Alien vs. Predator Page #3

one precise movement and crosses the wooden paneled floor to her desk.

Mopping her face with a towel, she thumbs a stud. The RINGING TONE stops,

the corporate logo on her flat-screen desk panel replaced with a black girl's

face.

HIROKO (CONT'D)

Noguchi.

CASSIE:

(O.S., onscreen)

Something just came up on Deep Space

Tracking.

HIROKO:

What kind of 'something'?

CASSIE:

(O.S., onscreen)

Easier if you come down and look.

HIROKO:

I'm on my way.

EXT. RYUSHI STATION - MIDDAY

An eight-wheeled articulated crawler rolls noisily through the rain, climbing

an access ramp leading from the swamp to the outpost's empty main-street. A

group of rhinos - brown two-horned quadrupeds indigenous to Ryushi -

restlessly stir in their corral at it's approach. The crawler's pneumatics

HISS gently as it comes to a halt, while somewhere off in the distance a dog

BARKS. DON KAMEN, a lean man in his forties. climbs down from the cab

mounted five feet above the ground and squints up at the main relay antenna.

He adjusts the cowboy hat on his head against the drizzle and crosses the

street towards one of the buildings, ignoring a Pepsi sign CREAKING in the

gentle breeze. A glass-paneled door SWISHES automatically open before him.

INT. RYUSHI STATION - COMMAND CENTER

KAMEN steps into the command center, nodding familiarly to the DUTY

PERSONNEL. A long-haired labrador rushes up to KAMEN, wagging it's tail.

Her name is BREWSTER. She's the base mascot. KAMEN reaches down and ruffles

it's fur. He climbs the few stairs to the monitoring tier, pulling the

French-plaited hair of ANNIE URIOSTE, an Italian systems-mechanic with her

hands buried in a disassembled console.

URIOSTE:

You didn't wipe your feet coming in.

KAMEN:

Well, it's okay. You didn't tell me it

was monsoon season going out.

PARSONS looks up at KAMEN and grins.

PARSONS:

Hey, buenos dias, cowboy. When d'you

blow in?

KAMEN places his hat on PARSONS' head and THUMPS it down.

KAMEN:

Just got back. Missed anything?

URIOSTE:

(snorts)

Yeah. We're almost out of beer.

PARSONS:

Ahh, don't pay any attention to Urioste.

She's still pissed that Noguchi wouldn't

let her go off on your hunting trip.

KAMEN pours himself a cup of coffee from a BUBBLING percolator.

KAMEN:

Wasn't my trip, I just did the driving.

'Sides, freezing my butt off out in the

wet taking pot-shots at the local wildlife

isn't _my_ idea of a good time, either.

He sips gingerly from the cup of scalding liquid.

PARSONS:

Where'd you leave them?

KAMEN:

Camped out by the navi-beacon out on Linson's

Range. They're making their own way back

tomorrow.

CASSIE:

MarsCo went belly-up on the Dow Jones.

KAMEN:

Sh*t. When?

CASSIE:

Yesterday. We got the Network feed from

Gateway; it was the top story on 'Sixty

Seconds'. Biggest market crash since

twenty-four.

KAMEN looks ill.

KAMEN:

F***ing great. I invested some money in

them.

CASSIE:

You win some, you loose some.

KAMEN:

I lose 'em all, that's why I'm still out

here on this rock. Anything else you

wanna ruin my day with?

CASSIE:

No, but I got something that might interest

you.

HIROKO enters, pulling on a leather jacket.

HIROKO:

What've you got?

KAMEN nods to her and receives a quick smile for his trouble. They turn to

watch the display clear, replaced with a computer simulation of the

neighboring solar system.

CASSIE:

A pair of incomings. They popped-up on

the medium-range about thirteen twenty-

four local time.

PARSONS:

We figured on it being a magnetic anomaly,

but we ran a back-trace just to make sure.

CASSIE:

Yeah. Turns out they dropped straight

out of hyperspace.

The simulation ZOOMS IN, revealing two unidentified objects heading towards

the planet in the center of the display. Computer notations accompany them.

CASSIE (CONT'D)

Curious thing is, the mass detector says

they're too small to carry a deep-space

drive.

HIROKO:

Sounds like a couple of escape shuttles.

PARSONS:

That's what we thought.

HIROKO:

Have you got an updated Lloyds' Almanac

to cross-reff them through?

PARSONS:

Done it already. Nothing matches.

CASSIE:

And if you thought that was interesting,

watch this...

HIROKO watches the course of the two objects simultaneously change.

KAMEN:

Jesus.

PARSONS:

Yeah, exactly. Those're _pre-programmed_

course adjustments you're looking at.

KAMEN:

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