Independence Day: Resurgence: The Official Movie Novelization Read Free Page A

after twenty years, scientists were in the depths of the ship, learning more about how those systems worked. Their initial results found their way to the research and development wing of the new Area 51, where applied scientists and computer engineers hybridized the technology and built it into new generations of military hardware.
    The structural and materials engineers, on the other hand, had different interests, and for them, teams recovered huge intact pieces of the ship’s hull and mechanisms. Military contractors had designed transport platforms specifically to move those pieces from the crash site to Area 51, where a battalion of engineers waited to document them and take them apart, piece by piece, analyzing each component in an ongoing effort to understand and utilize the alien technology.
    The invasion had left terrible destruction in its wake, and hundreds of millions dead—but it was also a gift, in a way. Because of it, Earth knew what was out there, and knowing enabled them to prepare for when they encountered it again. Adams had made it his life’s work to guide that preparation.
    The city destroyer fell away behind them and the chopper followed the main approach road from the crash site to the new Area 51. Not for the first time, Adams reflected on how Area 51—once the focus of so many conspiracy theories—had become exactly what the most wild-eyed kooks of the 1950s had believed it to be. The nerve center of Earth’s investigation of alien technology.
    In old photographs, the Groom Lake facility was just a few buildings behind a fence. It had grown to include runways, hangars, several small repair and manufacturing facilities, and laboratories. For decades the government had denied its existence. Until the aftermath of 1996, they had continued to deny its true purpose—which had always been to investigate, analyze, and attempt to use bits of extraterrestrial technology. The spy planes and stealth technology were all part of that, the tip of the iceberg that eventually became visible to the public. Yet for every B-2 that thrilled spectators at an air show, there were a dozen other projects that only a few people on Earth knew about.
    Then, after 1996, Area 51 had exploded into a small city of its own, built alongside a huge complex of research facilities—the best in the world. Crashed alien fighter craft, pieces of unidentified technology from the alien vessels, even a few surviving invaders themselves, all had been brought here. Now Area 51 was one of the largest military installations on planet Earth. Thousands of military and civilian workers lived and worked there. Manufacturing and testing facilities were getting close to good enough to reproduce alien technologies.
    All of it existed for one purpose.
    When the aliens came again, Earth would be ready.
    And they would come again. Adams knew it. They’d made contact once, and gotten a bloody nose, but any race that would traverse the great spaces between the stars would possess the kind of determination that a single setback couldn’t overcome. Adams had studied military history his entire adult life, and there was a truism. The conqueror didn’t give up after his first effort failed. The aliens would come back, and when they did, they would be pissed.
    The chopper flew toward the helipad next to the fighter hangar. As it swung around to orient itself for landing, Adams could see the destroyer again, a few miles away. He remembered watching it burn after it crashed to the ground.
    That crazy drunk crop duster…
    His final missile jammed in his jet’s own launch bracket, and he’d flown it straight up the aperture of the destroyer’s main weapon assembly. Pure guts.
    At the time
Major
Adams had been attached to the Area 51 R&D wing, but he hadn’t known all of its secrets. What he
had
known was that new technology kept appearing, along with orders to integrate it into existing fighter jets and other military hardware. He’d heard the