Rachel Miller-Hicks: Hicks's Wife And Paradox Marine

Full name: Rachel Miller-Hicks (née Miller)
Species: Human
Affiliation: United States Colonial Marine Corps (USCM)
Rank / role: Private First Class
Known for: Dwayne Hicks's wife; last Paradox video; freeze-dried recovery
Family: Dwayne Hicks (husband)
Appearance: Short dark hair, green eyes, matching Claddagh wedding band
First appearance: Aliens: Bug Hunt, "Reclamation" (2017)
Status: Killed in action aboard the Paradox
Injuries (story): Right half of skull caved in; freeze-dried with the rest of her crew
Kills (story): 0 confirmed

Rachel Miller-Hicks was a United States Colonial Marine Corps private first class and the wife of Dwayne Hicks in Yvonne Navarro's Reclamation, collected in Aliens: Bug Hunt in 2017. She does not appear in Aliens. Years before Hicks dropped on LV-426 with Ellen Ripley, Rachel's squad went to an airless moon to check reports of pirated ships, and she died aboard the Paradox when something huge and dark overran the crew.

Meeting Hicks And Marriage

Hicks first saw Rachel Miller in the base cantina after he graduated from boot camp. He had not planned to marry another Marine. She pinned a groper's hand to the table with her Ka-Bar after the man ran his palm down the back of her uniform.

Less than eight weeks later, PFC Rachel Miller became PFC Rachel Miller-Hicks in a small ceremony in the base chapel. Their First Sergeant allowed the marriage on the understanding that there would be no special treatment, and the only concession was that they would be stationed together.

Each of them received two rank promotions during the eleven months that followed. When her squad later went missing, the Corps still listed her as PFC Rachel Miller-Hicks. They were still living that shared posting when her unit was sent to investigate a small moon believed to be hiding pirated spacecraft.

Paradox Mission

Rachel expected a short assignment. The ship was the Paradox, with two months outbound, a week or two on site, and two months back, six months at most. Seven weeks into the flight, at the end of hypersleep, she sent her first video: a grainy black-and-white image of his dark-haired wife with her short hair flattened from forty-nine days without moving her head. Standard transmission time from her locale to Earth was about twelve hours, so Hicks could not answer her, but the messages still arrived on a timer.

The early recordings reported no new intelligence. She had just woken, her Gunny had nothing new on the moon, and the rest of the squad had grown beards during hypersleep. Later she reported that the moon was closer and that the squad was still preparing.

Last Transmission

The next message came after they were already on the surface. Rachel recorded in full kit, helmet, body armor, eye gear, and weapons, and said they had been down about five hours with a beacon lock another sixty klicks out. She reported that the moon felt wrong. There was no atmosphere, only rocks and small mountains, but the shadows seemed to move at the edge of her vision, and she could tell the others felt it too.

The last message arrived the next night, later than her usual transmissions. She said they were under attack by some kind of alien, black and big, and that they were shooting at shadows while sensors showed motion they could not pin down. A two-man forward patrol had been gone an hour with no reply. Hicks knew she was usually steady in emergencies, so her report of moving shadows stayed with him.

Gunfire started out of the camera's view, and Rachel stood, brought her pulse rifle up, and fired as a man screamed as if he were being burned alive, then a shriek cut over the channel. Something huge and dark rolled across the camera. After more than a minute of silence, a bruised hand wearing the Claddagh wedding band that matched Hicks's hit the Send key. He received no further messages.

MIA And Cover-Up

All contact with the Paradox stopped. There was no distress call and no locator beacon. The Corps listed PFC Rachel Miller-Hicks, the Gunnery Sergeant in charge, two Corporals, and eight more PFCs as missing. Official paperwork called it piracy, a hijacked ship stripped of usable parts, and said the crew would stay MIA until the required seven years had passed.

Hicks had watched the attack, and so had officers above him. Recovery was ruled too far past the border of the Core Territories, too expensive, and the original tasking stayed on a need-to-know basis. His demands earned him three NJPs for insubordination before his First Sergeant told him he had used up his last chance and had to drop the matter.

Body On The Paradox

Five years later a paperwork error sent Corporal Hicks back to the same moon, four parsecs on the other side of Beta Trianguli Australis, on a reclamation job that named neither the dead nor the first mission. Had those names been on the orders, a database crosscheck would have barred him. Travel time had dropped to a little over five weeks on a medium reclamation rig retro-fitted for speed.

Hicks had studied the Paradox's specifications for five years. It had set down properly, but the interior lights had been shut off, and blood marked the hatches. Under a smashed command console the bodies were freeze-dried skin over bone, identified by names sewn into the uniforms.

The nametag on her chest read R. MILLER-HICKS. The right half of her skull was caved in, and both hands still clenched her pulse rifle. Hicks took the gold band from her dried fingers, touched her dust-laden hair, and left her body when the creature still living in the ship started killing his boarding party.

Aftermath

Hicks escaped with a calf wound after GySgt Maxwell told him the rest of the team was already gone. Maxwell wrote the cause as a lethal non-human organic life form of indeterminate origin and physical description, and after the matter reached their Lieutenant Colonel the file closed with Rachel and the rest of the Paradox crew changed from missing to killed in action.

Hicks went back to his usual squad. He later replayed her videos while holding the ring, and intended to kill the creature that had murdered her. His next encounter with that kind of organism came on LV-426.

Continuity Notes

Rachel Miller-Hicks is a Bug Hunt addition, already dead years before Hicks took command on the Sulaco drop, and she never met Ripley. The moon is not Acheron.

The Corps never entered a Xenomorph name on the reports, even after Hicks's second team died in resin-coated compartments aboard the same wreck. The red heart and padlock on his chest armor is the usual in-universe reading of a memorial for Rachel. On set the padlock began as James Remar's armor customization before Michael Biehn took the role.

Conclusion

Rachel Miller-Hicks was a Colonial Marine who married Dwayne Hicks less than eight weeks after they met, then died with the Paradox crew on an airless moon the Corps later refused to reclaim. Hicks found her freeze-dried body five years later, still holding her pulse rifle, and took the Claddagh band from her hand before the same kind of creature wiped his boarding party. The Corps changed her from missing to killed in action, and she was already dead years before he dropped on LV-426 with Ripley.