Being the hardcore soldier he was, Colonel Decker would preferably have had his soldiers return to the Hercules with the disciplinary form he always invoked into his troopers – but the lot that came back from the surface of LV-426 were in no shape to maintain those military manners. The prisoner Morse met them as they disembarked, or rather stumbled off the dropship that had docked in the hangar – the look on their conditions spoke volumes that things had not gone according to plan.

"You look like you've been through several rounds with the devil," the prisoner said with a face that looked more curious than concerned.

"That's not far from the truth," Hicks replied being supported by Bishop as he stepped down to the deck of the landing-bay. He had been able to stand upright back inside the derelict while his adrenaline-level was still at its peak, but now that it had dropped down to low levels, Hicks felt the severe ache of the injuries he had sustained.

"What happened down there?" Morse asked as he studied the other troopers who slid their feet across the deck as they staggered towards the exit of the hangar. He wasn't the only one who raised the question.

"But how could you get beat up like this?" the pilot of the dropship asked as he and his co-pilot Samson carried a stretcher with the unconscious Sgt. Hurst laying on it. "You had weapons and the objectives were supposed to be dormant. You say you fought and almost lost to a bunch of animals?"

"Listen Riker, you weren't there, okay?" Simpson responded angrily. "You and Samson sat in your nice safe cockpit while we got our asses chipped by those stinking bugs!"

Morse's facial expression turned even more curious. "You encountered one of those creatures?"

"Three of them," Hicks told him. Deep down he wondered why he shared this information with the convicted felon. "We got one K.I.A. and three critical W.I.A. – four if you include the colonel's wounds."

"Three of them against all of you and all they accomplished was that? Those must've been of a weaker brand. It did after all only take just one to kill all of us back at Fiorina."

"Well, we had guns and you didn't." Now it was Hicks that looked at Morse curiously. "You almost sound disappointed that they failed to kill us?"

Morse smiled. "You have to see it from my perspective: I'm a prisoner. Surely it would be to my benefit if my guards were incapacitated, don't you think?"

Hicks decided to not pursue the matter further. The prisoner was a strange man who gave him the creeps. He wondered again what Morse's crimes were. Instead he turned to Bishop:

"Let's get to medical. I want Newt to have a complete check-up."

"Speaking of which…" Bishop said, looking around. "Where is she?"

Despite the pain in her chest, Newt felt that what she really needed the most right now was some time left alone. She knew that Hicks was concerned for her wellbeing of course, but the thought of those doctors, those strangers touching and groping her made her feel uncomfortable. Besides, they were so cold and dispassionate – so military - quite unlike the doctors that had been part of her colony. And the female doctor had without hesitation even attempted to put her to death. The girl therefore wanted absolutely nothing to do with them - so as soon as the dropship had returned to the hangar of the Hercules, she had snuck out through the opening hatches while the soldiers had been busy with attending to the wounded. Once outside, she had made her way into the only space where she expected to find solitude as well as some safety: in the air ducts.

The ducts were cramped, but that didn't bother Newt at all. She actually preferred it that way. Going into places where others couldn't fit was how she had survived the alien attack back at her colony and now these tight ventilation shafts were adequate to give her some privacy once again. The encounter with the aliens down in the derelict had really shaken her up and right now she didn't feel safe anywhere even though they had left the xenomorphic organisms behind down on the planet. Next trip down though, they would be brought up as Colonel Decker had proclaimed that they would, and when that happened the last shred of safety aboard the Hercules would be gone. (Not that there had been much of that onboard in the first place.) At least her part in this was now done – the soldiers did not need her down on the planet anymore, so they would not take her with them the next time they went. They probably didn't want her down there anyway, nor did she want to be.

After some crawling, Newt arrived at a large cavity of the ventilation system. It appeared to be a cross-section where several shafts interlinked. It reminded her of her colony's ventilation system's pressure-relief bubbles; just like the one where she had made her hideout after every adult had disappeared. It was perfect. This was a spot where she could try to relax and still make an escape in any direction she'd like should someone or something try to come after her from any of the connecting tunnels. At least that was the plan in her young mind. As she sat down settled against the wall to allow herself a calm moment, a feeling of drowsiness immediately overpowered her. If it was because she was more tired than she had realized or if it was an effect of the residual painkiller drugs that still hadn't gone out of her systems, she didn't know. Either way she fell asleep although that hadn't been her intention - and when she came to, she'd found that she wasn't alone in her hideout any more.

"Oh! Excuse me. I didn't know you were there," the small man named Fixer said. He had just emerged from one of the side-shafts, carrying a toolbox in his hand. Newt only stared blankly at him, more disturbed with that her senses had been so dulled that she hadn't detected him sooner rather than her being compromised inside the cross-section.

"Not to trouble you, but this is not a good place for you to be," Fixer continued. "Should the colonel find out that you're crawling around in here, he will probably become quite furious. I'm only saying that because I don't want you to get into trouble."

"What worse can he do to me than all the horrors I've already been through?" Newt asked him with a somewhat detached voice. Her retort took Fixer by surprise: it was a statement that was expected to come from a grown-up – not a child. He had never heard her speak before, so he had no idea that the girl had stopped being a traditional child since a long time ago.

"Well… just thought that I should give you a warning about it," the small man said collecting himself. "The colonel is quite strict with not allowing unauthorized personal occupying sealed areas without supervision from someone of his regular staff. So granted, I shouldn't be here either. So I won't tell if you don't. Agreed?"

Newt didn't answer – she just gave a very small nod with her head.

"I'll be out of your hair soon," Fixer continued as he crawled towards the opposite wall of the area. "I'm just going to do a little rerouting behind one of the panels inside this junction." He began to unlatch a panel.

"Rerouting of what?" Newt asked, watching what the other was doing.

"There's too much electricity going through these cables. I need to divert some of the current to relieve the main circuitry of the pressure."

Newt's next sentence took Fixer by even more surprise than her first words had. "In other words: you want to avoid a burn-out. Did any of the power-converters overload?"

"You know about such things?" The little man was impressed. To meet such a young child with knowledge of power-cables and converters was unexpected – especially out here in space. Newt simply shrugged.

"Happened all the time back home – in my colony I mean. Many of the supporting generators were wind-powered, but no one who hasn't lived there knows how strong the winds of Acheron really are. The dynamos were often running way beyond their capacities and became overheated. And the electricity generated burned out many of the cables. That's when they called in my daddy. He was the one fixing those when they broke down." Newt leaned her head against the wall, smiling at the memory. "There were several stations creating air spread all over the planet. My dad brought us with him sometimes in a tractor when he had to go out and repair one of them because it took time to get to each one and then back. My brother wasn't that interested, but I loved to help my daddy repair the stations. That's how I learned the stuff. Of course, I was only allowed to use the spanner from time to time – but I caught on quite well on what he was doing. I have a very good memory."

Fixer smiled. "So your father was an electrician?"

"Part time… and part time wildcatter."

"Then you were planning to follow him in his footsteps, I take it?"

There was no joy in her voice as she replied. "Daddy would have liked that. But now…" Newt felt her eyes beginning to sting.

"I'm sorry," Fixer said now concerned. "I should have remembered that your father was…" He didn't finish the sentence.

"Do you know what the worst part is?" she asked. The other shook his head. "No matter how much I try, I can't remember his face. It's… hidden!" She didn't elaborate, because she was already shivering. She didn't expect Fixer to understand that every time she tried to remember her father, no matter what situation she had attempted to picture him in, the face-raping parasite was always present wrapped tightly around his head.

"When we get back home, maybe you can ask the Company for his personal file. There's probably a photo of him in that." Fixer was meaning well, but Newt snorted.

"I want nothing to do with them!" she said determinately. "It was one of them that sent us out to that ship so that the monsters could kill him!" Her tone changed to one of bitterness. "Daddy never trusted the Company. He didn't like them – and I don't either!"

"I can understand your resentment… but why didn't your dad like them?"

"He saw them as… bad people. Those running the Company, I mean. Dad always said that the Company wanted total domination and that they would step over other people to get it. In fact, he came here because he wanted to have control over his life. But the Company owned the colony too…"

Newt didn't know why she spoke so candidly with a man she hardly knew, but she trusted her instincts – she felt that this man would not abuse her confidence. "He wanted so much to be free of them… he often spoke of how he would one day be lucky and make a fortune and start a new life for us. He was so excited when we found the ship… he thought we were going to be rich… but instead…" Newt couldn't continue. Instead of finding a fortune, Newt's father had found death.

"I believe in a way I understand him," Fixer told her. "I am not overly fond of them either, but please don't tell anyone I said that. It is hard to feel you've got control of your life when you're some kind of a target. I mean: look at me. I'm quite short-grown, and it's quite hard to gain respect when you're like this."

"Do they tease you?" the girl asked.

"Not openly. But I can hear the whispers behind my back, and I can see some resentment in their faces whenever they speak to me."

"I know the feeling. When we played monster-maze in the air-ducts back home, the other kids claimed that I was cheating at the game just because I could go into places where they couldn't fit. They couldn't take that I just happened to be smarter than they were – I was the ace, and they couldn't handle that."

"Oh, so that's how you found your way in here."

"It's the only place where I feel that I can be alone."

"Then I'll just quickly fix these cables so that you'll get your privacy." Fixer leaned inside the open panel.

"That's okay. I don't mind you." Newt crawled over to sit beside him to see what he was doing; the curiosity got the better of her. "Maybe I can hold the light for you so that you can see what you're doing?"

"That would be much appreciated," he said cheerfully. "Well, since you helped your father to repair things like this, then you do know what first rule of dealing with electricity is?"

"Sure. Always cut the power before touching the cables," she said as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

"You are really smart for being so young. That's something everyone who has not got the proper knowledge always forgets." There was a fuse-box within the service-compartment just above the main cables. Fixer leaned in and flipped the main switch, closing all circuits. Then he fished out his polysizable screwdriver and started to loosen the screws to some of the connectors – at least those he could immediately reach.

"Hey, do you mind holding that bundle of wires up so that I can get to the inner screws?" Fixer asked the girl. She didn't answer in words, but she was happy to oblige. As the work progressed, she assisted the mechanic in any way she could, and she even took over the screwdriver on some occasions. An unexpected feeling that Newt had not expected to feel again came to her: it was like she was back at her home and helping to repair the equipment. It was a good feeling, and one that she desperately didn't want to lose again.

The need for a damaged body to heal was no excuse to deviate from discipline – not in Colonel Decker's mind. Hicks was well aware of this from his first service-period with the 'Rawhides', so he'd expected nothing less as he and Dagger were instructed to begin scrubbing all the toilets on deck C that same evening, using only toothbrushes for cleaning. Hicks and Dagger had after all been put on penalty duty for their fight in the mess hall the day before and the colonel always made sure that every duty-rooster was carried out to the letter. It didn't matter how wounded you were from a battle; if the soldier was able to stand on his own feet, then the penalty was to be carried out as planned. So for Hicks and Dagger, the evening was spent on cleaning the lavatories, but fortunately the work went smoothly and without any similar incidents that had led them to the penalty in the first place. Dagger was quite shaken up from the battle with the aliens, so he did his job to preoccupy himself from reliving the experience in his mind and without saying a word for protest – something that was otherwise quite unusual for his character, but still a welcoming change. That meant Hicks could finish his job quickly enough and finally be released, and then he was free to try to locate Newt. He found her as she put back a cover to a ventilation duct in one of the corridors.

"So that's where you disappeared to. I should have known."

Newt jumped back at the sound of the voice. Although it was only Hicks, the girl looked somewhat embarrassed that she'd been caught exiting the ships ventilation system, but that was because she knew that she really wasn't allowed to be in there. Fixer wouldn't say anything and she was fairly certain that Hicks wouldn't give her away to Colonel Decker either – but she would've been more comfortable with her new hideout having remained a secret between her and the midget mechanic only.

"You know, you really shouldn't be in there." Hicks told her gently. "If Decker found out he'd instantly lock you up in the brig."

"I… I needed someplace where I could be alone for a while."

Hicks let the matter drop. Instead he brought up his primary concern. "Are you all right? After what happened down there?"

"I'm f-fine." she said, resisting the urge to touch her aching chest. That pain didn't seem to want to subside and it worried her. But she was hesitant to tell the adult that. Her words were therefore just as much a lie to herself as it was to the corporal. "I'm all right."

"I want to have one of the doctors to check you out." Hicks said extending his hand towards her, inviting her to take it. But she refused.

"I said I'm fine!" That had come out harsher than Newt had intended, but the meaning behind it was clear. She had already decided that she was not going to see any of those doctors, therefore she ran off as soon as the words had left her mouth. Hicks shouted her name, pleading to her to come back, but she would not listen.

The girl continued to keep her distance from both Hicks and Bishop even the next day. She spent most of her time with Fixer now, assisting him with all the repairs that were needed throughout the ship. The Rawhides were all mean marines - they lived to fight and kill; therefore maintenance was not a skill anyone of them carried. The Hercules was actually in a worse shape than what military protocols demanded, so Fixer had taken it upon himself to fix many of the damaged systems - not only to occupy himself, but to prove his continued usefulness during the mission. And as long as the mechanic did that, Colonel Decker could tolerate the civilian's presence. The bonus was that if the midget was willing to take the child under his wing, then so much the better. That meant that the child was kept out of his and the rest of the army's way, although he did not officially approve of Newt being around many of the ship's key-systems. Decker made sure to tell Fixer that he would be held directly accountable if the girl messed something up.

Meanwhile the mission had finally begun to get ahead according to the original plan. Next morning the dropship went back down to the surface of LV-426 with a new batch of egg-claws, and now that there were no more aliens guarding the cargo-hold of the derelict, collecting the specimens proceeded without trouble this time. And since Sgt. Hurst and Private Shawn were still in sick-bay, it left room within the dropship to bring up something extra.

It was not a deliberate incident. Newt and Fixer just happened to be in the corridor replacing a fuse for a malfunctioning door when the soldiers brought in their first load on radio-controlled trolleys. Newt was just finishing tightening the bolts of a cover-plate to the circuit-board compartment back in place using Fixer's motor-driven polysizable screwdriver when an alien egg came into her peripheral view, and she instinctively jumped back in fear.

"It's okay, Newt. The beast is sealed inside by the claw and cannot get out," Hicks assured her, but he didn't sound overly convinced himself. Sure enough, the egg-claw was in place locking the petal-shaped opening down tightly, but the parasite within it was not so willingly subdued. All of the dozen eggs that the soldiers had brought up with them shook and rattled as the facehuggers struggled to get out so they could do their single purpose in life. It even sounded like the small creatures screamed in rage. Fortunately it looked like they struggled to no avail, but didn't make Newt feel less apprehension in any way. The monsters were on the ship and the last of the safety-feeling she had been able to grasp onto was now completely gone.

"Is that what we came here to pick up?" Fixer asked sounding both astonished and a little frightened, possibly from both the reaction Newt displayed and the gruesome appearance of the eggs. The fact that the eggs quivered so much with such aggressive tremors fueled the repulsive feeling that crept along his spine with a chilling sensation even more.

"That's it," Hicks confirmed shortly with a dejected tone that spoke volumes of defeat.

"All right, what are you all waiting for?" Colonel Decker's harsh commanding tone cut in over the muffled shrieking sounds that came from the sealed eggs. "I want these specimens moved to the assigned storage compartment and secured there. The room will afterwards be sealed until the next load and no one will be allowed near that area! It will be off-limits! Is that understood?"

"Like anyone would even want to be near the place," Hicks muttered under his breath.

"The last specimen is an exception," Bishop said from the back of the line. "It'll go to the science lab. I'll take it there myself."

"Don't remind me," Hicks muttered again, more angrily this time.

"Whatever," every other soldier said dismissively as they rolled away the eggs down the corridor. Newt pressed herself hard against the wall as the eggs rolled past her, trying to get as much of a distance from them as she could, but then she got even more upset as she saw the load on the last trolley that Bishop had referred to.

"Why did you bring that up here?" The last specimen wasn't an egg – it was the remains of the first drone Hicks had killed in the derelict.

"Research," Bishop explained to her shortly as if he was surprised that the child even asked the question. "I've only been able to study the smaller creatures from the eggs so far, never a fully grown variant."

From Newt's perspective, it was not a justifiable reason. "Why are you helping them?" Her tone was filled with accusation and her eyes brimmed from a feeling of betrayal. "You know what those monsters did to my home! To Ripley's crew and to your former team!"

Bishop's tone was as calm and patient as always when he spoke. He understood Newt's dismay and he was not at all offended by her accusations of his actions. "I know exactly what they did, and I truly regret that you had to experience that horror. But I wish you could believe me when I'm telling you that it is in fact you I'm trying to help. You, the people aboard this ship, and the rest of the galaxy. The more I can learn from the creatures, the more I expect we can find the means to handle them so that they won't destroy another colony again."

"Those are not your words!" Newt shot back. "It's the words of the Company! Of the one who built you!" It was a good thing that Bishop was a synthetic; anybody else would have felt instantly insulted by the girl's outburst. But he did look wounded.

"I won't ask you to trust me, because right now you're too hurt to be able to and I perfectly understand that. But I assure you: one day you will understand why I'm doing this." Bishop touched a switch on the control-box he was holding and the trolley with the dead alien rolled down a side-corridor to the lab-section of the ship with the android walking beside it, leaving Hicks, Newt and Fixer behind.

"The most disturbing thing is that he actually managed to talk Decker into taking that carcass with him," Hicks said.

"Why did you let him do it?" Newt asked. The corporal was perplexed. Was the child accusing him now?

"I did speak against it, but Colonel Decker overruled me."

"You mean you can't do anything?"

"My hands are tied, kid. All I can do is to obey orders, no matter how much I disagree with them. That's the way of the army."

"Well, I hate the army! I hate Decker! I hate the monsters! I hate the Company and I hate Bishop! I even hate Ripley!"

"Newt…" Hicks attempted to lay a soothing hand on the girl's shoulder but she instantly slapped it away.

"Back off! I hate you too!" And then she ran away, leaving Hicks standing dumbfounded and a bit upset as well. What did he do to deserve that? He's been trying to help her all along. He looked over at Fixer, looking for an explanation of Newt's behavior from him. The little man had none to give though, all he could do was to give Hicks an assurance that he would continue to keep an eye on her as soon as she had calmed down.