Movie Script: Aliens (1986)

“ALIENS”

by

James Cameron

FIRST DRAFT
May 28, 1985

—————————————————————————–

ALIENS

FADE IN

SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE – SPACE 1

Silent and endless. The stars shine like the love of
God…cold and remote. Against them drifts a tiny chip
of technology.

CLOSER SHOT It is the NARCISSUS, lifeboat of the
ill-fated star-freighter Nostromo. Without interior
or running lights it seems devoid of life. The PING
of a RANGING RADAR grows louder, closer. A shadow
engulfs the Narcissus. Searchlights flash on, playing
over the tiny ship, as a MASSIVE DARK HULL descends
toward it.

INT. NARCISSUS 2

Dark and dormant as a crypt. The searchlights stream
in the dusty windows. Outside, massive metal forms can
BE SEEN descending around the shuttle. Like the tolling
of a bell, a BASSO PROFUNDO CLANG reverberates through
the hull.

CLOSE ON THE AIRLOCK DOOR Light glares as a cutting
torch bursts through the metal. Sparks shower into the
room.

A second torch cuts through. They move with machine
precision, cutting a rectangular path, converging. The
torches meet. Cut off. The door falls inward REVEALING
a bizarre multi-armed figure. A ROBOT WELDER.

FIGURES ENTER, backlit and ominous. THREE MEN in
bio-isolation suits, carrying lights and equipment. They
approach a sarcophaguslike HYPERSLEEP CAPSULE, f.g.

LEADER
(filtered)
Internal pressure positive. Assume
nominal hull integrity. Hypersleep
capsules, style circa late twenties…

His gloved hand wipes at on opaque layer of dust on the
canopy.

ANGLE INSIDE CAPSULE as light stabs in where the dust is
wiped away, illuminating a WOMAN, her face in peaceful
repose.

WARRANT OFFICER RIPLEY, sole survivor of the Nostromo.
Nestled next to her is JONES, the ship’s wayward cat.

LEADER
(voice over; filtered)
Lights are green. She’s alive.
Well, there goes out salvage, guys.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. HOSPITAL ROOM – TIGHT ON RIPLEY – GATEWAY STATION 3

She’s lying in a bed, looking wan, as a female MED-TECH
raises the backrest. She is surrounded by arcane white
MEDICAL EQUIPMENT. The Med-Tech exudes practiced
cheeriness.

MED-TECH
Why don’t I open the viewport?
Watch your eyes.

Harsh light floods in as a motorized shield slides into
the ceiling, REVEALING a breathtaking vista. Beyond the
sprawling complex of modular habitats, collectively
called GATEWAY STATION, is the curve of EARTH as seen
from high orbit. Blue and serene.

MED-TECH
And how are we today?

RIPLEY
(weakly)
Terrible.

MED-TECH
Just terrible? That’s better
than yesterday at least.

RIPLEY
How long have I been on
Gateway station?

MED-TECH
Just a couple of days. Do you
feel up to a visitor?

Ripley shrugs, not caring. The door opens and a MAN
enters, although Ripley sees only what he is carrying.
A familiar large, orange TOMCAT.

RIPLEY
Jones!

She grabs the cat like a life preserver.

RIPLEY
(cooing baby-cat talk)
Come here Jonesy you ugly old
moose…you ugly thing.

Jones patiently endures Ripley’s embarrassing display,
seeming none the worse for wear. The visitor sits
beside the bed and Ripley finally notices him. He is
thirtyish and handsome, in a suit that looks executive
or legal, the tie loosened with studied casualness. A
smile referred to as “winning.”

MAN
Nice room. I’m Burke. Carter Burke.
I work for the company, but other
than that I’m an okay guy. Glad to
see you’re feeling better. I’m told
the weakness and disorientation
should pass soon. Side effects of
the unusually long hypersleep, or
something like that.

RIPLEY
How long was I out there? They
won’t tell me anything.

BURKE
(soothing)
Well, maybe you shouldn’t worry
about that just yet.

Ripley grabs his arm, surprising him.

RIPLEY
How long?

Burke gazes at her, thoughtful.

BURKE
All right. My instinct says
you’re strong enough to handle
this…Fifty-seven years.

Ripley is stunned. She seems to deflate, her expression
passing through amazement and shock to realization of
all she has lost. Friends. Family. Her world.

RIPLEY
Fifty-seven…oh, Christ…

BURKE
You’d drifted right through the
core systems. It’s blind luck that
deep-salvage team caught you when
they…are you all right?

Ripley coughs suddenly as if choking and her expression
becomes one of dawning horror. Burke hands her a glass
of water from the nightstand. She slaps it away. It
shatters with a SMASH. Jones dives, yowling. Ripley
grabs her chest, struggling as if she is strangling.
The Med-Tech hits a console button.

MED-TECH
(shouting)
Code Blue! 415. Code Blue!
4-1-5!

Burke and the Med-Tech are holding Ripley’s shoulders as
she goes into convulsions. A DOCTOR and TWO TECHS run
in. Ripley’s back arches in agony.

RIPLEY
No…noooo!

They try to restrain her as she thrashes, knocking over
equipment. Her EKG races like mad. Jones, under a
cabinet, hisses wide-eyed.

DOCTOR
Hold her…Get me an airway, stat!
And fifteen cc’s of…Jesus!

AN EXPLOSION OF BLOOD beneath the sheet covering her
chest! Ripley stares at the SHAPE RISING UNDER THE
SHEET. Tearing itself out of her.

HER P.O.V. as the sheet rises. A GLIMPSE OF the
CHITTERING HORROR…IT SCREECHES.

TIGHT ON RIPLEY screaming, snapping up INTO FRAME.
Alone in the darkened hospital room. She gasps for
breath, clutching pathetically at her chest. There is
no demented horror rigging itself out of her. Her eyes
snap about wildly, slowly focusing on the reality of
her safety. Shuddering, bathed in sweat, she kneads her
breastbone with the heel of her hand and sobs.

A VIDEO MONITOR beside the bed snaps on. A MED-TECH’s
face.

MED-TECH
Bad dreams again? Do you want
something to help you sleep?

RIPLEY
(faint)
No.. I’ve slept enough.

The Med-Tech shrugs and switches off. Touching a button
on the nightstand she opens the viewport, REVEALING
Gateway and the turquoise Earth. She hugs Jones to her
and rocks with him like a child, still shattered by the
nightmare. Shivering. Sleep is far off.

RIPLEY
We made it, Jones. We made it.

But at what price?

CUT TO:

EXT. PARK 4

Sunlight streams in shafts through a stand of poplars,
beyond which a verdant meadow is VISIBLE.

EXTREME F.G. Jones stalks toward a bird hopping among
fallen leaves. He leaps. And smack into A WALL.

RIPLEY
(voice over)
Dumbsh*t.

WIDER ANGLE as Jones steps back confused from the
HIGH-RESOLUTION ENVIRONMENTAL WALL SCREEN, a sort of
cinerama video-loop. Ripley sits on a bench in what we
now SEE is an ATRIUM off the medical center, still
somewhere in the bowels of Gateway Station. Benches.
Some unenthusiastic potted trees. The sterile corridors
VISIBLE beyond glass doors b.g.

Burke ENTERS in his usual mode, casual haste.

BURKE
Sorry…I’ve been running behind
all morning.

Ripley seems healthier now, but still a bit brittle.

RIPLEY
Have they located my daughter
yet?

BURKE
Well, I was going to wait
until after the inquest…

He opens his briefcase, removing a sheet of printer
hard copy, including a telestat photo.

RIPLEY
Is she…?

BURKE
(scanning)
Amanda Ripley-McClaren. Married
name, I guess. Age: sixty-six
…at time of death. Two years
ago.
(looks at her)
I’m sorry.

Ripley studies the PHOTOGRAPH, stunned.

The face of a woman in her mid-sixties. It could be
anybody. She tries to reconcile the face with the
little girl she once knew.

RIPLEY
Amy.

BURKE
(reading)
Cancer. Hmmmm. They still haven’t
licked that one. Cremated. Interred
Parkside Repository, Little Chute,
Wisconsin. No children.

Ripley gazes off, into the pseudo-landscape, into the
past.

RIPLEY
I promised her I’d be home for
her birthday. Her eleventh
birthday. I sure missed that
one.
(pause)
Well…she has already learned
to take my promises with a grain
of salt. When it came to flight
schedules, anyway.

Burke nods, a simpatico presence.

RIPLEY
You always think you can make it
up to somebody…later, you know.
But now I never can. I never
can.

Let’s get one thing straight…Ripley can be one tough
lady. But the terror, the loss, the emptiness are, in
this moment, overwhelming. She cries silently.

Burke puts a reassuring hand on her arm.

BURKE
(gently)
The hearing convenes at 0930. You
don’t want to be late.

INT. CORRIDOR – GATEWAY 5

Elevator doors part and Ripley emerges, in mid-conversation
with Burke. DOLLYING AHEAD OF THEM as they move rapidly
down the corridor.

RIPLEY
You read my deposition…it’s
complete and accurate.

BURKE
Look, I believe you, but there are
going to be some heavyweights in
there. You got Feds, you got
interstellar commerce commission,
you got colonial administration,
insurance company guys…

RIPLEY
I get the picture.

BURKE
Just tell them what happened. The
important thing is to stay cool
and unemotional.

INT. CONFERENCE ROOM – ON RIPLEY – GATEWAY 6

She’s not cool. Not unemotional.

RIPLEY
Do you people have earwax, of
what? We have been here three
hours. How many different ways
do you want me to tell the same
story?

She faces the EIGHT MEMBERS of the board of inquiry at a
long conference table. Gray suits and grim faces. They
aren’t buying. Behind Ripley on a large VIDEO SCREEN,
PARKER grins like a goon from his personnel mugshot. His
file prints out next to it. BRETT’s face and dossier
replace it, and then the others as the SCENE continues…
KANE, LAMBERT, ASH the android traitor, DALLAS.
VAN LEUWEN, the ICC representative, steeples his fingers
and frowns.

VAN LEUWEN
Look at it from our perspective.
You freely admit to detonating the
engines of, and thereby destroying,
an M-Class star-freighter. A
rather expensive piece of hardware…

INSURANCE INVESTIGATOR
(dryly)
Forty-two million in adjusted dollars.
That’s minus payload, of course.

VAN LEUWEN
The shuttle’s flight recorder
corroborates some elements of
your account. That the Nostromo
set down on LV-426, an unsurveyed
planet, at that time. That
repairs were made. That it resumed
its course and was subsequently set
for self-destruct. By you. For

reasons unknown.

RIPLEY
Look, I told you…

VAN LEUWEN
It did not, however, contain any
entries concerning the hostile
life form you allegedly picked up.

Ripley sense the noose tightening.

RIPLEY
Then somebody’s gotten to it…
doctored the recorder. Who had
access to it?

The ECA (Extrasolar Colonization Administration)
Representative (ECA REP) just shakes his head.

ECA REP
Would you just listen to yourself
for one minute.

Ripley glares at the ECA Rep, a woman on the ungenerous
side of fifty. Van Leuwen sighs with exasperation.

VAN LEUWEN
The analysis team which went over
your shuttle centimeter by
centimeter found no physical
evidence of the creature you
describe…

RIPLEY
(losing it)
That’s because I blew it out the
Goddamn airlock!
(pause)
Like I said.

INSURANCE MAN
(to ECA Rep)
Are there any species like this
‘hostile organism’ on LV-426?

ECA REP
No. It’s a rock. No indigenous
life larger than a simple virus.

Ripley grits her teeth in frustration.

RIPLEY
I told you, it wasn’t indigenous.
There was an alien spacecraft there.
A derelict ship. We homed on its
beacon…

ECA REP
To be perfectly frank, we’ve surveyed
over three hundred worlds and no one’s
ever reported a creature which, using
your words…
(read from Ripley’s
statement)
…’gestates in a living human host’
and has ‘concentrated molecular acid
for blood.’

Ripley glances at Burke, silent at the far end of the
table. His expression is grim. Her mouth hardens as
a bit of the old nail-eating Ripley surfaces.

RIPLEY
Look, I can see where this is
going. But I’m telling you those
things exist. Back on that planetoid
is an alien ship and on that ship
are thousands of eggs. Thousands.
Do you understand? I suggest you
find it, using the flight recorder’s
data. Find it and deal with it —
before one of your survey teams
comes back with a little surprise…

VAN LEUWEN
Thank you, Officer Ripley. That
will be…

RIPLEY
(louder, stepping
on him)
…because just one of those
things managed to kill my entire
crew, within twelve hours of
hatching…

Van Leuwen stands, out of patience.

VAN LEUWEN
Thank you, that will be all.

Ripley stares him down, glowering at the board.

RIPLEY
That’s not all, Goddamnit! If
those things get back here, that
will be all. Then you can just
kiss it good-bye, Jack! Just kiss
it goodbye.

Ripley turns sharply away, trembling with frustration
and anger. Dallas looks back at her from the video
screen, his eyes burning from the photograph, as we:

CUT TO:

INT. CORRIDOR 7

Ripley kicks the wall next to Burke who is getting coffee
and donuts at a vending machine.

BURKE
You had them eating out of your
hand, kiddo.

RIPLEY
They had their minds made up
before I even went in there.
They think I’m a head case.

BURKE
(cheerfully)
You are a head case. Have a donut.

INT. CONFERENCE ROOM – TIGHT ON RIPLEY – LATER 8

Van Leuwen clears his throat.

VAN LEUWEN
It is the finding of this board of
inquiry that Warrent Officer Ellen Ripley,
NOC-14672. has acted with questionable
judgment and is unfit to hold an
ICC license as a commercial flight
officer.

Burke watches Ripley taking it on the chin, white-lipped
but subdued.

VAN LEUWEN
Said license is hereby suspended
indefinitely. No criminal charges
will be filed at this time and you
are released on own recognizance
for a six month period of
psychometric probation, to include
monthly review by an ICC psychiatric
tech…

INT. CORRIDOR 9

DOLLY BACK as the conference room door bangs open and
Ripley strides through. She shrugs off Burke’s
restraining arm and catches up to Van Leuwen walking
down the corridor.

RIPLEY
(insistent)
Why won’t you check out LV-426?

VAN LEUWEN
(condescendingly)
Because I don’t have to. The
people who live there checked it
out years ago and they never
reported and ‘hostile organism’
or alien ship. And by the way,
they call it Acheron now.

RIPLEY
What are you talking about.
What people?

Van Leuwen steps into an elevator with some others, but
Ripley holds the door from closing.

VAN LEUWEN
Terraformers…planet engineers.
It’s what we call a shake ‘n’ bake
colony. They set up atmosphere
processors to make the air
breathable…big job. Takes
decades. They’ve already been
there over twenty years. Peacefully.

The door tries to close. Ripley slams it back. People
are getting annoyed.

RIPLEY
How many colonists?

VAN LEUWEN
Sixty, maybe seventy families.

RIPLEY
(low)
Sweet Jesus.

ELEVATOR PASSENGER
Do you mind?

Ripley’s hand slides off the door, strengthless.

TIGHT ON HER FROM INSIDE the elevator as the doors close
like fate on her lost expression.

EXT. ALIEN LANDSCAPE – DAY 10

A hideous, storm-blasted vista. Tortured rock forms.
Bleak twilight at midday.

PAN SLOWLY ONTO a CORRODED METAL SIGN set in concrete
pylons, which reads:

HADLEY’S HOPE – POP. 159
“WELCOME TO ACHERON”

Some local has added below in spray-can graffiti
“Have a nice day.” Gale-force wind SCREECHES around
the steel sign, driving a freezing rain.

The COLONY, b.g., is a squat complex with lots of
floodlights.

EXT. COLONY COMPLEX 11

The town is a cluster of bunkerlike metal and concrete
buildings connected by conduits. Neon signs throw garish
colors across the vaultlike walls, advertising bars and
other businesses. It looks like a sodden cross between
the Krupps munitions works and a truckstop casino in
the Nevada boondocks.

Huge-wheeled tractors crawl toadlike in the rutted
“street” and vanish down rampways to underground garages.

ANGLE ON THE CONTROL BLOCK the largest structure. It
resembles vaguely the superstructure of an aircraft
carrier…a flying bridge.

VISIBLE across a half kilometer of barren heath, b.g.,
is the massive complex of the nearest ATMOSPHERE
PROCESSOR, looking like a power plant bred with an active
volcano. Its fiery glow pulses in the low cloud cover
like a steel mill.

INT. MAIN CONCOURSE – NEAR CONTROL BLOCK 12

A central space, laid out like a scaled-down shopping
mall with no styling flourishes. We SEE a cross section
of the types of people who have come to live on
Godforsaken Acheron. Tough. Pragmatic. “Grapes of
Wrath” faces. Calloused hands. Not too many interior
decorators. Some children race in the corridor on things
that look suspiciously like “Big Wheels.”

INT. OPERATIONS ROOM – CONTROL BLOCK 13

Jammed with computer terminals, technicians, displays…
most of the business of running the colony flows through
here. It’s high tech but used and scrungy. Papers
piled up. Coffee cup rings.

DOLLY AHEAD OF LYDECKER, the Assistant Operations Manager,
as he catches up to the harried Operating Manager,
SIMPSON.

LYDECKER
You remember you sent some
wildcatters out to that
plateau, out past the Ilium
range, a couple days ago?

SIMPSON
Yeah. What?

LYDECKER
There’s a guy on the horn,
mom-and-pop survey team. Says
he’s homing on something and
wants to know if his claim will
be honored.

SIMPSON
Christ. Some honch in a cushy
office on Earth says go look at
a grid reference in the middle
of nowhere, we look. They don’t
say why, and I don’t ask. I
don’t ask because it takes two
weeks to get an answer out here
and the answer’s always ‘don’t
ask.’

LYDECKER
So what do I tell this guy?

SIMPSON
Tell him, as far as I’m concerned,
he finds something it’s his.

EXT. ACHERON – THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE – A SIX-WHEELED 14
TRACTOR – DAY

It roars across corrugated rock, blasting through soggy
drifts of volcanic ash.

INT. TRACTOR 15

At the controls, intent on a PINGING scope, is RUSS JORDEN,
independent prospector. Beside him is his wife/partner
ANNE and in the back their two kids are playing among the
heavy sampling equipment.

JORDEN
(gloating cackle)
Look at this fat, juicy magnetic
profile. And it’s mine, mine,
mine.

ANNE
Half mine, dear.

NEWT, their six-year-old daughter, yells from the back…

NEWT
And half mine!

JORDEN
I got too many partners.

NEWT
Daddy, when are we going back
to town?

JORDEN
When we get rich, Newt.

NEWT
You always say that. I wanna go
back. I wanna play ‘Monster Maze.’

Her older brother TIM sticks his jeering face close to
hers.

TIM
You cheat too much.

NEWT
Do not. I’m just the best.

TIM
Do too! You go in places we
can’t fit.

NEWT
So! That’s why I’m the best.

ANNE
Knock it off! I catch either of
you playing in the air ducts again
I’ll tan your hides.

NEWT
Mom. All the kids play it…

JORDEN
(reverently)
Holy shiiit!

ANGLE THROUGH FRONT CANOPY ON a bizarre shape looming
ahead. An enormous bonelike mass projecting upward from
the bed of ash. The tractor slows.

Canted on its side and buckles against a rock outcropping
by the lava flow, it is still recognizable as an
EXTRATERRESTRIAL SHIP. Bio-mechanoid. Nonhuman design.

JORDEN
Folks, we have scored big this
time.

EXT. TRACTOR 16

Jorden and Anne step down, wearing ENVIRONMENT SUITS.
Carrying LIGHTS, PACKS, CAMERAS, TEST GEAR. Their

breath clouds in the chill air.

ANNE
You kids stay inside. I mean
it! We’ll be right back.

They trudge toward the alien derelict.

ANNE
Shouldn’t we call in?

JORDEN
Let’s wait till we know what to
call it in as.

ANNE
(nervous)
How about ‘big weird thing’?

They pause at a twisted gash in the hull. Blackness
inside.

INT./EXT. TRACTOR 17

Newt has her face pressed to the glass, steaming it.
Watching her parents enter the strange ship. Tim GRABS
HER from behind. She SHRIEKS.

TIM
Cheater!

EXT. LANDSCAPE – NIGHT 18

The tractor and the derelict are dark and motionless.
The wind HOWLS around them.

Tim is curled up in the driver’s seat. Newt shakes him
awake, trying hard not to cry.

NEWT
Timmy…they’ve been gone a
long time.

Tim considers the night. The wind. The vast landscape.

He bites his lip.

TIM
(quavering)
It’ll be okay, Newt. Dad knows
what he’s doing.

CRASH! Newt SCREAMS as the door beside her is RIPPED
OPEN. A dark shape lunges inside!

Anne, panting and terrified, grabs the dash mike.

ANNE
Mayday! Mayday! This is
Alpha Kilo Two Four Niner
calling Hadley Control.
Repeat. This is…

As Anne shouts the mayday Newt looks past her, to the
ground. Russ Jorden lies there inert, dragged somehow
by Anne from inside the ship. There is SOMETHING ON
HIS FACE. An appalling MULTILEGGED CREATURE, pulsing
with obscene life. Newt begins to SCREAM hysterically,
competing with the shrieking wind which rises to a
crescendo as we:

CUT TO:

INT. RIPLEY’S APARTMENT – GATEWAY – DAY 20

Silence. Ripley, looking haggard, sits at a table in
the dining alcove contemplating the smoke rising from
her cigarette. The place is modest, to be charitable,
and there are few personal touches. Though it’s late
in the day Ripley is still wearing a robe. The bed is
unmade. Dishes in the sink. Jones prowls across the
counter. The WALLSCREEN is on, blaring vapidly.

VOICE FROM VIDEO
(o.s.)
Hey, Bob! I heard you and the
family are heading off for the
colonies!

BON
(o.s.)
Best decision I ever made, Bill.
We’ll be starting a new life
from scratch, in a clean world.
No crime. No unemployment…

The door BUZZES. Ripley jumps like a cat. Jones doesn’t.

INT. CORRIDOR 21

Carter Burke stands in the narrow, dingy corridor with
LIEUTENANT GORMAN, Colonial Marine Corps. Young and
severe in his officer’s dress-black. The door opens
slightly.

BURKE
Hi, Ripley. This is
Lieutenant Gorman of the…

SLAM. Burke buzzes again. Talks to the door…

BURKE
Ripley we have to talk.
(pause)
They’ve lost contact with the
colony on Acheron.

The door opens. Ripley considers the ramifications of
that. She motions them inside.

INT. RIPLEY’S APARTMENT – A LITTLE LATER 22

Burke and Gorman are seated, nursing coffee. Ripley
paces, very tense.

RIPLEY
No. There’s no way!

BURKE
Hear me out…

RIPLEY
I was reamed, steamed and
dry-cleaned by you guys…and
now you want me to go back out
there? Forget it.

We SEE that she’s gut scared, covering it with anger.
Burke sees it.

BURKE
Look, we don’t know what’s going
on out there. It may just be a
down transmitter. But if it’s
not, I want you there…as an
advisor. That’s all.

GORMAN
You wouldn’t be going in with the
troops. I can guarantee your
safety.

BURKE
These Colonial Marines are
some tough hombres, and they’re
packing state-of-the-art firepower.
Nothing they can’t handle…right,
Lieutenant?

GORMAN
(cool)
We’re trained to deal with these
kinds of situations.

RIPLEY
(to Burke)
What about you? What’s your
interest in this?

BURKE
Well, the corporation co-financed
that colony with the Colonial
Administration, against mineral
rights. We’re getting into a lot
of terraforming…’Building Better
Worlds.’

Burke is revealing his early days in sales.

RIPLEY
Yeah, yeah. I saw the commercial.

BURKE
I heard you were working in the
cargo docks.

RIPLEY
(defensive)
That’s right.

BURKE
Running loaders, forklifts, that
sort of thing?

RIPLEY
(shrugging)
It’s all I could get. Anyway,
it keeps my mind off of…
everything. Days off are worse.

BURKE
What if I said I could get you
reinstated as a flight officer?
And that the company has agreed
to pick up your contract?

RIPLEY
If I go.

BURKE
If you go.
(pause)
It’s a second chance, kiddo. And
it’ll be the best thing in the
world for you to face this fear
and beat it. You gotta get back
on the horse…

RIPLEY
(frosty)
Spare me, Burke. I’ve had my
psych evaluation this month.

Burke leans close, a let’s-cut-the-crap intimacy.

BURKE
Yes, and I’ve read it. You
wake up every night, sheets
soaking, the same nightmare
over and over…

RIPLEY
(shouting)
No! The answer is no. Now
please go. I’m sorry. Just
go, would you.

Burke nods to Gorman who rises with him. He slips a
TRANSLUCENT CARD onto the table, heads for the door.

BURKE
Think about it.

EXT. ACHERON LANDSCAPE – NIGHT 23

As the wind HOWLS through tormented rock, BUILDING IN
PITCH until we:

CUT TO:

INT. APARTMENT 24

Ripley lunges INTO FRAME with an animal outcry. She
clutches her chest, breathing hard. Bathed in sweat
she lights a cigarette with trembling hands. Do we
hear a faint, desolate wind?

TIGHT ON PHONE CONSOLE as Ripley’s hand inserts Burke’s
card into a slot. “STAND BY” prints out on the screen
and is replaced by Burke’s face, bleary with sleep.

BURKE
(on video phone)
Yello? Oh, Ripley. Hi…

RIPLEY
Burke, just tell me one thing.
That you’re going out there to
kill them. Not study. Not bring
back. Just burn them out…clean
…forever.

BURKE
That’s the plan. My word on it.

CLOSEUP – RIPLEY taking a deep slow breath. It’s time
to look the demon in the eye.

RIPLEY
All right. I’m in.

She punches off before Burke replies, before she can
change her mind. She turns to Jones sitting on the
bed and her tone becomes admonishing…

RIPLEY
And you my dear, are staying
right here.

Jones blinks, cynical cat eyes…”count me right
out.”

CUT TO:

EXT. DEEP SPACE – THREE WEEKS LATER 25

An empty starfield. Metal spires slice ACROSS FRAME.

A mountain of steel following. A massive military
transport ship, the SULACO. Ugly, battered…
functional.

INT. CORRIDOR TO CARGO LOCK 26

An empty corridor, seemingly miles long. No movement.
The THRUMMING of hyperdrive engines.

INT. CARGO LOCK 27

An enormous chamber, cavernous and dark. Squatting
in the shadows are two orbit-to-surface shuttles.
DROP-SHIPS. Heavy machinery all around them…
cranes, loading equipment.

INT. BRIDGE 28

Dark electronic womb. CAMERA DOLLIES SLOWLY among
murmuring instrumentation. A sudden high-pitched
TRILLING accompanies a sequence of lights. An alarm.

INT. HYPERSLEEP VAULT 29

Blackness, until a bank of indicators lights up.
Hydraulics lift a grid of equipment from a row of
horizontal HYPERSLEEP CYLINDERS. It reaches the
ceiling. Locks.

CLOSE ON RIPLEY’S CAPSULE as trickles of water run
down the frosted canopy.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. HYPERSLEEP VAULT 30

Lit up, white and sterile.

The canopies of the row of capsules are raised. Ripley
sits up. Rubs her arms briskly. Next to her Gorman
and Burke are stirring and beyond them the troopers,
wearing shorts and dog tags. They are:

MASTER SERGEANT APONE UNIT LEADER

CORPORAL HICKS B-TEAM LEADER

CORPORAL DIETRICH (female) MED-TECH

PFC HUDSON COM-TECH

PFC VASQUEZ (female) ‘SMART-GUN’ OPERATOR

PRIVATE DRAKE ‘SMART-GUN’ OPERATOR

PRIVATE FROST TROOPER

PRIVATE CROWE TROOPER

PRIVATE WIERZBOWSKI TROOPER

CORPORAL FERRO (female) DROP-SHIP PILOT

PFC SPUNKMEYER DROP-SHIP CREW CHIEF

The ship is fully automated in interstellar flight so
there is no crew, except for EXECUTIVE OFFICER (ECA) Bishop,
who supervises planetary maneuvering.

GROANS echo across the chamber.

SPUNKMEYER
Arrgh. I’m getting too old for
this sh*t.

SPUNKMEYER says this sincerely, though he must have
enlisted underage not long ago. Looking surly, DRAKE
sits up. He’s young as well but street-tough. Nasty
scar curling his lip into a sneer.

DRAKE
They ain’t payin’ us enough
for this.

DIETRICH
Not enough to have to wake up
to your face, Drake.

DRAKE
Suck air. Hey, Hicks…you look
like I feel.

HICKS, an older lifer-type who keeps his own counsel,
just snorts good-naturedly.

Ripley scans the group as they shuffle past her to a
bank of lockers. Though not supermen they are lean and
hardened…tough, capable, jaded. They combine the
specialized techno-combat training of the twenty-first
century fighting man with those qualities universal to
“grunts” through the ages. SERGEANT APONE moves down the
row of freezers.

HUDSON
This floor’s freezing.

APONE
Christ. I never saw such a
buncha old women. You want me
to fetch your slippers, Hudson?

HUDSON
Would you, Sir?

Ripley steps back as the troopers shuffle past nodding
cursory hellos. She feels isolated by the camaraderie
of this tightknit group.

VASQUEZ eyes her coldly as she passes. Like Drake,
Vasquez is younger then the rest and her combat-primer
was the street in a Los Angeles barrio. She is tough
even by the standards of this group. Hard-muscled.
Eyes cunning and mean.

HUDSON
Hey, Vasquez…you ever been
mistaken for a man?

VASQUEZ
No. Have you?

She slaps Drake’s open palm and it clenches into a
greeting which is part contest. It gets rougher.
Painful. Until she cuffs him hard and they break with
vicious laughter. Dobermans playing. Conscripted from
juvenile prison, the two of them were trained to
operate the formidable “SMART-GUNS.” That is part
of their bond.

BISHOP is helping everyone like a valet. As he passes
close to her Ripley notices a strange TATTOO across
the back of his left hand…an ALPHA-NUMERIC CODE.

FROST
Hey, hand job, you take my
towel?

SPUNKMEYER
(overlapping)
I need some slack, man. How
come they send us straight back
out like this? We got some slack
comin’, man.

HICKS
You just got three weeks.

SPUNKMEYER
I mean breathing, not this frozen
sh*t.

DIETRICH
Yeah, ‘Top’…what about it?

APONE
You know it ain’t up to me.
(louder)
Awright! Let’s knock off the
grabass. First assembly’s in
fifteen…let’s shag it.

INT. SHOWERS 31

High pressure water jets and a blast of hot air when
you step out…a drive through car wash for people.
Through the swirling steam Hudson, Vasquez and FERRO
are watching Ripley dry off.

VASQUEZ
Who’s the fresh meat again?

FERRO
She’s supposed to be some kinda
consultant…
(exaggerated)
…She was an alien once.

HUDSON
Whoooah! No sh*t? I’m impressed.

APONE
Let’s go…let’s go. Cycle through!

INT. MESS HALL 32

An unconscious segregation takes place at the troopers
assemble at one long table while Gorman, Burke, Bishop
and Ripley sit at another. Everybody is nursing a
coffee, waiting for eggs from the AUTOCHEF. Among the
troopers dress discipline is lax…fatigues customized
and emblazoned with patches. Drake’s tunic is cut off
to a vest and has “Eat the apple and f*ck the Corps”
stenciled on back. “Peace Through Superior Firepower,”
“Pray for War” and “I’ve Served My Time in Hell: Cetti
Epsilon NC-104” are some others.

HUDSON
Hey, ‘Top.’ What’s the op?

APONE
Rescue mission. There’s some
juicy colonists’ daughters we
gotta rescue from virginity.

Apone is stocky, grizzled, with peregrine eyes. He runs
it loose and fair, but only because he knows his people
are the best.

SPUNKMEYER
Shee-it. Dumbass colonists.
What’s this crap supposed to be?

WIERZBOWSKI
Cornbread, I think. Hey, I wouldn’t
mind getting me some more a
that Arcturan poontang. Remember
that time?

HICKS
(low)
Looks like that new Lieutenant’s
too good to eat with us grunts.

WIERZBOWSKI
(glancing
over shoulder)
Yeah. Got a corn cob up his ass,
definitely.

Across the room, at the other table, Gorman sits with
his creases perfect…the consummate strack NCO. Bishop
takes a seat beside Ripley, who pointedly gets up and
moves to the far side of the table. He looks wounded.

BISHOP
I’m sorry you feel that way
about Synthetics, Ripley.

Ripley spins on Burke, her tone accusing.

RIPLEY
You never said anything about an
android being here! Why not?

BURKE
Well, it didn’t occur to me. It’s
been policy for years to have a
synthetic on board.

BISHOP
I prefer the term ‘artificial person’
myself. Is there a problem?

BURKE
A synthetic malfunctioned on her
last trip out. Some deaths were
involved.

BISHOP
I’m shocked. Was it an older model?

BURKE
Cyberdyne Systems 120-A/2.

Bishop turns to Ripley, very conciliatory.

BISHOP
Well, that explains it. The
A/2’s were always a bit twitchy.
That could never happen now with
out behavioral inhibitors. Impossible
for me to harm or, by omission of
action, allow to be harmed a
human being.
(smiling)
More cornbread?

WHAM! Ripley knocks the plate out of his hand, halfway
across the room.

RIPLEY
Just stay away from me, Bishop!
You got that straight?

Burke and Gorman exchange glances.

Wierzbowski, at the next table, shrugs and turns back
to the other troopers.

WIERZBOWSKI
She don’t like the cornbread
either.

INT. READY ROOM – TIGHT ON APONE – ARMORY 33

bellowing.

APONE
Tench-hut!

WIDER ANGLE as the troops snap to from their lounging
among the racks of high-tech weaponry. Gorman enters
with Burke and Ripley.

GORMAN
At ease. I’m sorry we didn’t
have time to brief before we
left Gateway but…

HUDSON
Sir?

GORMAN
(annoyed)
Yes, Hicks?

HUDSON
Hudson, Sir. He’s Hicks.

GORMAN
What’s the question?

HUDSON
Is this going to be a stand-up
fight, Sir, on another bug-hunt?

GORMAN
All we know is that there’s
still no contact with the colony
and that a xenomorph may be
involved.

WIERZBOWSKI
A what?

HICKS
(to Wierzbowski;
low)
It’s a bug-hunt.
(louder)
So what are these things?

Gorman nods to Ripley, who stands before the troops.
She sets some RECORDING DISKETTES on the table.

RIPLEY
I’ve dictated what I know on
these.

APONE
Tease us a bit.

SPUNKMEYER
Yeah…previews.

RIPLEY
Okay. It’s important to understand
this organism’s life cycle. It’s
actually two creatures. The first
form hatches from a spore…a sort
of large egg, and attaches itself
to its victim. Then it injects
an embryo, detaches and dies.
It’s essentially a walking sex organ.
The —

HUDSON
Sounds like you, Hicks.

RIPLEY
(controlled)
The embryo, the second form, hosts
in the victim’s body for several
hours. Gestating. Then it…
(with difficulty)
…then it…emerges. Moults.
Grows rapidly —

VASQUEZ
I only need to know one thing.

RIPLEY
Yes?

VASQUEZ
Where they are.

Vasquez coolly points her finger, c**ks her thumbs, and
blows away an imaginary alien.

DRAKE
Yo! Vasquez. Kick ass!

VASQUEZ
Anytime. Anywhere.

HUDSON
Somebody said alien…she
thought they said illegal alien
and signed up.

VASQUEZ
Fuck you.

HUDSON
Anytime. Anywhere.

RIPLEY
(icy)

Am I disturbing you conversation
Mr. Hudson?

Hudson settles down, smirking. Ripley locks eyes with
Vasquez.

RIPLEY
I hope you’re right. I really
do.

BURKE
(to all)
I suggest you study the disks
Ripley has been kind enough to
prepare for you.

GORMAN
Are there any questions? Hudson?

HUDSON
How do I get out of this
chicken-sh*t outfit?

Gorman scowls then, thanking Ripley with a nod, takes
over the predrop briefing.

GORMAN
All right. I want this to go
smooth and by the numbers. I
want DCS and tactical database
assimilation by 0830.
(some groans)
Ordnance loading, weapons strip and
drop-ship prep details will have
seven hours…

EXT. SPACE – ACHERON 34

They have arrived. From orbit the planet looks serene
…Pearlescent cloud cover masking the environmental
torment beneath. The SULACO floats, its MANEUVERING
JETS FIRING. A bluish glow. Then twice more, rapidly.

INT. BRIDGE 35

Bishop is installed in his command seat, hemmed in by
instrumentation.

BISHOP
(into mike)
Attention. This concluded final
maneuvering operations. Thank
you for your cooperation. You
may resume work.

INT. LOADING BAY – TIGHT ON MASSIVE FORKS – CARGO LOCK 34

sliding into a heavy ordnance rack with an echoing
CLANG. PULL BACK as the rack of tactical missiles is
lifted, REVEALING two powerful hydraulic arms.

Spunkmeyer, seated inside a POWER LOADER, swings the
ordnance up into a belly nacelle of the DROP-SHIP where
it locks into place. As he exerts pressure with his
hands against the servo-controls the hydraulic arms
move correspondingly…but with a thousandfold increase
in power. The forklift-style CLAWS on each arm can
crush with tons of pressure. The loader has an open
ROLL CAGE to protect the operator, and is supported
by squat HYDRAULIC LEGS which also move correspondingly
with the driver’s movements.

You have never seen anything like this before.
Advanced as it is to us, it’s only an old forklift
to them…battered and well used. Covered with grease.
Repainted many times. Across the back is stencilled
“CATERPILLAR.”

Spunkmeyer’s machine swings out from under the drop-ship
and we become aware of the intense activity throughout
the cavernous loading bay. Troopers on foot or driving
TOW-MOWERS, OVERHEAD LOADING ARMS…all in motion.
Hicks checks off items on an electronic manifest.

INT. READY ROOM – ARMORY 37

Wierzbowski, Drake and Vasquez are fieldstripping
light weapons with precise movements. Around them,
in racks, is an arsenal of advanced personal
artillery.

Vasquez likes the feel of the guns, the weight…the
authority. Her hands move without hesitation. CLACK.
CLACK. CLACK. She swings one of the SMART-GUNS out
on a work stand. Using a body brace and GYRO-STABILIZED
SUPPORT ARM, it is a computer-aimed, video targeted
automatic weapon. The futuristic equivalent of a .30
caliber light machine gun. Sort of a steadicam that
kills.

INT. LOADING BAY – ANGLE ON BURKE AND GORMAN 38

with pre-flight activity b.g.

BURKE
Still nothing from the colony?

GORMAN
Dead on all channels.

Ripley watches the drop-ship being loaded. A cross
between a Huey Aircobra gunship and the space shuttle
might describe it. An orbit-to-surface troop carrier,
heavily armed for the close support of ground missions.
She watches a six-wheeled APC, ARMORED PERSONNEL
CARRIER, being raised hydraulically into the ship’s
belly. Ripley looks around as Frost wheels a rack of
incomprehensible equipment toward her.

FROST
Clear, please.

Ripley jumps aside, nodding apologetically. She turns.
Steps hastily back. Hudson cruises by with a laden
forklift.

HUDSON
Excuse me.

ANGLE ON APONE standing with Hicks, as Ripley approaches
him

RIPLEY
I feel like a fifth wheel
here. Is there anything I can
do?

APONE
I don’t know. Is there anything
you can do?

RIPLEY
(pointing)
I can drive that loader. I’ve
got a Class Two rating. My
latest career move.

Apone turns. A SECOND POWER LOADER sits unused in
an equipment bay.

TWO SHOT APONE AND HICKS skeptical. Considering.

TIGHT ON POWER SWITCH as Ripley’s finger punches it on.
A RISING WHINE of power.

TIGHT ON THE HYDRAULICS as the massive machine stirs
to life.

FULL, as the loader starts. Ripley is strapped into
the safety cage, her arms and legs inserted in the
servo-sensor assemblies. She takes a step. BOOM!
Two tons of hardened steel takes a step.

Ripley spins the wrist servos. The huge claws swing,
open…slide smoothly into lifting brackets on a
cargo module, nearby. She raises it deftly.

RIPLEY
Where you want it?

Hicks looks at Apone, c**ks an eyebrow appreciatively.

INT. READY ROOM – ARMORY 39

The troopers are suiting up for the drop. Strapping on
their bulky COMBAT-ARMOR…interlocking plates like
football padding. They tape their wrists. Draw on
segmented boots. The sole cleats CLACK like hooves
on the deck plates. Lockers SLAM.

WEB BELTS. PACKS. HARNESSES. HELMETS. COM-SETS.
Their fingers move methodically over the fastenings.
It has its own rhythm…CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.

APONE
Let’s move it, girls! On
the ready line. Let’s go,
let’s go.

INT. DROP-SHIP – APC 40

Ripley, wearing a flight jacket and headset, files into
the ship with the hulking troopers. Inside they pass
directly into the APC we saw loaded earlier and take
seats facing each other across a narrow aisle. They will
drop already strapped into their ground vehicle for
rapid deployment. A KLAXON SOUNDS, signalling
depressurization of the cargo lock.

Hudson prowls the aisle, his movements predatory and
exaggerated. Ripley watches him working his way toward
her.

HUDSON
I am ready, man. Ready to get
it on. Check-it-out. I am the
ultimate badass…state of the
badass art. You do not want to
f*ck with me. Hey, Ripley, don’t
worry. Me and my squad of
ultimate badasses will protect you.
Check-it-out…

He slaps the SERVO-CANNON controls in the GUN BAY
above them.

HUDSON
Independently targetting
particle-beam phalanx. VWAP!
Fry half a city with this puppy.
We got tactical smart-missles,
phased-plasma pulse-rifles,
RPG’s. We got sonic eeelectronic
ballbreakers, we got nukes, we
got knives…sharp sticks —

Hicks grabs Hudson by his battle harness and pulls him
into a seat. His voice is low, but it carries.

HICKS
Save it.

HUDSON
Sure, Hicks.

Ripley nods her thanks to Hicks. MOTORS WHINE and the
craft lurches. Burke, next to Ripley, grins eagerly
like this is a sport fishing trip.

BURKE
Here we go.

She looks like she’s in a gas chamber waiting for the
pellet to drop.

EXT. SULACO 41

The drop-ship lowers from the cargo-lock on a massive
launch rig. The night side of Acheron yawns below…
enigmatic.

INT. COCKPIT 42

Ferro and Spunkmeyer run rapidly through the switches.

FERRO
Initiate release sequencer on my
mark. Three. Two. One. Mark!

EXT. SULACO – DROP-SHIP 43

Hydraulic WHINE. Clamps SLAM BACK. The ship drops.

INT. DROP-SHIP – APC 44

Apone, stalking the aisle, snatches for a handhold.
Bishop, Burke and Gorman groan at the sudden gees.
Ripley closes her eyes…the point of no return.

EXT. DROP-SHIP 45

It screams down through the stratosphere, plunging
into dark turbulence.

INT. COCKPIT 46

Beyond the canopy is gray limbo. The craft shudders
and lurches.

FERRO
(icy calm)
Switching to DCS ranging.

SPUNKMEYER
Two-four-o. Nominal to profile.
Picking up some hull ionization.

FERRO
Got it. Rough air ahead.

INT. HOLD – APC 47

TIGHT ON HICKS asleep in his harness.

FERRO
(voice over;
filtered)
Stand by for some chop.

TIGHT ON GORMAN as the ship begins to buck, his eyes
closed. Pale. Sweating. He rubs his hands on his
knees repeatedly.

RIPLEY
How may drops is this for you,
Lieutenant?

GORMAN
Thirty-eight…simulated.

VASQUEZ
How many combat drops?

GORMAN
Well…two. Three, including
this one.

Vasquez and Drake exchange do-you-believe-this-sh*t
expressions. Ripley looks accusingly at Burke.

INT. COCKPIT 48

FERRO
Turning on final. Coming around to
a seven-zero-niner. Terminal
guidance locked in. Where’s
the damn beacon?

EXT. DROP-SHIP 49

It emerges from the low cloud ceiling. From the twilight
haze ahead the distant colony LANDING BEACONS become
visible.

INT. HOLD – APC 50

Stumbling as the ship pitches, Ripley makes her way
forward to the MOBILE TACTICAL OPERATIONS BAY (MTOB),
a control console lined with monitor screens. She
joins Burke watching over Gorman’s shoulder as the
Lieutenant plays the board like a video director.

TIGHT ON MONITOR CONSOLE REVEALING screens labelled with
the names of the troopers. Two for each soldier. The
upper screens show images from the IMAGE-INTENSIFIED
VIDEO CAMERAS in their helmets. The lower screens are
BIO-MONITORS: EEG, EKG, and other graphic life-function
readouts. Other screens show EXTERIOR VIEWS.

GORMAN
Let’s see. Everybody on line.
Drake, check you camera. There
seems to be a…

CLOSE ON DRAKE as he whacks himself on the head with
an ammo case. A familiar malfunction.

GORMAN
(o.s)
…that’s better. Pan it around
a bit.

APONE
Awright. Fire-team A. Gear up.
Let’s move. Two minutes.
Somebody wake up Hicks.

A clatter of activity as they don backpacks and weapons.
Vasquez and Drake buckle on their smart-gun body
harnesses.

Ripley watches the AP station loom on the exterior
screens.

RIPLEY
That the atmosphere processor?

BURKE
Uh-hunh. One of thirty or so,
all over the planet. They’re
completely automated. We
manufacture them, by the way.

EXT. SHIP – AP STATION 51

The tiny ship circles the roaring tower. A metal
volcano thundering like the engines on God’s Lear jet.

INT. HOLD – APC 52

Gorman plays with the controls, zooming the image of
the colony.

GORMAN
(to Ferro via mike)
Hold at forty. Slow circle of
the complex.

RIPLEY
The structure seems intact. They
have power.

On the screen the colony buildings loom in and the low
visibility like wrecks of freighters on the sea floor.

GORMAN
(to Apone)
Okay, let’s do it.

APONE
Awright! I want a nice clean
dispersal this time.

Ripley turns as Vasquez squeezes past her.

VASQUEZ
You staying in here?

RIPLEY
You bet.

VASQUEZ
(turning away)
Figures.

GORMAN
(to Ferro via mike)
Set down sixty meters this side
of the telemetry mast. Immediate
dust off on my ‘clear,’ then stay
on station.

APONE
Ten seconds, people. Look sharp!

EXT. COLONY COMPLEX 53

Landing beacons sweep harsh light across the wet Tarmac.
The ship roars down, extending the loading ramp. Slams
down on hydraulic LANDING LEGS. The APC hits the ground
a moment later, pulling away from the ship as it leaps
up in a cloud of spray and peels off, circling.

The APC pulls to the edge of the complex. The CREW DOOR
opens. Troopers hit the ground running. Spread out.
They drop behind immediate cover. Apone scans with
him image intensifier visor lowered.

APONE’S P.O.V. through the starlight-scope visor.
Bright as a sunny day, though contrasty and lurid, we
SEE the colony buildings. Trash blows in the street.
No other movement.

GORMAN
(voice over;
filtered)
First squad up, on line. Hicks,
get yours in a cordon. Watch the
rear.

APONE
Vasquez, take point. Let’s move.

Sprinting in a skirmish line, Apone’s team advances on
the colony main entry-lock. Parked tightly across the
doors are two heavy-duty tractors. Vasquez reaches one
of the tractors, looks inside. The controls are ripped
out, as if by a crowbar or axe. She moves on.

EXT. COLONY BUILDING 54

Vasquez reaches the main doors, Drake flanking on the
right. Apone tries the door controls. Nothing.

APONE
Sealed. Hudson, run a bypass.

Hudson, all business now, moves up and studies the
door control panel. He pries off the facing and starts
clipping on the bypass wires.

APONE
First squad, assemble on me at
the main lock.

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. Apone motions Vasquez inside. She
eases over the wrecked tractor, through the doors.
The others follow.

GORMAN
(voice over;
filtered)
Second team, move up.
Flanking positions.

INT. COLONY – MAIN CONCOURSE 55

DOLLYING SLOWLY FORWARD, following Vasquez and Apone 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 56

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 57

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 58

Ripley et al watching.

BURKE
Looks like my room in college.

Nobody laughs.

INT. SECOND LEVEL 59

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 60

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 61

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 62

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 63

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 64

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 65

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 66

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 67

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 68

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 69

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 70

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 71

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 72

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 f*ck!

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 P.O.V. lit by Hicks’ pack-light…a tiny
cowering figure. A very dirty, very terrified
NEWT JORDEN. She clutches a plastic food packet in
one hand, its top gnawed partway through. In the other
hand she grips the HEAD OF A LARGE DOLL, holding it by
the hair. Just the head. Eyes staring. Newt is
pathetically emaciated…fragile-looking as Dresden
china, her hair tangled and matted.

RIPLEY
(soothingly)
Come on out. It’s all right…

Ripley moves toward her, reaching slowly under the
cabinet. Newt backs away, trembling visibly, her
vision fixated like a rabbit blinded by headlights.
Ripley’s hand almost reaches her.

The kid bolts like a shot, scuttling along beneath the
cabinetry. Ripley scrambles to follow…to keep her
in sight. Crabbing frantically sideways. Hicks makes
a grab, catching one tiny ankle. He snaps his hand
out a moment later.

HICKS
Ow! Shit. Watchit, she bites.

The girl reaches a ventilation duct set in the
baseboard, its grille kicked out. She scrambles
inside, her tiny body barely fitting, wriggling like
a fish.

In his bulky armor Hicks knows he’ll never make it
into the tiny duct. Ripley dives. She squirms into
the duct without thinking. Just ahead she sees Newt
enter a dark space and slam a steel hatch. Ripley
pushes the hatch open before the child can latch it,
and crawls in after her.

Newt is backed into a cul-de-sac in the tiny steel
chamber. Ripley shines her light around in amazement.
It is a NEST. A nest built by a child. Wadded up
blankets and pillows line the space, mixed up with a
haphazard array of TOYS, STUFFED ANIMALS, DOLLS, CHEAP
JEWELRY, COMIC BOOKS, EMPTY FOOD PACKETS, even a
battery operated TAPE PLAYER. All foraged from the
wrecked colony. Ripley marvels at the child’s
incredible adaptability, the ability to functions even
in this nightmarish environment.

Newt edges along the far wall and dives for the hatch.

Ripley grabs her, controlling her in a bear hug. The
kid struggles wildly, like a cat at the vets. Eyes
wide, hands lashing out in a frenzy…but silent. No
scream.

RIPLEY
It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s over…
you’re going to be all right now…
it’s okay…you’re safe…

Newt goes limp, almost catatonic.

CLOSE ON NEWT’S TRAUMATIZED, VACANT STARE her lips
are white and trembling, her eyes track wildly and
she flinches from unseen terrors. We READ a dark
nightmare world in her eyes.

Ripley’s light falls on something amidst the debris…
a FRAMED PHOTOGRAPH of Newt, dressed up and smiling,
a ribbon in her hair. In embossed gold letters
underneath it says:

FIRST GRADE CITIZENSHIP AWARD
REBECCA JORDEN

INT. OPERATIONS – ON NEWT – MANAGER’S OFFICE 73

sitting huddles in a chair, arms around her knees.
Looking at a point in space.

GORMAN
(o.s.)
What’s her name again?

DIETRICH
(o.s.)
Rebecca.

WIDER ANGLE REVEALING Gorman sitting in front of her
while Dietrich watches the readouts from a
BIO-MONITORING CUFF wrapped around Newt’s tiny arm.

GORMAN
Now think, Rebecca.
Concentrate. Just start at
the beginning…

No response. Ripley enters, carrying a coffee mug.

GORMAN
Where are your parents? You
have to try…

RIPLEY
(sharply)
Gorman! Give it a rest would
you.

Gorman stands with a sigh of dismissal.

GORMAN
Total brain-lock.

DIETRICH
(shrugs)
Physically she’s okay.
Borderline malnutrition, but
I don’t think any permanent
damage.

She unsnaps the bio-monitoring cuff.

GORMAN
Come on, we’re wasting our
time.

Gorman and the others exit, leaving only Ripley with
Newt. Through the window of the office, out on the
main floor of the operations room, we SEE Gorman
join Burke and Bishop at a computer terminal.

Ripley kneels beside Newt, brushing the girl’s unkempt
hair out of her eyes in a gentle, maternal fashion.

RIPLEY
Here, try this. A little
instant hot chocolate.

She wraps the child’s hands around the cup. Raises
it to her lips for her. The girl drinks mechanically,
spilling down her chin.

RIPLEY
(soothing)
Poor thing. You don’t talk
much do you? That’s okay by
me. Most people do a lot of
talking and they wind up not
saying very much.

She sets the cup down and wipes the child’s chin clean.

RIPLEY
Uh oh. I made a clean spot
here. Now I’ve done it. Guess
I’ll just have to do the whole
thing.

She pours water from a squeeze bottle onto a small
cloth and gently washes the little girl’s face.
Newt’s eyes seem to focus on her for the first time.

RIPLEY
Hard to believe…there’s a
little girl under all this.
And a pretty one at that.

Newt gazes at her. Ripley smiles.

INT. OPERATIONS 74

The ground teams are gathered around a terminal in
the computer center. Hudson 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.

Hudson bashes at the keyboard, his fingers dancing
expertly.

BURKE
(to Gorman)
What’s he scanning for?

GORMAN
PDT’S. Personal-Data Transmitters.
Every adult colonist had one
surgically implanted.

HUDSON
If they’re within twenty
klicks we’ll read it out here,
but so far…zip.

INT. OFFICE 75

Ripley is washing Newt’s tiny hands with a cloth,
pink skin emerging from black grime.

RIPLEY
I don’t know how you managed
to stay alive but you’re one
brave kid, Rebecca.

Newt’s voice is almost inaudible.

NEWT
N-newt.

Ripley leans closer. Feels like she’s breathing
on coals. The sound was incomprehensible.

RIPLEY
What did you say?

NEWT
Newt. My n-name’s Newt.
Nobody calls me Rebecca except
my dork brother.

Ripley grins inanely, not wanting to move or speak…
or break the spell.

RIPLEY
Well, Newt it is then. My
name’s Ripley…and people
call me Ripley.

Ripley picks up her tiny limp hand, shaking it
formally.

RIPLEY
Pleased to meet you. And who
is this? Does she have a
name?

Newt glances at the disembodied doll, still clutched
in one filthy hand.

NEWT
Casey. She’s my only friend.

RIPLEY
What about me?

Newt’s reply is flat, neutral.

NEWT
I don’t want you for a friend.

RIPLEY
Why not?

NEWT
Because you’ll be gone soon,
like the others. Like
everybody. You’ll be dead
and you’ll leave me alone.

Ripley gazes at her, chilled both by the ominous
statement and by the situation which could have
produced this outlook in a child.

RIPLEY

Oh, Newt. You mom and dad
went away like that, didn’t
they?

Newt nods, staring at her knees.

RIPLEY
(soothingly)
They’d be here if they could,
honey. I know they would.

NEWT
(with cold certainty)
They’re dead.

RIPLEY
Newt. Look at me…Newt. I
won’t leave you. I promise.

NEWT
You promise?

RIPLEY
Cross my heart.

NEWT
And hope to die?

Ripley smiles grimly at the inadvertently macabre
expression.

RIPLEY
(quietly)
And hope to die.

And because she’s a child, the darkest terrors, even
the ones seen and not imagined, can still be banished
by a smile and a single promise.

Newt’s eyes brim as she gazes at Ripley. Her lower
lip starts to tremble, and her face slowly deforms
into an abject mask. She sobs as she clamps her arms
around Ripley’s neck. The sobs come in waves as
Ripley rocks her, tears of suppresses terror and
grief and hurt rolling down her face. It is a
breakthrough.

Ripley closes her eyes, hoping that this promise
can be kept.

INT. OPERATIONS 76

Everyone jumps as Hudson cries out triumphantly.

HUDSON
Hah! Stop your grinnin’ and
drop your linen! Found ’em.

GORMAN
Alive?

HUDSON
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.

HICKS
Looks like a Goddamn town
meeting.

GORMAN
Let’s saddle up.

APONE
Awright, let’s go girls, they
ain’t payin’ us by the hour.

EXT. ACHERON – TWILIGHT 77

The APC roars across the stygian landscape, traversing
the causeway which connects the colony to the
ATMOSPHERE STATION a kilometer away. Behind it the
drop-ship settles to the ground at the colony landing
field.

PAN WITH THE APC TO REVEAL the massive structure.
Like a vast foundry the conical exhaust tower
flickers with spectral light.

INT. APC 78

The troopers sit, more subdued now, swaying and
bouncing in the heavily sprung vehicle. Wierzbowski
is in the saddle. Ripley and Newt sit side by side
just aft of the driver’s c**kpit.

NEWT
I was the best at the game.
I knew the whole maze.

RIPLEY
The ‘maze’? You mean the
air ducts?

NEWT
Yeah, you know. In the walls,
under the floor. I was the
ace. I could hide better
than anybody.

RIPLEY
You’re really something, ace.

Ripley’s gaze shifts out the windshield as the
processing station looms ahead.

EXT. APC/STATION 79

The vast structure towers above the parked personnel
carrier. Deploying in front of the APC, backlit by
its lights, the troopers cast long shadows. They
look ominous. Hulking techno-samurai.

The base of the station is a depthless maze of
conduits and pressure vessels, like an oil refinery.
Or a Dantean version of one. The THRUM of
functioning machine systems echoes through the
labyrinth.

GORMAN
(voice over; static)
Forty meters in. Ramp on
axial two-two. Access to
sublevels.

The troopers start down the open rampway. Light
filters down through several levels of steel mesh
floor, catwalks and pipes. Below that is darkness.

GORMAN
(voice over; static)
B-Level. Next one down.

The thrumming of machines grows louder as they
descend.

INT. APC 80

Huddles around the screens are Ripley, Burke and
Gorman. Newt squeezes in from behind. Gorman is
doing his video wizard bit, dancing on the buttons.

GORMAN
(to team)
We’re not making that out too
well. What is it?

HUDSON
(voice over; static)
You tell me. I only work
here.

INT. COMPLEX 81

The group stands before a bizarre tableau. Among
the refinerylike lattice of pipes and conduits
something new and not of human design had been
added.

It is a structure of some sort, extending from and
crudely imitating the complex of plumbing, but made
of some strange encrusted substance. It vaguely
resembles the chambered nests of swallows on a much
larger scale, and it attenuates so gradually into
the original hardware that it is hard to see where
one ends and the other begins.

The alien structure seems to extend far back into
the complex of machinery. The plant thrums loudly,
its functioning seemingly not impaired.

INT. APC 82

Ripley stares at the scene in dread fascination.

GORMAN
What is it?

RIPLEY
I don’t know.

GORMAN
(to team)
Proceed inside.

INT. ALIEN STRUCTURE 83

They enter the organic labyrinth, playing their
lights over the walls. Revealing a BIO-MECHANICAL
LATTICE, like the marrow of some vast bone. The air
is thick with STEAM. Trickling water. The place
seems almost alive.

INT. APC 84

They watch in various helmet-camera P.O.V.’s of the
wall detail.

RIPLEY
(low)
Oh God…

CLOSE ON VIDEO as it PAN SLOWLY…REVEALING a
bas-relief of detritus from the colony: furniture,
wiring, human bones, skulls…Fused together with a
translucent, epoxylike substance.

DIETRICH
(voice over; static)
Looks like some sort of secreted
resin.

GORMAN
They ripped apart the colony
for building materials.

RIPLEY
And the colonists…When they
were done with them.
(turning)
Newt, you better go sit up
front. Go on.

INT. ALIEN STRUCTURE 85

Steam swirls around them as the troopers move deeper
inside.

FROST
Hotter’n hell in here.

HUDSON
Yeah…but it’s a dry
heat.

INT. APC 86

Ripley leans forward suddenly, studying the graphic
readout of the STATION GROUND PLAN.

RIPLEY
They’re right under the
primary heat exchangers.

BURKE
Yeah? Maybe the organisms like
the heat, that’s why they built…

RIPLEY
That’s not what I mean. Gorman,
if your men have to use their
weapons in there, they’ll rupture
the cooling system.

BURKE
(realizing)
She’s right.

GORMAN
So.

RIPLEY
So…then the fusion
containment shuts down.

GORMAN
(impatient)
So? So?

BURKE
We’re talking thermonuclear
explosion.

GORMAN
Shit.
(into
mike)
Apone, collect magazines
from everybody. We can’t
have any firing in there.

INT. ALIEN STRUCTURE 87

The troopers look at each other in dismay.

WIERZBOWSKI
Is he f*cking crazy?

HUDSON
What’re we supposed to use,
man? Harsh language?

GORMAN
(voice over; static)
Flame-units only. I want
rifles slung.

APONE
Let’s go. Pull ’em out.

He walks among the troopers, collecting the magazines
from each one’s weapon.

Vasquez turns hers over reluctantly.

The three who are carrying them get out small
incinerator units. When Apone moves on, Vasquez
slips a spare magazine from concealment and inserts
it in her weapon. Drake does the same. Hicks hangs
back in the shadows. He opens a cylindrical sheath
attached to his battle-harness. Slides out an
old style PUMP TWELVE-GAUGE with a sawed-off butt
stock. Chambers a round.

HICKS
(low,
to Hudson)
I always keep this handy.
For close encounter.

APONE

(o.s.)
Let’s move. Hicks, back
us up.

INT. LARGER CHAMBER 88

The air is thick. Lights flare.

GORMAN
(voice over;
very faint)
Any movement?

Hudson watches his tracker, scanning.

HUDSON
Nothing. Zip.

Apone stops, his expression changing. They face a
wall of living horror. The colonists have been
brought here and entombed alive…

COCOONS protrude from the niches and interstices
of the structure. The cocoon material is the same
translucent epoxy. The bodies are frozen in
carelessly twisted positions. Macabre image of
frozen agony. Many are disiccated. Skeletal.
Rip-cages burst outward, as if exploded from within.
Paralyzed, brought here, entombed in living death
as hosts for the embryos growing within then.

Dietrich moves close to examine one of the figures,
perhaps the most “recent.” A WOMAN, ghost-white
and drained. The WOMAN’S EYES SNAP OPEN…They
seem to plead.

DIETRICH
Sir!

The woman’s lips move feebly.

WOMAN
Please…God…kill me.

INT. APC 89

Ripley watches the woman, white knuckled. The
sound of RETCHING comes over the general frequency.

INT. COCOON CHAMBER 90

The woman begins to convulse. She SCREAMS, a
sawing shriek of mindless agony.

APONE
Flame thrower! Move!

Frost hands it to him. Suddenly, the woman’s chest
EXPLODES in a gout of blood. A SMALL FANGED HEAD
EMERGES, HISSING VICIOUSLY.

Apone pulls the trigger. Then the other troopers
carrying flame throwers open fire. An orgy of
purging fire. The cocoons vanish in the shimmering
heat.

A SHRILL SCREECHING begins, like a siren made from
fingernails on blackboards.

ANGLE ON WALL as something begins to emerge. Dimly
glimpsed, a glistening bio-mechanoid creature larger
then a man. Lying dormant, it had blended perfectly
with the convoluted surface of fused bone. The
troopers don’t see it. Smoke from the burning cocoons
quickly fills the confined space. Visibility drops
to zero.

HUDSON
Movement!

APONE
Position?

HUDSON
Can’t lock up…

APONE
(with an edge)
Talk to me, Hudson.

HUDSON
Uh, seems to be in front
and behind.

INT. APC 91

Gorman is plating with the gain controls on the
monitors.

GORMAN
We can’t see anything back
here, Apone. What’s going on?

Ripley senses it coming, like a wave at night. Dark,
terrifying and inevitable.

RIPLEY
(low)
Pull you team out, Gorman.

INT. COCOON CHAMBER – TIGHT ON SEVERAL WALLS AND 92
CEILING NICHES

as they come alive. Bonelike, tubelike shapes shift,
becoming emerging ALIENS. Dimly glimpsed…glints
of slime. Silhouettes.

APONE
Go to infrared. Looks sharp
people!

The squad members snap down their image-intersifier
visors.

HUDSON
Multiple signals. All round.
Closing.

Dietrich turns to retreat, her flamethrower held
tightly. A nightmarish silhouette materializes out
of the smoke behind her! It strikes like lightning.
SEIZES HER. She fires reflexively, wild. The jet
of flame engulfs Frost nearby.

Apone spins as the double SCREAM. Can’t see anything
in the think smoke.

INT. APC 93

Ripley watches Frost’s monitor go black. His
bio-readouts flatten. The other screens show glimpses
of shimmering infrared silhouettes of the aliens, the
images bobbing and panning confusedly.

INT. COCOON CHAMBER 94

Vasquez nods to Drake with grim satisfaction.

VASQUEZ
Let’s rock.

They OPEN UP simultaneously, lighting up the smoke
like welders’ arcs.

GORMAN
(voice over; static)
Who’s firing? I ordered a
hold fire, dammit!

Vasquez rips off her headset. She is riveted to the
targetting screen, moving ferret-quick in a pivoting
dance. Thunder and lightning. Better than sex for
her. FLASH-CRACK! An alien SCREECH from the darkness.

INT. APC 95

The battle of phantoms unfolds on the video screens.
Ripley flinches as another scream comes over the
open frequency. Wierzbowski’s monitor breaks up.
His life signs plummet. Voices blend and overlap.

HUDSON
(voice over)
Let’s get the f*ck out of
here!

HICKS
(voice over)
Not that tunnel, the other
one!

CROWE
(voice over)
You sure? Watch it…behind

you. Fucking move, will you!

Gorman is ashen. Confused. Gulping for air like a
grouper. How could the situation have unravelled
so fast?

RIPLEY
(to Gorman)
GET THEM OUT OF THERE! DO
IT NOW!

GORMAN
Shut up. Just shut up!

CRASH! Crowe’s telemetry cuts off like the plug was
pulled. Flat line.

GORMAN
Uh,…Apone, I want you to
lay down a suppressing fire
with the incinerators and
fall back by squads to the
APC, over.

APONE
(voice over;
heavy static)
Say again? All after
incinerators?

Ripley watches it fall apart.

GORMAN
I said…

INT. COCOON CHAMBER 96

Apone adjusts his headset.

GORMAN
(voice over;
static)
…lay down (garbled) …by
squads to…(garbled)

Gorman’s voice breaks up completely. A SCREAM.
Apone whirls, uncertain.

APONE
Dietrich? Crowe? Sound
off! Wierzbowski?

Nothing. He spins. Almost blows Hudson’s head
off.

HUDSON
(freaked)
We’re getting juked! We’re
gonna die in here!

Apone hands him a magazine. Hudson slaps it home,
looking truly terrified.

APONE
Yeah. Right. Right! Fuck
the heat exchanger!

He FIRES. Vasquez, nearby, is laying down a
horrendous field of fire. Strobe-bright flashes
sear the darkness. She pivots, firing mechanically
in controlled bursts. Scoring points in her own
private video game.

She SPINS as Hicks approached laterally. WHAM! She
fires “at” him. Hicks whirls…to see a nightmarish
figure right behind him, catapulted backwards by
Vasquez’ blast.

INT. APC 97

Apone’s monitor SPINS CRAZILY AND GOES DARK.

GORMAN
(distantly)
I told them to fall back…

RIPLEY
(viciously)
They’re but off! Do something!

But he’s gone. Total brain-lock.

TIGHT ON RIPLEY as she struggles with a decision.
She’s terrified…of what she knows she’s about to
do. But more than that, she’s furious. Shouldering
past a paralyzed Gorman she runs up the aisle of the
APC.

RIPLEY
(in passing)
Newt, put your seatbelt on!

Ripley jumps into the driver’s seat of the APC. Takes
a deep breath. Starts slapping switches.

GORMAN
Ripley, what the hell…?

She slams the tractor into gear.

EXT. APC 98

as the drive-wheels spin on the wet ground. The
massive machine leaps forward.

INT. APC 99

Ripley sees smoke pouring out of the complex ahead
as she slides sideways onto the descending rampway.
She slams the left and right drive-wheel actuators
viciously, spinning the machine in a roaring pivot.
Gorman lunges forward along the aisle, abandoning
his command center.

GORMAN
(shrill)
What are you doing? Turn
around! That’s an order!

He claws at her, hysterical. Burke pulls him off.

INT. ALIEN STRUCTURE 100

The APC roars down into the smoky structure, tearing
away outcroppings of alien-encrustation. Ripley hits
the floodlights. Strobe-beacon. Siren. She homes
on the flash of weapons fire ahead.

INT. COCOON CHAMBER 101

The APC crashes inside, showering debris. Hicks,
supporting a limping Hudson, appears out of the smoke.
The APC pulls up broadside and Burke gets the crew-door
open.

Drake and Vasquez back out of the dense mist, firing as
they fall back.

Drake goes empty, slams the buckles cutting loose his
smart-gun harness, and unslings a flame thrower.

Hicks pushes Hudson inside, leaps in after him and
drags Vasquez inside, massive gear and all. She sees
a DARK SHAPE lunge toward Drake. She fires one burst,
prone. Clean body hit.

The flash lights up the hideous inhuman grin, blowing
open the thing’s thorax. A spray of BRIGHT YELLOW
ACID slashes across Drake’s face and chest, eating
into him like a hot knife through butter. He drops
in boiling smoke, reflexively triggering his flame
thrower.

The jet of liquid fire arcs around as he falls,
engulfing the back half of the APC.

INT. APC 102

Vasquez rolls aside as a gout of napalm shoots
through the crew-door, setting the interior on fire.
Hicks is rolling the door closed when Vasquez lunges,
clawing out the opening. He stops her, dragging her
inside.

VASQUEZ
Drake! He’s down!

Hicks screams right in her face.

HICKS
He’s gone! Forget it, he’s
gone!

VASQUEZ
(irrational)
No.. No, he’s not. He’s —

Burke and Hudson help him drag her from the door.

HICKS
(to Ripley)
Let’s go!

Ripley jams reverse. Nails the throttle. The APC
bellows backward up the ramp. Hudson disappears
under a pile of equipment as a storage rack breaks
free. Hicks gets the door almost closed. Suddenly
CLAWS appear at the edge. Newt screams. Against
the combined efforts of Hicks, Burke and Vasquez
the door is being SLOWLY WRENCHED OPEN FROM OUTSIDE.
Hicks yells at a paralyzed Gorman.

HICKS
Get on the Goddamn door!

Gorman backs away, eyes wide. Hicks jams his shoulder
against the latching lever and frees one hand to raise
his 12-gauge. An alien head wedges through the opening,
its hideous mouth opening. And Hicks jams his SHOTGUN
MUZZLE between its jaws and pulls the trigger! BLAM!
The creature is flung backward, its shattered head
fountaining acid blood. The spray eats into the door,
the deck, hits Hudson on the arm. He shrieks. They
slide the door home and dog it tight.

EXT. APC 103

The armored vehicle roars backward up the ramp. Slams
into a mass of conduit. Tears free. Ripley works the
shifters, pivoting the massive machine. Everybody’s
shouting, trying to put out the fire. Pandemonium.

INT./EXT. APC 104-
105

Something lands on the roof with a metallic clang.

Gorman has plastered himself against a wall, as far
from the door as possible. A latch lever behind his
head turns. The small hatch against which he was
leaning is ripped away and SOMETHING snatches him out
the opening He disappears to the waist with a shriek,
legs kicking. The alien clings to the roof, pulling
him out. Its tail whips over, scorpionlike, and
buries a four inch stinger in Gorman’s shoulder.
Hicks grabs a joy stick at the FIRE-CONTROL CONSOLE
and turns it rapidly. On the roof the alien looks up
as servo-motors whir. A remote control turret cannon,
a 20mm chain-gun, swivels toward it in a curt arc.
VOOM. The creature is blasted off the vehicle’s
armored back and tumbles away. Gorman, slumped
unconscious, is dragged back inside.

The APC rips away a section of catwalk and heads for
clear air, its flank trailing fire like a comet.
Ripley fights the controls as the big machine slews,
broadsiding a control-room out-building. Office
furniture and splintered wall sections are strewn in
the APC’s wake.

Suddenly, an alien arm arcs down, right in front of
Ripley’s face. It smashes the windshield. Glistening,
hideous jaws lunge inside…

Ripley recoils. Face to face once again with the same
mind-numbing horror. She reacts instinctively. Slams
both sets of brakes with all her strength. The huge
wheels lock. The creature flips off, landing in the
headlights. Ripley hits full throttle. The APC roars
forward, smashing over the abomination. Its skeletal
body is crushed under the massive wheels. It rolls,
tumbling…lost in the darkness behind as the machine
thunders onto the causeway and away from the station.

A sound like bolts dropped in a meat grinder is coming
from the APC’s rear end. Hicks eases Ripley’s hand
back on the throttle lever. Her grip is white knuckled.

HICKS
It’s okay…we’re clear. We’re
clear. Ease up.

The grinding clatter becomes deafening even as she
slows the machine.

HICKS
Sounds like a blown transaxle.
You’re just grinding metal.

EXT. APC 106

The tractor limps to a halt. A HALF-KILOMETER from the
atmosphere processing station. The APC is a smoking,
acid-scarred mess.

INT. APC 107

Ripley, still running on the adrenalin dynamo, spins
out of her seat into the aisle.

RIPLEY
Newt? Where’s Newt?

Feeling a tug at her pants leg she looks down. Newt
is wedged into a tiny space between the driver’s seat
and a bulkhead. She is trembling, and looks terrified,
but it’s not the basket case catatonia of before.

RIPLEY
You okay?

Newt gives her a THUMBS-UP, wan but stoic. Ripley goes
back to the others. Hudson is holding his arm and
staring in stunned dismay at nothing, playing it all
back in his mind.

HUDSON
Jesus…Jesus…I don’t believe
it.

Burke tries to have a look at Hudson’s arm.

HUDSON
(jerking away)
I’m all right, leave it!

Ripley joins Hicks who is bent over Gorman, checking
for a pulse.

HICKS
He’s alive. I think he’s paralyzed.

VASQUEZ
He’s f*cking dead!

She grabs Gorman by the collar, hauling him up roughly,
ready to pulp him with her other fist.

VASQUEZ
(to Gorman)
Wake up pendejo! I’m gonna kill
you, you useless f*ck!

Hicks pushes her back. Right in her face.

HICKS
Hold it. Hold it. Back off, right
now.

Vasquez releases Gorman. His head smacks the deck.
Ripley opens Gorman’s tunic, revealing a bloodless
purple puncture wound.

RIPLEY
Looks like it stung him.

HUDSON
Hey…hey! Look, Crowe and
Dietrich aren’t dead, man.

They turn to see Hudson at the MTOB monitors, pointing
at the bio-function screens.

HUDSON
They must be like Gorman. Their
signs are real low but they ain’t
dead!

Hudson is pale, panicky, and his voice echoes around
the tiny metallic space and comes back to all of them
as the near hysteria they all feel, fluttering just
at the edges of their minds.

RIPLEY
You can’t help them. Right now
they’re being cocooned just like
the others.

HUDSON
(sagging)
Oh, God. Jesus. This ain’t
happening.

Ripley and Vasquez lock eyes. Ripley doesn’t want
it to be “I told you so” but Vasquez reads it that
way. She turns away with a snap.

INT. MED LAB 108

Bishop is hunched over an occular probe doing a
dissection of one of the dead parasites. Spunkmeyer
enters with some electronics gear on a hand truck
and parks it near Bishop’s work table.

SPUNKMEYER
Need anything else?

Bishop waves “no” without looking up.

EXT. COLONY – DROP-SHIP 109

Spunkmeyer emerges, crossing the Tarmac to the loading
ramp of the ship. As he nears the top of the ramp,
his boot slips…skidding on something wet. Kneeling,
he touches a small puddle of thick slime. He shrugs,
and hits the controls to retract the ramp and close
the doors.

INT. APC 110

ON VASQUEZ wired and intense.

VASQUEZ
All right, we can’t blow the f*ck
out of them…why not roll some
canisters of CN-20 down there.
Nerve gas the whole nest?

HUDSON
Look, man, let’s just bug out and
call it even, okay?

RIPLEY
(to Vasquez)
No good. How do we know it’ll
effect their biochemistry? I say
we take off and nuke the entire
site from orbit. It’s the only
way to be sure.

BURKE
Now hold on a second. I’m not
authorizing that action.

RIPLEY
Why not?

Burke senses the challenge in her tone and backpedals
flawlessly into conciliatory mode.

BURKE
Well, I mean…I know this is an
emotional moment, but let’s not
make snap judgments. Let’s move
cautiously. First, this physical
installation had a substantial
dollar value attached to it —

RIPLEY
They can bill me. I got a tab
running. What’s second?

BURKE
This is clearly an important
species we’re dealing with here.
We can’t just arbitrarily
exterminate them —

RIPLEY
Bullsh*t!

VASQUEZ
Yeah, bullsh*t. Watch us.

HUDSON
Maybe you haven’t been keeping up
on current events, but we just got
out asses kicked, pal!

Ripley faces Burke squarely and she’s not pleased.

RIPLEY
Look, Burke. We had an agreement.

Burke moves in, lowering his voice. He takes her aside
from the others.

BURKE
I know, I know, but we’re dealing
with changing scenarios here. This
thing is major, Ripley. I mean
really major. You gotta go with
its energy. Since you are the
representative of the company who
discovered this species your
percentage will naturally be
some serious, serious money.

Ripley stares at his like he’s a particularly
disagreeable fungus.

RIPLEY
You son of a bitch.

BURKE
(hardening)
Don’t make me pull rank, Ripley.

RIPLEY
What rank? I believe Corporal Hicks
has authority here.

BURKE
Corporal Hicks!?

RIPLEY
This operation is under military
jurisdiction and Hicks is next in
chain of command. Right?

HICKS
Looks that way.

Burke starts to lose it and it’s not a pretty sight.

BURKE
Look, this is a multimillion
dollar operation. He can’t make
that kind of decision. He’s just
a grunt!
(glances at Hicks)
No offense.

HICKS
(coolly)
None taken.
(into mike)
Ferro, you copying?

FERRO
(voice over; static)
Standing by.

HICKS
Prep for dust-off. We’re gonna
need an immediate evac.
(to Burke)
I think we’ll take off and nuke
the site from orbit. It’s the
only way to be sure.

He winks. Burke looks like a kid whose toy has been
snatched.

BURKE
This is absurd! You don’t have
the authority to —

CLACK! The sound of a rifle bolt snapping home
truncates his rant. Vasquez has a pulse-rifle cradled,
not exactly aimed at Burke but not exactly aimed away
either. Her expression is masklike. End of discussion.

Ripley sits behind Newt, putting her arm around her.

RIPLEY
We’re going home, honey.

EXT. DROP-SHIP 111

The ship rises through the spray thrown up by the
downblast of the VTOL jets, hovering above the complex
like a huge insect, its searchlights blazing.

EXT. APC 112

The group is filing out of the personnel carrier, which
is clearly a write off. Hicks and Hudson have Gorman
between them, and the others emerge into the wind.
They watch the ship roar in on its final approach.

INT. DROP-SHOP COCKPIT 113

Ferro flicks the intercom switch several times. Thumps
her headset mike.

FERRO
Spunkmeyer? Goddammit.

The compartment door behind her slides slowly back.

FERRO

(turning)
Where the fu —

Her eyes widen. It’s not Spunkmeyer.

Am impression of leering jaws which blur forward, then
a whirl of motion and a truncated scream. The throttle
levers are slammed forward in the melee.

EXT. APC – LANDSCAPE – STATION 114

They watch in dismay as the approaching ship dips and
VEERS WILDLY. Its main engines ROAR FULL ON and the
craft accelerates toward them even as it loses altitude.
It skims the ground. Clips a rock formation. The
ship slews, sideslipping. It hits a ridge. Tumbles,
bursting into flame, breaking up. It arcs into the
air, end over end, a Catherine wheel juggernaut.

RIPLEY
Run!

She grabs Newt and sprints for cover as a tumbling
section of the ship’s massive engine module slams
into the APC and it explodes into twisted wreckage.

The drop-ship skips again, like a stone, engulfed in
flames…AND CRASHES INTO THE STATION. A TREMENDOUS
FIREBALL.

The remainder of the ground team watches their hopes
of getting off the planet, and most of their superior
fire power, reduced to flaming debris.

There is a moment of stunned silence, then…

HUDSON
(hysterical)
Well that’s great! That’s just
f*cking great, man. Now what the
f*ck are we supposed to do, man?
We’re in some real pretty sh*t now!

HICKS
Are you finished?
(to Ripley)
You okay?

She nods. She can’t disguise her stricken expression
when she looks at Newt, but the little girl seems
relatively calm. She shrugs with fatalistic acceptance.

NEWT
I guess we’re not leaving, right?

RIPLEY
I’m sorry, Newt.

NEWT
You don’t have to be sorry. It
wasn’t your fault.

HUDSON
(kicking rocks)
Just tell me what the f*ck we’re
supposed to do now. What’re we
gonna do now?

BURKE
(annoyed)
May be could build a fire and
sing songs.

NEWT
We should get back, ’cause it’ll
be dark soon. They come mostly
at night. Mostly.

Ripley follows Newt’s look to the AP station looming
in the twilight, the burning drop-ship wreckage jammed
into its basal structure.

EXT. CONTROL BLOCK – NIGHT 115

The wind howls mournfully around the metal buildings,
dry and cold.

INT. OPERATIONS 116

The weary and demoralized group is gathered to take
stock of their grim options. Vasquez and Hudson are
just setting down a scorched and dented packing case,
one of several culled from the APC wreckage.

Hicks indicates their remaining inventory of weapons,
lying on a table.

HICKS
This is all we could salvage. We’ve
got four pulse-rifles with about
fifty rounds each. Not so good.
About fifteen M-40 grenades and
two flame throwers less than
half full…one damaged. And
We’ve got four of these
robot-sentry units with scanners
and display intact.

He opens one of the scorched cases, revealing a
high-tech servo-actuated machine gun with optical
sensing equipment, packed in foam.

RIPLEY
How long after we’re declared
overdue can we expect a rescue?

HICKS
About seventeen days.

HUDSON
Man, we’re not going to make it
seventeen hours! Those things
are going to come in here, just
like they did before, man…
they’re going to come in here
and get us, man, long before…

RIPLEY
She survived longer than that
with no weapons and no training.

Ripley indicates Newt, who salutes Hudson smartly.

RIPLEY
So you better just start dealing
with it. Just deal with it,
Hudson…because we need you and
I’m tired of your bullsh*t. Now
get on a terminal and call up some
kind of floor plan file.
Construction blueprints,
maintenance schematics, anything
that shows the layout of this
place. I want to see air ducts,
electrical access tunnels,
subbasements. Every possible way
into this wing.

Hudson gathers himself, thankful for the direction.
Hicks nods approval of her handling of it.

HUDSON
Aye-firmative. I’m on it.

BISHOP
I’ll be in medical. I’d like to
continue my analysis.

RIPLEY
Fine. You do that.

INT. OPERATIONS 117

Burke, Ripley, Hudson and Hicks are bent over a large
HORIZONTAL VIDEOSCREEN, like an illuminated chart table.
Newt hops from one foot to the other to see.

RIPLEY
This service tunnel is how they’re
moving back and forth.

HUDSON
Yeah, right, it runs from the
processing station right into
the sublevel here.

He traces a finger along the abstract ground plan.

RIPLEY
All right. There’s a fire door
at this end. The first thing we
do is put a remote sentry in the
tunnel and seal that door.

HICKS
We gotta figure on them getting
into the complex.

RIPLEY
That’s right. So we put up
welded barricades at these
intersections…
(pointing)
…and seal these ducts here
and here. Then they can only
come at us from these two
corridors and we create a free
field of fire for the other
two sentry units, here.

Hicks contemplates her game plan and raises his hand,
satisfied.

HICKS
Outstanding. Then all we need’s
a deck of cards. All right, let’s
move like we got a purpose.

HUDSON
Aye-firmative.

NEWT
(imitating Hudson)
Aye-firmative!

INT. SERVICE TUNNEL – SUBLEVEL 118

A long straight service tunnel, lined with conduit,
seems to go on forever. Vasquez and Hudson have
finished setting up two of the robot sentry guns on
tripods in the tunnel.

VASQUEZ
(shouting)
Testing!

She hurls a wastebasket down the tunnel, into the
automatic field of fire. The sentry guns swivel
smoothly, the wastebasket bounces once…and is riddled
by two quick bursts of EXPLODING 10MM ROUNDS into
dime-sized shrapnel. They retreat behind a heavy steel
FIRE DOOR which they roll closed on its track. Vasquez,
using a PORTABLE WELDING TORCH, begins sealing the door
to its frame, as Hudson paces nervously.

HUDSON
Hudson here. A and B
sentries are in place and
keyed. We’re sealing the
tunnel.

INT. SECOND LEVEL CORRIDOR 119

Hicks pauses in his work.

HICKS
(into mike)
Roger.

He and Ripley are covering an air duct opening with
a metal plate, welding it in place, showering sparks
in the dark corridor. Behind them Burke and Newt
are moving back and forth with cartons of food on a
hand truck, stacking it inside the operations center.
Hicks sets down his welder and pulls a small object
out of a belt pouch. A braceletlike EMERGENCY
LOCATING BEEPER.

HICKS
Here, put this on. Then
I can locate you anywhere
in the complex on this —

He indicates a tiny TRACKER hooked to his battle
harness. He shrugs, a little self-consciously.

HICKS
Just a…precaution. You
know.

Ripley pauses for a moment, regarding him
quizzically.

RIPLEY
(strapping
it on)
Thanks.

HUDSON
Uh, what’s next?

She consults a printout of the floor plan.

EXT. CONTROL BLOCK 120

The wind has died utterly and in the even more eerie
stillness a diffuse mist has rolled into shroud
the complex. Visibility is low in the fog.
Everything looks underwater. There is no movement.

INT. CORRIDOR 121

In the barricaded corridor sentry-gun “C” sits waiting,
its “ARMED” light flashing green. Through a hole
torn in the ceiling at the far end of the corridor
the fog swirls in. Water drips. An expectant hush.

INT. MED LAB ANNEX – OPERATING ROOM 122

Ripley carries an exhausted Newt through the inner
connecting rooms of the medical wing. She reaches
an OPERATING ROOM which is small but very high-tech
…vaultlike metal walls, strange equipment.
Several metal cots have been set up, displacing O.R.
equipment which is pushed into one corner.

Newt is resting her head on Ripley’s shoulder, barely
awake…out of steam. Ripley sets her on one of
the cots and Newt lies down.

RIPLEY
Now you just lie here and
have a nap. You’re exhausted.

NEWT
I don’t want to…I have
scary dreams.

This obviously strikes a chord with Ripley, but she
feigns cheerfulness.

RIPLEY
I’ll bet Casey doesn’t have
bad dreams.

Ripley lifts the doll’s head from Newt’s tiny fingers
and looks inside. It is, of course, empty.

RIPLEY
Nothing bad in here. Maybe
you could just try to be like
her.

Ripley closes the doll’s eyes and hands her back.
Newt rolls her eyes as if to say “don’t pull that
five-year-old sh*t on me, lady. I’m six.”

NEWT
Ripley…she doesn’t have
bad dreams because she’s just
a piece of plastic.

RIPLEY
Oh. Sorry, Newt.

NEWT
My mommy always said there
were no monsters. No real
ones. But there are.

Ripley’s expression becomes sober. She brushes damp
hair back from the child’s pale forehead.

RIPLEY
(quietly)
Yes, there are, aren’t there.

NEWT
Why do they tell little kids
that?

Newt’s voice reveals her deep sense of betrayal.
She’s seen that the world can be just as terrifying
as her most primal child’s nightmare if not more
so, and that’s a lot worse than finding out there is
no Santa.

RIPLEY
Well, some kids can’t handle
it like you can.

NEWT
Did one of those things grow
inside her?

Ripley begins pulling blankets up an tucking them in
around her tiny body.

RIPLEY
I don’t know, Newt. That’s
the truth.

NEWT
Isn’t that how babies come?
I mean people babies…they
grow inside you?

RIPLEY
No, it’s different, honey.

NEWT
Did you ever have a baby?

RIPLEY
Yes. A little girl.

NEWT
Where is she?

RIPLEY
(quietly)
Gone.

NEWT
You mean dead.

It’s more statement than question. Ripley nods slowly.

She turns, reaching for a PORTABLE SPACE HEATER
sitting nearby, and slides it closer to the bed. She
switches it on. It HUMS and emits a cozy orange
glow.

NEWT
Ripley, I was just thinking…
Maybe I could do you a favor and
fill in for her. Just for a
while. You can try it and if
you don’t like it, it’s okay.
I’ll understand. No big deal.
Whattya think?

Ripley gazes at her a long time before answering…
a conflict between the urge to crush the child to her
in a forever hug and the knowledge that neither of them
may see another dawn.

RIPLEY
I think it’s not the worst idea
I’ve heard all day. Let’s talk
about it later.

She switches off the light and starts to rise. Newt
grabs her arm. A plaintive voice in the dark.

NEWT
Don’t go! Please.

RIPLEY
I’ll be right in the other
room, Newt. And look…I can
see you on that camera right
up there.

Newt looks at the VIDEO SECURITY CAMERA above the door.
Ripley unsnaps the TRACKER BRACELET given to her by
Hicks and puts it on Newt’s tiny wrist, cinching it
down.

RIPLEY
Here. Take is for luck. Now
go to sleep…and don’t dream.

Ripley walks away and Newt rolls on her side, hugging
Casey and gazing at the hypnotically pulsing function
light on the bracelet. The space heater hums
comfortingly.

INT. MED LAB 123

ECU Gorman, his eyelids slitted open like those of a
corpse, but with the eyes tracking erratically. The
only sign of life.

RIPLEY
(voice over)

How is he?

Ripley stands over the Lieutenant, who is lying
motionless on an examining table. Bishop looks up
from his instruments nearby, the light of a single
gooseneck lamp giving his features a macabre cast.

BISHOP
I’ve isolated a neuro-muscular
toxin responsible for the
paralysis. It seems to be
metabolizing. He should wake
up soon.

RIPLEY
Now let me get this straight.
The aliens paralyzed the colonists,
carried them over there,

cocooned them to be hosts for
more of those…

Ripley points at the stasis cylinders containing the
face-hugger specimens.

RIPLEY
Which would mean lots of
those parasites, right? One
for each person…over a hundred
at least.

BISHOP
Yes. That follows.

RIPLEY
But these things come from
eggs…so where are all the
eggs coming from.

BISHOP
That is the question of the
hour. We could assume a parallel
to certain insect forms who
have hivelike organization.
An ant of termite colony, for
example, is ruled by a single
female, a queen, which is the
source of new eggs.

RIPLEY
You’re saying one of those things
lays all the eggs?

BISHOP
Well, the queen is always physically
larger then the others. A
termite queen’s abdomen is so
bloated with eggs that it can’t
move at all. It is fed and tended
by drone workers, defended by
the warriors. She is the center
of their lives, quite literally
the mother of their society.

RIPLEY
Could it be intelligent?

BISHOP
Hard to say. It may have been
blind instinct…attraction to
the heat of whatever…but she
did choose to incubate her eggs
in the one spot where we couldn’t
destroy her without destroying
ourselves. That’s if she exists,
of course.

Ripley ponders the ramifications of Bishop’s analysis.

RIPLEY
(rising)
I want those specimens destroyed
as soon as you’re done with them.
You understand?

Bishop glances at the creatures, pulsing malevolently
in their cylinders.

BISHOP
Mr. Burke have instructions
that they were to be kept alive
in stasis for return to the
company labs. He was very specific.

Ripley feels the fabric of her self-restraint tearing.
She slaps the intercom switch.

RIPLEY
Burke!

INT. MED LAB ANNEX 124

In a small observation chamber separated from the med
lab by a glass partition, Ripley and Burke have
squared off.

BURKE
Those specimens are worth
millions to the bio-weapons
division. Now, if you’re smart
we can both come out of this
heroes. Set up for life.

RIPLEY
You just try getting a dangerous
organism past ICC quarantine.
Section 22350 of the Commerce Code.

BURKE
You’ve been doing your homework.
Look, they can’t impound it if
they don’t know about it.

RIPLEY
But they will know about it, Burke.
From me. Just like they’ll know
how you were responsible for the
deaths of one hundred and fifty-seven
colonists here —

BURKE
Now, wait a second —

RIPLEY
(stepping on him)
You sent them to that ship. I
just checked the colony log…
directive dates six-twelve-seventy-nine.
Signed Burke, Carter J.

Ripley’s fury is peaking, now that the frustration and
rage finally have a target to focus on.

RIPLEY
You sent them out there and you
didn’t even warn them, Burke.
Why didn’t you warn them?

BURKE
Look, maybe the thing didn’t even
exist, right? And if I’d made it
a major security situation, the
Administration would’ve stepped
in. Then no exclusive rights,
nothing.

He shrugs, his manner blase, dismissive.

BURKE
It was a bad call, that’s all.

Ripley snaps. She slams him against the wall, surprising
herself and him, her hands gripping his collar.

RIPLEY
Bad call? These people are f*cking
dead, Burke! Well, they’re going
to nail your hide to the shed…
and I’ll be there when they do.

She steps back, shaking, and looks at him with utter
loathing, as if the depths of human greed are a far
more horrific revelation than any alien.

BURKE
(sadly)
I expected more of you, Ripley.
I thought you would be smarter
than this.

RIPLEY
Sorry to disappoint you.

She turns away and strides out. The door closes.
Burke stares after her, his mind a whirl of options.

INT. CORRIDOR 125

Ripley is walking toward operations when a STRIDENT
ALARM begins to sound. She breaks into a run.

INT. OPERATIONS 126

Ripley double-times it to Hicks’ TACTICAL CONSOLE
where Hudson and Vasquez have already gathered. Hicks
slaps a switch, killing the alarm.

HICKS
They’re coming. They’re in
the tunnel.

The TRILLING of the motion sensor remains, speeding up.
TWO RED LIGHTS on the tactical display light up
simultaneously with an echoing crash of gunfire which
vibrates the floor.

HICKS
Guns A and B. Tracking and firing
on multiple targets.

The RSS guns pound away, echoing through the complex.
Their separate bursts overlap in an irregular rhythm.
A counter on the display counts down the number of
rounds fired.

HUDSON
They must be wall to wall in
there. Look at those ammo counters
go. It’s a shooting gallery down
there.

INT. SERVICE TUNNEL – TIGHT ON RSS GUNS 127

blasting stroboscopically in the tunnels. Their barrels
are overheating, glowing cherry red. One CLICKS empty
and sits smoking, still swiveling to track targets it
can’t fire upon.

INT. OPERATIONS 128

The digital counter on B gun reads zero.

HICKS
B gun’s dry. Twenty on A.
Ten. Five. That’s it.

SILENCE. Then a GONGLIKE BOOMING echoes eerily up from
sublevel.

RIPLEY
They’re at the fire door.

The BOOMING INCREASES in volume and ferocity.

HUDSON
Man, listen to that.

Mixed with the echoing crash-clang is a nerve-wrecking
SCREECH of claws on steel. The intercom buzzes,
startling them.

BISHOP
(voice over)
Bishop here. I’m afraid I have
some bad news.

HUDSON
Well, that’s a switch.

INT. OPERATIONS – MINUTES LATER 129

Everyone, including Bishop, is crowded at the window,
intently watching the AP station which is a dim
silhouette in the mist. Suddenly a column of flame,
like an acetylene torch, jets upward from the complex
at the base of the cone.

BISHOP
That’s it. See it? Emergency
venting.

RIPLEY
How long until it blows?

BISHOP
I’m projecting total systems
failure in a little under four
hours. The blast radius will be
about thirty kilometers. About
equal to ten megatons.

HICKS
We got problems.

HUDSON
I don’t f*cking believe this.
Do you believe this?

RIPLEY
And it’s too late to shut it down?

BISHOP
I’m afraid so. The crash did too
much damage. The overload is
inevitable, at this point.

HUDSON
Oh, man. And I was gettin’ short,
too! Four more weeks and out.
Now I’m gonna buy it on this f*ckin’
rock. It ain’t half fair, man!

VASQUEZ
Hudson, give us a break.

They watch as another gas jet lights up the fog-shrouded
landscape.

RIPLEY
(to Hicks)
We need the other drop-ship. The
on one the Sulaco. We have to
bring it down on remote, somehow.

HUDSON
How? The transmitter was on the
APC. It’s wasted.

RIPLEY
(pacing)
I don’t care how! Think of a
way. Think of something.

HUDSON
Think of what? We’re f*cked.

RIPLEY
What about the colony transmitter?
That up-link tower down at the
other end. Why can’t we use that?

BISHOP
I checked. The hard wiring
between here and there was severed
in the fighting.

Ripley is wound up like a dynamo, her mind spinning out
options, grim solutions.

RIPLEY
Well then somebody’s just going
to have to go out there. Take a
portable terminal and go out there
and plug in manually.

HUDSON
Oh, right! Right! With those
things running around. No way.

BISHOP
(quietly)
I’ll go.

RIPLEY
What?

BISHOP
I’m really the only one qualified
to remote-pilot the ship anyway.
Believe me, I’d prefer not to. I
may be synthetic but I’m not stupid.

RIPLEY
All right. Let’s get on it. What’ll
you need?

VASQUEZ
Listen. It’s stopped.

They listen. Nothing. An instant later comes the
HIGH-PITCHED TRILLING of a motion-sensor alarm. Hicks
looks at the tactical board.

HICKS
Well, they’re into the complex.

INT. MED LAB 130

One of the acid holes from the colonists’ siege has
yielded access to subfloor conduits. Bishop lying in
the opening, reaches up to graph the portable terminal
as Ripley hands it down to him. He pushes it into
the constricted shaft ahead of him. She then hands him
a small satchel containing tools and assorted patch
cables, a service pistol and a small cutting torch.

BISHOP
This duct runs almost to the
up-link assembly. One hundred
eighty meters. Say, forty minutes
to crawl down there. One hour
to patch in and align the antenna.
Thirty minutes to prep the ship,
then about fifty minutes flight time.

Ripley looks at her watch.

RIPLEY
It’s going to be closer. You
better get going.

BISHOP
(cheerfully)
See you soon.

She squirms into the shaft, pushing the equipment along
ahead of him with a scraping rhythm. The diameter of
the conduit is barely larger than the width of his
shoulders. Vasquez slides a metal plate over the hole
and begins spot welding it in place.

INT. CONDUIT 131

Bishop looks back as the welder seals him in. He sighs
fatalistically and squirms forward. Ahead of him the
conduit dwindles straight to seeming infinity. Like
being in the bore of a very long Howitzer.

INT. MED LAB 132

Ripley jumps as an ALARM suddenly blares through the
complex.

HICKS
(voice over)
They’re in the approach corridor.

RIPLEY
(into mike)
On my way.

Ripley jumps up, unslinging a FLAMETHROWER from her
shoulder in one motion, and sprints for Operations with
Vasquez. The sound of SENTRY GUNS opening up in
staccato bursts echoes from close by.

INT. OPERATIONS 133

Ripley runs to the tactical console where Hicks is
mesmerized by the images from the surveillance cameras.
The flashes of the sentry guns flare out the sensitive
video, but impressions of figures moving in the smoky
corridor are occasionally visible. The robot sentries
hammer away, driving streamers of tracer fire into
the swirling mist.

HICKS
Twenty meters and closing.
Fifteen. C and D guns down
about fifty percent.

The digital readout whirl through descending numbers.
An inhuman SHRILL SCREECHING is audible between bursts
of fire.

RIPLEY
Now many?

HICKS
Can’t tell. Lots. D gun’s
down to twenty. Ten. It’s out.

Then the firing from the remaining guns stop abruptly.
The video image is a swirling wall of smoke. Small fires
burn, dim glows in the mist. There are black and
twisted shapes, and pieces of twisted shapes, scattered
at the edge of visibility. However, nothing emerges
from the wall of smoke. The motion sensor TONE shuts off.

RIPLEY
They retreated. The guns stopped
them.

The moment stretches. Everyone exhales slowly.

HICKS
Yeah. But look…

The digital counters for the two sentry guns read “0”
and “10” respectively. Less than a second’s worth of
firing.

HICKS
Newt time then can walk right
up and knock.

RIPLEY
But they don’t know that. They’re
probably looking for other ways
to get in. That’ll take them awhile.

HUDSON
Maybe we got ’em demoralized.

HICKS
(to Vasquez
and Hudson)
I want you two walking the perimeter.
I know we’re all in strung out
shape but stay frosty and alert.
We’ve got to stop any entries before
they get out of hand.

The two troopers nod and head for the corridor. Ripley
sighs and picks up a cup of cold coffee, draining it in
one gulp.

HICKS
How long since you slept?
Twenty-four hours?

Ripley shrugs. She seems soul weary, drained by the
nerve-wracking tension. When she answers, her voice
seems distant, detached.

RIPLEY
(grimly)
They’ll get us.

HICKS
Maybe. Maybe not.

RIPLEY
Hicks, I’m not going to wind up like
those others. You’ll take care of
it won’t you, it if comes to that?

HICKS
If it comes to that, I’ll do us
both. Let’s see that it doesn’t
Here, I’d like to introduce you to
a close personal friend of mine.

He picks up his pulse-rifle and with the casually precise
movements of long practice he snaps open the bolt, drops
out the magazine and hands it to her.

HICKS
M-41A 10mm pulse-rifle, over and
under with a 30mm pump-action
grenade launcher.

Ripley hefts the weapon. It is heavy and awkward. But
there is an irrational promise of security in its lethal
cold steel lines, to at least the sense that she will
be in some greater measure the master of her own fate.
She raises it clumsily.

RIPLEY
What do I do?

INT. CONDUIT 134

Bishop is in claustrophobic limbo between two echoing
infinities. The pipe rings with his scraping advance.
He approaches an irregular hole which admits a tiny
shaft of light. He puts his eyes up to the acid-etched
opening.

HIS P.O.V. as drooling jaws flash toward us, SLAMMING
against the steel with a vicious scraping SNAP.

Bishop flattens himself away from the opening and
inches along, looking pale and strained. He glances at
his watch.

INT. OPERATIONS 135

Ripley has the stock of the M-41A snugged up to her cheek
and is awkwardly trying to keep up with Hicks’
instructions. The Corporal is standing close behind her,
positioning her arms. It’s intimate but that’s the
last thing on their minds.

HICKS
Just pull it in real right. It
will kick some. When the counter
here heads zero, hit this…

He thumbs a button and the magazine drops out, clattering
on the floor.

HICKS
Just let it drop right out. Get
the other one in quick. Just
slap it in hard, it likes abuse.
Now, pull the bolt.

CLACK.

HICKS
You’re ready again.

Ripley repeats the action, not very smoothly. Her hands
are trembling. She indicates a stout TUBE underneath
the slender pulse-rifle barrel.

RIPLEY
What’s this?

HICKS
Well, that’s the grenade launcher
…you probably don’t want to
mess with that.

RIPLEY
Look, you started this. Now show
me everything. I can handle myself.

HICKS
Yeah. I’ve noticed.

INT. CORRIDOR 136

DOLLYING WITH Ripley walking down the corridor, now
carrying the newfound friend, the M-41A. Gorman steps
out of the door to the med lab, looking weak but sound.
Burke is right behind him.

RIPLEY
How do you feel?

GORMAN
All right, I guess. One hell
of a hangover. Look, Ripley…
I…

RIPLEY
Forget it.

She shoulders by him into the med lab. Gorman turns to
see Vasquez staring at him with cold, slitted eyes.

GORMAN
You still want to kill me?

VASQUEZ
(turning away)
It won’t be necessary.

INT. MED LAB – ANNEX 137

Ripley crosses the deserted lab, passing through the
annex to the small O.R. where she left Newt.

INT. MED LAB – O.R. 138

Entering the darkened chamber, Ripley looks around.
Newt is nowhere to be seen. On a hunch she kneels down
and peers under the bed. Newt is curled up there,
jammed as far back as she can get, fast asleep. Still
clutching “Casey.”

Ripley stares at Newt’s tiny face, so angelic despite
the demons that have chased her through her dreams and
the reality between dreams. Ripley lays the rifle on
top of the cot and crawls carefully underneath. Without
waking the little girl, she slips her arms around her.

Ripley becomes merely the larger of two children huddling
together in the darkness under their bed.

Newt’s face contorts with the externalization of some
tormented dreamscape. She cries out, a vague inarticulate
plea. Ripley rocks her gently.

RIPLEY
There, there. Sssshh. It’s all
right.

EXT. Up-LINK TOWER – VIEW OF AP STATION 139

A VIEW OF the processing station from the colony landing
platform. A rising wind is clearing out the low fog and
the silhouette of the station grows sharper. Several
systems of high pressure conduits at the base of the
conical tower are actually glowing dull red with heat in
the darkness. High voltage discharges arc around the
upper latticework, lighting the blighted landscape
with irregular glaring flashes.

PAN ONTO BISHOP, F.G. hunched against the wind at the
base of the telemetry tower. He has a TEST-BAY PANEL
open and the portable terminal patched in. His jacket
is draped over the keyboard and monitor unit to protect
it from the elements and he is typing frenetically.

BISHOP
(to himself)
Now, if I did it right…

He punches a key marked “ENABLE.”

INT. SULACO CARGO LOCK – IN ORBIT 140

The drop bay is empty and silent, with the remaining
ship brooding in the shadows. A KLAXON sounds and
rotating clearance lights come on. Hydraulics whine
to life. Drop-ship two moves out on its overhead track
and is lowered into the drop bay fro launch-prep.
Service booms and fueling couplers move in automatically
around the hull. A recorded announcement echoes across
the huge chamber.

FEMALE VOICE
Attention. Attention. Automatic
fueling operations have begun.
Please extinguish all smoking
materials.

INT. OPERATING ROOM – TIGHT ON RIPLEY – MED LAB 141

as she awakens with a start. She checks her watch…
an hour has passed. She gently disengages herself from
Newt and is about to crawl out from beneath the cot
when she sees something and FREEZES.

Across the room, just inside the door to the med lab,
are two innocuous but nonetheless chilling objects.
TWO STASIS CYLINDERS. Their tops are hinged open, and
the suspension fields are switched off. They are both
EMPTY. Ripley feels a slow upwelling wave of terror
rise through her in that silent frozen moment…the
inescapable certainty of a lethal presence. Unable to
move or breathe, she looks around frantically, assessing
the situation.

RIPLEY
(whispers)
Newt. Newt, wake up.

NEWT
Wah…? Where are…?

RIPLEY
(whispers)
Sssh. Don’t move. We’re in
trouble.

Newt nods, now wide awake. They listen in the darkness
for the slightest betrayal of movement. The scrabble
of multiple legs across the polished floor, for example.

There is only the droning HUM of the little space heater.
Ripley reaches up and, clutching the springs of the
underside of the cot, begins to inch it away from the
wall.

The SQUEAL OF METAL as the legs scrape across the floor
is jarringly loud in the stillness.

When the space is wide enough she cautiously slides
herself up between the wall and the edge of the cot,
reaching for the rifle she left lying on top of the
mattress. Here yes clear the edge of the bed. The rifle
is GONE.

She snaps her head around. A SCUTTLING SHAPE LEAPS
TOWARD HER from the foot of the bed! She ducks with
a startled cry. The obscene thing hits the wall above
her, legs moving lightning fast. Reflexively she slams
the bed against the wall, pinning the creature inches
above her face. Its legs and tail writhe with
incredible ferocity and it emits a demented, piercing
SQUEAL.

Ripley heaves Newt across the polished floor and in a
frenzied scramble rolls from beneath the cot. She
flips it over, trapping the creature underneath.

They back away, gasping. Ripley’s eyes flash around
the shadowed room where every corner of space
between equipment holds lethal promise. The creature
scuttles from beneath the bed and disappears under a
back of cabinets in a blur. Ripley hugs Newt close
and heads toward the door, moving as if every object in
the room had a million volts running through it. She
reaches the door. Hits the wall switch. Nothing
happens. Disabled from outside. She tries the lights.
Nothing. She pounds on the door. The acoustically
dampened door panel thunks dully. She moves to the
observation window, glancing frantically over her
shoulder. The bare floor behind her is like a screaming
threat.

RIPLEY
(shouting)
Hey…hey!

She pounds on the window. Through the double
thickness window we can SEE that the lab is dark and
empty. Ripley whirls, hearing a loathsome scrabbling
behind her. Newt starts to whimper, feeding off her
fear. She steps in front of the video surveillance
camera and waves her arms in a circle.

RIPLEY
Hicks! Hicks!

INT. OPERATIONS – TIGHT ON VIDEO MONITOR 142

showing Ripley waving her arms. There is no sound,
a surreal pantomime.

A hand ENTERS FRAME and switches off the monitor.
Ripley’s image vanishes.

WIDER ANGLE as Burke straightens casually from
the console. Hicks is talking via headset with
Bishop and hasn’t noticed Ripley’s plight or
Burke’s action.

HICKS
(into mike)
Roger. Check back when you’ve
activated the ship.
(turning)
He’s at the up-link tower.

BURKE
(calmly)
Excellent.

INT. OPERATING ROOM 143

Ripley picks up a steel chair and slams it against
the observation window. It bounces back from the
high-impact material. She tries again.

REVERSE ANGLE from the med lab side, showing her
futile efforts, the chair hitting with a dull THWACK
barely audible through the double thickness pressure
port.

Ripley turns, studying the room. She fumbles through
a clutter of equipment on a counter next to her and
finds a SMALL EXAMINATION LIGHT. Snapping it on she
plays the beam over the walls. Tall assemblies of
surgical and anaethesiology equipment loom in the
dark. She hears, ot thinks she hears, movements. The
light spins across the room, swiveling and bobbing
frantically. Like an indicator of her growing panic.
Newt starts a thin, high wailing.

NEWT
Mommy…mommmyyyyy…

Ripley steadies herself, realizing Newt’s terror and
the child’s dependence on her. She plays the beam
across the ceiling. Holds on something. Gets an idea.
She removes her lighter from a jacket pocket and picks
up some papers from the counter. Moving cautiously
she boosts Newt up onto the SURGICAL TABLE in the center
of the room and clambers up after her.

NEWT
Mommy…I mean, Ripley…I’m
scared.

RIPLEY
I know, honey. Me too.

Ripley lights the papers and holds the flaming mass
under the temperature sensor of a fire control system
SPRINKLER HEAD. It triggers, spraying the room from
several sources with water. An ALARM sounds throughout
the complex.

INT. OPERATIONS 144

Hicks jumps at the sound of the alarm, finally
identifying its source among the lights flashing on
his board. He bolts for the door, yelling into his
headset as he moves.

HICKS
Vasquez, Hudson, meet me in
medical! We got a fire!

INT. OPERATING ROOM 145

Ripley and Newt are drenched as the sprinklers
continue to drizzle in the darkness. The SIREN
hoots maniacally, masking all other sound. Ripley
scans the room with her light, her hair plastered
to her face, wiping water out of her eyes. She is
eye level with a complex surgical MULTILIGHT. She
looks into its tangle of arms and cables, inches away.
Looks away. Her eyes snap back. SOMETHING LEAPS AT
HER FACE. She SCREAMS and topples off the table,
splashing to the floor. Newt shrieks and scrambles
away as Ripley hurls the CHITTERING creature off of
her. It slams against a wall of cabinets, clings
for a moment, then leaps back as if driven by a
steel spring. Ripley scrambles desperately, pulling
equipment over on top of herself, clawing across the
floor in a frenzy of motion. In a blurr of
multijointed legs the creature scuttles up her body.

She tears at it, but it is incredibly powerful for
its size. It moves like lightning toward her head,
avoiding her fumbling hands. Newt screams abjectly,
backing away, until she is pressed up against a
desk in one corner.

Ripley has both hands up, forcing the pulsing body
back from her face. The thing’s tail whips around
her throat and begins to tighten, forcing the underside
of its body close to her. Ripley thrashes about,
knocking over equipment, sending instruments CLATTERING.
Water streams over her, into her eyes, blinding her
and making it impossible to get a grip on the creature’s
body.

ANGLE ON NEWT as crablike legs appear from behind the
desk, right behind her. She sees it and, thinking
fast, jams the desk against the wall, pinning the
writhing thing. The desk jumps and shudders against
all the pressure her tiny body can bring to bear on it.
She wails between gritted teeth as the second creature
gets one leg free, then another and another. Squeezing
itself inexorably onto the desk top…toward her.

The legs of the chittering thing claw at Ripley’s
head, getting a surer grip even as she whips her head
from side to side. The obscene TUBULE extrudes wetly
from the sheath on the creature’s underside, forcing
itself between the arms she has crossed tightly over
her face.

A figure appears at the observation window, a silhouette
behind the misted-over glass. A hand wipes a clear spot.
Hick’s eyes appear. He steps back. WHAM! A burst of
pulse-rifle fire shatters the tempered glass. Hicks
dives into the crazed spider web pattern and explodes
into the room in a shower of fragments. He hits
rolling, his armor grinding through the shards, and
slides across to Ripley. He gets his fingers around the
thrashing legs of the vicious beast and pulls. Between
the two of them they force is away from her face,
though Ripley is losing strength as the tail tightens
sickeningly around her throat. Hudson leaps into the
room, flings Newt away from the desk to go skidding
across the wet floor, and blasts the second creature
against the wall. Point-blank. Acid and smoke.

Gorman appears at Ripley’s side and grabs the tail,
unwinding its writhing length like a boa constrictor
coil from her throat. All of them grip the struggling,
SHRIEKING creature.

HICKS
The corner! Ready?

HUDSON
Do it!

Hicks hurls the thing into the corner. It scrabbles
upright in an instant and leaps back toward them.
WHAM! Hudson gets it clean.

Ripley collapses, gagging. The alarm and sprinklers
shut off automatically. Hicks sees the stasis
cylinders.

RIPLEY
(coughing)
Burke…it was Burke.

INT. OPERATIONS – ANGLE ON HUDSON 146

looking decidedly stressed-out. He grips his rifle
tightly, AIMED RIGHT AT CAMERA.

HUDSON
(intense)
I say we grease this rat-f*ck
son of a bitch right now!

THE GROUP is gathered around Burke who sits in a
chair, maintaining an icy calm although beads of
sweat betray intense concealed tension. Only a few
minutes have passes and everyone is still buzzed on
adrenaline, as if the whole group is charged with
high voltage.

HICKS
(pacing)
I don’t get it. It doesn’t
make any Goddamn sense.

Ripley stands in front of Burke, every fiber of
her being accusing him with absolute outrage. Burke
tries to break Ripley’s stare, which is like a
diamond drill. He can’t.

RIPLEY
He wanted an alien, only he
couldn’t get it back through
quarantine. But if we were impregnated
…whatever you call it…and then
frozen for the trip back at just
the right time…then nobody would
know about the embryos we were carrying.
We and Newt.

Ripley glances at the little girl, a frail figure
sitting nearby, hugging her knees and watching the
proceedings with somber eyes. She is all but lost in
an adult jacket someone has found for her, and her still
damp hair is plastered to her forehead and cheeks.

HICKS
Wait a minute. We’d know about it.

RIPLEY
The only way it would work is if
he sabotaged certain freezers
on the trip back. Then he could
jettison the bodies and make up
any story he liked.

HUDSON
Fuuuck! He’s dead.
(to Burke)
You’re dogmeat, pal.

BURKE
This is total paranoid delusion.
It’s pitiful.

RIPLEY
(wearily)
You know, Burke, I don’t know
which species is worse. You don’t
see them screwing each other over
for a f*cking percentage.

HICKS
(serious)
Let’s waste him.
(to Burke)
No offense.

Ripley shakes her head, the rage giving way to a
sickened emptiness.

RIPLEY
Just find someplace to lock him
up until it’s time to —

THE LIGHTS GO OUT. Everyone stops in the sudden darkness,
realizing instinctively it is a new escalation in the
struggle. Hicks looks at the board. Everything is out.
Doors. Video screens.

RIPLEY
They cut the power.

HUDSON
What do you mean, they cut the
power? How could they cut the
power, man? They’re animals.

Ripley picks up her rifle and thumbs off the safety.

RIPLEY
Newt! Stay close.
(to the others)
Let’s get some trackers going.
Come on, get moving. Gorman, watch
Burke.

Hudson and Vasquez pick up their scanners and move to
the door. Vasquez has to slide it open manually on its
track.

INT. CORRIDOR 147

The two troopers separate and move rapidly to the
barriers at opposite ends of the control block.

DOLLYING WITH VASQUEZ as she moves forward with feral
steps in the darkness.

ON HUDSON scanning the med lab and the nearby barrier.

RIPLEY
(voice over)
Anything?

BEEP. Hudson’s tracker lights up, a faint signal.

HUDSON
There’s something.

He pans it around. Back down the corridor. It beep
again, louder.

HUDSON
It’s inside the complex.

VASQUEZ
(voice over)
You’re just reading me.

HUDSON
No. No! It ain’t you. They’re
inside. Inside the perimeter.
They’re in here.

RIPLEY
Hudson, stay cool. Vasquez?

ANGLE ON VASQUEZ swinging her tracker and rifle together.
She aims it behind her. BEEP.

VASQUEZ
(cool)
Hudson may be right.

INT. OPERATIONS 148

Ripley and Hicks share a look…”here we go.”

HICKS
(low)
It’s game time.

RIPLEY
Get back here, both of you. Fall
back to Operations.

INT. CORRIDOR 149

Hudson backtracks nervously, peering all around. He
looks stretched to the limit.

HUDSON
This signal’s weird…must be
some interference or something.
There’s movement all over the
place…

RIPLEY
(voice over)
Just get back here!

Hudson reaches the door to operations at a run, a
moment before Vasquez. They pull the door shut and
lock it.

INT. OPERATIONS 150

Hudson joins Ripley and Hicks, who are laying out their
armament. Flamethrowers. Grenades. M-41A magazines.
Hudson’s tracker beeps. Then again. The tone continues
through the SCENE, its rhythm increasing.

HUDSON
Movement! Signal’s clean.

He pans the scanner. Stops. The range display reads
out, counting down.

HUDSON
Range twenty meters.

RIPLEY
(to Vasquez)
Seal the door.

Vasquez picks up a hand-welder and moves to comply.

HUDSON
Seventeen meters.

HICKS
Let’s get these things lit.

He hands one flamethrower to RIpley and begins priming
the other himself. It lights with a muffled POP.
Ripley’s lights a moment later. Sparks shower around
Vasquez as she begins welding the door. Hudson’s tracker
is beeping like mad now, as fast as their hearts.

RIPLEY
They learned. They cut the power
and avoided the guns. They must
have found another way in, something
we missed.

HICKS
We didn’t miss anything.

HUDSON
Fifteen meters.

RIPLEY
I don’t know, an acid hole in
a duct. Something under the
floors, not on the plans.
I don’t know!

She picks up Vasquez’ scanner and aims it the same
direction as Hudson’s.

HUDSON
Twelve meters. Man, this is a big
f*cking signal. Ten meters.

RIPLEY
They’re right on us. Vasquez,
how you doing?

Vasquez is heedlessly showering herself with molten metal
as she welds the door shut. Working like a demon.

HUDSON
Nine meters. Eight.

RIPLEY
Can’t be. That’s inside the room!

HUDSON
It’s readin’ right. Look!

Ripley fiddles with her tracker, adjusting the tuning.

HICKS
Well you’re not reading it right!

HUDSON
Six meters. Five. What the fu —

He looks at Ripley. It dawns on both of them at the same
time. She feels a cold premonitory dread as she angles
her tracker upward to the ceiling, almost overhead. The
tone gets louder.

Hicks climbs onto a file cabinet and raises a panel of
acoustic drop-ceiling. He shines his light inside.

HICKS’ P.O.V. 151

A soul-wrenching nightmare image. Moving in the beam of
light are aliens. Lots of aliens. They are crawling
like bats, upside down, clinging to the pipes and beams
of the structural ceiling, not touching the flimsy
acoustic panels. They glisten hideously as they claw
their way forward in silence. They cover the ceiling
of the operations room. The inner sanctum is utterly
violated.

ON HICKS 152

blasted by fear.

Something moves…he snaps the light around. It’s a
meter behind him. IT LUNGES! He drops reflexively,
the claws raking across his armor.

Hicks falls into the room just as the creatures detach
en masse from the handholds. THE CEILING EXPLODES,
raining debris. Nightmare shapes drop into the room.
Newt screams. Hudson opens fire. Vasquez grabs Hicks,
pulls him up, firing one handed with her flamethrower.
Ripley scoops up Newt and staggers back. Gorman turns
to fire and Burke bolts for the only remaining exit,
the corridor connecting to the med lab. In the
strobelike glare of the pulse-rifles we SEE flashes
of aliens, moving forward in the smoke from the
flamethrower fires. They move like nothing human…
leaping quick as insects at times or gliding with
powerful, balletic grace.

RIPLEY
Medical! Get to medical!

She dashes for the corridor.

INT. MED LAB CORRIDOR 153

DOLLYING BEHIND HER as she sprints, the walls becoming
a frenzied blur. Ahead of her Burke clears the door to
the med lab. HE SLIDES IT CLOSED. Ripley slams into
the door. Tries the latch. Hears it LOCK from the far
side.

RIPLEY
Burke! Open the door!

NEWT
Look!

Behind her an alien is moving down the corridor like a
locomotive, a graceful skeleton shape as lethal and
inhuman as you can imagine. Strobe flashes backlight
the demented silhouette. Shaking, Ripley raises her
rifle. She squeezes the trigger. NOTHING HAPPENS.
The creature HISSES, baring its teeth as it advances.
Ripley checks the SAFETY. The safety is off. The
DIGITAL COUNTER. The magazine is full. Newt begins to
wail. Ripley’s hands, slick with sweat, are trembling
so much she almost drops the rifle. Panic screams in
her brain. The thing is almost on her, filling the
corridor, when she remembers. She snaps the bolt back,
chambering a round. Whips the stock to her shoulder.
FIRES. FLASH-CRACK! A FLASHBULB GLIMPSE OF shrieking
jaws as the silhouette is hurled back, screeching
insanely.

Ripley is slammed against the door by the recoil,
blinded by the flash and deafened by the concussion.

INT. OPERATIONS 154

Hicks looks up. Fires POINT-BLANK at a leaping
silhouette. SCREEEECH! The fire-control system has
tripped, with sprinklers spraying the room and a
mindless SIREN wailing. Total pandemonium.

HUDSON
(hysterical)
Let’s go! Let’s go!

HICKS
Fuckin’ A!

Hudson screams as floor panels lift under him, and clawed
arms seize him lightning fast, dragging him down.
Another skeletal shape leaps on him from above. He
disappears into the subfloor crawlway. Hicks, Vasquez
and Gorman make it to the med lab access corridor.

INT. CORRIDOR

Stunned, Ripley sees through dissipating smoke the
creature rising to advance again. Flinching against
blast and glare she drills it POINT-BLANK with a
BLINDING BURST that carries the M-41A’s muzzle right
up toward the ceiling. Newt covers her ears against
the CONCUSSION.

HICKS
(o.s.)
Hold you fire!

The troopers seem to materialize out of the smoke.

RIPLEY
(indicating door)
Locked.

HICKS
Stand back.

Hicks snaps the torch off his belt and cuts into the
lock. Inhuman shapes enter the far end of the corridor.
Vasquez hands her flamethrower to Gorman and unslings
her rifle. She starts loading 30mm grenades into the
launcher, like oversize 12-guage shells.

GORMAN
You can’t use those in here!

VASQUEZ
Right. Fire in the hole!

She pumps a round up and fires. The grenade EXPLODES and
the blast almost knocks them down. Hicks kicks the door
open, molten droplets flying.

HICKS
(shouting at Vasquez)
Thanks a lot! Now I can’t hear sh*t.

VASQUEZ
(shouting)
What?

INT. MED LAB ANNEX 156

Vasquez slides the door almost closed, then fires three
grenades rapid-fire through the gap. She slams the door
home as the grenades detonate, the explosion sounding
gonglike through the metal.

Ripley sprints across the room, trying the far door.
Burke has locked it as well. Hicks switches his
hand-torch from CUT to WELD and starts sealing the door
they just passed through.

INT. MED LAB 157

Burke, hyperventilating with terror, backs across the
dark chamber. Gasping, almost paralyzed with fear, he
crosses the chamber to the door leading to the main
concourse. His fingers reach for the latch. It moves
by itself. The door opens slowly.

ON BURKE his eyes wide, transfixed by his fate. We
hear the BULLWHIP CRACK of a tail-stinger striking as we:

CUT TO:

INT. MED LAB ANNEX 158

The door dimples with a clanging impact, separating
slightly from its frame. Another crash, the squeal of
tortured steel. Newt grabs Ripley by the hand and
tugs her across the room.

NEWT
Come on! This way.

She leads Ripley to an air vent set low in the wall and
expertly unlatches the grille, swinging it open. Newt
starts inside but Ripley pulls her back.

RIPLEY
Stay behind me.

Ripley trades her rifle for Gorman’s flamethrower before
he can protest and enters the air shaft, which is a
tight fit. Newt scrambles in behind, followed by Hicks,
Gorman and Vasquez on rearguard. Glancing back
fearfully Newt pushes on Ripley’s butt as they crawl
rapidly through the shaft.

NEWT
Come on. Crawl faster.

RIPLEY
DO you know how to get to the
landing field from here?

NEWT
Sure. Go left.

Ripley turns into a larger MAIN DUCT where there is
enough room to crab-walk in a low crouch. She runs,
scraping her back on the ceiling. The troopers’ armor
clatters in the confined space. They approach an
intersection. She fires the flamethrower around the
corner, the looks. Clear.

NEWT
Go right.

They sprint into the narrow connecting duct, the maze
becoming a blur. Ripley fires the flamethrower
periodically, as they pass side ducts covered by
louvered grilles or vertical shafts going to higher or
lower levels.

HICKS
(into headset)
Bishop, you read me? Come in, over.

There is a long pause then Bishop’s VOICE, almost
unintelligible with interference, comes over the radio.

BISHOP
(voice over;
static)
Yes, I read you. Not very well…

EXT. UP-LINK RELAY – LANDING FIELD 159

Bishop is huddled against the base of the telemetry
mast, out of the wind which is now gusting viciously.

BISHOP
(yelling;
over enunciating)
The ship is on its way. ETA
about sixteen minutes. I’ve
got my hands full flying…
the weather’s come up a bit.

Bishop’s fingers are blurring over the terminal keys and
he squints, watching the screen as the flight telemetry
updates rapidly.

In the b.g. the AP station has become a raging demon,
wreathed in boiling steam and electrical discharges.

INT. AIR DUCT 160

HICKS
All right, stand by there. We’re
on out way. Over.

The beam of Ripley’s light wavers hypnotically in the
tunnel ahead. She blinks, seeing something…not sure.
A GLINTING OBSCENE FORM MOVING TOWARD THEM, filling the
tunnel at the absolute limit of the light’s power.

RIPLEY
Back. Go back!

They try to crawl back, jamming together. Behind them,
the way they have come, a GRATING is battered in with a
FEROCIOUS CLANG and the deadly silhouette of a warrior
flows into the duct. They are trapped. Vasquez uses
her flamethrower, bathing the tunnel in fire. Hicks
snaps out his hand-welder and cuts into the wall of the
duct. Molten metal spatters him, as sparks fill the
tunnel with lurid light. Vasquez’ flamethrower sputters.

VASQUEZ
(icy)
Losing fuel.

Between eye-searing bursts of flame Ripley sees the
glistening apparitions closing in. Hicks’ torch feathers
out. Empty. Bracing his back he kicks hard at the
cherry-hot metal. It bends aside.

Beyond is a narrow SERVICE WAY, lined with pipes and
conduit. Hicks slides through the searing hole,
lifting Newt safely through as Ripley hands her out.
Ripley follows and turns to help Gorman. Vasquez’
flamethrower goes dry. She draws her SERVICE PISTOL.
Suddenly she looks up as a WARRIOR SCREECHES DOWN FROM
A VERTICAL SHAFT, right above her.

She fires with incredible rapidity…BAM! BAM! BAM!
Rolls aside. It lands on her legs and she snaps her head
to one side just as its TAIL STINGER buries into the
metal wall beside her cheek. She fires again, emptying
the pistol, kicking the thrashing shape away.

Acid cuts through her chickenplate armor, searing into
her thigh. She cries out, gritting her teeth against
the white-hot pain. Gorman sees Vasquez hit, unable to
move. Sees the creatures coming the other way…and
turns away from the escape hole. He crawls back to her,
grabs her battle harness and starts dragging her towards
safety. Too late. The approaching alien warriors have
reached and passed the opening. Vasquez sees him,
barely conscious.

VASQUEZ
(hoarse whisper)
You always were an asshole, Gorman.

She seizes his hand in a deadly drip, but we RECOGNIZE
it as the “power greeting” she shared with Drake…
something for the chosen few. Gorman returns the grip.
He hands her two grenades and arms two himself as the
creatures are upon them.

INT. SERVICE WAY 161

RUSHING WITH Ripley, Newt and Hicks as a full tilt run.
The service way lights up with a POWERFUL BLAST behind
them and they stumble with the shock wave. Newt breaks
out ahead and it’s all Ripley and Hicks can do to keep
up.

NEWT
This way. Come on, we’re almost
there!

RIPLEY
Newt, wait!

The kid moves like lightning, diving and dodging around
obstacles. If it wasn’t clear before it’s clear now
that we are on her turf, and she’s the ace. Running on
and on, their breathing loud and echoing…the walls
a directionless blur. Newt never hesitates.

They reach a junction with a narrow ANGLED CHUTE which
runs upward at a steep 45 degrees.

NEWT
Here! Go up.

INT. CHUTE 162

Ripley looks up the angles shaft, seeing light at the
top…an exterior vent hood. The sound of wind booms
down from above. Like blowing across a bottle top
vastly amplified.

Ripley enters, bracing her feet on perilously narrow
side ribs in the shaft. She looks down. The chute
descends far into the depths, lost in shadow. She
starts to climb with Next behind/below her, and Hicks,
just emerging from the side duct.

NEWT
Just up there —

Newt slips, a rusted rib collapsing under her foot. She
slides…catches herself with one hand. Ripley reaches
for her, dropping her light. The hand-light goes
skittering and bumping down the chute, around a bend,
and disappears.

Ripley strains, reaching, her hand groping for Newt’s.
They miss, inches apart.

NEWT
Riiiiipppleee —

She slips. Hicks lunges, grabbing her oversized jacket.
AND SHE SLIPS OUT OF IT. With an echoing scream Newt
plummets, sliding down the chute into darkness.

MOVING WITH HER, the walls racing by in a dizzy blur like
a bobsled ride. THe shaft pitches left. Newt bounces,
sliding halfway up the wall. The chute forks ahead.
Newt tumbles into the right shaft, which drops at a
steeper angle into the depths. Just disappearing down
the LEFT SHAFT we SEE Ripley’s light.

Ripley looks Hicks in the eye. And kicks free…sliding
down the chute after Newt. Ripley slams her feet into
the side-ribs, bracing herself in a controlled descent.
Ripley reaches the “V.” Sees the glow of the light in
the left fork. She goes left.

RIPLEY
Newt!

She hears a plaintive reply, so echoey and distorted it
has no direction.

NEWT
(o.s.)
Mommy…where are you?

Ripley reaches the bottom of the chute where it
intersects with a HORIZONTAL SERVICE TUNNEL. The light
is lying there, but no Newt. The echoing wail comes
again.

NEWT
(o.s.)
Moooommeeee…

Ripley starts down the tunnel, answering. Newt’s call
comes again. Fainter? She can’t tell. She spins in
a growing panic, starts the other way.

RIPLEY
(to her headset)
Hicks, get down here. I need
that locator.

INT. SUBBASEMENT 163

Newt is in a low grottolike chamber, filled with pipes
and machines. It is flooded, almost up to Newt’s waist.
She looks up, seeing light streaming through a grating.
Ripley’s voice seems to come from there.

RIPLEY
(o.s.)
Newt! Star wherever you are!

Newt climbs some pipes, straining to reach the grating.

INT. SERVICE TUNNEL 164

Hicks joins Ripley, unsnapping the emergency-locator
from his belt. They follow the signal into a lighted
area where the power apparently was not cut.

HICKS
This way. We’re close…

Following the signal they come to a grating set in the
floor.

NEWT
Here! I’m here. I’m here.

Ripley runs to the grating. Looking down she sees Newt’s
tearstreaked face. Newt reaches up. Her tiny fingers
wriggle up through the bars of the grate. Ripley
squeezes the child’s precious fingertips.

RIPLEY
Climb down, honey. We have to
cut through this grate.

Newt backs away, climbing down the pipe as Hicks cuts
into the bars with his hand-torch.

INT. SUBBASEMENT 165

Newt, standing waist deep in the water, watches sparks
shower blindingly as Hicks cuts. She bites her lip,
trembling. Cold and terrified. Silently a glistening
shape rises in one graceful motion from the water behind
her. It stands, dripping, dwarfing her tiny form. Newt
turns, sensing the movement…She SCREAMS as the
shadow engulfs her.

INT. SERVICE TUNNEL 166

Ripley panics, hearing screaming below, then splashing.
She and Hicks kick desperately at the grating, smashing
it down. Heedless of the cherry-hot edges Ripley
lunges into the hole with her light.

RIPLEY
Newt! Newt!

The surface of the water reflects the beam placidly.
Newt is gone. Bobbing in the water, eyes staring, is
“Casey” the doll head. In sinks slowly, distorting,
vanishing in darkness.

Hicks pulls Ripley away from the hole. She struggles
furiously, trying to tear out of his grip.

RIPLEY
No! Noooo!

He drags her back. It takes all of his strength.

HICKS
(intense)
She’s gone! Let’s go!

He sees something moving toward them through a lattice
of pipes. Ripley is irrational. Hysterical.

RIPLEY
No! No! She’s alive! We
have to —

HICKS
All right! She’s alive. I
believe it. But we gotta get
moving! Now!

He drags her toward an ELEVATOR not far away at the
end of the tunnel. Gets her inside, slamming her against
the back wall. Hits the button to go to surface level.
An alien warrior leaps into the tunnel, starts
toward them. The doors are closing. Not fast enough.
The creature gets one arm through, the doors closing on
it. THEY OPEN AGAIN, an automatic safety feature. THE
WARRIOR HISSES, LUNGING. Hicks FIRES, POINT-BLANK. It
spins away, SCREECHING. Acid sluices between the closing
doors, across Hicks’ armored chest plate, as he shields
Ripley with his body. The lift starts upward. Hicks’
fingers race with the clasps as the stuff eats its way
toward his skin. Galvanized out of her hysteria, Ripley
claws at his armor, helping him as much as she can. He
screams as the acid contacts his chest and arm. He
shucks out of the combat armor like a madman, dropping
the smoking pieces to the floor. Acrid fumes fill the
air, searing eyes and lungs. The elevator stops. The
doors part and they stumble out, Ripley supporting Hicks
who is doubled over in agony.

RIPLEY
Come on, you can make it.
Almost there.

EXT. LANDING FIELD 167

Drop-ship two descends toward the landing grid,
side-slipping in hurricane gusts. Bishop stands, guiding
it with the portable terminal. The ship sets down hard.
Slides sideways. Stops. Bishop turns as Ripley and
Hicks stumble out of a doorway in the colony building
behind him. He goes to them, helping to support Hicks
and they run toward the ship, buffeted by the gale.
Ripley shouts, her words barely audible over the wind.

RIPLEY
HOW MUCH TIME?

BISHOP
PLENTY! TWENTY-SIX MINUTES!

RIPLEY
WE’RE NOT LEAVING!

The loading ramp deploys and they run into the ship.

EXT. PROCESSING STATION 168

An infernal engine, roaring out of control. Steam blasts
and swirls, lightning zaps around the superstructure and
columns of incandescent gas thunder hundreds of feet into
the air.

We APPROACH, hypnotically. The drop-ship ENTERS FRAME,
moving toward the station. It pivots, hovering in the
blasting turbulence, and settles onto a NARROW LANDING
PLATFORM ten levels above the ground, or about a third
of the way up the enormous structure.

INT. DROP-SHIP 169

Ripley finishes winding tape around a bulky object and
drops the roll. She has crudely fastened a M-41A
assault rifle together, side by side, with a flamethrower.
A massive, unwieldy package of absolute firepower. Her
movements are curt, precise…determined. She works
rapidly, snatching magazines, grenades, belts and other
gear from the fully stocked ordnance racks of the
drop-ship.

Bishop comes aft from the pilot’s compartment to help
Hicks dress his injuries. Hicks is sprawled in a flight
seat, the contents of a FIELD MEDICAL KEY strewn around
him. He’s out of the game…contorted with pain.

BISHOP
Ripley…

RIPLEY
She’s alive. They brought her
here and you know it.

BISHOP
In seventeen minutes this place
will be a cloud of vapor the
size of Nebraska.

Ripley is stuffing gear rapidly into a satchel, her hands
flying.

RIPLEY
Hicks, don’t let him leave.

HICKS
(grimacing with
pain)
We ain’t going anywhere.

She hefts the hybrid weapon, grabs the satchel and spins
to the door controls. The door opens. Wind and
machine-thunder blast in.

RIPLEY
See you, Hicks.

Hicks is holding a wad of gauze plastered over his face.

HICKS
Dwayne. It’s Dwayne.

Ripley grabs his hand. They share a moment, albeit
brief. Mutual respect in the valley of death.

RIPLEY
Ellen.

HICKS
(nods with
satisfaction)
Don’t be long, Ellen.

Ripley runs down the ramp, crossing the platform to the
open doors of a LARGE FREIGHT ELEVATOR. The doors close.

INT. FREIGHT ELEVATOR 170

The elevator descends. Bars of light move rhythmically
across her as Ripley stands facing the doors, watching
the landings go by. The heat grows more intense. Pipes
glowing cherry-red pass by. Steam hisses and billows.
The lift clatters in a steady beat. Hypnotic.

Ripley removes her jacket and dons a battle harness
directly over her T-shirt. Her hair is matted, and
she glistens with sweat. Her eyes burn with a
determination that holds the gut-panic in check.

The elevator descends. She checks her weapon. Attaches
a BANDOLIER OF GRENADES to her harness. Primes the
flamethrower. Checks the rifle’s magazine. Racks the
bolt, chambering the first round. She checks the
MARKING FLARES jammed in the thigh pockets of her
jump pants. She drops an unprimed grenade, trembling,
forcing herself to be strong. We SEE she doesn’t
know doodley about grenades.

This is the most terrifying thing she has ever done. She
begins to hyperventilate, soaking with sweat. Her fingers
slick and slippery on the rifle. The elevator descends.

The lift motors whine, slowing. It hits bottom with a
bump. The safety cage retracts. Slowly, expectantly,
the doors open.

HER P.O.V. THROUGH the parting doors…an empty
corridor. Dark, swirling with steam, a ruddy glow
VISIBLE here and there. It seems to have been a descent
into Dantean Hell. The air itself vibrates with heat
distortion. Couplings groan. Machinery whines and
throbs. Like the beating of a vast heart the pounding
of massive pumps echoes through the station.

INT. CORRIDOR 171

Ripley moves out of the lift, knuckles white on the
rifle. Her eyes dart, straining to penetrate the lethal
gloom. Behind her we SEE a SECOND ELEVATOR next to
hers, its lift cage somewhere on a higher floor. Ahead
the corridor is encrusted with the alien excressence
and not far down the bio-mechanoid catacomb begins.
She enters the maze, darting glances at Hick’s LOCATOR,
taped to the top of her kludge weapon.

A VOICE echoes down the tunnels, calm and mechanical.

VOICE
Attention. Emergency. All
personnel must evacuate
immediately. You now have
fourteen minutes to reach
minimum safe distance.

INT. CATACOMB 172

Range and direction read out in rapid-fire alpha-numerics
on the locator display.

Ripley blinks sweat out of her eyes, moving through the
swirling steam of the alien maze. She approaches an
intersecting tunnel. Flashing emergency lights
illuminate the insane fresco of the walls. She spins,
firing the flamethrower. Nothing there. She whirls
back. Moves forward, trembling and adrenalized.

Skeletal figures drown in the walls, frozen in macabre
tormented positions like human insects in amber.
Steam blasts, blinding her. The locator signal
strengthens an she turns, crouches through a low
passage, turns again. At each intersection she quickly
lights a FIFTEEN-MINUTE MARKING FLARE and drops it.
For the way back. She has to turn sideways, inching
through a fissure between two walls of death…cocoon
niches, human bas-relief sealed in resin.

SUDDENLY SOMETHING SHOOTS OUT, GRABBING HER! A hand.
She recovers , then recognizes the face sealed in
the wall. Carter Burke.

BURKE
Ripley…help me. I can feel
it…inside. Oh, God…it’s
moving! Oh gooood…

She looks at him. No one deserves this.

RIPLEY
Here.

She hands him a grenade, wrapping his fingers around
the spoon, and pulls the primer. She moves on.

VOICE
You now have eleven minutes to
reach minimum safe distance.

Ripley moves ahead. The locator signals shows she is
almost there. A CONCUSSION rocks the place, like an
earthquake, jarring her almost off her feet. Then
another. The whole station seems to shudder. A SIREN
begins to wail a demented rhythm. Following the tracker
she turns a corner and stops. The RANGE INDICATOR READS
ZERO. She looks down, horrified to see Newt’s tracer
bracelet lying on the floor of the tunnel. All hope
recedes, disintegrating into mindless chaos.

INT. EGG CHAMBER 173

Newt is cocooned in a pillarlike structure at the
edge of a cluster of upright OVOID SHAPES…alien
eggs. Her eyelids flutter open and she becomes
aware of her surroundings. The egg nearest her
begins to move…opening like an obscene flower at
its top to reveal something stirring within. Newt
stares, transfixed by terror, as the jointed legs
appear over the lip of the ovoid one by one. She
SCREAMS.

INT. CATACOMBS 174

Ripley hears the scream and breaks into a run.

INT. EGG CHAMBER 175

Newt watches the face-hugger emerge and turn toward
her. Ripley runs in just as it is tensing to leap,
and FIRES, blasting it with a burst from the assault
rifle. The flash illuminates the figure of an
adult warrior, nearby. It spins, moving straight
for Ripley. Firing from the hip she drills it with
two controlled bursts which catapult it back. She
steps toward it, FIRING AGAIN. Her expression is
murderous. AND AGAIN. It spins onto its back.
She unleashes the flamethrower and it vanishes in
a fireball. Ripley runs to Newt and begins tearing
at the fresh resinous cocoon material, freeing the
child. She swings her up onto her back.

NEWT
(weakly)
I knew you’d come.

RIPLEY
Newt, I want you to hang on,
now. Hang on tight.

Groggily Newt hooks her arms and legs through the belts
of Ripley’s battle harness as Ripley picks up her
weapon. More warriors are moving toward her among
the eggs. She fires the flamethrower. The eggs are
engulfed. One of the warriors lunges forward, a
living fireball. She blasts it in half with two
bursts from the M-41A. Ripley retreats, ducking under
a glistening cylindrical mass. A PIERCING SHRIEK
fill the chamber. She turns. And there it is.

A massive silhouette in the mist, the ALIEN QUEEN
glowers over her eggs like a great, glistening black
insect-Buddha. What’s bigger and meaner than the
Alien? His momma. Her fanged head is an unimaginable
horror. Her six limbs, the four arms and two
powerful legs, are folded grotesquely over her
distended abdomen. The egg-filled abdomen swells
and swells into a great pulsing tubular sac, suspended
from a lattice of pipes and conduits by a weblike
membrane as if some vast coil of intestine were draped
carelessly among the machinery. Ripley realizes
she ducked under part of it a moment before. Inside
the abdominal sac can be SEEN the forms of countless
eggs, churning their way toward the pulsating ovipositor
where they emerge glistening, to be picked up by
DRONES. The drones are tiny scuttling albino versions
of the “warrior” aliens we have already seen.

Ripley pumps the slide on her grenade launcher. She
fires. Pumps and fires again. Four times. The
grenades punch deep into the egg sac and EXPLODE,
ripping it open from within. Eggs are tons of gelatinous
matter pour across the chamber floor. The Queen goes
berserk, SCREECHING like some psychotic steam whistle.
Ripley lays about her with the flamethrower, igniting
everything in sight with an insane fury. Eggs shrivel
in the inferno, and figures of warriors and drones
vanish in frenzied thrashing. Over all is the Queen’s
shrieking as she struggles in the flames. Two
warriors emerge from the boiling smoke, closing on
her. She pulls the trigger…an empty click. DIGITAL
COUNTER flashing crimson zeroes. She drops the
magazine, grabs another from her belt, rams it home
and OPENS UP.

The creatures vanish in rapid-fire flashes. Ripley

backs away, venting her terror in a sustained orgy
of fire as she blasts everything that moves in one
long eye-searing expenditure of energy. Then she
dashes into the catacombs, navigating by sheer primal
instinct.

INT. CATACOMBS 176

Ripley runs, blindly, with panting intensity verging
on hysteria. Impressions crash upon her…the maze
blurring by, sirens howling, the station rocking with
explosions, emergency lights flashing, steam blasting,
red-hot steel hissing. Reality itself is reduced to
a concussive series of strobelike instants of
relentless forward motion.

She sees one of the flares she dropped and turns.
Sees another, sprinting toward it as the foundations
of the world shake.

INT. EGG CHAMBER 177

Lashing in a frenzy, the QUEEN DETACHES FROM THE EGG
SAC, ripping away and dragging torn cartilage and
tissue behind it. SEEN DIMLY THROUGH swirling smoke,
it rises on its powerful legs and steps forward.

INT. CATACOMBS – CORRIDOR 178-
179

Ripley uses the flamethrower ahead of her, firing
bursts of pulse-rifle fire down side corridors at
indistinct shapes and shadows. The weapon is empty
when she reaches the freight elevators. A mass of
debris, falling down the shaft from a higher level,
has demolished the life cage she descended in. She
slams the control for the other cage and hears the
sound of the LIFT MOTOR’S WHINE as it begins its
slow descent from several levels up. AN ENRAGED
SCREECH ECHOES in the corridor. Ripley sees a
silhouette moving in the smoke…a glistening black
shape which FILLS THE CORRIDOR TO THE CEILING…THE
QUEEN. Her last cartridge is reading zeroes. The
flamethrower sputters uselessly when she tries that.
The grenades are gone. Ripley drops the weapon and
looks up the shaft to the descending lift…then at
the approaching FIGURE. The elevator won’t be in time.
She runs to a ladder set in the wall as a horrendous
screech beats in her ears. She scrambles up the
rungs.

INT. SECOND LEVEL 180

Ripley struggles up through a narrow hatch, Newt
clinging to her. She dives aside as a POWERFUL
BLACK ARM shoots up through the opening, its
razor claws slamming into the grille-floor inches
from her. Looking down through the grille she
sees the great horrifying jaws directly below her,
wet and leering. She scrambles up, running, as
the grille-floor lifts and buckles behind her
with the titanic force of the creature below.
It hurls itself with insane ferocity against the
metal, pacing her from below as she runs.

INT. STAIRWELL 181

Ripley reaches an open-grid emergency stairwell and
sprints upward. It rocks and shudders with the
station’s death throes.

VOICE
You now have two minutes
to reach minimum safe
distance.

INT. CORRIDOR – ELEVATORS 182-
183

The lift reaches bottom, the doors rolling open.
The Queen turns and freezes, as if contemplating
the open lift cage.

INT. STAIRWELL 184

Ripley stumbles, smashing her knees against the
metals stairs. As she rises she hears the LIFT
MOTORS start up. Looking down through the lattice
work of the station she sees the life cage start
ominously upward. She knows there is only one
explanation for that. She runs on, the stairwell
becoming a crazy whirl around her.

EXT. LANDING PLATFORM 185

Ripley, with Newt still clinging to her, slams
through the door opening onto the platform.
Through wind-whipped streamers of smoke she
sees…THE SHIP IS GONE.

RIPLEY
BISHOP!

Her shouts become inarticulate screams of hatred,
outrage at the final betrayal. She scans the sky.
Nothing.

RIPLEY
(hysterical)
BISHOP!

Newt is sobbing.

The lift rises ponderously INTO VIEW. Ripley turns,
backing away from the doors toward the railing. There
is no place to run to on the platform. EXPLOSIONS

detonate in the complex far below and huge fireballs
swell upward through the machinery. The platform bucks
wildly. Nearby a cooling tower collapses with a
THUNDEROUS ROAR and the SHRIEK OF RENDING STEEL. More
EXPLOSIONS, one after another, rocketing up from below.
Ripley stares transfixed as the lift stops. The
safety cage parts.

RIPLEY
(to Newt; low)
Close your eyes, baby.

The lift doors begin to open. A glimpse of the
apparition within.

ANGLE ON RIPLEY AND NEWT as the drop-ship RISES RIGHT
BEHIND THEM, its hovering jets roaring.

VOICE
You now have thirty seconds to
reach…

Ripley leaps for the loading boom projecting down from
the cargo bay and it raises them into the ship. A
TREMENDOUS EXPLOSION RIPS THROUGH THE COMPLEX nearby,
slamming the ship sideways. Its extended landing legs
foul in a tangle of conduit, grinding with a hideous
squeal of metal on metal.

INT./EXT. DROP-SHIP – STATION 186-
187

Ripley leaps into a seat with Newt, cradling her. Begins
strapping in. Bishop wrestles with the controls. The
landing legs retract, ripping free. Ripley slams her
seat harness latches home.

RIPLEY
Punch it, Bishop!

The entire lower level of the station disappears in a
fireball. The air vibrates with intense heat waves and
concussion. The drop-ship engines fire. Ripley is
slammed back in her seat. The ship vaults out and up,
Bishop standing it on its tail, pouring on the gees.
Ripley and Newt see everything shake into a blur.

EXT. STRATOSPHERE 188

The drop-ship lunges up and out of the cloud layer into
the clear high night. Below, the clouds light up from
beneath from horizon to horizon.

A SUN HOT DOME OF ENERGY bursts up through the cloud
layer, WHITING OUT THE FRAME. The tiny ship is slammed
by the shockwave, tossed forward…and climbs, scorched
but functioning, toward the stars.

INT. DROP-SHIP 189

Ripley and Newt watch the blinding glare fade away and
they sit, wide-eyed, trembling, realizing they are
finally and truly safe. Newt starts to cry quietly,
and Ripley strokes her hair.

RIPLEY
It’s okay, baby. We made it. It’s
over.

INT. SULACO CARGO LOCK – IN ORBIT – LATER 190

The scorched and battered ship once again sits in its
drop-bay, steam blasting from cooling vents beside the
engine. Rotating clearance lights sweep the dark chamber
hypnotically.

INT. DROP-SHIP 191

Bishop stands behind Ripley as she kneels beside a
comatose Hicks.

BISHOP
I gave him a shot, for the pain.
We’ll need to get a stretcher to
cart him up to medical.

Ripley nods and, picking up Newt, precedes Bishop down
the aisle to the loading ramp.

BISHOP
I’m sorry if I gave you a scare
but that platform was just becoming
too unstable…

INT. CARGO LOCK – DROP-SHIP 192

Bishop continues as they move down the ramp.

BISHOP
I had to circle and hope things
didn’t get too rough to take you
off.

Ripley turns to him, stopping partway down the ramp.
She puts her hand on his shoulder.

RIPLEY
You did okay, Bishop.

BISHOP
Well, thanks, I —

He notices a tiny innocuous drop of liquid splash onto the
ramp next to his shoe. SSSSSS. Acid. SOMETHING BURSTS
FROM HIS CHEST, spraying Ripley with milklike android blood.
It is the razor-sharp scorpion TAIL of the alien QUEEN.
Driven right through him from behind. Bishop thrashes,
seizing the protruding section of tail in his hands, as is
slowly lifts him off the deck. Above them the Queen
glowers from its place of concealment among the hydraulic
mechanisms inside one landing-leg bay. It blends perfectly
with the machinery until it begins to emerge. Seizing
Bishop in two great hands it rips him apart and flings him
aside, shredded, like a doll. It descends slowly to the
deck, the rotating lights glistening across its shiny black
limbs, dripping acid and rage. Still smoking where Ripley
half-fried it. The Queen is huge, powerful…and very
pissed off. It descends slowly, its six limbs unfolding in
inhuman geometries.

Ripley moves with nightmarish slowness herself, staring
hypnotized…terrified to break and run. She lowers Newt
to the deck, never taking her eyes off the creature.

RIPLEY
(to Newt)
Go!

Newt runs for cover. The Alien drops to the deck, pivoting
toward the motion. Ripley waves her arms, decoying.

RIPLEY
Here!

Without warning it moves like lightning, straight at her.
Ripley spins, sprinting, as the creature leaps for her.
Its feet slam, echoing, on the deck behind her. She clears
a door. Hits the switch. It WHIRRS closed. BOOM. The
Alien hits a moment later.

INT. DARK CHAMBER 193

Ripley moves ferret-quick among dark, unrecognizable
machines.

VARIOUS ANGLES VERY TIGHT ON what she is doing…her feet
going into stirruplike mechanisms. Velcro straps
fastened over them. Fingers stabbing buttons in a sequence.
Her hand closing on a complex grip-control. The HUM of
powerful motors. The WHINE of hydraulics.

INT. CARGO LOCK 194

The Queen turns its attention from the doors to Newt as
the little girl crawls into a system of trenchlike
service channels which cross the deck. The channels are
covered by steel grillework and barely big enough for her
to crawl through.

INT. CHANNEL 195

Newt scurries like a rabbit as the looming figure of the
Alien appears above, seen through the bars. A section of
grille is ripped away behind her. She scrambles
desperately. Another section is ripped away right at her
heels. Light pouring in. The next will be right above
her.

INT. CARGO LOCK 196

The Queen spins at the sound of door motors behind her.
The parting doors REVEAL an inhuman silhouette standing
there.

Ripley steps out, WEARING TWO TONS OF HARDENED STEEL.
THE POWER LOADER. Like medieval armor with the power of
a bulldozer. She takes a step…the massive foot
CRASH-CLANGS to the deck. She takes another, advancing.

Ripley’s expression is one you hope you’ll never see…
Hell hath no fury like that of a mother protecting her
child and that primal, murderous rage surges through her
now, banishing all fear.

RIPLEY
Get away from her, you bitch!

The Queen SCREECHES pure lethality and leaps.

WALLOP! A roundhouse from one great hydraulic arm catches
it on its hideous skull and slams it into a wall. It
rebounds into a massive backhand. CRASH! It goes
backward into heavy loading equipment.

RIPLEY
(screaming)
Come on!

The Queen emerges as a blur of rage, lashing with
unbelievable fury. The battle is joined.

Claws swipe, tail lashes. Ripley parries with radical
swipes of the steel forks. They circle in a whirling
blur, demolishing everything in their path. The cavernous
chamber echoes with nightmarish sounds…WHINE, CRASH,
CLANG, SCREECH.

They lock in a death embrace. Ripley closes the forks,
crushing two of the creature’s limbs. It lashes and
writhes with incredible fury, coming within inches of her
exposed body. She lifts it off the ground. The hind
legs rip at her, slamming against the safety cage, denting
it in. The striking teeth extend almost a meter from
inside its fanged maw, shooting between the crash-bars.
She ducks and the teeth slam into the seat cushion
behind her dead in a spray of drool. Yellow acid foams
down the hydraulic arms toward her. The creature rips
at high-pressure hoses. Purple hydraulic fluid sprays
…machine blood mixing with alien blood. They topple,
off balance. The Queen pins her. Ripley hits a switch.
The power loader’s CUTTING TORCH flares on, directly in
the thing’s face. They roll together, over the lip of
a RECTANGULAR PIT, A VERTICAL LOADING AIRLOCK.

INT. LOADING LOCK 197

They crash together four meters below, twisted in the
loader’s wreckage. The Alien shrieks, pinned.

Ripley pulls her arm out of the controls of the loader
and claws toward a panel of airlock actuating buttons.
She slaps the red “INNER DOOR OVERRIDE” and latches the
“HOLD” locking-key down. A KLAXON begins to sound. She
hits “OUTER DOOR OPEN” and there is a hurricane shriek of
air as the doors on which they are lying separate,
REVEALING the infinite pit of stars, below.

All this time the Alien has been lashing at her in a
frenzy and she has been parrying desperately in the
confined space. The airlock becomes a wind tunnel,
blasting and buffetting her as she struggles to unstrap
from the loader. The air of the vast ship howls past her
into space as she claws her way up a service ladder.

INT. CARGO BAY 198

Newt screams as the hurricane airstream sucks her across
the floor toward the airlock. Bishop, torn virtually in
two, his pastalike internal organs whipped by the wind,
grips a stanchion and reaches desperately for Newt as she
slides past him. He catches her arm and hangs on as she
dangles, doll-like, in the airblast.

INT. LOADING LOCK 199

The Alien seizes Ripley’s ankle. She locks her arms
around a ladder rung, feels them almost torn out of
their shoulder sockets.

The door opens farther, all of space yawning below. The
loader tumbles clear, falling away. It drags the Alien,
still clutching one of Ripley’s lucky hi-tops, into the
depths of space. Its SHRIEK fades, it gone.

With all her strength Ripley fights the blasting air,
crawling over the lip of the inner doorway. She releases
the OVERRIDE from a second panel. The inner doors close.
The turbulent air eddies and settles.

She lies on her back, drained of all strength. Gasping
for breath. Weakly she turns her head, seeing Bishop
still holding Newt by the arm. Encrusted with his own
vanilla milkshake blood. Bishop gives her a small, grim
smile.

BISHOP
Not bad for a human.

He winks.

Ripley crosses to Newt.

NEWT
(weakly)
Mommy…Mommy?

RIPLEY
Right here, baby. Right here.

Ripley hugs her desperately.

INT. CORRIDOR 200

Ripley limps along the corridor, carrying Newt on her hip.
The ship’s systems hum comfortingly. Newt’s head rests
on her shoulder.

NEWT
Are we going to sleep now?

RIPLEY
That’s right.

NEWT
Can we dream?

RIPLEY
Yes, honey. I think we both can.

HOLD ON THEM AS they recede down the long straight
corridor.

FADE OUT

THE END