tracker, adjusting the tuning.

BREEZE: Well you're not reading it right!
ZEKI: Six meters. Five. What the fu --

He looks at Jenna. 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. Breeze climbs onto a file cabinet and raises a panel of acoustic drop-ceiling. He shines his light inside.

BREEZE' 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 BREEZE 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. Breeze 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. Julie screams. Zeki opens fire. Snowdrift grabs Breeze, pulls him up, firing one handed with her flamethrower. Jenna scoops up Julie and staggers back. Hahoku turns to fire and Not-much bolts for the only remaining exit, the corridor connecting to the med lab. In the strobe like 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, ballistic grace.

JENNA: 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 Not-much clears the door to the med lab. HE SLIDES IT CLOSED. Jenna slams into the door. Tries the latch. Hears it LOCK from the far side.

JENNA: Not-much! Open the door!
JULIE: 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, Jenna raises her rifle. She squeezes the trigger. NOTHING HAPPENS. The creature HISSES, baring its teeth as it advances.  Jenna checks the SAFETY. The safety is off. The DIGITAL COUNTER. The magazine is full. Julie begins to wail. Jenna'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.

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

INT. OPERATIONS 154
Breeze 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.

ZEKI: (Hysterical) Let's go! Let's go!
BREEZE: Fuck' All!

Zeki 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 sub floor crawlway. Breeze, Snowdrift and Hahoku make it to the med lab access corridor.

INT. CORRIDOR
Stunned, Jenna 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. Julie covers her ears against the CONCUSSION.

BREEZE: (v.s.) Hold you fire!

The troopers seem to materialize out of the smoke.

JENNA: (Indicating door) Locked.
BREEZE: Stand back.

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

HAHOKU: You can't use those in here!
SNOWDRIFT: Right. Fire in the hole!

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

BREEZE: (Shouting at Snowdrift) Thanks a lot! Now I can't hear shit.
SNOWDRIFT: (Shouting) What?

INT. MED LAB ANNEX 156
Snowdrift 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.

Jenna sprints across the room, trying the far door.  Not-much has locked it as well. Breeze switches his hand-torch from CUT to WELD and starts sealing the door they just passed through.

INT. MED LAB 157
Not-much, 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 NOT-MUCH 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. Julie grabs Jenna by the hand and tugs her across the room.

JULIE: Come on! This way.

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

JENNA: Stay behind me.

Jenna trades her rifle for Hahoku's flamethrower before he can protest and enters the air shaft, which is a tight fit. Julie scrambles in behind, followed by Breeze, Hahoku and Snowdrift on rearguard. Glancing back fearfully Julie pushes on Jenna's butt as they crawl rapidly through the shaft.

JULIE: Come on. Crawl faster.
JENNA: DO you know how to get to the landing field from here?
JULIE: Sure. Go left.

Jenna 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.

JULIE: Go right.

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

BREEZE: (Into headset) Kapu, you read me? Come in, over.

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

KAPU: (Voice over; static) Yes, I read you. Not very well...

EXT. UP-LINK RELAY - LANDING FIELD 159
Kapu is huddled against the base of the telemetry mast, out of the wind which is now gusting viciously.

KAPU: (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.

Kapu'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
BREEZE: All right, stand by there. We're on out way. Over.

The beam of Jenna'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.

JENNA: 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. Snowdrift uses her flamethrower, bathing the tunnel in fire. Breeze 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. Snowdrift' flamethrower sputters.

SNOWDRIFT: (Icy) Losing fuel.

Between eye-searing bursts of flame Jenna sees the glistening apparitions closing in. Breeze' 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. Breeze slides through the searing hole, lifting Julie safely through as Jenna hands her out. Jenna follows and turns to help Hahoku. Snowdrift' 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 chicken plate armor, searing into her thigh. She cries out, gritting her teeth against the white-hot pain. Hahoku sees Snowdrift 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. Snowdrift sees him, barely conscious.

SNOWDRIFT: (Hoarse whisper) You always were an asshole, Hahoku.

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

INT. SERVICE WAY 161
RUSHING WITH Jenna, Julie and Breeze as a full tilt run. The service way lights up with a POWERFUL BLAST behind them and they stumble with the shock