Hicks stopped and stared at her. He'd made this promise to her before, back on LV-426. Made it after they'd let that women at the processing station down, after they hadn't listened to her plea to kill her and she'd died in agony, without the dignity of a clean merciful death. He'd made that promise to her because it was better to bullet through both their brain pans... and through Newt's too, if it had really come to that... than die like that.
"Yeah," he rasped, nodding slightly. "Yeah. You have my word." And he'd do it. He'd give her that dignity. And then he'd deal with the alien. And then... well, frankly he didn't know what he'd do after he'd done all that. He could only hope that he'd never have to find out. "It ain't gonna come to that," he said, squaring his jaw as if he could make it happen by sheer willpower. "It ain't."