TITLE: ALIENS
SUMMARY: ALIENS rewritten with an extra female character, Charlotte. Her inclusion in the story will have an effect on how things will turn out, who lives, and who dies…
PAIRING: Hicks/OFC
LENGTH: 20-30 chapters.
RATING: PG-13 for language and violence and a tid-bit of romance:)
GENRE: Action/adventure/romance/horror
DISCLAIMER: I own my character, but I don't own anything that even remotely has to do with the ALIEN franchise. That privilege lies with 20th Century Fox. No copyright infringement is intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: As a side note, all of the information for this story, such as dates, times, events, names (except my OCs), and places, I got from some very handy websites. I got my grubby hands on an online script and I also happened upon a very useful ALIENS 'timeline.' Good Stuff. Anywho, like I said in the summary, some of the events of the story will change because Charlotte is now involved. So not everything is perfect to the script. It wouldn't be much of a story then, now would it? By the way, information about my character, Charlotte, is made up. As is her past and anything that she tells Ripley and the Marines. Kay… That is all.

Chapter 1: Hadley Looses Its Hope

JULY 3, 2179

Charlotte Hodges couldn't remember much of the dream she had. All she knew was that something dark and looming and dreadful was searching for her. She knew it was in the dark places ready to reach its clawed hand out and drag her screaming into the darkness.

Thank the heavens it was only a dream.

Charlotte's eyes fluttered open and she stared at the ceiling groggily. It was still dark in her small apartment. The automatic lights hadn't come on yet.

She tried stretching her body out underneath the thin sheet on her bed but stopped when she realized something heavy and warm was lying on her right arm. She turned her head to see a small child snuggled up against her, her back pushed cozily against Charlotte's side. She was curled up and holding a small brown teddy bear. Her neck rested on Charlotte's arm.

The woman smiled softly as she turned onto her side and, with her left hand, began to stroke the little girl's light brown curls. She vaguely remembered her daughter coming to her a couple of hours earlier claiming there were monsters under her bed and that she wanted to sleep in bed with her mother. The little girl shifted under her mother's touch and Charlotte silently hoped the girl wasn't having the same dream that she herself just woke up from.

Charlotte turned over onto her back and sighed, rubbing her eyes with her thumb and index finger. "I wish she didn't have to grow up here. This colony is no place for a child." she whispered to herself. She closed her eyes and was about to drift back into sleep when she heard something. Her eyes flew open. It was distant but very distinct. Gunfire. She heard gunfire. Six or seven shots, maybe.

Charlotte was completely still as she waited to hear more shots. Nothing. She heard a scream, though, and it was much, much closer than the gunfire.

Charlotte shot out of bed with such speed that she nearly got tangled up in the sheets and hit the floor. She darted to her dresser and slipped out of the blue tank top she wore and into a black, long sleeve shirt. The shirt said 'Weyland-Yutani… Building Better Worlds" across the chest. She threw on grey, faded pants and a pair of old Reebok sneakers that had been with her since she was back on Earth.

Her back was turned to the small pair of eyes that watched her from the edge of the bed. "Mommy? What's going on?"

Charlotte paused and hopped around to face her daughter in her little pink nightgown. One foot was in mid-air and she was trying to tie her shoe. "Nothing, baby. We have to go find your grandpa and uncle. Okay?" She spoke as softly and warmly as she could as she continued to tie her shoe. She didn't want to raise any alarms in her daughter and make her cry.

Suddenly there was more gunfire. And much closer, too.

Accompanying this gunfire, though, was an older man barging through Charlotte's bedroom door. "Dad!" she yelped.

He was holding onto the side of the metal door and leaning into her room. He seemed exhausted and out of breath but his eyes were wild and wide. He was shining a flashlight on the two females. "We're leaving, now! Grab Michelle!" the older man barked.

Doctor Malcolm Hodges was a balding, but cheery, man in his late fifties. But suddenly he seemed a lot older and meaner to Charlotte. She watched him scamper wildly around her room grabbing some of her belongings: her purse, a photograph, her ID card.

"What the hell is going on, Dad! Are those gunshots that I heard? And screaming! Where's Carl?" Charlotte demanded. If she was going to be frightened out of her mind she sure-as-hell wanted to know why.

The doctor stopped what he was doing, the flashlight in one hand and Charlotte's belongings in another. He watched her scoop up her daughter and the teddy bear that belonged to her. "Carl is… I don't know where Carl is. Probably playing some kind of goddamn hero out there! But you can't play hero with these things! That's why we have to leave, Charlotte…" This usually calm and collected man sounded nearly hysterical.

Charlotte felt fear creeping up her spine and she looked at Michelle, who had her head buried into Charlotte's shoulder.

"We're not going anywhere until we know why, Dad. And I mean it. And what 'things' are you talking about?" Charlotte said sternly. She tried desperately not to sound afraid.

Doctor Hodges stuffed the flashlight he had into the pocket of his long, white jacket. He left it on and facing upwards so it cast eerie shadows on his wrinkled face. His arm sprang out and clenched Charlotte's wrist. "You know what 'things' I'm talking about, Charlotte. The situation's gotten a lot worse. People are dying. That's why we have to get everyone we can to the barricaded area near Operations." His voice calmed down and now it was barely more than a whisper.

And in that moment, Charlotte knew what he spoke of. This was bad. For her safety and the safety of her six-year-old daughter, she had to get the hell out of there.

At the same time, Charlotte and her father bolted for the bedroom door and ran outside of Charlotte's small living space. The door slid shut behind them and Charlotte looked around. The long corridor was dimly lit and it seemed a lot more cold and menacing than it used to. Charlotte shivered as she placed Michelle on the hard, metal floor. The girl seemed to have the same response to the corridor her mother did.

Outside the main entrance to her home were five people. Three men and two women. All of them she knew. Nurses. Doctors. People she worked with. They all carried firearms of some kind. They looked frightened.

They all nodded to Charlotte and one of the men looked at Doctor Hodges. "Malcolm, we gotta go."

Her father nodded at the man, who Charlotte knew as her father's co-worker and fellow doctor, Ronald Shuman. The group started to move quickly down the corridor. They all then broke into a slow run as they turned a corner down another long hallway. Everyone's feet clinked eerily on the floor below them. It seemed to echo for a long distance.

Charlotte, Michelle, and Doctor Hodges brought up the end of the small group. Charlotte was pulling Michelle along and Doctor Hodges was pulling Charlotte along. "I'm so sorry, honey." The man looked over his shoulder at the frightened and suspicious woman who was holding his hand, his daughter. "I know this was so sudden. But things got complicated. Things got complicated all over the place. It's safer if we stick together and move quickly."

Charlotte looked over her shoulder at her daughter and the teddy bear she clutched. "It'll be okay, baby." Suddenly she and her daughter found it difficult to keep up with the group. They were starting to move too fast. "Dad," Charlotte called out, "slow down!"

Her father seemed to ignore her. "These things, these… creatures, have highly corrosive blood. Some kind of molecular acid." He said as they approached a rather large hole directly in the middle of the floor. "We shot one of those big fuckers and as it bled to death it fell right through the floor."

Charlotte looked past her father at the ground. The edges of the hole sizzled as the acid ate through it.

Then something frightening happened. When they passed the hole, Charlotte lost grip of her daughter. In fact, it's more like her daughter's hand was yanked from hers. A light, feminine scream filled the corridor.

In that moment time seemed to slow down for Charlotte.

She whipped her head around just in time to see her daughter being pulled into the darkness of the hole in the floor. The very hole that her father just spoke of. Then everything was silent.

All that was left was a small, brown teddy bear.

The group turned around just as Charlotte dove towards the hole. "Michelle?" she cried out. "Michelle!"

She picked up the teddy bear, grabbed the edge of the hole with her left hand, and looked into the darkness. But that ended quickly when a searing pain started in the palm of her left hand and shot up through her arm. She had touched the acidic blood around the edges. She screamed in agony and her body lurched back away from the hole.

"Michelle!" she screamed. "Michelle!"

By that time two people had grabbed her arms; her father and a young woman. They tried pulling her back as Charlotte tried to dive for the hole again, completely ignoring her wounded hand.

Even though he was right next to her, holding on to her actually, her father sounded so distant and muffled. "Charlotte, we have to go! We'll get Michelle. We'll get her. But right now we can't stay here!"

Tears were freely running down her cheeks as she tried getting to the hole again and again. She loved her child. She would fight to the death to get her back. But the group was dragging her down the corridor, away from the dark hole that was filled with everything from every nightmare she ever had.

"Michelle…"

JULY 4, 2179

The moment Corporal Dwayne Hicks laid eyes on Carter J. Burke, he didn't like him. Or he was at the very least suspicious of him. Carter was what Hicks and his fellow troopers liked to call an 'ass-kisser' or a 'paper-pusher.' Hicks saw Carter as the kind of man who would do anything to please his superiors, to stay out of the field or danger, or to save his own ass from a heap of trouble.

And Hicks realized that, by the looks of it, Apone was thinking the same thing about the man. The older, African man stood there, nearly choking himself on his cigar as he usually did, and watched Carter like he was the smallest, no-nothing peon in the world.

"So whatchu gotta say about this, Lieutenant Gorman?" Sergeant Apone took his cigar out of his mouth and turned his focus on the young man in the immaculately clean marine uniform.

The man looked startled at the sudden interest in himself. He cleared his throat. "I, uh, don't know what you mean, Sergeant Apone." Hicks looked down at the ground as he tried to stifle a smirk. He knew Apone could be quite intimidating even to his superiors. It was just his nature.

"I mean," Apone said as he stuffed his cigar back in his mouth and folded his arms, "whatdaya gotta say about this? Whatdaya gotta say about this… xenomorph?" He pronounced the word strangely, as if it was just some word he made up and decided to use at the moment.

Carter cut in and pulled the attention away from the now-nervous Lieutenant Gorman. "He knows as much as you do, Sergeant Apone. We're not hiding anything from you. All we know is that we lost contact with Hadley's Hope on Acheron yesterday and the Colonial Administration wants us to check it out. And we have to bring along a military team in case we encounter a xenomorph. I'm sure it's just a down transmitter, but we'd like to take precautions here."

Hicks and Apone nodded their head. Hicks wanted to know what the hell a 'xenomorph' was, but he kept his comments and suspicions to himself. He didn't talk much anyway.

Apone decided not to pursue this subject any further. He was getting nowhere with this stuffy paper-pusher in his nice shiny suit. The man just kept repeating himself whenever Apone had a question.

The silence that filled the room made Carter uncomfortable. He had to speak. "A woman will be coming with us when we go to the planet. Her name is Ellen Ripley. She'll be an advisor to the situation. She's had an encounter with a xenomorph before. We'll be speaking with her next."

"So, when do we leave?" Apone asked.

"The day after tomorrow." Gorman said. "We'll board the Sulaco and from there make our way to Acheron. It'll take a couple weeks. We'll make it there by the end of the month. A small drop-ship with take us to the planet's surface."

"Hmm. Okie dokie." Apone said, a bit annoyed. He wished he could've been given a little more of a notice before this was slapped in his face.

"Thanks a lot, guys." Carter said with a broad smile, looking at Apone then to Hicks. "We're just going to check this out and we'll be back home in no time."

Carter and Gorman took their leave and left Apone and Hicks alone. The two men stood there for a moment before Hicks plopped himself down on a small, rather uncomfortable couch that had no arms. Hicks squirmed a little bit and thought about how awkward and bland all the furniture was on Gateway Station.

He lit himself a cigarette and stared at Apone, who was still smoking his cigar, from across the room. The two soldiers regarded each other silently for a moment.

"So I suppose they'll just brief the others before we get there." Hicks said as he finally stood up to leave.

"Somethin' like that." Apone mumbled.

Hicks stopped when he reached the door. He ran one hand through his rough, brown hair. "Sergeant, I don't like this. I don't trust this."

Apone looked at Hicks as if he was just being a big baby about everything. "Don't worry about this, Hicks. I've got my unit of ultimate badasses!" He smiled. "We'll be just fine…" And with that, he booted Hicks out and closed the door.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I don't know if that's how the conversation would've went with any of those four men if they spoke first before leaving Gateway, but that's my interpretation. And remember, your review is more than welcome!