Landing Day
is a fanfic by Quallevra. It is Independence Day retold from the POV of the aliens.
For the Arretchi, Landing Day is a momentous occasion: the once-in-a-lifetime moment when they land on a new world to harvest its resources. Their next home is a blue-green world known to its inhabitants as "Earth," and before they can arrive, the inhabitants must be eliminated.
A sequel, Ejection Strike, has been published, recounting the events of Independence Day: Resurgence from the aliens' POV.
This fic contains examples of:
- Ace Pilot: Veen and Garasso, who are part of Harbinger 2-6's striker force. Both easily outpace their fellow Strikers and take out several of the human fighters.
- Adaptational Explanation: The scout ship that crashed at Roswell is mentioned to have suffered a mechanical failure due to incompatibility with Earth's atmosphere, a weakness that has been compensated for by the film's events.
- The Captain: Atchak, the commander of Harbinger 2-6, aka the Los Angeles City Destroyer.
- Composite Character: Eariot. He is the dock controller who sees Steve and David waving to him, and then watches the nuke tick to zero. In the film, these were two separate aliens.note
- Despair Event Horizon: Most of the Arretchi fall past it when the humans begin taking down the City Destroyers. Ebbiar falls past it when she feels Garasso's death.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: Male and female Arretchi hold positions of authority throughout the invasion force.
- Foregone Conclusion: The aliens are defeated by the humans.
- Friendly Rivalry: Veen and Garasso. They quip, bicker, and always try to outperform one another when taking down human fighter jets, but they prove how close they are when Veen considers letting Garasso have the last laugh and Garasso expresses a desire to look for Veen after his Strike crashes and he's captured.
- Hive Mind: The Arretchi share a collective consciousness referred to as the Thoughtstream.
- Named by the Adaptation: This fic was written long before Independence Day: Resurgence gave the aliens their nickname "Harvesters." Here, they're named the Arretchi.
- Nuke 'em: Felluw commands the DC City Destroyer and suffers the nuclear strike over Houston. The Arretchi labels it as a "flare" weapon, and it shook the entire ship upon impacting the shields.
- Number Two: Terryf, who's Atchak's chief subordinate on the LA City Destroyer.
- Oh, Crap!: Quite a lot of it once the Arretchi realize that their shields are down.
- Perspective Flip: The events of Independence Day from the POV of the alien invaders.
- Precision F-Strike: Atchak's last words before their main weapon backfires is "Oh, void." It's definitely treated as an S-strike.
- Punch-Clock Villain: How the aliens are depicted. They're pulling off an extermination job before they move in, no different than how humans would try to rid a house of cockroaches.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Garasso takes Veen's death very personally, and leads the vanguard of attackers to wipe out the human fighters at Area 51. The lack of shields puts a stop to this before he can get very far.
- Say My Name: Garasso says "Ebbiar" just before he's blown up during the battle above Area 51.
- A Simple Plan: The Attrechi operation is no different from what they've done on countless worlds before: deploy the Harbingers to wipe out the native settlements, send the Strikers to eliminate any attempt at a counterattack, then have the ground forces finish off what's left. The campaign goes perfectly for two cycles, until they recover a long-lost scout and begin experiencing computer problems.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
- The aliens have personal friendly rivalries and romances.
- Also inverted. The aliens don't view the humans as anything more than vermin, referring to them as such throughout the story.
