Independence Day: Crucible (The Official Prequel) Read Online Free PDF

even survived. Maybe he hadn’t used up all of his luck after all. Now all he had to do was travel unseen through a few hundred aliens, reach the perimeter, and not get killed by friendly fire.
    All good.
    He scooted closer to the edge of the roof for a better look, and found himself looking down on the roof of a lower part of the building. For a few seconds he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Part of it was an anti-aircraft rocket launcher—not an alien weapon, but Russian-built. The launcher and its operator were facing away from him, but as the weapon swiveled to the right, he understood.
    The operator was human, but an alien crouched behind him, holding him with the tentacles that sprouted from the back of its exoskeleton.
    In 1947, an alien craft had crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, and for forty-nine years scientists had been studying the alien craft and the bodies of the creatures that had piloted it Because the creatures lacked vocal cords—and for several other reasons—the investigators early on speculated that they communicated by some sort of voodoo-telepathy bullshit.
    They were only too right.
    Not only could the aliens use it to communicate, they could use it as a weapon. The alien Hiller himself captured had nearly killed President Whitmore and put the lead scientist on the project—Dr. Okun—into a catatonic state he still hadn’t recovered from. This one was flat-out controlling a guy, like a puppet master.
    He reconnoitered the rest of the rooftop and found that the other four sides presented him with a two-story jump. He was banged up enough as it was, without risking a twisted ankle or even a broken leg. He would do it if he had to, obviously, and the clock was ticking, because it was already well past noon. The aliens could see better at night than he could, due to night vision built or grown into their suits—the science guys were still trying to figure that stuff out. So he had to make a move sooner, rather than later.
    * * *
    He’d been waiting no more than ten minutes when he heard jets coming. When he saw them, he felt like whooping for joy, but then he noticed that of the nine they’d had at the start of the day, he now counted only three.
    He was a little less excited when it occurred to him that they were coming to finish the job they had begun before the missile attack—and he was sitting pretty much on the bullseye. Moving quickly, he checked his sidearm and scrambled over to where he could see the anti-aircraft gun and its hybrid operating team.
    The “crew” was in motion, tracking one of the approaching Knights.
    “Oh, no, I don’t
think
so,” he said. He dropped the ten feet down to the lower roof and started sprinting toward the launcher. It felt good—he was tired of hiding. The alien started to turn at the last second, whipping a tentacle toward him, but he already had it in his sights. He put four bullets in its face before it went down.
    The man slumped to the rooftop. Hiller was afraid one of the rounds had hit him, but the Russian was still alive, and Hiller didn’t see any wounds. He grabbed the fellow and started dragging him across the roof. When he got to the far edge, he heaved the soldier onto his shoulder.
    “This is gonna hurt,” he said, and he jumped just as the F-18s screamed overhead. A missile took out the rocket launcher and most of the building. Hiller hit the ground with the weight of two men—a sharp pain in his ankle caused him to buckle and fall. Debris rained down, but he and the Russian were protected from the explosion, which hadn’t taken down the far end of the structure.
    “I knew it,” he groaned. “I
knew
that was going to happen.” He rolled over and tried to stand, hoping the ankle wasn’t broken.
    The Russian was already on his feet. His eyes were wide, ice-blue. His hands were gripped into fists.
    “
Tchort
!” he screamed. “
Tchort v moi golovye
!”
    Then he backed away, turned, and ran.
    “Yeah,” Hiller said.