Forwards and backwards in soft packed sandy dirt. The rover would not get unstuck, like it had been trapped in a snowbank.

We all got out of the vehicle.

Miles and miles of dirt, scrubby plants, no living creatures to be seen. No scents to speak of, other than dust and a faint chemical smell, like melted plastic and chlorine. I could taste the grit and dust carried on the wind, which whistled in a near musical tone, perhaps due to piping through the nearby rock formations. The temperature had dropped somewhat, no longer a desert climate, more like seventy degrees.

Ripley glanced at the wasteland behind us. "The good news is, we're not being followed. That freak lightning strike seems to have taken care of those creatures. We only need some traction to get us out of this shit."

Hicks rummaged around in the back of the vehicle, muttering something about cat sand we didn't have. He came out with a folding shovel designed for digging latrines.

As he worked to extricate the vehicle, I asked the woman. "Ripley, you...seemed surprised when you saw Grandmother in that arena. I know it wasn't you you, but you were broadcasting..."

"The droid didn't tell me who I'd be facing in the arena. She just told me she'd help me escape."

I sighed. "It's too bad we had to leave Grandmother behind."

Hicks scoffed. "Yeah. A real shame."

"She belongs in that arena." Ripley glanced nervously about, like she expected Grandma to come rushing after her at any moment. "With new chains, maybe in a big super reinforced cage where she can never get out...with maybe some kind of diamond plated chipper shredder under her rear end to pulverize all those fucking facehugger eggs." She cast her adopted child an apologetic glance. "Sorry, Newt. I need to put a quarter in the swear jar."

I watched the man shovel. "Hicks, I'm curious. How did you escape to the shuttle and get on the station in the first place? It was very dangerous, and you were very injured."

He only laughed and gave this sarcastic response: "I'm a Space Marine, and I didn't have you tagging along."

Hicks tossed another shovelful. "Ripley, this thing is creeping me out. I know it...sorta helped us escape, but could you please send it away? Make it climb a mountain or something?"

"Sorry, Hicks. Newt wants it."

"If it tries laying eggs in anyone, I want it gone."

"She won't do that," said Newt. "She's not like that."

I swallowed, thinking about Robert. I could only hope Newt wasn't wrong.

Noting my idleness, he thrust the shovel into my claws. "Make yourself useful. Dig the dirt out from under the tires."

I obeyed.

Ripley leaned on the rover. "How's your daughter, Ernie? Did she like the scarf?"

I choked down a sob. "She liked it too well, I'm afraid." I pointed to the sky. "She's up there now."

She wrinkled her brow as she stared at the stars. "Really? I thought that blast destroyed everything on the planet!"

To me, the woman's statement sounded about as insensitive as an American soldier bragging about Hiroshima. "No...up there. Above."

She scratched her head. "She's...somewhere else in space?"

"Sort of." I rubbed my face in frustration. "This would be so much easier if we still had a bronze age geocentric cosmology. My daughter is with the Lord in heaven now."

"I'm sorry." She didn't sound sorry.

Newt grabbed my claw, speaking in Ss'sik'chtokiwij. "It is better this way. Shauqauzjarruba would not have permitted any of us to live."

Ellen and Hicks gaped at her.

"Don't look now, Ripley, but I think your girl needs an exorcist."

Ripley stared at my claw like I'd somehow invaded Newt's brain by holding hands. "Newt, honey, get away from that thing."

"Ripley, it's okay." The girl didn't say it in English.

"Thank you for comforting me, Newt," I muttered. "But you need to let go, or she will get upset."

The girl smiled a little and obeyed. "It's okay, Ripley. She would never harm me. She thinks of me as her daughter."

I frowned. "Newt, you might want to say that in English, to reassure them properly."

Ripley forcefully pulled the girl to her side.

"Get out of here!" she shouted at me. "Go! Leave us!" She pointed to a rocky butte in the distance. "Go...find someone else to bother!"

I turned to go, but Newt called to me in Ss'sik'chtokiwij.. "Wait! Don't leave!"

Newt switched to English, addressing the woman. "It's okay, Ripley. Ernie is my friend. She's the only friend I have left."

But then she blinked several times, her face going slack. "Lemon, lemon cake. Lemon...cake."

Ripley knelt in front of the girl, grabbed her shoulders, looking into her eyes. "Newt. Newt! Are you okay?"

Newt stared at her in bewilderment. "Is something wrong?"

The woman opened her mouth to say something, but I waved my claws to indicate no.

I pointed to the back of her head, pantomiming scissors.

Ripley eyed me with mistrust, but just pulled the girl close in a hug. "Whatever you're going through, you're not alone. Remember that."

Hicks shook his head. "I kinda think her not being alone is part of the problem. There shouldn't be an extra person in her head."

Ripley glared. "Hicks, this is no time for jokes."

The man raised his hands defensively. "Fine."

The woman had that same reluctant look she had when deciding to pick me up in that shuttle on Archeron when everything was blowing up. "I don't like you, but the kid does. Step out of line, harm a hair on her head, and we'll make you wish you'd never been born."

I swallowed. "Does that mean I can stay?"

"Unfortunately, yes...but we're going to make you work."

Hicks crossed his arms. "Speaking of which...What are you doing standing around? Dig!"

Not the first time I'd been rudely ordered around. I would have still helped out if he asked nicely, but knew it accomplished nothing to verbalize the complaint. I silently obeyed.

The man brought out his sword, to motivate me into a proper serving mindset, I suppose.

"Ernie," the woman asked. "You know the answer to this better than anybody: What weaknesses do Xenomorphs have?...Besides fire? Any Achilles' heel we can take advantage of, if, say for example, your...granny starts making babies again?"

I opened my mouth to say something, but Hicks spoke first. "Face it, Ripley, the moment she does, the planet is fucked."

"Hicks!" Ripley scolded.

"What? It's true!"

"Language! We have a kid!"

I could tell my Newt's facial expression that she didn't care. She'd probably heard worse language from her own father and people around the base.

"Sorry. The planet's...hosed. Look, you said so yourself, those little...mothers can go absolutely everywhere. You think you exterminated every last one of them, but then there'll be some guy that got...impregnated while getting the morning paper, acting like nothing's wrong, to save his sorry ass, and while he's watching TV, the little fuh, I mean, little freaker, will op out of his chest and crawl into the furnace ducts or the attic, shred the family pets to pieces, and lay a bunch of eggs. Everything and everyone will be dead before we even know what the F is happening. We are so hosed!"

Ripley frowned at me in disgust. "All the more reason to get off this planet while we still can."

"I can talk to them," I suggested. "Convince them not to harm...intelligent creatures like yourself."

Ripley only scoffed at this.

"We're hosed."

The content of this conversation didn't frighten Newt at all. She only looked...haunted, as if expecting something of this nature to take place, from experience.

I shoveled dirt.

"What if we got some explosives from the wreckage and stuck granny full of them?"

"Hey! That's my grandmother you're talking about!" I cried.

Ripley and Hicks ignored me.

"You see how well that worked on LV 426! Bombed the whole damn planet from orbit and The Bitch still came back! Face it, we don't have a prayer!"

Forgiving him for his callous remark, I offered to say a few prayers, but the two just gave me dirty looks.

As I scooping dirt from under the tires, Hairball came rolling up to me like a demented clump of tumbleweed, uttering is usual laughing, panting noises.

Ripley panicked, dragging Newt to a safe place, shouting for Hicks to stab the thing. The man stepped forward, brandishing the weapon threateningly. They probably would have shot Hairball, had they any bullets.

I stepped between him and the creature. "Please do not be alarmed. This is...a pet I've...acquired. I admit I know little about this creature, but it does not appear to be overly violent. It is, however, a carnivore, but your dogs and cats also eat meat."

Hicks kept the sword poised for an attack.

"Please. I'm sure that action won't be necessary."

"You'd better be right!"

Hairball frantically panted and licked the man in response. Hicks probably would have stabbed him right then, but, lacking the sword, he just petted the creature and laughed.

I returned to shovel duty.

Ripley jumped in the rover halfway through my effort and got the wheels going. The rover shot out of the sinkhole, purring on the dirt beyond.

The woman waved us all in.

...Well, I almost got left, but Newt prompted her to call to me at the last moment. I had to run to get in the vehicle.

We drove through that lifeless expanse, this time with Hairball on my lap, panting and licking me as we rolled along.

"Ripley..." I called over the noise. "How did you end up down here?...With me?"

The woman sighed. "We tried to escape the gravitational pull in the pods, but we were already in orbit. When my EEV came down, we hit a swamp, and the pod filled with sludge. Me and Newt nearly drowned before we got the door open. Hicks landed in dirt, but his airbags deflated and he couldn't get out. He had to dig his way free."

I frowned. "Sounds very unpleasant. I...had a very harrowing experience myself."

She didn't care to ask for the details, so I let the subject drop.

Hicks pointed to my face. "Hey, what's with the credibility gap? You get in a fight?"

When I stared in puzzlement and didn't answer, he pulled down his lip to show me his teeth.

"I...did not get along with my family."

He laughed. "I can't get along with your family either."

I stared as rain spatted against the windows. The droplets seemed...unusual, fringed in white, clinging to the glass. More of it spattered the cracked windshield up front.

"Oh great." Ripley shifted gears. "We got sleet."

"You sure that's what it is?" Hicks asked. "Not some kind of...alien swamp water jism picked up by air currents?"

"Hicks, I'm seeing snowflakes."

"I thought you said it was sleet."

"Will you shut up? You are such a smartass! (Dammit, we don't even have coats!)"

Ever since they turned the atmosphere generators on at LV426, I'd witnessed rain. In my cage, I'd press my claw to the reinforced glass, to get at least a minor taste of what precipitation felt like. Generally cold, as the planetoid didn't get much sun, but it never got to freezing.

I'd been out in it before, cold and warm. Mud interested me, due to the craft potential, but I'd always been too busy to properly enjoy it. I wagged the stump of my tail as I thought about building a snowman.

We traveled another five miles, the ground getting muddy from the icy, snowy slop.

"I'm hungry," Newt moaned.

Hicks scoffed. "Hey Ripley! Let's park this thing and let the girl scavenge! Maybe she'll find us some mice and shit to eat!"

"Hicks..." Ripley scolded.

"What? She lived for days on that base by herself...somehow!"

Newt cast me a knowing glance.

"I believe this would work best as a team effort."

The man smacked his face. "Geez, everyone's acting like I'm just gonna sit on my duff and wait for Newt to feed me!"

Ripley blew a raspberry, refusing to stop the rover. "We're in the middle of a damn desert. There's a difference between rummaging through garbage and skinning up a snake and cooking it over sagebrush."

"Yeah, but she eats rats."

"She probably got sick from doing it too."

Newt got a haunted look on her face.

I recalled a few days of bringing her stomach medications, and the strange smells after I suggested she cook the rodents in a microwave. Her body...seemed to...adapt to eating raw rats over time.

Hicks slouched in his seat. "All I'm saying is, we went through all the MRE's we could find this morning. We'll have to find something sooner or later!"

Ripley steered us around a boulder. "That's why I'm trying to get us out of this wasteland. I want to find water, some edible plants, and lifeforms that eat them. More importantly, an area where we don't have so much magnetic interference, so we can track down the wreckage, find the medical scanners so we don't die from allergic reactions eating...whatever the hell they have here."

We rolled down a hill and did find a wreckage.

Not the Sulaco.

A shell for what appeared to be an immense robotic turtle, two A-Frame shaped corridors penetrating it at an angle, the broken bits and scattered debris suggestive of...engines? Tanks of fuel or coolant?

Hicks leaned forward in his seat. "That's...not one of ours."

Ripley shifted into park. "Really? No shit!"

"Twenty five cents in the swear jar," Newt muttered.

Atop this structure, a cannon on a turret spun around, pointing directly at our rover. The ground exploded.

Something rumbled behind us. I glanced out the snow obscured window.

A mob of hairy figures in armor now thundered after us on scaly steeds, bearing long Zulu style shields and projectile weaponry.

Their leader, clad in leather vest and skirt like a Roman general, galloped forward on his red saurian beast, aiming a crossbow-like weapon.

Our window cracked as his first shot found its mark.