Alien: Invasion: Novel Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: April 26, 2016
Author: Tim Lebbon
Publisher: Titan Books
Format: Mass market paperback
Pages: 320
ISBN: 978-1-78329-609-5
Series: The Rage War, Book 2
Setting: Human Sphere, 2692

Alien: Invasion is a 2016 novel by Tim Lebbon, published by Titan Books on 26 April 2016 as the second book of the Rage War trilogy after Predator: Incursion. It followed Weyland-Yutani researcher Isa Palant, Colonial Marines lieutenant Johnny Mains, and the Rage android Liliya through the next stage of that war. Rage generals drove adult Xenomorph armies through Gamma dropholes into the Human Sphere in 2692. The Yautja ceasefire from the first book remained in force.

Plot Summary

Two Xenomorphs advancing through wrecked industrial space during the Rage invasion

The novel follows four threads in 2692. Johnny Mains and Gemma Lieder left the Yautja habitat UMF 12 with the HellSparks. They later boarded the Rage sister ship Othello. Isa Palant and Major Akoko Halley fought at LV-1657. After that fight they went rogue with a wrecked Rage android. Liliya reached the independent station Hell with Hashori, while Beatrix Maloney ran the invasion from the Rage flagship Macbeth.

Patton Dead

In September 2692, Mains and Lieder were the last of the 5th Excursionists left on the grown Rage ship docked at UMF 12. They made their stand on the bridge as adult Xenomorphs came through the doors. The creatures carried the stamp PATTON on the rear carapace. The android general Patton hung on a Yautja spear and dug into his own chest wound. The two Marines were down to an antique shotgun, a thin laser charge, one plasma shot, and a last grenade they meant to press against the hull.

Lieutenant Eddie Durante of the HellSparks reached them in the Marine Arrow Navarro in time for that blast. Mains grappled under a panel with Lieder, the grenade went, and a larger blast drove metal through Patton's face, titanium skull, and computing core. Medic Radcliffe treated them afterward. They sent Tyszka Star a report on Patton's control methods and the self-destruct that followed a fatal wound. They also reported the returning Fiennes sleeper ships Susco-Foley and Aaron-Percival, which they treated as nurseries for new Xenomorphs.

Drophole One

In October 2692, the Rage general Rommel closed on the jump gate at Gamma 123. He brought more than two thousand hatched Xenomorphs and about twenty thousand in reserve, and he meant to rename the hole Drophole One. The Titan ship Gagarin, under captain Nathan McBrain, had spent four months assembling a hole more than two miles across. Six Marine escorts guarded the work, instead of the usual two. The Fiennes sleeper Susco-Foley, launched from Sol in 2216, was running faster than an Arrow. It dropped about a million miles out and did not answer hails.

Lieutenant Vicar's command destroyer Blue One went in first and was destroyed. Drones and boarding craft wrecked the rest of the Marine screen. Adult Xenomorphs then came through all seven of Gagarin's airlocks. Rommel later found McBrain in his seat, gut opened and skull smashed. Rommel's own ship took only light damage before the first jump into the Sphere.

Gamma Quadrant

The same month, Rage attacks hit other Gamma sites. On Priest's World, the 13th Spaceborne MudSerpents under lieutenant Frogwhich met Xenomorphs that swam ashore at Langelli Station, a Company research post tied to drophole Gamma 34. Those hides carried the stamp Montgomery. At Gamma 43, Maria Grizz, a well-known drophole operator, watched Xenomorphs cross vacuum with six silver globes on their backs and smash into a frontier ship. At another hole, a Fiennes laser wrecked the engines of two Marine frigates, and an open Rage belly then swallowed one of the disabled hulls.

On Charon Station, General Paul Bassett played Mains's UMF 12 report for Gerard Marshall of the Thirteen, Weyland-Yutani's ruling group. The attacks were limited to the Gamma Quadrant, and Bassett had ordered every Fiennes ship destroyed on sight. Marshall wanted a remote shutdown of the Gamma dropholes. Bassett refused, because closing the net would isolate the Rim for decades. Marshall wanted a live android for ArmoTech, and he meant to put Palant and Halley on that job.

Macbeth And The Queen

On the Rage flagship Macbeth, Maloney sat in a gel suit on a hover platform and ordered general Alexander to take Liliya alive if he could. The control secret sat in the android's blood. Elder Challar, older than Maloney and missing both legs and one arm, reported Patton lost and the sister ship Othello without contact for years. Hamlet had vanished on the original Founders outbound run. Maloney intended to finish the war with Macbeth alone.

The hold held a bound Queen whose egg sac ran half the compartment. After more than twenty years of drone searches from Midsummer, she laid forty to fifty eggs a day. Controlled Xenomorphs took the eggs away, and no human had entered that hold and lived in decades. The scientist Wilder had three naked Fiennes sleepers carried in as food, and the Queen ate them. The Faze, found on Midsummer, lived mainly in the engine room and rebuilt the ship. The crew never managed a successful talk with it.

Hell

The independent station Hell had started as the Company mining post WayStation 14, in geostationary orbit around LV-301 in the Scafell Minor system. After the trimonite ran out, the miners bought the hull, and a broadcast by Maxella Murian May stuck the new name. About two thousand people lived there, with room for a thousand visitors, a thirty-person independent unit, and a militia. It sat about one light year from the nearest drophole and about twenty light years in from the Outer Rim.

Jiango Tann and Yvette Tann, both in their seventies, had lived on Hell Station for years after their son Christopher died on an ArmoTech sample job. Yvette had tried to expose Marshall. Jiango was pulling fragments of Xenomorph assault traffic from quantum folds when an unidentified Yautja silhouette closed on the station.

Hashori And Liliya

Fifty-one days after they left the Zeere Za, Hashori of the Widow Clan flew a small cloak-built ship toward the Sphere with Liliya. She stayed in the flight seat with a battle spear close and her helmet off. On day fifty-two she reported Alexander's force about five billion miles back. Their only chance was drophole Gamma 23, whose moon control base General Parks had wrecked. Liliya forced the hole open and sent a wrong code to slam it shut behind them. They jumped seven light years, and Alexander did not follow at once.

At Hell Station the mercenaries surrounded the dock. Liliya left first and identified the Rage. Hashori then came out in warrior kit with a drooped shoulder blaster, blades, a heavy trident, and her helmet under one arm. The mercenaries locked her in a cell and left the weapons with her. Jiango saw that Liliya was artificial and treated her as a person. She told them how she stole the Evelyn-Tew research, and that Wordsworth had wanted that work held as insurance. She also described Midsummer's dead dog-like species and the two Faze given to Macbeth and Othello. The control in her blood could attune Xenomorphs to one general. A fatal wound triggered a melt or blast, and those same elements could be pushed into a living body from light years away.

Rommel At LV-1657

Palant was on LV-1657, ten days out of the medical bay after a bleed on the brain from the ceasefire with Kalakta. Linguist Milt McIlveen and Major Halley's DevilDogs were with her on Marshall's order to get her to Sol. Three Rage ships decoyed the base guns so they could drop Xenomorphs on the plateau. One hull then dived into the core as a bomb and killed Major Reece's command. During the fight on the ground, a Xenomorph inner jaw wrecked private Nassise's head through the visor. Private Gove died when a creature blew on him and acid cut the suit, and Halley finished him with a laser. The Arrow Pixie lifted under fire from its computer Billy.

A Yautja ship destroyed the third Rage hull over the forest. Rommel stood by his landed ship, refused surrender, and went into a cliff cave with a Xenomorph guard after Pixie wrecked that hull. He then self-destructed at about two megatons. The Susco-Foley later burned in the world's atmosphere. Halley came out with a broken arm, Sprenkel and Bestwick with cracked ribs, and sergeant major Huyck with both wrists shattered. Palant had a thumb-sized acid burn on her forearm. Marshall gave Halley a new job after that, to take another android alive.

Othello

About thirty days after the UMF 12 rescue, Mains and Lieder were on the Navarro for drophole Beta 37 when they intercepted a hull more than three miles long with almost no emissions. The interior looked grown. One hold held about forty thousand gel pods, each with a naked human and a shriveled Facehugger, and the computer Spike counted five more holds like it. Three survivors met them, shipborn who called themselves Founders again. The ship was Othello.

A Wordsworth remnant had killed the Rage elders on Othello, at the cost of most of the original thousand crew. Sara was one of three survivors. Android general Jones held the control decks with a little loyal shipborn and more than a hundred hatched Xenomorphs, and he hatched more whenever one died. While Macbeth made noise on the Rim, Othello was meant to slip in unseen, split into a dozen attack vessels, and strike Sol. The Queen was not on Othello. Macbeth's queen carried a genetic link the Rage called the Touch, and eggs had been shipped across before the sister ships parted.

They hid in a waste channel under the pods while Xenomorphs passed, then Jones started a mass birthing. Durante killed the third rebel after acid gel burned through her throat. Three Xenomorphs boarded the Navarro. A plasma grenade vented the Arrow, and the remaining HellSparks died with Spike. Mains and Lieder were without a ship again. They remained inside Othello with Durante, Moran, Hari, Sara, and the burned engineer.

Satan's Saviour

Hell Station's council wanted both Tanns to take Liliya and Hashori to the Company on a hired hull, because Hashori's own ship might be what Alexander was tracking. The crew on the station were Ware, Robo, Hoot, and Millard of the independent ship Satan's Saviour. They had spent seven years together and were there to tag the Tanns for Weyland-Yutani at two hundred thousand credits. Ware offered the delivery for free and meant to bill the Company. Hoot had once worked for the Company's Section Seven. Jiango did not tell Yvette that part.

Cooper-Jordan

Nineteen days after LV-1657, two Yautja ships shadowed the Arrow Pixie on Kalakta's order to keep Palant alive. They followed her drophole codes from Gamma 116 to Gamma 65, then warned of an enemy wreck ahead. The dead Fiennes hull was the Cooper-Jordan. Palant, McIlveen, and the DevilDogs spacewalked into a burned hold of cryo-pods, then into another where more than two thousand sleepers had produced Chestbursters. Adult Xenomorphs were loose, and the Yautja were hunting through the far side.

A hunter in full kit led them to a wrecked Rage android, one leg gone, torso bitten open, head almost off. The android tried and failed to fire its nuke. The novel never names that general. They bagged the body, walked it back to Pixie, and Sprenkel put three warheads into the Cooper-Jordan from fifty miles. In the rec room McIlveen drew a laser on Halley rather than let Palant keep the android off-grid. Huyck came from the flight-deck door, put a combat knife in McIlveen's back, and cut his throat. After that, Pixie went rogue.

Rogue And The Asteroid

They dumped McIlveen's body to space and stopped answering Marshall. The two Yautja ships came back, requested a full holo, and led Pixie for twelve days in staged jumps. They stopped at an unnamed asteroid about forty miles across, with no star, about twenty light years in from the Outer Rim. Three hangar doors opened in an equatorial valley. The hunters offered Palant the hangar for that research. All outgoing transmissions from Pixie were blocked as the doors closed on the bagged android.

Hell Must Fight

On Hell Station a drophole fired under an unknown user. Jiango counted the threat in weeks, while Liliya treated Alexander as days away. Two hours later they sat on Satan's Saviour and watched a space battle about ten billion miles out, then five ships drop from warp a million miles from the station. Hashori read those five as Yautja come to help, and she meant to join them. Tann judged it too late to run. Hell Station would have to fight.

Othello Destroyed

Inside Othello, Moran stayed as rear guard in the ducts and did not come back. Lieder shot the burned engineer after a plasma flash wrecked his face. Jones used open comms to claim the name of a British paratroop general. In a lobby ambush a tail went through Hari's chest. A plasma grenade then burned Sara and Durante, and Mains finished Durante. Mains and Lieder fell down an elevator shaft.

They lived long enough to reach a hangar of two attack craft. Hundreds of Xenomorphs flooded the bay, cracked the cockpit glass, and killed each other to melt the gap with acid. Lieder hot-wired a fist-sized nuke with her one good arm while Mains held it. Macbeth later received an automated signal from Othello, the first in seven years, timestamped at the moment of the ship's destruction.

The Sol Jump

Marshall could not raise Pixie on any subspace frequency and treated the Arrow as lost. Bassett counted nineteen Gamma dropholes gone and contact lost with about twelve more. The fighting they knew about remained limited to Gamma. Marshall raised a shutdown of all six hundred Gamma holes again. It would have needed every one of the Thirteen, and Bassett refused.

Macbeth had taken a drophole three days earlier and shipped about a thousand of the moon's people to the Queen as food and hosts. Maloney treated Othello's loss as a change of plan, not a disaster. She meant to move the Faze onto the captured hole for thirty to sixty days of rebuild work. After that she would attempt a jump deeper than the usual ten to twelve light years, straight into the Sol System, and split Macbeth into a dozen attack craft. In the meantime General Mashima would take the Aaron-Percival, six attack ships, and the remaining egg store against Weaver's World in twenty-eight days. Weaver's World was a Beta colony of more than seven million, and the attack was meant to pull Marine attention while the Faze worked.

The Yautja

William Bao concept art of a Yautja in a vacuum suit, used here for Hashori

Hashori was the only named Yautja followed at length, and she spoke only Yautja, with Liliya translating. Hashori flew fifty-one days with almost no sleep and reported habitats, ships, and even planets lost. She later treated the human ceasefire as fact. At Hell Station she refused to hide, kept her weapons in the cell, and stood down a leveled spear when Liliya stopped her from forcing a return to the ship. When five Yautja hulls dropped a million miles out, she left Satan's Saviour to join them.

Kalakta never appears in person. After the ceasefire he ordered two ships to keep Palant alive. Those hulls destroyed Rommel's third dropship at LV-1657 and then followed Pixie through the holes. They hunted on the Cooper-Jordan, handed Palant the wrecked android, and later led her to the hidden asteroid. Halley had to accept cloaked ships she did not like.

An unnamed Yautja met Palant's group on the wreck of the Cooper-Jordan. He wore a lance, a blaster, a trophy belt, and armor burned by acid, with green blood on his chest, and he did not fire on the Marines. Palant's Yautja-language work from the first book remained part of the peace, and Kalakta's speech had shown human word order.

The Rage

The Rage ran Xenomorphs as soldiers under android generals, each battalion stamped with a name. Patton died on UMF 12, and Rommel took Gamma 123 before wrecking LV-1657 and blowing himself rather than be taken. Jones held Othello until that hull was destroyed, while Alexander hunted Liliya toward Hell Station. Parks wrecked the Gamma 23 moon base, and Montgomery appeared only as a hide stamp on Priest's World. At the end of the book Mashima was assigned Weaver's World. A wrecked general from the Cooper-Jordan stayed alive in a bag on Pixie, too damaged to fire its nuke.

The Rage ran their Xenomorphs with three things put together: the nano research Liliya stole from Weyland-Yutani, leftover science from the dead dog-like species on Midsummer, and the Faze. Macbeth's Queen had been rewritten so every egg, Facehugger, and adult Xenomorph answered one general. Fatal wounds triggered a melt or blast to hide those artificial elements. Some troops crossed vacuum with six silver globes on their backs. Fiennes sleeper ships were the nurseries, early loads about seven thousand and later ones about forty thousand.

The Faze rebuilt ships and extruded Watchers to track the Midsummer tech in Liliya's blood. One Watcher sat with Maloney, another with Alexander. Shipborn on Othello kept a Wordsworth remnant, while Macbeth stayed a cult around Maloney. She had killed Wordsworth. Liliya had killed the elder Erika Simons on the way out of Macbeth in the first book.

Confirmed Kills

Durante's hull blast killed Patton on UMF 12, and Mains and Lieder killed the last Xenomorphs on that bridge. Later, on an Othello attack craft, they armed a hangar nuke that destroyed the sister ship. Rommel's troops killed McBrain and Vicar and wrecked the Gagarin screen. The Gamma 77 squadron destroyed the Fiennes sleeper Harmes-Cox, launched more than four hundred years earlier with about nineteen thousand aboard, at the cost of three frigates and one Arrow. The MudSerpents, Maria Grizz's ship, and Moore's frigates were overrun off-page.

At LV-1657, a Xenomorph killed Nassise, Halley mercy-killed Gove, and Bestwick finished the creature that had killed Nassise. Reece died in the core blast. A Yautja ship wrecked Rommel's third dropship, and Rommel killed himself. Huyck killed McIlveen after the linguist drew on Halley. Pixie then put warheads into the Cooper-Jordan, and those warheads, with the earlier Marine action, killed the sleepers aboard that hull.

On Othello, Xenomorphs killed Hari, Sara, the third rebel, and the Navarro crew, including Bekovich. Lieder shot the burned engineer, Mains finished Durante, and Moran died as rear guard. Jones's earlier purge had killed most of Othello's original thousand.

Key Characters

Johnny Mains - Lieutenant, VoidLarks. Last seen arming a nuke on an Othello attack craft. Ship later confirmed destroyed.
Gemma Lieder - VoidLark pilot. Left arm ruined. Last seen with Mains on that craft.
Eddie Durante - HellSparks lieutenant, Navarro. Mercy-killed by Mains after a plasma burn.
Moran and Hari - HellSparks. Dead on Othello.
Sara - Othello rebel medic. Dead in the lobby blast.
Patton - Rage android general. Dead on UMF 12.
Jones - Rage android general on Othello. Lost with the ship.
Isa Palant - ArmoTech Yautja researcher. Alive in a hidden Yautja asteroid hangar.
Akoko Halley - Major, 39th Spaceborne DevilDogs. Rogue with Pixie. Lived.
Huyck, Bestwick, and Sprenkel - DevilDogs. Alive with Halley.
Milt McIlveen - Company linguist. Killed by Huyck.
Nassise and Gove - DevilDogs. Dead at LV-1657.
Liliya - Rage android. Alive on Satan's Saviour as Hell Station prepared to fight.
Hashori - Widow Clan hunter. Alive, leaving to join five Yautja ships.
Jiango Tann and Yvette Tann - Hell civilians. Alive on Satan's Saviour.
Ware, Robo, Hoot, and Millard - Satan's Saviour crew. Alive.
Beatrix Maloney - Rage leader on Macbeth. Alive at a captured drophole.
Alexander - Rage general hunting Liliya. Alive, closing on Hell Station.
Rommel - Rage android general. Dead in a two-megaton self-destruct.
Challar - Original Founder on Macbeth. Alive in gel.
Gerard Marshall - Seventh of the Thirteen, ArmoTech. Alive on Charon.
Paul Bassett - Colonial Marine commander. Alive on Charon.
James Barclay - Thirteen leader. Ordered a live android taken.
Kalakta - 677th Elder. Off-page. His ships guarded Palant.
Mashima - Rage general assigned to Weaver's World. Not seen.

Place In The Rage War

Titan's first official Alien novel wave was the 2014 trio, Lebbon's Out of the Shadows, James A. Moore's Sea of Sorrows, and Christopher Golden's River of Pain. Lebbon's Incursion started the far-future line in October 2015. Invasion followed on Alien Day, 26 April 2016, and Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon closed the trilogy in September 2016. This was Lebbon's third Alien or Predator novel after Out of the Shadows and Incursion.

The book is labeled Alien, but the hunters stay in the fight through Hashori, Kalakta's escorts, and the five ships at Hell Station. Halley later returned in Lebbon's short stories Spite, in the anthology Aliens: Bug Hunt, and Devil Dogs, in Predator: If It Bleeds. Those pieces sit earlier in her Corps career than the Rage War.

Continuity

The Evelyn-Tew theft and the LV-178 samples were recap from Incursion, which had tied that work to Out of the Shadows. Invasion did not name the Midsummer dog-like species Drukathi. That word came in Armageddon, when Yaquita pulled it from a damaged android. In this novel the Midsummer find was the Faze, the Watchers, and the stolen nano.

Mains and Lieder did not appear again after the signal that confirmed Othello's destruction. Liliya, Hashori, and the Tanns were on Satan's Saviour as five Yautja ships reached Hell Station. Palant and the rogue DevilDogs were inside a hidden asteroid hangar with a bagged general. Maloney paused at a captured drophole while the Faze prepared a Sol jump. Alexander was inbound, and Marshall treated Pixie as lost.

Editions

Titan Books released the first edition on 26 April 2016 as a mass-market paperback in the United States, the same day as Alien Day. Titan's catalog gives 320 pages. The cover uses film stills of two adult Xenomorphs in wrecked industrial space, rather than a painted scene from 2692. In 2018, Luzifer published a German edition under the same title Alien: Invasion. The story continues in Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon.

Behind The Scenes

Titan marked the release with an Alien Day interview in which Lebbon treated the hard part of the trilogy as writing Colonial Marines three centuries on, after they had become a police force for the Company, and building habitats and worlds he then wrecked. He treated James Cameron's Aliens as the film that opened Weyland-Yutani's wider story. This volume has no acknowledgments page.

Conclusion

Alien: Invasion is Tim Lebbon's 2016 Titan novel, the second book of the Rage War. It covers the 2692 Gamma assault after the Yautja ceasefire, then the boarding of Othello and the uneasy stay at Hell Station. The book ends with Othello destroyed, Palant hidden in a Yautja hangar, Hell Station facing Alexander, and Macbeth preparing a jump into Sol. It sits on many Alien book lists as the middle volume of that trilogy, after Incursion and before Armageddon.