed them completely.
*
The canopy of the president’s jet lifted and a gloved fist rose in the air. Whitmore tore off his mask and lifted himself out of the cockpit onto the wing of his F-15. Seven of the Eagle Squad had returned, and thirty or so of the ragtag air force were coming in for their landings. They’d stayed in the air dogfighting with the last remaining attackers until the gray stingrays had started losing power and falling out of the sky. Apparently, they had only limited reserves of onboard energy.
Once his feet were on the ground, Whitmore pointed a finger at one of the other pilots, the long-haired, bearded Pig, acknowledging the credit he deserved. Pig pointed right back at the president. Cheering soldiers ran out to greet the planes. When the president gave them the order, they led the way to a hole in the earth. A stone’s throw from the collapsed main hangar, a set of iron doors embedded in a slab of concrete opened onto a stairway. It was an emergency exit leading down to the research labs. Whitmore and his fellow pilots followed the soldiers into the passage.
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 29
