Tamar Prather: Venture Spy Who Stole The Prototype Egg

Full name: Tamar Prather
Species: Human
Height: Six and a half feet
Affiliation: Venture Intelligence Division (freelance)
Role: Corporate spy embedded with the pirate ship Manticore
Known for: Stealing the Xenomorph egg that led to the Necromorph
Weapon: Fournier 350 pistol
Setting: The Proximo, the Manticore, and Jericho 3
First appearance: Alien: Prototype (2019)
Status: Dead; infected and killed by the Necromorph outside the Lodge

Tamar Prather was a freelance corporate spy working for Venture in Tim Waggoner's 2019 novel Alien: Prototype. Embedded with a pirate crew, she found an unmarked stasis pod holding a Xenomorph egg and killed several crewmates to keep it. She delivered it to the V-22 Lodge on Jericho 3 and pressed director Aleta Fuentes for payment. After the egg produced the Necromorph, she joined the hunt for it while planning to sell pieces of it to a rival company. That greed led to her death on the surface of the planet.

Biography

Spy Aboard The Manticore

Tamar called herself a professional in freelance information acquisition, but she was a spy, hired by Venture to infiltrate a pirate crew and watch for stolen goods the corporation could use. She had signed on for two years with the Manticore and had served seventeen months. The crew broadcast false distress calls, crippled responding ships with a rail gun, and boarded them with gas grenades. In that time they raided a dozen ships, and she found nothing of interest until the raid on the Proximo. Several of her crewmates had been her lovers.

The Unmarked Stasis Pod

Searching the captain's quarters of the Proximo, Tamar found a hidden floor compartment holding a stasis pod with no manufacturer's mark or serial number, likely a Weyland-Yutani product. Her omniscanner read only one word through its shielding, biomatter. When the pirate captain Juan Verela walked in and saw it, she shot him twice in the forehead. On her way out she tricked Sid and Kenyatta into turning on each other, then shot them both. She told Lia, who was guarding the prisoners, that everything was fine, and left the survivors stranded.

She flew the Manticore to Jericho 3 on a roundabout course that took twenty-three days instead of a week. She expected the Proximo to send a distress signal and alert Weyland-Yutani, so she avoided the standard shipping lanes. She also set the call sign to change every few hours and cycled the engines to break up the ion trail. She doubted those measures were needed, but she had survived in the spy trade by being careful to the point of paranoia.

Waiting For Payment At The Lodge

Tamar spent weeks at the Lodge waiting for director Aleta Fuentes to pay her, and she grew sick of the place. When she pushed her way into a meeting at the lab of Dr. Millard Gagnon, she hinted that Weyland-Yutani would like to know where its lost property had turned up. Aleta suspected a contingency plan and let her come along. There she saw the egg for the first time and learned it was an Ovomorph. Aleta then promised immediate payment, but Tamar had already begun planning to sell the find to a Venture competitor.

Hunting The Escaped Xenomorph

Tamar learned of the first deaths while playing cards with security guards, and Aleta then asked her to join the search and watch over Gagnon and his synthetic assistant. At the dock warehouse she met Zula Hendricks beside the skeletons of two dockworkers. Aleta authorized her to deal with Zula however she wanted if Zula became a problem. Tamar formed an uneasy partnership with the synthetic Brigette, and she hoped to grab some of the creature's genetic material before Gagnon recaptured it. At the Med Center, Gagnon injected her with his cellular necrosis vaccine.

The Med Center

Inside the Med Center Tamar tried to shoot the Necromorph, but Gagnon struck her arm because he wanted it alive. When Brigette was knocked down holding a modified stunner, Gagnon ordered Tamar to fetch it, and she raised her gun at him instead. He went himself and died after the creature breathed infected particles over him. Zula and her trainees arrived in time, and Tamar fired from the floor and stuck a tracking disk on the creature's back as it fled. She joined Zula's group and carried Brigette's head.

The Stolen Tooth

In the final fight inside the Lodge, Tamar aimed at the Necromorph's mouth and shot out one of its teeth to sell. To get it, she deliberately stumbled into the trainee Brenna, drawing the creature to her, and Brenna was killed. The tooth, coated in acidic blood, melted into her palm and infected her. When the Necromorph turned on her, she fled into an open airlock and crawled out onto the surface of Jericho 3 without an EVA suit. Unable to breathe and covered in lesions, she collapsed, and the creature tore her apart.

Personality And Methods

Tamar was six and a half feet tall, lean and muscular, with sharp features and short blond hair, kept short so no opponent could grab it. She carried a Fournier 350 pistol on silent mode and never left the safety on. She prided herself on staying ice-cold and rational, and she felt no qualms about betraying Venture, reasoning that in a cutthroat galaxy a girl had to look out for herself first. She read people closely, using body language to draw them out. Aleta found her pushy and untrustworthy, and Tamar felt nothing over the deaths of Gagnon and Brigette.

Behind The Scenes

Tamar appeared in Alien: Prototype by Tim Waggoner, which the novel's chronology note placed between Alien: Isolation and the comic series Aliens: Resistance. She opened the book, finding the pod in its first scene, and her surname appeared 14 times while her first name appeared about two hundred times. Her death outside the Lodge came shortly before the final battle against the Necromorph. Her plotline tied the corporate side of the story to the Colonial Marine side led by Zula Hendricks.

Conclusion

Tamar Prather was a Venture spy who turned a routine pirate raid into the theft of a Xenomorph egg, killing her own crewmates to keep it. She brought the egg to Jericho 3, pushed the director for payment, and hunted the resulting Necromorph for her own profit. Her last scheme, stealing a tooth, cost a trainee her life and ended with her own death on the surface. The tracking disk she planted on the Necromorph outlived her and let Zula follow the creature into the storm for the last fight.