Alien: Colony War: Novel Plot, Characters & Lore
Alien: Colony War is a 2022 novel by David Barnett, published by Titan Books on 26 April 2022. It followed journalist Cher Hunt, former Weyland-Yutani scientist Chad McLaren, and the synthetic Davis in July 2186, after the British colony New Albion broke from the Three World Empire and claimed the Independent Core System Colonies oil world LV-187. Cher was looking for the truth about her sister Cheyenne "Shy" Hunt, killed during the Hasanova raid. The trail led to a Xenomorph hive under LV-187's fusion reactor, and New Albion's Royal Marines then lifted more than 150 eggs as a first-strike weapon.
Plot Summary
In July 2186 the salvage ship Clara crashed on New Albion after boarders took its eggs. Journalist Cher Hunt landed looking for her sister, and Prime Minister Maurice Pepper's secession speech turned an empty oil world into a flag claim. Chad McLaren and Davis knew the missing cargo was eggs. They pulled Cher into the hunt and flew the cruiser Elvik to LV-187 before New Albion closed its airspace.
The Clara Crashes On New Albion
Captain Jamie Gambell ran the private towing ship STSV Clara for the family firm Gambell Reclamations, with a crew of five: his pregnant wife Kathryn, plus David Currie, DJ Roberts, and Paul Simpson. A third-party broker hired them to lift oil-rich ore from a crashed freighter on a barren moon. In the hold they also found 27 waist-high eggs and loaded them into small-animal cryotubes.
On the run to the Hub the crew went into about three months of cryosleep. Someone boarded while they slept, smashed the tubes from outside, and took the eggs. The boarders planted charges on the drive and overrode the old MU/TH/UR, which woke Jamie about two weeks in, in orbit of LV-593, and would not name the override. The charges wrecked the drive, the Clara fell on New Albion, and all five died before or in the crash. The ore tow was cut free, and no distress call went out.
Cher Reaches New Albion
New Albion sat on LV-593 in the Weyland Isles, a British-founded world about one-tenth Earth's size. Promo films sold parks, a river, and a Clock Tower. Cher reached the capital on a cheap RyanSpace liner after a postcard from Hasanova arrived with only the words New Albion on the back, and found rain, concrete, an unfinished Thames ditch, mines, and farmland the locals called the Midlands.
An envelope at the Ritz held a Xenomorph photograph, the line THIS IS WHY YOUR SISTER DIED, and an encrypted tag. At the Queen's Head, Chad would not give his name until he trusted her. He had sent the postcard, walked her through the Nostromo story, and named Captain Kylie Duncan's Midnighters as the unit that wiped Hasanova witnesses after the infestation. The Hague had cleared that raid six months earlier as collateral in a covert Marine job.
Amanda's Hypersleep Cover
Chad was a Company biomedical researcher who had tried to expose hive work and been marked for death. Amanda Ripley, then a Weyland-Yutani engineer hunting what happened to her mother Ellen Ripley, saved him, and they married.
The public file said Amanda McLaren died of cancer on 23 December 2178 and was cremated at Westlake Repository in Little Chute, Wisconsin. Davis told Cher that file was a cover: Amanda was in hypersleep at a hidden site, and waking her as she was would kill her. Chad would not do that until he had a cancer cure.
Chad Wins The Elvik
Davis had been a Weyland-Yutani security drone who broke his programming and learned to jump into networks and hardware. After his humanoid body was destroyed he lived as transferable AI. On the fringe freeport LV-222, Chad won the Elvik and a grey-market synthetic cockapoo in a card game with crime-family matriarch Dorothea Whittaker, and Davis used that dog body under the cover name Scooby. Davis wanted Zula Hendricks found and kept safe, and Chad would not bring her into this job.
Pepper Declares Secession
On 17 July 2186, Prime Minister Maurice Pepper put New Albion on a war footing and declared secession from Britain and the Three World Empire, citing the Hasanova cover-up, Frontier raids, and rumors of pathogen border bombings. The Three World Empire had grown out of Britain and Japan in 2088, and Weyland-Yutani had grown with it. The United Americas and the ICSC were in a war of words after Hasanova, and the Union of Progressive Peoples was pushing on the Frontier. Pepper treated New Albion as the start of a new British empire, not a partner in anyone else's bloc.
The New Albion trade ship Victory had answered LV-187's distress, found the colony deserted, raised a Union flag, and claimed salvage rights on the oil. Press nicknamed the break 3WExit. Chad and Davis tied the empty-world claim to the Clara wreck in the Shires and treated LV-187 as a seeded hive, either New Albion's work or the Company's. Airspace then closed. Davis bit a Duke of Wellington guard. Cher bluffed as Corporal Poppins, and they stole the Elvik off the terminus pad.
Merrilyn Hides On LV-187
LV-187 was an ICSC French oil and ore colony about two kilometers end to end, under constant storm, with wells run by TotalEnergies. A fusion reactor sat under the landing pad, the comms tower stood on the east side, and canteen, labs, garage, and storage tanks filled the rest. The next supply ship was a month out, and nobody watched the rock if the oil kept moving.
Petroleum geologist Merrilyn Hambleton had been hiding in the canteen stores with her daughter Therese. About a week earlier Therese had found the first egg in an unused east corridor, a Facehugger had leapt, and the child tore it off and stamped on it before it could implant. People then went missing, the comms tower became a nest, and pastor Father Henry had his face torn off when he tried to treat the creatures as animals. Miner François ran onto the pad to warn the Victory crew, and Amina Mir shot him in the chest. Captain Tom Moran called that an accident, then ordered the rest of the colonists treated as if none had lived.
Priestley Dies In The Garage
Victory science officer Jerry Bough, called Boffin, hacked the colony mainframe and read 17 extra life signs besides the five of them. Moran sent Yorkshireman Frank Priestley toward the southern dispatch point with orders to kill any survivors. Priestley found Therese's toy Pinky Ponk, met Merrilyn, and planned to murder the child, until an adult Xenomorph dropped from the ceiling on its tail and hit his face with the inner jaw. Merrilyn ran with Therese.
Hours later Amina went looking for him and died on the dark dispatch deck. Merrilyn recovered Amina's pulse rifle, jammed it into the inner mouth of the adult Xenomorph that came through the truck glass, and killed it, though acid blood ate the garage floor. Teesha Bromley caught mother and child at the outer door and took them to the comms tower. Boffin went out to prep Victory and was killed aboard it, and an adult Xenomorph stayed inside that hull.
The Chestburster In The Tower
The Elvik slammed the last two meters onto the pad in the storm at 6 PM GMT, and starboard engine damage kept them on-world. Moran waved them inside, then Chad stopped him at Victory's hatch when blood showed on the glass and an adult Xenomorph appeared at the window. They left Boffin and sealed the tower: Merrilyn, Therese, Moran, Bromley, Chad, Cher, and Davis.
Priestley was not dead. The hive had webbed him in resin, a Facehugger had implanted him while he was out, and a Queen had cut him free and sent him back as a living beacon. He hammered on the tower door with an adult Xenomorph behind him, the group shot that adult Xenomorph in the doorway, and acid burned through the floor. At dinner Priestley slammed his head on the desk, and a Chestburster tore out of him.
Escape From The Comms Tower
On 20 July 2186, Earth papers split over Pepper, and his cabinet learned the Bougainville-class attack transport USC Cronulla was holding high orbit, a Colonial Marine hull in Weyland-Yutani service. Two New Albion troop lifts of thirty men each could not get past it. Pepper's answer was Captain Augustus Trent and the former Three World Empire warship HMS God's Hammer, which had defected to New Albion.
In the tower the lights failed. Moran opened the doors, an adult Xenomorph hit him at once, and more adult Xenomorphs filled the corridor behind it. Bromley killed the one on Moran, and Merrilyn shoved Cher's pistol into the doorway Xenomorph's mouth and killed that one too. They shot out the observation glass, about fifty meters above the pad, and built a rope from blankets, ducting, and cable. Chad shot Priestley's growing Chestburster when it went for the line. The acid cut the rope, Moran caught Merrilyn, and Therese hung about fifteen meters up. Cher climbed, took the child, and slid down. After the doors blew in, Chad jumped with Davis strapped to his chest.
Jones Admits The Seeding
Five Marines rose out of a ravine in a Cheyenne and threw weighted Kevlar nets, then shocked six captured adult Xenomorphs. Corporal Barrington B. Jones III claimed the samples as Weyland-Yutani property. Therese knew him as the trade visitor who had given her a lollipop about a week earlier.
Jones put Chad under corporate arrest. When Moran argued jurisdiction, Jones shot him in the face. In the Cheyenne hold Jones admitted the rest: his team had boarded the Clara, taken the eggs, crashed the salvage ship on New Albion, and seeded LV-187 as a Company test, with orders to harvest live adult Xenomorphs for DNA work and then have the Cronulla nuke the colony from orbit. He drugged Chad and locked him with the six chained adult Xenomorphs, hoping for a lead on Amanda, Zula, and Davis, all on the Company most-wanted list. Chad gave him nothing usable.
The Cheyenne Crash And The Cronulla
A colony lab rat had come aboard and burst, and a cat-sized Xenomorph killed comms man Marquez and marine Segura. The Cheyenne lurched into the comms tower and exploded, and the six caged adult Xenomorphs were lost with it. Jones ran for Victory, and the adult Xenomorph that had killed Boffin killed him at the hatch.
In orbit, Trent gave Cronulla captain George Weems one hour to leave New Albion airspace. Weems would not abandon the Cheyenne in the storm. Four modified Alphatec EVAC-3 fighters, the Angels Uriel, Raguel, Sariel, and Remiel, drew fire, then Lieutenant Mackenzie launched four Short Lances. The Cronulla burned in the atmosphere.
Trent Takes The Survivors
On the surface an adult Xenomorph dropped from a corridor ceiling onto Bromley and killed her. Trent's Royal Marines then cleared the halls and took the remaining civilians. He detained Chad, Cher, and Davis for the no-fly breach, and Merrilyn and Therese as nationals of a power at war with New Albion.
Trent refused to destroy the plant from orbit, because the oil and ore were too scarce and he wanted the hive.
The Hive Under The Reactor
Colony scans showed at least twenty adult Xenomorphs and a stationary mark on the fusion reactor. Trent took a six-marine fire team in armored ape-suits, with Weyland-Yutani ID23 incinerators under NSG23 rifles, and Chad went with them. The reactor doors were clawed open, and a webbed colonist begged to be killed before a Chestburster tore out of him. Deeper in, Chad counted about 100 eggs in the lit area, then a Queen about ten meters tall.
In the canteen an adult Xenomorph burst from the floor, grabbed Therese, sniffed her, and threw her aside unharmed when the Queen fight started. Cher had seen nine-day-old security footage of the first Facehugger, and Merrilyn refused a Marine medic exam. Surface contacts then ran for the reactor.
Chad Kills The Queen
Royal Marine bullets ricocheted off the Queen, and incinerators only slowed her. Trent's orders were not to destroy the eggs, because he wanted them for use on enemy ships and worlds. Dibble died at the hive doors, then the Queen clawed Grub in the face and tore one Pugh's head off. The last doorway drones killed Cuthbert and McGrew, and the remaining Pugh burned with a drone.
Only Chad, a gut-wounded Trent, and the Queen were left. Chad armed a grenade from Trent's suit and rammed it into the Queen's inner jaws. Backup Marines opened fire as the blast blew the back of her head out from inside.
The Queen Falls In The Reactor
Chad woke in the canteen, and Winwick's last mainframe sweep, with power failing, showed no unexpected life signs. Trent confirmed the cryo boxes on the pad held ovomorphs, more than 150 eggs, with one egg meant for one enemy colony. His other order had been to leave no survivors. He holstered the gun, left them the Victory after his people removed the corpse inside, and set a two-hour control lock so they could not follow. Three dropships lifted into the cloud.
The Queen was not quite dead when they took the eggs. Her acid ate through a meter of lead over the reactor, her body fell in, and the plant went into alarm. Davis read 1 hour 38 minutes until the Victory unlocked, against about 60 minutes to critical, and a human could not reach the manual shutoff in that heat and radiation.
Therese Shuts The Reactor
Therese confirmed what Davis had seen in the tower: she was a synthetic. About ten years earlier Merrilyn had used a donor and named the girl Therese. At five the child developed seizures and near-blindness from Batten disease missed on screening, and she died the next year. Three years before the outbreak Merrilyn bought a black-market replica that would stay six forever, cut family contact, and took off-world jobs.
Contact with Davis ended her inhibitors, and Therese chose the reactor run. Davis stored the shutdown protocols, told Chad to find Zula, and went with her in a modified Alphatech XT-37 Stinger. The shutdown worked, then heat and radiation wrecked both bodies. The last word recovered from Davis was Butterfly. Therese's chip could have held the protocols, but Davis went with her anyway.
The Praetorian On The Pad
On the pad they lined up human corpses and burned Xenomorph bodies with garage fuel. A Praetorian then came out of the comms-tower wreck, about twice drone size, with a crested Queen-like head that stopped small-arms fire. Merrilyn found a pulse cannon on Victory's hull and killed it at about a meter, and the three living humans lifted off.
Project A And The Little Ships
High orbit was crowded. The ICSC Class II warship Thelwall held port, New Albion troop transports Churchill, D'Israeli, and Thatcher held starboard, and three MiG-730 fighters from a UPP Kremlin-class hunter-destroyer were coming in. Victory's Mother reported a limited nuclear exchange the day before on UA colony LV-729, with 73 resident families destroyed, and a formal UA accusation against the UPP. Warrants named Chad, Cher, Merrilyn, Therese, and Davis for New Albion, Weyland-Yutani, the USCMC, the ICSC, and the Three World Empire.
They could not go to Earth, so Chad set course for unaffiliated border worlds to find Zula and to track the stolen eggs, and Merrilyn and Cher went with him. On 20 July 2186, Pepper broadcast from the New Albion Protectorate, named Project A as a secret weapon, and took reports from three defecting Royal Marine captains: Ronald Marlborough of the Queen Charlotte, Peter Wellington of the London Eye, and Karen Trainor of the Albert Square. Thirteen colonies had applied. Pepper told Trent that if he met McLaren again the debt was paid and they were enemies. At eight the next morning, Little Ships lifted from the spaceport under flags of convenience, each carrying eggs for colonies that had not declared.
LV-187 And The Hive
The outbreak was a planted egg dump, not a border-bombing strike. Jones's team hid ovomorphs in corridors, hatches, and cupboards rather than in a nursery, and about ten burst husks showed on a partial Victory sweep. Adult Xenomorphs used ceiling voids and tails, and acid blood stayed lethal after a kill. Merrilyn's reliable shot was a pulse blast inside the inner mouth, because head shots on a fully armored adult Xenomorph did not always drop it.
The hive formed under the landing pad, on a meter of lead over the fusion reactor, with hosts webbed in resin. The Queen was about ten meters tall and heavily plated. Chad saw about 100 eggs in the lights, and Trent shipped more than 150, far above the 27 taken from the Clara, so the Queen had laid more. A lab rat also carried an embryo, shed a tiny skin, and produced a cat-sized Xenomorph that wrecked the Cheyenne. Chad treated that as DNA reflex at the cellular level, the same biology he had once hoped might unlock a cancer cure. Weyland-Yutani wanted shock troops instead.
Therese had been hit by a Facehugger nine or ten days before the tower fight, far past the hours Chad taught as the usual window, and an adult Xenomorph later refused to kill her. Merrilyn's account was that the hugger never intubated. Davis confirmed she was not carrying an embryo, for the same reason Merrilyn was sure: she was a synthetic. Winwick's sweep at lift-off showed no unexpected life signs, then the Praetorian came out of the comms-tower wreck.
Confirmed Xenomorph Kills
Merrilyn killed two adult Xenomorphs with inner-mouth pulse shots, one in the garage and one in the tower doorway. Bromley killed the adult Xenomorph that hit Moran. The group shot the adult Xenomorph that chased Priestley to the tower door. Chad killed Priestley's Chestburster, then at least three adult Xenomorphs in the comms room before the jump. Pad and tower fire dropped more adult Xenomorphs in ones and twos, not always for good.
Jones's team netted six live adult Xenomorphs and lost them in the Cheyenne crash. Trent's Marines killed five in the halls, two at the canteen doors, and the one pinned by the table, then burned a Chestburster in the hive. Chad killed the Queen with a grenade in the inner jaws, with Marine fire as the charge went off. Merrilyn killed the Praetorian with Victory's hull cannon. They burned more bodies on the pad. The full death count on LV-187 was never taken one by one, and New Albion left with the eggs.
Key Characters
- Cher Hunt was a New York journalist and Shy Hunt's sister. She left LV-187 on Victory intending to publish the cover-up.
- Chad McLaren was a former Weyland-Yutani scientist and Amanda Ripley's husband. He killed the Queen and fled to find Zula Hendricks.
- Davis was a free-will Company AI in a synthetic cockapoo. He shut down the reactor with Therese and was destroyed there.
- Merrilyn Hambleton was a TotalEnergies geologist. She killed two adult Xenomorphs and the Praetorian, then escaped with Chad and Cher.
- Therese was a synthetic replica of Merrilyn's dead daughter. She chose the reactor run and was destroyed with Davis.
- Maurice Pepper was Prime Minister of New Albion. He declared secession and launched Project A.
- Augustus Trent captained God's Hammer. He took more than 150 eggs and spared the three human survivors.
- Barrington B. Jones III was a USCMC corporal in Company pay. He seeded LV-187 and was killed by the Victory Xenomorph.
- Tom Moran captained the Victory. He ordered the no-survivors hold and was shot by Jones.
- Teesha Bromley was the last Victory crew member to die on the surface, killed by an adult Xenomorph.
- Frank Priestley was a Victory crewman sent back from the hive as a host. He died in a chestburst.
- Amina Mir and Jerry Bough were Victory crew. Adult Xenomorphs killed them after Amina shot François.
- Jamie Gambell and the Clara crew were a salvage family who took 27 eggs and died when boarders wrecked the ship.
- George Weems captained the Cronulla. He died when God's Hammer destroyed the transport.
- Amanda Ripley was off-page in hypersleep under a 2178 cancer-death file while Chad hunted a cure.
Place In The Titan Line
Barnett's novel sits after Alex White's The Cold Forge and Into Charybdis. Hasanova, the Midnighters, and the ICSC-UA break in 2184 set the politics Cher Hunt walked into as Shy Hunt's sister. Titan released Colony War on 26 April 2022, then Philippa Ballantine's Alien: Inferno's Fall later that year, then Mary SanGiovanni's Alien: Enemy of My Enemy in 2023. Those three were a loose 2180s run, not a numbered trilogy.
Editor Steve Saffel asked Barnett to put the colonial war on the page and to use Chad McLaren and Davis, who were present in the Dark Horse comics with Amanda and Zula. The paperback also binds Andrew E.C. Gaska's Alien RPG one-act Fallout, set on LV-187 after the novel.
Continuity
The story is set in 2186, about seven years after Aliens. Burke's file in that film said Amanda Ripley-McClaren died on 23 December 2178 at Westlake Repository, with no children. Colony War keeps the date, the place, and the cancer line, then treats them as a cover while Amanda waits in hypersleep. It never mentions Isolation, Sevastopol, or the Torrens.
Duncan died on Hasanova in Into Charybdis. Colony War's public story is a Hague clearance six months before Cher's trip, and Chad's version is a Midnighters specimen grab that killed witnesses, including Shy. LV-187 was not a pathogen bombing. The black-goo strikes and the LV-729 nuclear exchange run in the same war, on other worlds. This book has no Yautja.
Editions And Adaptations
Titan's trade paperback came out in the United States and the United Kingdom on 26 April 2022 at 416 pages. That count includes the bound-in Free League scenario. Titan also released an ebook the same day. Blackstone Publishing released an audiobook on 19 April 2022, read by Shiromi Arserio, about fourteen hours. The story does not continue as a numbered sequel under Barnett's name.
Behind The Scenes
In a May 2022 interview with Paul Semel, Barnett said Saffel's brief was to paint the political map that later books would use, keep military force and Xenomorphs in the mix, and start from Chad and Davis. He wrote Colony War first, before Inferno's Fall and Enemy of My Enemy existed as manuscripts. He joked that the secession plot was Brexit in space, then pointed to older colony breaks from empire as the longer precedent. Press in the novel uses the 3WExit coinage for Pepper's speech.
The acknowledgements thank White, because Into Charybdis is the springboard, and Clara Carija and Andrew E.C. Gaska for lore, maps, and gun names. From Titan he names Saffel, Nick Landau, Vivian Cheung, Laura Price, Michael Beale, Paul Simpson, George Sandison, and Hannah Scudamore. From 20th Century Studios he names Nicole Spiegel and Sarah Huck, plus Free League's Tomas Härenstam, Nils Karlén, and Christian Granath, and Joe LeFavi of Genuine Entertainment. He used the name Merrilyn Hambleton with permission from the real Merrilyn's daughters, Amanda and Tracey, after their mother died in early 2021. The last line of the acknowledgements apologizes about the dog.
Conclusion
Alien: Colony War is David Barnett's 2022 Titan novel about the July 2186 secession of New Albion and the seeded hive on LV-187. It ends with the Queen dead, Davis and Therese destroyed in the reactor, Chad, Cher, and Merrilyn running on the Victory, and Pepper's Little Ships carrying the stolen eggs toward undeclared colonies.
External Sources
- Alien: Colony War at Titan Books
- Alien: Colony War at Penguin Random House
- David Barnett interview at Paul Semel
- Colony War announcement at AvP Galaxy
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