Now that the introductory chapter is over with, we can jump right in! Y'know, fanfiction really needs to add an "action" genre. Seriously. Oh, and sorry that the chapters are all so short. I'll try and fix that, but my need to try and keep you all in suspense is just too much to resist.
What I want, you've got,
And it might be hard to handle,
Like the flame that burns the candle –
The candle feeds the flame.
Eh, eh!
Newt sang along enthusiastically, blasting the music from her radio.
What I've got is full stock,
Of thoughts and dreams that scatter.
You pull them all together,
And how I can't explain.
The song was interrupted by an incoming call. The phone company's generic ringtone filled the car, and Newt grinned at the caller I.D. on the electronic dashboard. She pressed, "answer".
"Hi, Ripley!" She sang.
"Hey, there, honey." The voice of her mother was warm and strong, even through the electronic device. "Where are you?"
"I'm on my way to pick up Dad." Newt responded.
"Oh, great! Would you remember to pick up some oregano?"
"Please tell me you're not trying to make dinner again." Newt groaned good-naturedly. "You set fire to the oven last time."
"Need I remind you that I survived for many years before Bishop came along and decided to become our personal housemaid, and we will survive now that he's gone." Ripley said with mock sternness. The android had indeed insisted upon 'easing their return to civilization', as he put it, mainly by keeping the house clean and running errands and fixing meals. About four years back a new line of androids had replaced the line that he came from, and last year he'd broken down. Unable to find the parts to fix him, they had been forced to say goodbye to their dear friend.
"Okay, I'll pick some up after I get Dad. Anything you want besides oregano?"
"Nope, that's it. Oh, hey, what did the board say? Did you get it?"
Newt grinned. "I'll tell you at dinner." She assured her. "Give Jonesy the Third a hug for me!"
"You spoil that cat way too much." Ripley said. She actually spoiled him more than any of them, but Newt didn't say that. Her mother was probably hugging and cuddling the orange tabby right that second.
"I'll be in touch." Newt said.
"Okay. I love you, baby."
"I love you too."
Newt terminated the call just in time to hear the radio announcer say,
"And that was the mash-up of two popular Hall & Oates songs, I Can't Go For That and You Make My Dreams, performed by the cast of the musical television show Glee. To celebrate the fiftieth season of the show, we will be playing songs the cast has covered–"
Newt switched off the radio. How such a fluffy, cotton-candy show had lasted a fifty years was anyone's guess. Still, she always enjoyed a little Hall & Oates.
In the distance, an immense complex began to rise out of the sand, and Newt eased off the accelerator. You never knew when you'd have to pull off the road to make way for an army caravan.
Fortunately, she reached the entrance of the base uninterrupted, slowing to a stop in front of the main guard gate. Newt rolled down her window.
"Hey there, Charlie."
"Hey, Newt!" The guard grinned. "Here to pick up your old man?"
"That 'old man' is your boss's boss." Newt reminded him jokingly. "And yeah."
"All right; come on in." Charlie started to raise the gate.
"Just like that?" Newt teased. "I could be a terrorist!"
"Newt, you come here a few times a week." Charlie reminded her.
"So? Someone could be hidden in the back seat, holding a gun to my head." Newt said with mock seriousness.
"I'll take that chance. In ya go, girlie." Charlie raised the gate.
Newt laughed. "Thanks, Charlie." She drove on through.
Seeing as her father hadn't taken his own car to work that day, she took the liberty of parking in the space reserved for his vehicle. Her slightly beat-up Jeep Wrangler stood out among the standard army vehicles, but not as much as it had at the university, where nearly every car was silver and all of them were younger than five years. She'd spent over two years working on her baby with her dad, breathing life back into the old shell, and she loved it almost as much as the aforementioned family cat.
Locking the car by pressing her fingerprint to the electronic sensory pad on the driver's door handle, Newt proceeded to make her way through the base. She waved to couple of people that she knew, and shouted insults regarding manhood to some trainees doing group exercises under the watchful eye of a Drill Sergeant. The Sergeant gave Newt a wink and a thumbs up, but never ceased his yelling.
She'd been coming to this a couple times a week ever since her father had been stationed there, and she knew everybody. Of course, she did have her favorites…
"Hey, Newt."
"Jonathan!"
Newt let the young man scoop her up into a hug. She'd known Private Jonathan Dallas since they were fourteen. He had a good couple of inches on her, although he was still on the short side, with light brown hair that never fully obeyed him no matter how much hair gel or combs he used. He'd had a bit of baby fat when he was younger but Marine training had cleaned him up quick, giving him tone and muscle and leaning out his face. His warm, soft eyes, however, had always stayed the same.
"I'm going to take a wild guess here," Jonathan said, setting Newt back on the ground, "You're here to see your dad."
"Yup." Newt said. "Is he in his office?"
"I wish. If he were he could actually oversee this stupid shipment delivery." Jonathan snorted. "No, Corporal Higgins escorted him to oversee a weapons demonstration about five miles out. He should be back in an hour."
"An hour?" Newt groaned. "Mom'll kill him. She's cooking dinner."
"Again? After what happened last time?" Jonathan grinned. "Well, if at first you don't succeed…"
"She set the stove on fire. I do not need a repeat of that."
"Hey, I guess setting fires runs in the family–"
Newt punched him in the shoulder. "That was an accident, and you know it. I didn't know those materials were flammable!"
Jonathan laughed. "Okay, you win that one. If you want, I can escort you to his office and you can hang out there. Snoop in his drawers, see what he got you as a present…"
"Ugh, he won't tell me! All he said was 'you earn that scholarship, I'll give it to you', and he won't even give me the tiniest hint!" Newt griped as she allowed Jonathan to lead her through the compound. Seeing the look on his face, she frowned. "You know what it is, don't you?"
"I have my suspicions." Jonathan said cryptically.
"Tell me!"
"Nope." Jonathan made a zipping motion across his lips with his fingers. "He's my boss, remember? He'd have my hide for spoiling his surprise for his precious little girl."
Newt gave Jonathan a glare, having long since learned that she couldn't pull off the puppy-eyed pout. He just shook his head.
"Not gonna work, Newt. You haven't seen him on a bad day. He's fucking scary."
Newt rolled her eyes and groaned and did her best to cajole Jonathan into at least giving her a hint, but eventually gave up. They moved onto the topic of their futures – namely, how Jonathan was doing with his goal of trying to get promoted to Private First Class, and Newt about her classes in college.
"I'm really looking forward to my biology class, because I have a few – hey, what's that?" Newt stopped, pointing towards a large truck that was in the process of being unloaded. The proud insignia of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (recently shortened to WeyYu) was stamped on the side of the vehicle, as well as each large box. The overlapping white 'Y' and yellow 'W' had been the subject of many racist jokes over the years, seeing as before the merger, Weyland had been an American company, and Yutani a Chinese one. After the death of Weyland's President, Meredith Vickers, Yutani had bought the corporation to save it from ruin, merging them and making the company that was stamped on every box containing energy, weapons, or engineering products.
"That? Oh – just the new delivery I was telling you about. WeyYu's got this new biochemical weapon for us to test out."
The primary job of the outpost – and the reason it was situated in the middle of the desert fifty miles outside of the city – was that it was a testing site for weapons for the government. Most of the men were U.S. Army, the few that weren't being the Marines that made up a small, specialized group within the compound, of which Jonathan was a member.
"Biochemical?" Newt said slowly, eyeing the boxes. "What kind?"
Jonathan shrugged. "Not sure. They imported them from a factory that's rumored to be off-planet."
"Off-planet?" Newt stopped. "What planet is it from, then?"
"Again, I'm not sure. I only know what little they told me – I'm just a Private, remember? All I know is that it's based in a former colony called Hadley's Hope."
Newt's body completely froze. Jonathan realized that she had not only stopped walking but was standing stock-still, and frowned. "Are you all right?" He asked concernedly.
"What… what else do you know about," Newt waved her hand towards the boxes. "This?"
"Um, well, they're being moved into a containment room before we start a preliminary examination of the weapon." Jonathan said. "Biological, chemical, machine or whatever, examination comes first. You have to know–"
"Your weapon inside and out." Newt finished for him. "I was raised by a Marine, Jonathan, I know. First thing he set out to do when we got back to Earth was to teach me how to use a gun."
Jonathan noted the phrase 'back to Earth' but said nothing. In all the years he had known Newt, he had never heard anything much about her life before her parents adopted her. Whenever he asked, she'd either changed the subject or brushed him off, saying that she'd tell him another time. Now was definitely not that time.
"Do you want me to show you the room? You can't go inside, but you can take a look." Jonathan said. "I know you don't trust WeyYu, Newt, but trust me, it's an army base; everything's under control."
Newt shuddered involuntarily. "It's not the insignia on the boxes so much as what's in them that's got me worried." She admitted.
Jonathan placed a hand on the small of her back and guided her towards the containment room. "Here," He said, leading her around to the side. "There's a viewing room you can look through."
The viewing room was nothing more than a hallway with floor-to-ceiling bulletproof windows on one side, allowing the occupants to see into the containment room. A couple of officers were standing by, including one that Newt recognized.
"Hey, Hurt." She said, nodding to the Army Private.
Hurt nodded back. Everyone knew and liked the Staff Sergeant's daughter. He looked over at Jonathan. "What's she doing here?"
"She's waiting for Staff Sergeant Hicks to return from inspection, sir. She expressed concern about the shipment and wanted to take a look. We'll only be a minute."
"As you were." Hurt said agreeably, turning back to look at the containment room.
A couple of men were beginning to unpack a stack of boxes, all with the WeyYu logo glaringly obvious, almost mocking with its bright, shining colors. Newt unconsciously leaned in, trying to see what was inside.
One of the men set down the contents of his box on the examination table. When Newt saw it, all of the breath went out of her.
"Oh dear God no…"
Jonathan gave her a strange look. "Newt? You okay?"
The man began to carefully prod at the immense, dark gray colored egg. He wrote a few things down on a clipboard. As he did so, the top of the egg opened up, blossoming like a flower.
Newt made a choking noise.
The man, absorbed in his work, did not notice. The others in the room went about their work, also oblivious to what the egg was doing.
"Newt?" Jonathan asked again. "Newt, what's wrong?"
Newt could only manage a strange, strangled word that no one understood. This wasn't happening, this was not happening. It was all some kind of horrible nightmare. It had to be. Why, just last week she'd dreamed about her stomach bursting open and had woken up screaming, her sheets drenched with sweat. Ripley had spent the rest of the night holding her so that she could go back to sleep.
But this wasn't a dream. This was real. Like she was watching a horror film, knowing what would happen but unable to look away, Newt watched the man notice the egg's, well, movement, so to speak, and peer down inside it.
The weird, crab-like creature leaped onto the man's face, its long snake tail whipping around and wrapping itself around his throat. The unfortunate man fell to the ground, twitching desperately for a moment before the creature inserted its eight probes, four on each side of the man's skull, and he fell unnaturally still.
The room was utterly silent.
Completely on instinct, Newt began to scream.
Yes, Jonathan's last name is a tribute to the only character in the original "Alien" film that I liked besides Ripley. The others were all just kind of annoying, except for Ash, who I rather wanted to rip apart circuit by tiny circuit. So that's just my little tip of the hat to the original Dallas.