Conflicts of the last progenitors

RECTANGLE

Think it’s a gift? A peace

offering?

128.

LO-CHEUN

Don’t know. If they had the

capabilities, I’d think it was a

bomb.

Lo-Cheun, Rectangle, the two Frenchmen and the other Bullets stare at the proffered crescent icon. Behind them in the construction area, workers climb the building frames to get a better view of the exchange. Sven and Abacus emerge from the cube lab.

Jesca races to the front line, HUFFING and sweating; she stops beside Lo-Cheun, PANTING, radiating steam from her run.

Lo-Cheun points to the sculpture.

LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)

(to Jesca)

Should we accept it?

Jesca looks at the sculptor: it stands as still as the stone it proffers.

JESCA

I-

(she PANTS)

I think so.

LO-CHEUN

Why?

JESCA

It’s holding-

(she PANTS)

It’s holding that icon at a-

(she PANTS)

It’s holding it low, so that a

human could take it. It wants

someone to take it.

Lo-Cheun looks at Rectangle.

LO-CHEUN

You’re the tallest Bullet present?

RECTANGLE

I am.

LO-CHEUN

Go. Don’t you dare get killed.

Rectangle grins.

129.

RECTANGLE

I’ve no intention of letting you be the only survivor of the old squad.

Lo-Cheun does not return Rectangle’s grin. The African two-star clips his j-gun to his hipcache, inhales to steady himself and walks toward One-”Eye” twenty feet away; the man’s strides are even, measured.

Lo-Cheun hears something alarming through his earplug.

LO-CHEUN

Stop!

Ten feet from the crescent sculpture and ten feet from the Bullet line, Rectangle stops. The sculptors train their eye sockets upon him; a few wriggle their enormous claws.

LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)

Return to formation.

Rectangle- not turning around- takes one step backward.

From the Bio encampment, Sven and Abacus anxiously observe the tense tableau.

Rectangle takes a second step backward. One-"Eye" throws the stone sculpture at him; the hurled crescent impacts and SNAPS

Rectangle’s knee backwards; he GRUNTS and collapses to the ground. The Bullets aim their weapons.

LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)

Bullets! Hold. Yves, Jean-James,

get Rectangle.

The two Frenchmen race toward Rectangle, pick him up by his arms and carry him back to safety. The injured Bullet endures his extreme pain in silence.

LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)

Elysabeth is besieged.

EXT. OPTION-1 OCEAN - MOMENTS LATER

A shadow wholly covers the Elysabeth, cast by a seventeen-mile-long crescent made of lavender ice. The top of the cyclopean vessel is perfectly flat; from its underside extrude thousands upon thousands of cylinders, all made of lavender ice...an upside-down metropolis.

Water drips from the cylinders, falls through eight-thousand feet of air and onto Elysabeth’s hull, a TATTOO of raindrops.

130.

INT. MULTI-STAR COUNCIL ROOM - SAME

Dishevelled and confused Seniors pour inside the summit room; Graynose turns to an eye in the ceiling.

GRAYNOSE

Try to get out from under it. Now.

EXT. OPTION-1 OCEAN - SAME

Thirty of Elysabeth’s boosters spark to life, flashing white luminance (FWISS) and CRACKING the ice.

One of the cylinders drops from the underside of the CRESCENTCRAFT. The lavender ice projectile lances into Elysabeth’s right thigh with a thunderous B-DOOM, plummets straight through the craft and submerges into the water below.

Red blood pours from the open wound in Elysabeth’s thigh.

She GROANS.

The submerged cylinder boomerangs back, lances up into Elysabeth’s other leg...and explosively emerges, B-DOOM.

Sparks, shards of steel, clots of Fleischwerk and gouts of blood erupt from the thirty-foot-wide wound.

The cylinder of lavender ice returns precisely to the nook in the underside of the crescentcraft whence it dropped; the surface of the cylinder is completely unscathed.

Elysabeth’s boosters darken; she sits idle in the shadow of the alien oppressor.

INT. FLEISCHWERK BUNDLE ROOM 1 - SAME

The walls are covered with hemispherical domes containing Fleischwerk woven with a filigree of dark red nerves. Tears drip from eleven eyeballs embedded in the ceiling and PLIP

upon the floor.

EXT. OPTION-1 OCEAN - SAME

A metal dome on Elysabeth’s back opens up to reveal twelve Dragonfly probes. With twelve bursts of light (POOMF) the insectile probes lurch into the air; rear thrusters fire, FWASH.

131.

The Dragonflies speed out of the crescentcraft’s shadow, into the viridescent night.

INT. MULTISTAR COUNCIL ROOM - SAME

Graynose, Florida, Hector and the other stunned Seniors look at the panorama screen: the assailing vessel threatens like a floating peninsula above them.

GRAYNOSE

What are you doing?

ELYSABETH’S VOICE

Counterattacking.

FLORIDA

With what?

ELYSABETH’S VOICE

Drones.

EXT. OPTION 1 ATMOSPHERE - SAME

Dragonflies climb into the atmosphere. Their hulls begin to glow with heat.

INT. MULTISTAR COUNCIL ROOM - SAME

The panorama image divides in two: the first image is of the crescentcraft, the second image is of the ascending probes.

The Dragonflies’ metal hulls glow bright red, heated by their flight into the atmosphere.

HECTOR

(to Elysabeth)

Spray them down-- they’re gonna

melt.

ELYSABETH’S VOICE

The alien craft radiates cold far

more frigid than the local climate--

heat seems a likely weakness.

FLORIDA