Alien³

HICKS

No brass left...

JACKSON

And you better check this, Hicks.

Her other screens display assorted images of nearly identical tunnels and passageways, but three of them are black; she gestures to the dark screens.

JACKSON

(continuing)

This is down by the main air-scrubber. System says those cameras are still operational, but there's something in the way. Something big...

EXT. ANCHORPOINT – ECO-MODULE

Huge louvers pivot smoothly, like Venetian blinds, revealing lush vegetation through thick plastic...

INT. ECO-MODULE

Spence sits cross-legged in Newt's meadow, tearfully hugging a small tame primate. Light crosses the meadow as the louvers open overhead, beyond the geodesics. Artificial dawn. BIRDS begins to sing. Quiet before the storm...

EXT. RODINA

No sign of movement.

Dimly lit. Clutter of spacesuits, machinery. The Vietnamese commando seated on the floor, back to the wall, cradling her gun. The corpse of her partner is sprawled on the deck beside her, face hideously burned, his armor fretworked with acid. Her face is blank, eyes straight ahead.

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. ANCHORPOINT

The station.

INT. ANCHORPOINT – MEDLAB – CORRIDOR

Hicks, still in his fighting gear, walking purposefully. MedLab staff inhospital whites dubiously note his passage.

INT. MED LAB – RIPLEY'S ROOM

Ripley comatose, still hooked up to assorted biomonitors, the only movement in the room the restless flicker of a bank of colored diodes.

Hicks enters, crosses to the bed, seems about to speak, makes a helpless little gesture with his hands – then yanks the biomonitor leads from the bedside console. The diodes go out; a buzzer begins to SOUND. The bed is mounted on casters. He starts to pull it out of the room. Stops. Looks up at Newt's map on the wall.

He rips the map from the wall and stuffs it into her hospital gown.

INT. MEDLAB – CORRIDOR

Hicks hustles Ripley through MedLab, not about to stop for anyone; startled staff jump out of the way.

INT. ANCHORPOINT – ANOTHER CORRIDOR – ENTRANCE TO A LIFEBOAT

Signs and notices detailing lifeboat launch procedures. Hicks lifts Ripley from the bed, carries her through hatch into lifeboat. Places her in a hypersleep capsule, presses a button. The lid comes down. Silent moment as he looks down at her through the lid, his palm on the smooth plastic in a gesture of farewell, resignation. Then back through the hatch, where he activates controls that seal the boat, setting the launch-procedure in motion.

ANGLE
 

On the blunt prows of the lifeboat receding around the curve of the station's hull.

INT. LIFEBOAT BAY

Hicks watching digital countdown. Muted WHUMP of explosive bolts –
 

EXT. LIFEBOAT

Flash of the bolts as Ripley's boat is launched into the sweep of night.

INT. LIFEBOAT BAY

Bishop enters behind Hicks.

BISHOP

But can you be certain she hasn't been infected?

HICKS

I'll take the chance.

BISHOP

Why?

HICKS

I owe her one.

INT. OPS ROOM

Jackson at her screens; display as before, the tunnels near the air-scrubber – with three screens dark. CLOSEUP on one tunnel-view as an open, six-wheeled personnel carrier rolls past the video camera, Hick looking up.

Five Marines in full battle dress ride with him: ALSOP, GREENFIELD, BRICE, COSTELLO, WALLACE.

JACKSON

Next junction, hang a right...

INT. TUNNEL

Dim; light spaced far apart along tunnel. The carrier takes a right.

JACKSON (V.O.)

Left at the fork and you wanna take it slow. Fifty meters to whatever's in front of that camera...

Hicks gestures to Wallace, the driver. The carrier halts. SOUND of the air-scrubbers from down the tunnel. The Marines shift their weapons, uneasily eye the tunnel ahead. These are young recruits, not the hard-case vets of "Aliens."

HICKS

Now listen up. We don't do this by the book, we don't pair off. Stay together, tight. Greenfield up front with me; anything moves, you torch it. The rest of you, if it moves, kill it. You gotta get the fuckers before they get close. You know about the acid; you know they don't show on infrared. And you know you don't let them take you alive. You might have to do a friend a favor... Ready? Move out.

He climbs down from the carrier, heavily burdened with gear. The others follow. Greenfield has a flamethrower. They move forward. Toward the next light; beyond it, the tunnel curves out of sight.

JACKSON (V.O.)

You're right up on it, Hicks. Right around the corner...

HICKS

Affirmative...

They round the turn, weapons ready. And stop, stunned.

GREENFIELD

Wha' 'th...?

The tunnel, which widens here as it approaches the massive air-scrubber, has been transformed; its lights are dimly visible through shrouds of resin. Vast ribs of the stuff sweep up from a dim and monstrous shape that covers the deck at the base of the scrubber; we're looking into an Alien grotto, black and pearlescent, and obscene fairyland. The shape's symmetry suggest function.

Patient DRUMMING of the air-scrubber's giant fans.

HICKS

Scan it. Motion?

COSTELLO

(consulting tracker, adjusting knob)

Negative.

HICKS

Alsop, gimme the flood...

Alsop passes Hicks a portable halogen-flood. Hicks thumbs it on...

WALLACE

Holy Christ.

The central shape is revealed as an enormous mutant queen. The thing is splayed on its back, mortared into the mass of resin, its vestigial head toward Hicks and the Marines. Its abdomen is arched like an inverted scorpion-tail, tipped with a swollen, semi-translucent sac that ripples and pulses in the glare of Hick's lamp. A biomechanical birth-factory.

HICKS

(passing the flood to Brice)

Hold it... steady.

He kneels, unslings one of his gear cases, open it, revealing a squat tube.

HICKS

Moving. Something's moving...

Hicks is working on the tube-thing, snapping components into place.

Brice suddenly swings the beam away from the queen, revealing half a dozen new-model Aliens twisting out of recesses in the grotto walls...

INT. OPS ROOM

Jackson and Bishop hear SCREAMS and FIRING over the comm-link.

HICK (V.O.)

The light! The goddamn light!

(garble)

The Aliens tear into the Marines like living chainsaws. Wallace and Costello go down immediately; the Aliens begin to drag them away. Hicks has gotten hold of the light, struggles to keep it on the queen as he props the tube against his thigh. SCREAMS. Blue stutter of pulse-rifles. A tongue of fire from Greenfield's flamethrower, but an Alien jumps him; the napalm-stream arcs wildly, splashing the resin structure – and the Queen wakes. The huge tail extends, lifts in the floodlight beam...

Hicks is still trying to assemble his mortar.

As the swollen, podlike tail-tip splits open with a sickly, tearing SOUND, releasing a puffball cloud of dark mist – we've seen it before, in miniature, with Tully in the lab – which begins to rise, drawn up toward the giant fans above the air-scrubber...

INT. OPS ROOM

HICKS (V.O.)

Stop the fans!

Bishop is instantly on the case, leaning over Jackson's shoulder to punch the right button, but...

INT. SCRUBBER-TUNNEL

Too late. The cloud of spores is sucked into the fans – as Hicks drop a shell into the mortar. It bucks against his thigh and the queen is blown to shred in an EXPLOSION that rips out the side of the scrubber.

HICKS

The vents! Seal the vents!

INT. OPS ROOM

Bishop's fingers fly as he punches another sequence.

INT. VENT

Straight down the pipe, a long way, to the whirling fans. Huge hermetic barriers SLAM across the vent in sequence – one, two, three.

INT. SCRUBBER-TUNNEL

Hicks scramble to his feet.

HICKS

Out! Out of here! Now!

The Marine beside him begins to spasm and quake as the Change comes. Hicks SHOOTS him in the chest at close range and sprints for the carrier.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. RODINA – HUB

The Vietnamese commando nears the station's hub. The walls, in one large chamber, are decorated with official U.P.P. art, like a blend of Mexican Socialists agitprop murals and Syd Mead techo-fantasy. She passes evidence of brief violent struggle: a wall splashed with dried blood, a single shoe, smashed equipment, ragged acid-scars in the deck.

She looks like a child now, moving through all this, small and alone. But not helpless: she still moves with a cat's wariness, her gun ready.

Three face-huggers scuttle across at an intersection of corridors, tails thrashing...

She comes to a door that opens onto Rodina's central hub, a large cylindrical space surrounding a core of equipment. The door is ajar; she edges through...

Virtually the station's entire crew, perhaps a hundreds people, have been cocooned along the multi-story column, a bas-relief of human bodies and glittering resin.

She stares from a railing, appalled, then slips through the door.

INT. ACHORPOINT – OPS ROOM

Rosetti, Jackson, Bishop
 

JACKSON

I don't know what they did down there, but it's screwed up internal comm-link for the whole area; I can't raise 'em...

One of Jackson's consoles CHIMES; her central screen suddenly glows with a hi-rez simulation of Rodina.

JACKSON

(continuing)

Rodina's got company...

EXT. SPACE

Silent approach of the U.P.P. cruiser Nikolai Stoiko, a vicious-looking mile-long slab of armament. Stoiko slows, comes to an ominous halt.

INT. RODINA

The commando bolts down a corridor. Total desperation. She's lost her gun. A CRASH behind her. The beast's shrill RAGE. She throws herself through the first available door – and sees the interceptor waiting. She scrambles up a ladder, through the hatch, and frantically begins to activate systems. Sirens begin to SOUND in the launch bay. The interceptor's hatch closes as the twin gates of the bay begin to swing open – and the beast is on her, striking at the view-port in the hatch, inches from her face. She flips open a safety-override on the interceptor's joystick and thumbs a red button.

EXT. RODINA

Total overdrive: the interceptor BLASTS out through the half open gates in a fireball of exhaust gases, the beast and the service ladder tumbling after it...

EXT. SPACE – STOIKO

Something streak from the bow of the cruiser...

INT. ANCHORPOINT – OPS ROOM

Jackson huddled over her screen.

JACKSON

Missile!

EXT. SPACE – RODINA – INTERCEPTOR IN F.G.

The U.P.P. missile takes out the station. Whiteout of nuclear EXPLOSION; the interceptor is a black blot tumbling toward us like a singed leaf in a whirlwind...

INT. OPS ROOM

The simulation of Rodina on Jackson's screen is surrounded by an expanding blue sphere. The sphere stops expanding. The simulation blurs into digital static, fades as the sphere begins to contract...

JACKSON

Nuked 'em! Twenty megs! That coded transmission...

ROSETTI

Send Mayday.

JACKSON

I don't believe it! They send for help, their own people nuked 'em!

HICKS

(quietly)

Maybe they asked for it...

ROSETTI

That's an order, Jackson!

Bishop looks at Rosetti as though he's about to offer an opinion, but doesn't.

JACKSON

Maybe they'll nuke us too...

BISHOP

No. They're leaving...

EXT. SPACE – STOIKO

The cruiser begins to move, accelerates, is gone.

INT. OPS ROOM

ROSETTI

Bastards!

JACKSON

Yeah. And they violated the fucking arms treaty, too, didn't they? Well, Colonel Rosetti, how about a situation update? We got, lessee, fifty-six missing crew members as of fifteen hundred hours...

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. THE MALL

Deserted. The only SOUNDS are Muzak and the trickles of an artificial waterfall. Some signs of trouble: an overturned trash canister, someone's red nylon baseball cap on the polished concrete.

Walker strolls around a corner beside the bar with a pulse-rifle, grenades, and assorted gadgetry slung across his chest. Goes to the bar entrance, nudges the door open with the barrel of the rifle. Nobody there. Same soccer game on the big screen, but the sound is off. Silent cheering crowd rising to its feet, the flicker of the holo-game consoles. He glances around the mall, enters. Crosses to the bar, checks behind it, then fishes up a big plastic jug of liquor. Opens it, drink from the jug.

Behind him, a mug topples, CLATTERS on the floor. He slowly lowers the liquor to the counter; just as slowly, he turns. A beast is there, waiting, beyond the Glimmer of the holo-games.

Walker and the beast move simultaneously. But he doesn't go for his gun – he grabs the control unit hanging on his chest.

An unmanned power-loader walks straight through the glass facade, plowing tables and chairs out of its way, big vise-grip claws extended. The Alien SCREAMS, leaps for it, but the steel claws close and grip.

Walker twiddles the controls; the power-loader responds, pinning the Alien against the wall. The Alien writhes and HISSES, striking furiously at the hydraulic arm. Walker tightens the grip, locks the loader in place. Picks up the jug of liquor and has another swallow.

WALLACE

Fuck you.

Beat. As his satisfied grin is replaced by something else. The Change...

INT. ECO-MODULE

Artificial dusk. Spence is crossing the mirco-meadow with a wire basket of food the module's population of small primates. Moths flutter through narrowing beams of sunlight as the louvers gradually close overhead. CRICKETS in the long grass.

She enters the scaled-down forest, ducking branches, and Spanish moss. Begins to make Tk-tk-tk sound, calling the lemur, the monkeys...

And stops. Suddenly aware of a stillness, an absolute silence. Even the crickets...

She turns – gasps. The primates have been cocooned in the branches of a tree. And screams as something pounces on her from above, the transformed lemur: a very small Alien. She bats the thing away with the strength of desperation. It hits the ground HISSING; she hurls the basket of food at it and bolts from the forest, sobbing.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. A TUNNEL

WHINE of an approaching engine. The six-wheeled carrier come INTO VIEW, Hicks driving, alone. His face is fixed, white. The carrier slews against the tunnel wall, strikes sparks, bounces off. He hardly seems to notice. He plows into a row of big plastic crates, tumbling them like a child's blocks, bringing the vehicle to a halt. Beat. He look up from the controls: the doors of a freight elevator.

INT. A CORRIDOR OFF THE MALL

Automatic CHIME as elevator doors open, revealing Hicks and his gun.

INT. THE MALL

Hicks warily crosses the Mall. SOUND of perpetual Muzak. He eyes the wreckage of the bar, but keeps moving. Into stuttering neon light from one of the shops. HISS and CRACKLE of bad wiring. He move toward the shop, gun ready.

INT. SHOP

Hicks enters, surveys the wreckage of display cases, scattered 21st century consumer toys.

He finds five cocoons at the read of the shop.

INT. THE MALL