Aliens

INT. APC

Ripley watches as the bobbing images reveal the empty colony building.

GORMAN

Quarter and search by twos. Second team move inside. Hicks, take the upper level. Use your motion trackers.

INT. MAIN CONCOURSE – SECOND LEVEL

Hicks leads his squad up the stairwell to second level. They emerge cautiously. An empty corridor recedes into the dim distance. Hicks unslings a rugged piece of equipment. Aims it down the hall. He adjusts the "gain". It remains silent.

HICKS

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.

BURKE

Looks like my room in college.

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

Apone's men are searching systematically in pairs. They pass through the colonists' modest apartments, little more than cubicles. Hudson, on tracker, flanks Vasquez as they move forward. Hudson touches a splash of color on the wall. Dried blood. His tracker BEEPS.

Vasquez whirls, cannon aimed. The BEEPING grows more frequent as Hudson advances toward a half open door. The door is splintered partway out of its frame. Holes caused by pulse-rifle rounds pepper the walls. Vasquez 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

Ripley watches Hicks' monitor.

RIPLEY

Wait! Tell him to...

(plugs in headset jack)

... Hicks. Back up. Pan left. There!

TIGHT ON MONITOR

As the image shifts, revealing a section of wall corroded almost through in an irregular pattern.

TIGHT ON RIPLEY

Knowing what it is.

HICKS

(voice over; filtered)

You seeing this okay? Looks melted.

Burke raises an eyebrow at Ripley.

BURKE

Hmm. Acid for blood.

HICKS

(voice over; filtered)

Looks like somebody bagged them one of Ripley's bad guys here.

INT. FIRST LEVEL

Hudson is looking at something.

HUDSON

Hey, if you like that, you're gonna love this...

WIDER ANGLE

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.

APONE

Second squad? What's your status?

HICKS

(voice over; filtered)

Just finished our sweep. Nobody home.

APONE

(to Gorman)

The place is dead, Sir. Whatever happened, we missed it.

INT. APC

Gorman turns to the others.

GORMAN

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. Hudson, see if you can get their CPU on line. Hicks, meet me at the south lock by the up-link tower...

INT. FIRST LEVEL

GORMAN

(voice over)

... We're coming in.

HUDSON

(cupping his mike)

He's coming in. I feel safer already.

VASQUEZ

(sotto voice)

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.

Hicks emerges from the south lock just as the APC rolls up close to the entrance. The crew-door slides back. Gorman emerges, followed by Burke, Bishop, and Wierzbowski. Burke looks back to see Ripley stop in the APC doorway, eyeing the ominous colony structure. She meets his eyes. Shakes her head "no." Not ready.

HUDSON

(voice over; filtered)

Sir, the CPU is on-line.

GORMAN

Okay, stand by in operations.

(to those present)

Let's go.

INT. APC

The crew-door cycles home with a clang. Ripley sits in the dark interior, lit by the tactical displays. The wind howls outside, an incredibly desolate sound. She hugs herself. Alone. Unarmed. She knows she's in a tank, but remembers the acid. Leaps up. Hits the door switch.

EXT. APC – SOUTH LOCK

The crew-door opens and Ripley emerges. In time to see the lock doors rumbling closed.

RIPLEY

(shouting)

Burke!

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.

WIERZBOWSKI

Scare you?

RIPLEY

Christ, Wierzbowski!

WIERZBOWSKI

Sorry. Hicks said to keep an eye on you.

He gestures for her to precede him inside.

INT. CONTROL BLOCK CORRIDOR

Ripley catches up with the others as they move into the bowels of the complex.

GORMAN

(to Burke)

Looks like you company can write off its share of this colony.

BURKE

(unconcerned)

It's insured.

ON RIPLEY

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 Wierzbowski 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 Hicks. He winks, but so fast maybe it's something in his eye.

Trooper Frost emerges from a side corridor ahead.

FRONT

Sir, you should check this out...

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.

FROST

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.

WIERZBOWSKI

Last stand.

GORMAN

No bodies?

FROST

No, Sir. Looks like it was a helluva fight.

TIGHT ON RIPLEY

Transfixed by something.

RIPLEY

(low)

Over there.

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.

BURKE

Are these the same...?

Ripley nods, unable to speak. Burke leans closer in fascination. His face almost touching one cylinder, is lit by its glow.

RIPLEY

Watch it, Burke...

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."

HICKS

(to Burke)

It likes you.

Only two of the creatures seem to pulse with life. Burke taps the other stasis cylinders but the hand-things remain inertly clenched.

BURKE

These are dead. There's just the two alive.

On top of each cylinder is a file folder. Ripley takes a folder from above one of the live specimens. Inside is a medical chart printout with handwritten entries.

RIPLEY

(reading)

Removed surgically before embryo implantation. Subject:  Marachuk, John L.Died during procedure.

(looking up)

They killed him getting it off.

HICKS

Poor bastard.

They are startled by a LOUD BEEP. They turn. Hicks is intent on his motion tracker, aimed back toward the shattered barricade. BEEP. BEEP.

HICKS

Behind us.

He gestures at the corridor they just passed through.

RIPLEY

One of us?

GORMAN

(into headset)

Apone... where are your people? Anybody in D-Block?

APONE

(voice over; filtered)

Negative. We're all in Operations.

Vasquez swings the smart-gun to ready position on its support arm, locking it with an authoritative CLICK. She and Hicks head toward the source of the signal, the others following.

INT. CORRIDOR

Hicks' tracker is reading out more rapidly. They turn into the kitchens, a stainless steel labyrinth.

Ripley 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.

HICKS

It's moving.

Vasquez is scanning, gaze intense. The other troops grip their weapons tightly.

VASQUEZ

Which way?

Hicks nods toward a complicated array of food processing equipment. They move forward, weapons leveled.

Ripley shuffles forward in the dark. Wierzbowski trips over a metal cannister, sending it CLANGING. Ripley half climbs the wall.

Hicks' tracker beeps steadily. The beeps merge. Become a solid tone. CRASH. Something moves in the dark, toppling a rack of stockpots.

ON VASQUEZ
 

Pivoting smoothly to fire. In the same instant Hicks' rifle slashes INTO FRAME. Slams Vasquez' barrel upward. A STREAM OF TRACER FIRE rips into the ceiling, the rounds SEARING LIKE LIGHTNING.

VASQUEZ

You fuck!

Hicks ignores her, moving past and aiming his light under a row of steel cabinets. He gestures to Ripley, who steps forward. Trusting his judgment. She crouches beside him.

RIPLEY'S POV