rocketing up from below.  Jenna stares transfixed as the lift stops. The safety cage parts.

JENNA: (To Julie; low) Close your eyes, baby.

The lift doors begin to open. A glimpse of the apparition within.

ANGLE ON JENNA AND JULIE as the drop-ship RISES RIGHT BEHIND THEM, its hovering jets roaring.

VOICE: You now have thirty seconds to reach...

Jenna 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
Jenna leaps into a seat with Julie, cradling her. Begins strapping in. Kapu wrestles with the controls. The landing legs retract, ripping free. Jenna slams her seat harness latches home.

JENNA: Punch it, Kapu!

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. Jenna is slammed back in her seat. The ship vaults out and up, Kapu standing it on its tail, pouring on the gees.  Jenna and Julie 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
Jenna and Julie watch the blinding glare fade away and they sit, wide-eyed, trembling, realizing they are finally and truly safe. Julie starts to cry quietly, and Jenna strokes her hair.

JENNA: 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
Kapu stands behind Jenna as she kneels beside a comatose Breeze.

KAPU: I gave him a shot, for the pain. We'll need to get a stretcher to cart him up to medical.

Jenna nods and, picking up Julie, precedes Kapu down the aisle to the loading ramp.

KAPU: I'm sorry if I gave you a scare but that platform was just becoming too unstable...

INT. CARGO LOCK - DROP-SHIP 192
Kapu continues as they move down the ramp.

KAPU: I had to circle and hope things didn't get too rough to take you off.

Jenna turns to him, stopping partway down the ramp.  She puts her hand on his shoulder.

JENNA: You did okay, Kapu.
KAPU: 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 Jenna with milk like android blood.  It is the razor-sharp scorpion TAIL of the alien QUEEN.  Driven right through him from behind. Kapu 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 Kapu 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 Jenna half-fried it. The Queen is huge, powerful...and very pissed off. It descends slowly, its six limbs unfolding in inhuman geometries.

Jenna moves with nightmarish slowness herself, staring hypnotized...terrified to break and run. She lowers Julie to the deck, never taking her eyes off the creature.

JENNA: (To Julie) Go!

Julie runs for cover. The Alien drops to the deck, pivoting toward the motion. Jenna waves her arms, decoying.

JENNA: Here!

Without warning it moves like lightning, straight at her.  Jenna 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
Jenna moves ferret-quick among dark, unrecognizable machines.

VARIOUS ANGLES VERY TIGHT ON what she is doing...her feet going into stirrup like 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 Julie as the little girl crawls into a system of trench like 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
Julie 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.

Jenna 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.

Jenna'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.

JENNA: 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.

JENNA: (screaming) Come on!

The Queen emerges as a blur of rage, lashing with unbelievable fury. The battle is joined. Claws swipe, tail lAshes. Jenna 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. Jenna 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. Jenna 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. Jenna 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 buffeting 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
Julie screams as the hurricane air stream sucks her across the floor toward the airlock. Kapu, torn virtually in two, his pasta like internal organs whipped by the wind, grips a stanchion and reaches desperately for Julie as she slides past him. He catches her arm and hangs on as she dangles, doll-like, in the air blast.

INT. LOADING LOCK 199
The Alien seizes Jenna'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 Jenna's lucky hi-tops, into the depths of space. Its SHRIEK fades, it gone.

With all her strength Jenna 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. Gaspingfor breath. Weakly she turns her head, seeing Kapu still holding Julie by the arm. Encrusted with his ownvanilla milkshake blood. Kapu gives her a small, grim smile.

KAPU: Not bad for a human.

He winks. Jenna crosses to Julie.

JULIE: (weakly) Mommy...Mommy?
JENNA: Right here, baby. Right here.

Jenna hugs her desperately.

INT. CORRIDOR 200
Jenna limps along the corridor, carrying Julie on her hip. The ship's systems hum comfortingly. Julie's head rests on her shoulder.

JULIE: Are we going to sleep now?
JENNA: That's right.
JULIE: Can we dream?
JENNA: Yes, honey. I think we both can.

HOLD ON THEM AS they recede down the long straight corridor.

FADE OUT