Independence Day: Crucible (The Official Prequel) (26 page)

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.

Dikembe locked eyes with 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.”

“It shouldn’t be anything new to you,” Grey said.

“Ha,” David responded. “I avoid this whenever I can. I came up here to cut the ribbon in ’09, and this is my first time here since.”

Grey’s voice softened. “I was so sorry to hear about Connie,” he said. “She is very much missed.”

“Yes,” David said. “The flowers you sent were beautiful. I don’t think I ever sent a thank you card. I don’t think I sent any.”

“It’s understandable,” Grey said. “When I lost Amelia, it felt like my whole life ground to a halt. Like my own history had disappeared.”