Conflicts of the last progenitors

You’re turning those probes into

kamikazes?

Upon the screen, the twelve Dragonflies speed upward, shaking;

132.

their red hot hulls become white with the heat they endure.

Like twelve luminous boomerangs, the ships arc around...and descend.

EXT. OPTION-1 OCEAN - SAME

The colossal ship sits like a petrified bat over its dwarfed adversary, the enshadowed Elysabeth.

From the sky above fall twelve burning, SIZZLING white stars--

the Dragonflies. Trailing smoke, dripping molten steel, the insectile crafts careen toward the seventeen-mile-long crescentcraft.

The probes fan out, accelerate and impact the icy surface: twelve flowers of white fire and black smoke burgeon along the top of the lavender ship, a series of SNAPS followed by BOOMS.

INT. MULTISTAR COUNCIL ROOM - SAME

Graynose, Florida, Hector and the other gathered Seniors stare at the monitor.

The bright explosions of the twelve probes can be seen from below, through the lavender ice of the ship. The conflagrations fade.

EXT. OPTION-1 OCEAN - SAME

Twelve molten disks resembling featureless dimes pepper the surface of the crescentcraft.

The cyclopean vessel tilts its southern end two degrees down: the metal ingots- all that remain of the Dragonflies-smoothly slide off of the ship, thorough the air and into the water: SPLASH-SPLASH-SPLASH...

The lavender surface of the crescentcraft is unblemished.

INT. MULTI-STAR COUNCIL ROOM - SAME

The Seniors are silent and grave.

INT. THRUSTER BAY (INTERNAL) / LEFT LEG - SAME

Water and ice ROAR through the bottom breach, into Elysabeth’s left thigh;

133.

Fleischwerk detritus, metal shards, sparking wires and spraying arteries make the environment a volatile, CRACKLING, HISSING maelstrom.

Manned by two PEOPLE each, three repair spheres- Handyman units- attend to the holes in the leg.

INT. MULTI-STAR COUNCIL ROOM - SAME

Graynose, Florida, Hector and the fourteen other Seniors on-board watch the panorama screen that hangs from the ceiling.

The broadcast displays a shot of the seventeen-mile-wide lavender crescentcraft looming eight thousand feet overhead.

The five moons in the sky are faintly visible through the ice of the craft.

ELYSABETH’S VOICE

Everyone please remain where you

are while the threat is being

handled. You will be informed what to do when action is needed. Thank you.

All of the Seniors look to Graynose; the perspiration-glazed man wipes his face.

GRAYNOSE

It’s not a coincidence that we shot the sculptors’ legs and now this

craft has done the same to our

ship. Clearly, they are allied

with this craft.

(to an eye in the wall)

Elysabeth, can you see any movement within the alien vessel?

The panorama screens divides into forty-eight images; Elysabeth’s powerscopes scan the cylinders of the vast ship.

One of the images locks in on a solitary tube and tightens.

Inside the lavender ice, suspended in a solution with luminous bubbles, is a pink worm with two ‘heads,’ each covered with a dozen tubes supporting white eyes.

GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)

Tighter.

The image grows larger, admitting more detail. The worm’s body is covered with a net of green veins; from its underside sprouts white hair; thirty pink tentacles of varying length jut from its ‘chest’. From the swollen region at the bottom of its body emerge two white branches which terminate in dozens of spoke-like fingers.

134.

GRAYNOSE (CONT'D)

(enervated)

Elysabeth...give us some scale.

How...how large is that life form?

ELYSABETH’S VOICE

Eleven feet in diameter; seventy-

four feet long.

The Seniors stare at the ICEWORM, stunned and horrified. The creature’s posterior ‘arms’ move at incredible speeds (poking luminous bubbles), while the tentacular extrusions languidly writhe.

GRAYNOSE

Are there more of these...ice

worms?

The panorama image divides into thirty: each image isolates another iceworm, adrift in a serum with luminous bubbles, its white branches a flurry of activity.

HECTOR

I think we’ve come upon that

technologically superior species

Jesca described.

FEMALE VOICE (O.S.)

We need to get our people out of

the sculptors’ cave and then we

need to leave this planet.

The Seniors look over at the woman entering the room.

Escorted by two Bullets, leaning on a crutch, is the bruised former-leader Thakani.

THAKANI

I have nineteen qualified pilots

ready to retrieve the people

stranded within the settlement. My volunteers are not afraid to die:

they will not leave until they have completed their mission.

Graynose stares at Thakani, pondering.

THAKANI (CONT'D)

May we redeem ourselves?

GRAYNOSE

You may.

135.

INT. THE HUMAN PLATEAU - SAME

Fifty-one sculptors face thirty Bullets; the stone icon lies between them; both groups are still and tacit. Lo-Cheun TAPS

his earplug.

LO-CHEUN

We’re pulling out. Elysabeth is

threatened with annihilation and a

fight here won’t help matters.

Sven and Abacus beeline for the Bio division’s hover-van. Lo-Cheun looks back at the stunned workers standing within the settlement.

LO-CHEUN (CONT'D)

Empty the hover-vans and pack in as many people as you can. They’re