Independence Day: Resurgence: The Official Movie Novelization by Alex Irvine Read Free Book Online

and the feeling was mutual. Lao thought Jake was a failure, a slacker, and Jake thought Lao was a petty tyrant. They had to work together, though, and Jake needed the job. Plus he was flying. He had to keep that in mind. Maybe he wasn’t flying the new generation of hybrid fighters, but he was in space. It wasn’t all bad.
    The tugs got the cannon into position.
    “Initiate uncoupling sequence,” Lao said.
    An engineer got the process started. “Tug One… disengage.”
    One by one the tugs cut loose and drifted away.
    Jake disengaged the autopilot and got ready for his turn to pull away from the turret mount. He put the thrusters into a gentle reverse, holding the tension in the linking arms that extended from the tug’s hull to the armature of the cannon. His command console beeped and the engines thrummed, holding the cannon steady while the engineers in the command center figured out whether the cannon was in the right place.
    Just like the mail truck it was, the tug beeped when you put it in reverse. Jake itched to fly something else, like he’d been trained to do. But he’d made his bed, and he had to lie in it—at least for now. He hadn’t really given up. It just seemed like it most days.
    When it was their turn, Jake and Charlie’s tug cut loose, nice and smooth, their crane arms opening up just like they were supposed to. Their tug drifted back and then Jake held it steady a short distance from the cannon mount.
    “You know, I didn’t have to follow you up here,” Charlie said, as if he’d been reading Jake’s mind, which sometimes Jake thought he could.
    “Yes, you did,” Jake said. “You get lonely without me.”
    Charlie watched the cannon as another one of the tugs pulled away.
    “I was the youngest valedictorian in the history of the Academy,” he responded. “I could’ve been stationed anywhere. San Diego would’ve been nice. Beaches, surfing…”
    Jake snorted. “You never surfed a day in your life.”
    “But I’m a fast learner, and I’ve got great balance. Like a cat.” Always looking on the bright side, Jake thought again.
    He didn’t feel like looking on the bright side.
    “Cats hate water, Charlie,” Jake said.
    Over the tug’s radio, they heard Commander Lao say, “Seal the locks.”
    Jake and Charlie watched as giant clamps started to close in around the base of the cannon. All the tugs but one held their positions a short distance from the turret mount, with Jake still close enough to brace the tug’s crane arms against the cannon if that was necessary. Sometimes the clamps shifted things as they tightened, and at least one tug had to stay attached to keep the cannon from moving too far. If they’d set the cannon down a little crooked or off-center, or if it moved too much while the engineers and techs were setting the clamps, they would have to start the whole process over again.
    Until then, all they could do was wait. Jake tried not to think of Patricia. Or Dylan. Or all the things he could have done differently.

6
    The emergency klaxon blared angrily. Rhea Base personnel filed into a tug, jamming themselves together in its small cargo space after the passenger compartment was full. Commander Belyaev was at the controls.
    Outside, the ripple grew into a giant distorted cloud, a hole in space that sucked in everything around it. Base equipment and building material tumbled away from Rhea’s surface in a cloud of ice crystals and dust, whirlpooling up into nothingness. Smaller asteroids and other fragments collided on their way in, releasing flashes of heat that disappeared as quickly as Valeri saw them.
    None of them knew what was happening. Was it a black hole, suddenly born out of nothing? It didn’t look right—or at least it didn’t look like what they had theorized a black hole should look like. It was irregular, for one thing, seeming like a tear or a wound in space-time rather than a clean circular singularity.
    But what, then? What had caused