The jeep (separate drive-trains for each wheel) pulls two three-sixties on a
dime, hurling the thing toward Hicks.  It smashes into the desk, splash of
water, leaps for Hicks instantly.  The charge from his pulse-rifle takes it
in mid-air, hideous bile-yellow spurt of acid... And it hits the water again
with a terrific EXPLOSION of steam.  The jeep lurches out through the steam,
engines SCREAMING, wheels losing traction through the puddle, throwing up
fantails of water, nearly overturning.  Hicks jumps, snags a roll bar, empties
the pulse-rifle's clip into the steam on full-auto as Walker hauls ass back
down the corridor...

JACKSON (V.O.)
Hicks!  What's happening?

INT. OPS ROOM

JACKSON
Hicks?  Hicks!

CLOSE ON SCREEN

as the jeep-cursor speeds away from Tully's blinking locator-dot.

Spence's eyes fixed on the screen as she makes a serious stab at swallowing
her own fist.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. RODINA -- BIOLAB

VERY SLOW PAN past monitors -- one flickering like a defective strobe, the
other displaying a readout in Russian -- past an overturned mug on a keyboard,
past assorted equipment, past the shattered ruin of the big stasis tube, to
Suslov and Braun cocooned in a glittering biomech structure of alien resin.
Braun is dead, his rib cage gaping.

SCEAMS and the HAMMER of automatic weapons.  Station crew fleeing in panic
enter through one door, crash into tables, scattering trays of food, claw at
one another to escape through another door.  The Vietnamese commando and her
partner are last into the room; they spin in unison and FIRE back through the
door.  SOUND of rending metal and loud inhuman RAGE.

The commandos scramble for the far door as the alien crashes into the mess:  a
new form, the result of Suslov's genetic tinkering.  Bigger.  Meaner.  Faster.
Able to reproduce more quickly.

The frantic crew are climbing a ladder.  The commandos start up the ladder.
They climb through a circular hatch.  Like the deck they stand on, the hatch
is made of heavy steel expansion-grid.  The alien swarms up the ladder, slams
into the hatch just as the commandos close and lock it.  The alien keeps on
slamming.  The steel begins to bulge and tear...

INT. ANCHORPOINT -- OPS ROOM

Hicks, Bishop, Rosetti, Shuman, and Jackson.

JACKSON
Cant's raise 'em, boss.

SHUMAN
Try the diplomatic codes...

JACKSON
Diplomatic codes?  They aren't responding to
Mayday International.  Maybe they've got a
transponder down, but -- hey, check this,
outgoing traffic...
(she bobs her head, taps
her lapboard)
It's a squirt transmission... Military decryption
standard.

ROSETTI
What do they have in the area?

JACKSON
(taps up a fresh screen
of data)
Not much.  Automated mining system working
NC-313... Test module for a terraforming operation
enroute MV-45... And, here we go, the battle
cruiser Nikolai Stoiko.  Nine hours from Rodina
if they push it.

HICKS
What I wanna know is, what do we have in the
area?

JACKSON
(another screen of data)
Not much.  How about the Kansas City, Colonel
Admin transport?  We hit her with a mayday,
she'll get here inside twenty hours.

HICKS
Then what?

ROSETTI
We abandon the station.

HICKS
Destroy the station, man!  We got nukes?

ROSETTI
Outlawed under the Strategic Arms Reduction
treaty.

JACKSON
We can fiddle the overrides on the fusion
package.  Baby nova.

BISHOP
We're dealing with a new form, Colonel.  We
know nothing of this new mode of reproduction.
Others may have already become hosts...

ROSETTI
What are you suggesting?

BISHOP
In order to be entirely certain, Colonel, it
would be necessary to override the fusion
package now.

Jackson looks up at Bishop; he's suggesting mass suicide.

HICKS
I thought you were programmed to protect human
life?

BISHOP
(with android blandness)
I'm taking the long view.

Jackson's console CHIMES, begins to display new data, ID shots of three crew
members.

JACKSON
Missing persons.
(she taps her way through
windows of data)
Two were members of the clean-up crew who did
the lab after the blowout.  Third doesn't
check... No, wait.  Lives with one of the first
two.. But that makes a total of fifteen...
Something's happening...

HICKS
Goddamn, Rosetti, it's catching!

ROSETTI
(ignores him)
Mayday Kansas City, Jackson.

HICKS
What about Sulaco?

SHUMAN
It would take two days to raise her.

HICKS
(bitterly)
With that shit on board.

ROSETTI
Gateway will have our warning before Sulaco
arrives.

SHUMAN
Fine, Colonel.  And who do you suppose will be
willing to take it seriously?  Weapons Division?

JACKSON
Hey, I'm getting something!  The socialist space
brothers speak at last...

Her main screen flickers and jumps; the speakers hill with a roar of STATIC --

JACKSON
(continuing)
Their transmission standards get worse all the --

She falls silent as the screen clear, revealing a young Slavic madwoman -- one
of Suslov's lab assistants -- in blood-drenched coveralls.  Jerky handheld
video, grainy transmission, indistinct background.  She clutches a sheet of
paper, reads aloud from it in a foreign language.

SHUMAN
Get a translation program on line, Jackson!

Jackson's already punching.  An instantaneous computer translation cuts in as
V.O.; the girl's lips move, out of sync, like a cheap dub; the transmission is
rendered in flat synthi-voice.

CLOSE UP ON SCREEN

SPOKESWOMAN
... of Progressive Peoples.  Technician First
Class, Tatjana Malik.  Please, we wish to inform
you:  we have undertaken an experiment with