General Nigel Uno... Male...Active***
Lt. R. T. McKenzie...Female...Active***
Sgt. P. Drilovsky...Male...Squad 1... Active***
Cpl. D. Hicks...Male...Squad 2...Active**
Cpl. A. Lincoln... Female...Squad 1...Active
PFC. Maurice...Male...Squad 2...Active
Pvt. C. Dickson (aka Numbuh 274)...Male...Squad 1...Active***
Pvt. Ace...Male...Active
Pvt. W. Hudson...Male...Squad 1...Active**
Pvt. J. Vasquez...Female...Squad 2...Active**
Pvt. W. Gorman...Male...Active
Pvt. A. Apone...Male Squad 2...Active
Pvt. T. Crowe...Male...Squad 1...Active
Chapter 3
Survivors and Close Encounters
EXT. COLONY BUILDING
Abby reaches the main doors, Maurice flanking on the right. Nigel tries the door controls. Nothing. Patton notice and looked Nigel that noded. Patton look to Dickson. He shouted an order to him
"Sealed. Dickson, run a bypass." Dickson, all business now, moves up and studies the door control panel. He pries off the facing and starts clipping on the bypass wires.
"First squad, assemble on Drilovsky at the main lock." Nigel Order First Squad.
The wind roars around the bleak structures. A neon sign creaks overhead. Hudson makes a connection. The door shrieks in its tracks and rumbles aside. It jams partway open. Drilovsy motions Abby inside. She eases over the wrecked tractor, through the doors. The others follow.
Rachel voice overs "Second team, move up. Flanking positions." She Ordered Second Squad.
INT. COLONY - MAIN CONCOURSE
DOLLYING SLOWLY FORWARD, following Abby and Patton as they move into the broad corridor. A few emergency lights are still on. Wind moans along the concourse. Pools of water cover the floor. Farther down, rain drips through blast holes in the ceiling. Evidence of a fire fight with pulse-rifles.
ON VASQUEZ moving forward. Taut. Alert. Her smart-gun cannon swinging slowly in an arc. She studies the video aiming monitor, looking down rather than ahead. Their footsteps echo.
INT. APC
Rachel watches as the bobbing images reveal the empty colony building.
"Quarter and search by twos. Second team move inside. Nigel, take the upper level. Use your motion Tracker."
INT. MAIN CONCOURSE - SECOND LEVEL
Nigel leads his squad up the stairwell to second level. They emerge cautiously. An empty corridor recedes into the dim distance. Nigel unslings a rugged piece of equipment. Aims it down the hall. He adjusts the "gain." It remains silent.
"Nothing. No movement."
They pass rooms and offices. Through doors they see increasing signs of struggle. Furniture overturned. Papers scattered...floating sodden in the puddles.
INT. APC
Ripley et al watching.
"Looks like my room at home and the tree house." Apone said but nobody laughs.
INT. SECOND LEVEL
Hicks' group passes several burnt-out rooms. There are no bodies. In several offices the exterior windows are blown out, admitting wind and rain. Hicks picks up a half-eaten donut beside a coffee cup overflowing with rainwater.
INT. LOWER LEVEL - QUARTERS
Drilovsky's men are searching systematically in pairs. They pass through the colonists' modest apartments, little more than cubicles. Hudson, on tracker, flanks Lincoln as they move forward. Hudson touches a splash of color on the wall. Dried blood. His tracker BEEPS.
Lincoln whirls, cannon aimed. The BEEPING grows more frequent as Hudson advances toward a half open The door is splintered partway out of its frame. Holes caused by pulse-rifle rounds pepper the walls. Linclon eases up to the door. Kicks it in. Tenses to fire.
Inside, dangling from a piece of flex conduit, a junction-box swings like a pendulum in the wind from a broken window. It clanks against the rails of a child's bunkbed as it swings.
INT. DROP-SHIP - APC
Rachel watches her Boyfriends monitor.
"Nigel. Back up. Pan left." She said to her boyfriend into her mike. "There!"
TIGHT ON MONITOR as the image shifts, revealing a section of wall corroded almost through in an irregular pattern. Nigel and Rachel know whats that is from.
"You seeing this okay? Looks Melted right. We are definitely dealing with those bugs" his voice, voice over.
Apone raises an eyebrow at Ripley.
"Hmm. Acid for blood."
"Patton. Rachel. Abby. This brings some horried memories here."
INT. FIRST LEVEL
Dickson is looking at something.
"Hey, if you like that, you're gonna love this..."
Showing the trooper standing beneath a gaping hole. Another hole, directly beneath, is at his feet. The acid has melted right down through two levels into the maintenance level. Revealing pipes, conduit, equipment...eaten away by the ferocious substance.
"Second squad? What's your status?" Drilovsky siad into his mike.
"Just finished our sweep. No body home"
"The place is dead, Sir. Whatever happened, we missed it." Patton said to Nigel and Rachel into his mike.
INT. APC
Rachel turns to Apone.
"All right, the area's secured. Let's go in and see what their computer can tell us." into mike "First team head for operations. Dickson, see if you can get their CPU on line. babe, meet me at the south lock by the up-link tower..."
INT. FIRST LEVEL
" Where coming" Rachel said in to her mike
Dickson was cupping his mike. " She's coming. I feel safer already,"
Lincoln said to Dickson "Pendejo jerkoff."
EXT. COLONY COMPLEX
Lights arc across the dormant buildings as the APC turns onto the "main drag." It trundles down the rutted street, throwing up sheets of filthy water as the massive wheels hit pondlike potholes. Windblown rain lashes across the headlights.
Nigel emerges from the south lock just as the APC rolls up close to the entrance. The crew-door slides back. Gorman emerges, followed by Apone. Rachel was eyeing the ominous colony structure.
Dickson Voice filter over "Sir, the CPU is on-line."
"Okay, stand by in operations.' Nigel order. He looks to who was Present " Let's go." He order every one.
"Rach, I having flashbacks left in right." Nigel told his girlfriend.
"I Know"
EXT. APC - SOUTH LOCK
The crew-door opens and Rachel emerges. In time to see the lock doors rumbling closed.
"Ni-"
The wind snatches her words away. The crew door whines shut behind her. She walks to the exterior lock door-controls and studies them. She punches some unfamiliar buttons. Nothing happens. She looks really nervous, alone in the howling wind. She hits another button. The door-motors come to life and she relaxes a little. Glances behind her. AND SCREAMS! There's a face right there! Right at her shoulder. She jumps back, gasping for breath.
"Scared you?" Apone asked.
"Christ, Apone!"
"Sorry. Nigel said to keep an eye on you."
He gestures for her to precede him inside.
INT. CONTROL BLOCK CORRIDOR
RAchel catches up with the others as they move into the bowels of the complex.
RIachel as they move along the corridor...reacting to the fact that she is back in alien country. She sees the ravaged administration complex. Fire-gutted offices. Hicks notices her looking around nervously. He motions to big Apone with his eyes and the trooper casually falls in beside her on the other side, rifle at ready. a two-man protective cordon. She glances at Nigel. He winks, but so fast maybe it's something in his eye. She Loved Niegl to death. She has a feeling that he might not make it or her or both along with Patton and Fanny.
Trooper Vasquez emerges from a side corridor ahead "Sir, you should check this out..." He siad to Nigel.
He leads the way into the corridor.
INT. CORRIDOR
This wing is completely without power. The troopers switch on their pack lights and the beams illuminate a scene of devastation worse than they have seen. Her expression reveals that Ripley is about to turn and flee.
"Right ahead here..."
They approach a barricade blocking the corridor, a hastily welded wall of pipes, steel-plate, outer-door panels. Acid holes have slashed through the floor and walls in several places. The metal is scratched and twisted by hideously powerful forces, peeled back like a soup can on one side. They squeeze through the opening.
INT. MEDICAL WING
They pack-lights play over the devastation of the colonists' last ditch battle. The equipment of the med labs has been uprooted to add to the barrier. The walls are perforated by pulse-rifle fire and acid. Scorched by untended fires to bare metal. A few instruments glow with emergency power.
" Last Stand" Apone said
"No bodies?"
"No, Sir. Looks like it was a helluva fight."
Rachel transfixed by something.
"Over there." rahchel said in a low woice while she pointed,
The others turn and approach, seeing what she sees. She has entered a second room, part of the med lab area. In a storage alcove at near eye level stand seven transparent cylinders. STASIS TUBES. They glow faintly with an eerie violet light given off by the field which preserves the specimens inside.
They look like jars containing SEVERED ARTHRITIC HANDS, the palsied fingers curled in a death-rictus. Structurally they are more like spiders with sickening translucent skin, a flacid scrotal body, gill-like organs underneath drifting in the suspension fluid. Something you definitely do not want on your face, for example.
"Are those the same..." Apone asked
Both Nigel and Rachel nod, unalbe to speak Apone leans closer fascination. His face almost touching one cylinder, is lit by its glow.
"Watch It' Both Nigel and Rachel said in unison.
The creature inside lunges suddenly, slamming against the glass. Burke jumps back. From the palm of the thing's handlike body emerges a pearl-escent TUBULE. like a tapered piece of intestine, which slithers tonguelike over the inside of the glass. Then it retracts into a sheath between the "gills."
"I thinks he likes you" Nigel said really calmly to Apone
Only two of the creatures seem to pulse with life. Apone taps the other stasis cylinders but the hand-things remain inertly clenched.
"These are dead. There's just the two alive." Apone murrurred
On top of each cylinder is a file folder. Nigel take a folder from above one of the live specimens. Inside is a medical chart printout with handwritten entries.
Nigel Begins reading "Removed surgically before embryo implantation. Subject: Marachuk, John L. Died during procedure." Looking up "They killed him getting it off."
"Poor Bastard. I shouldn't never sent a damn Marines. But my sister want to go. Now where here dealing with those funking things." Nigel told them
They are startled by a LOUD BEEP. They turn. Nigel is intent on his motion tracker, aimed back toward the shattered barricade. BEEP. BEEP.
"Behind us." rachel whispered.
He gestures at the corridor they just passed through.
"One us?"
"Patton...where are your people? Anybody in D-Block?" Nigel said in to his mike.
"Negative. We're all in Operations."
Maurice swings the smart-gun to ready position on its support arm, locking it with an authoritative and Nigel head toward the source of the signal, the others following.
INT. CORRIDOR
Nigel' tracker is reading out more rapidly. They turn into the kitchens, a stainless steel labyrinth.
Rachel hangs back. Then realizes there is nothing behind her but darkness. She catches up to the group.
INT. KITCHENS
The troopers enter, their lights bouncing around the stainless steel surfaces.
"The two are moving" Nigel whispered.
Muarice is scanning, gaze intense. The other troops grip their weapons tightly.
"Which way?''
Nigel nods toward a complicated array of food processing equipment. They move forward, weapons leveled.
Rachel shuffles forward in the dark. Apone trips over a metal cannister, sending it CLANGING Riachel half climbs the wall.
Nigels' tracker beeps steadily. The beeps merge. Become a solid tone. CRASH. Something moves in the dark, toppling a rack of stockpots.
On Maurice pivoting smoothly to fire. In the same instant Hicks' rifle slashes INTO FRAME. Slams Maurice' barrel upward. A STREAM OF TRACER FIRE rips into the ceiling, the rounds SEARING LIKE LIGHTNING.
"You Fuck"
Nigel ignores him, moving past and aiming his light
"Fanny" he said. Fanny came running hugging him and rachel. Corporal Infinity come outs with his Pulse Riffle slung over his shoulder.
"Holly shit! you guys fucking came."
"Numbuh 1 you made it" SHe clung to them crying.
"Where here. Where here. Maurice Get Patton her NOW."
2 HOURS LATER.
"Fanny, tell what the hell happen here" Rachel asked her bestfriend. Nigel was near by.
"They escape. they start attack the Colonist. The Colonial Marines was fighting back and on by one by one they gone. It was just me and Infinity."
INT. OPERATIONS
The ground teams are gathered around a terminal in the computer center. Dickson has the CPU main computer on-line and reading out.
TIGHT ON MONITOR SCREEN as an abstract of the main colony ground plan drifts across the screen. Searching.
Dickson bashes at the keyboard, his fingers dancing expertly.
Fanny was looking at her brother.
"What's Numbuh 274 scanning for?"
"PDT'S. Personal-Data Transmitters. Every Kid/Teen colonist had one surgically implanted." Nigel replied to his sister.
"If they're within twenty clicks we'll read it out here,but so far...zip."
INT. OPERATIONS
Everyone jumps as Hudson cries out triumphantly.
Hah! Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen! Found 'em." Dickson kinda shouted.
"Alive?"
"Unknown. But, it looks like all of them. Over at the processing station...sublevel 'C' under the south tower.
TIGHT ON SCREEN showing an amoebalike cluster of flashing blue dots clumped tightly in one area.
"Looks like a Goddamn town meeting." Cpl. D. Hicks said.
"Let's saddle up."
"Awright, let's go girls, they ain't payin' us by the hour."
Chapter 3 is up. working chapter 4 Now. Please review..