Alien: Uncivil War: Novel Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: July 30, 2024
Author: Brendan Deneen
Publisher: Titan Books
Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
ISBN: 978-1-80336-695-1
Series: Titan Alien novels
Setting: LV-1213 / OST, 2381

Alien: Uncivil War is a 2024 novel by Brendan Deneen, published by Titan Books on 30 July 2024. It followed former United Systems Military colonel Chris Temple, his daughters Jane and Emma, and the family auton Alicia in May 2381, after the USM Auriga crashed into Earth in Alien: Resurrection. Their transport aborted to LV-1213 and wrecked near Mining Outpost Omega Seven Tango, a quadromite colony under a false sky. A Weyland-Yutani cult held the dome, two adult Xenomorphs grew from the wreck, and Chris got his family off on an empty USM ship while miners and troops were still fighting in the unlit town.

Plot Summary

On 23 May 2381 the Temples were awake on the transport ship VX-72383, bound for a civilian colony after Chris left the service. An adult Xenomorph got loose in the corridors. Alicia opened a locked path with his old colonel codes, tackled the creature so the three humans could reach an escape pod, and they left believing she had been destroyed with the ship.

Earth Before The Transport

Chris quit after the Auriga hit Earth and the fighting that followed. A sergeant had warned him that war would keep finding him. His wife Elizabeth was dead, and he was moving Jane, eleven, and Emma, eight, plus Alicia, a domestic synthetic the girls treated as family. Robberies had jumped in the months after the Auriga hit Earth, which was one reason he wanted them off the planet.

Shortly before they left, two escaped convicts, Terrence and Mackie, broke into the Temple house for Elizabeth's jewelry. Alicia's inhibitor kept her from hurting them until Jane came down the stairs and Terrence moved toward the girl with a knife. Alicia broke his arm, took a blade in the back from Mackie, and smashed Mackie unconscious on the stairs. Alicia reached local law after the fight. Jane asked if she was all right, not whether her systems were fine. The family went through Gateway in a blur and boarded the transport.

Outbreak On The Ship VX-72383

Most passengers had gone into hypersleep. The girls were not ready for the chambers, so Chris kept them awake for the months-long run. Chris heard rumors of genetic cargo, live experiments, even cloning, and one name that reached a man of his rank was Ripley. He treated that as gossip until he saw an adult Xenomorph pin a guard through the gut with its tail.

Alicia used his colonel codes to open a locked route toward the pods. She slammed the creature into a wall and rolled with it in the smoke while Chris got the girls into a four-seat pod, a count that left two seats empty. The adult Xenomorph reached the closing hatch with no sign of Alicia behind it. Chris thought of Elizabeth, glad she had missed this, and of Alicia being torn apart in the corridor.

Crash On LV-1213

The destination abort put them on LV-1213 instead of the civilian colony they had booked. The pod came down a few miles from the OST during daylight, which mattered because nights there ran long and the open rock was unsafe. Lexa Phelan watched the girls while Chris was unconscious in the hospital. When he woke, Jane and Emma had attached themselves to her, and she walked him through a town that looked like late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America under a digital sky.

Once the girls were out of earshot she told him the transport had been completely destroyed and that nothing had survived. That was a lie. Colonists had hauled the wreck into a warehouse before he woke, and Cosgrove, a scarred former USM man on warehouse security, kept him away from it with a story about radioactive waste from one of Margaret Livingston's energy tests. Lexa claimed a small board ran the outpost and that she was not the leader. She offered the Temples a prepared empty house, canned goods and farm milk, a spare walkie, and a table at Delilah's. She also claimed the colony had sent a survivor message to the USM, and that a reply would take time.

Life Under The Dome

Jane and Emma settled faster than Chris expected. They named rooms in the house while he slept, ate breakfast at Delilah's, and sat through a short animated film in the colony theater, the first old-fashioned cinema either girl had seen. Lexa left once the movie started, citing work. Miner Tom invited them to the Friday night at the bar, when Delilah poured moonshine and the miners needed to cut loose.

Margaret's work included accelerated trees and animals on a farm plot, and the dome climate was set to a comfortable fake Earth day. Lexa talked about school and about waiting for a USM answer on a residential colony. At Delilah's that night the fight started when a red-bearded miner blamed the group for something they had done, then swung. Chris put several men down before Lexa pulled him back. By closing time those same miners were clapping his back, and Lexa kissed him on the walk home.

After the girls were in bed, Chris walked the dark side of the stores and found the warehouse in a tree clearing. Anthony Milliken blocked him there. Cosgrove made the younger guard apologize, offered cigarettes and drinks, and promised a tour if Chris filled out paperwork. Chris left with Cosgrove, Milliken, and a red-haired guard watching him from the door.

Eggs In The Warehouse

Miners Tommy Travers and his twin Francis were sent into sections of the wreck that the first sweep had missed. Tommy wanted Lexa to notice him. In a dark lower deck they squeezed through a crash blockage and found two eggs. Both opened, and a Facehugger took Tommy. A second creature attached to Francis. They stumbled out blank-eyed, and Cosgrove treated them as drunks he could fire.

In their house Tommy and Francis went into convulsions together. A Chestburster tore out of each man, and the pair of small Xenomorphs found each other before they slipped into the shadows. Those two later hid in the trees outside the warehouse, shed their skins, and grew into adult Xenomorphs. The larger one killed handler John Wilkins in the barn, then the pair tore a lone person on the road and split, hunting as a larger brother and a smaller sister.

Taggert And The USS Weaver

Captain James Taggert of the USS Weaver woke ahead of his Marines and reviewed a mission to restore Commander Jennifer Chu, the USM official who had been sent to strip the OST back to a mine. First Lieutenant Riya Ashraf and Second Lieutenant Douglas Parsons sat the bridge with him. Ashraf later caught a days-old distress call as they closed on LV-1213. That call was Chu's, sent just before Lexa's people took her.

Taggert treated the Company remnants as a long war, not a closed file. Mega-corporations had been outlawed in 2349 after Nu Indi won independence from Weyland-Yutani and Ridton took the faster-than-light contract the Company wanted. The USM took most of the dissolved firm's assets, then spent years burning cult cells and hunting moles inside its own ranks. Those cells treated Peter Weyland and Cullen Yutani as the real founders of the species, set against the military that had stripped them. On Earth he had spent the last few years wiping small cult cells and lost only two soldiers, so he came to the OST expecting the same kind of fight.

Chris Finds The Prison

Lexa had been orphaned after a Gateway transport accident, then read a Weyland and Yutani biography and joined that church-style following. She spent months turning the miners against Jennifer Chu, who had docked pay, jailed dissenters, and shut the nostalgic town down as a waste of USM money. The siege lasted about a day. A few people died on both sides, then Jennifer and her staff went into cells under headquarters, and Lexa ran the dome. Lexa wanted Chris in the fight. He refused, and she put Margaret on the wreck instead.

Chris bypassed a hidden door in headquarters and went down a long stair into an underground cell block. Pale prisoners stared back, including the red-bearded miner from Delilah's. Jennifer Chu named herself the former leader, laughed at Lexa's board story, and dated the revolt in weeks or months she could no longer count. No children were in the cells. The miners with kids had gone with Lexa. Jennifer asked if the transport was really gone, and Chris understood the warehouse lie. He left her there, went back for his girls, and promised to get the prisoners out if he could.

Alicia In The Lab

Margaret woke Alicia on a warehouse table and asked how to hack the USM. Lexa wanted colonel-level access more than she wanted the auton repaired for the Temples. Chris later beat Milliken behind the warehouse, took his badge, and used Lexa's headquarters code on the main door. The wreck filled the chamber on wooden props, black with scorch, other escape pods gone.

A light under a side door led to Margaret's cluttered lab. She was humming over a soldering iron when Chris found Alicia on the table, face cut and burned, one arm gone, white fluid dried through holes in her clothes. Jane and Emma ran in and held her. Alicia warned them the colonists were dangerous. The family decided to leave that night, before the USM landing turned the dome into a battlefield.

Civil War In The Dome

Taggert's Marines came in during the long night. Moira Campbell found a hidden hatch at the back of the dome and started to cut power, while turrets that were not on the Weaver's old schematics opened up. Parsons took multiple hits, told Campbell to finish the job, and died on the rock after she confirmed the grid was down. Inside, Lexa's miners were armed from a farm range she had set up after the takeover, with ambush teams already placed.

Power and the fake sky started to glitch as factions fought for the grid, swapping a painted Earth day for LV-1213's three moons and flying rock. Chris hid Alicia and the girls in a locked room, then went back to the cells. He shot two of Lexa's guards, kicked the locks open, and watched Jennifer's people strip the weapons locker. Chu wanted the colony back and would not leave. When Chris returned upstairs, a blast had torn the hide room and written MOVIE in blood on the wall.

Ashraf was shot under the ribs while she and Taggert closed on headquarters. She lost feeling in her legs, and he left her to keep fighting. Taggert went on alone, killed anyone who moved, and took a round through the femoral artery in a street duel. When the lights came back he saw he had put a bullet through Jennifer Chu's forehead, the woman he had been sent to protect. He died beside her.

The Movie Theater

Chris kicked in the theater's back door and found a silent black-and-white film running in an empty house. Alicia, Jane, and Emma rose from between the front rows. The larger adult Xenomorph dragged a living woman in and started wrapping her against the wall. Chris emptied a pistol into it, acid blood burned the floor and his skin, and the gun clicked empty before the head shot. Alicia caught the tail with her remaining hand long enough for him to finish the skull. The cocooned woman had no pulse when he checked her neck.

Off LV-1213

Alicia plugged a wrist wire into a pharmacy port and found an unattended USM ship about two miles west. They waited for the false daylight to fail, then moved for the main exit. Lexa stopped them with a rifle, claimed the Marines were dead, and asked Chris to stay. He told her she did not know him. She aimed at his head, and the smaller adult Xenomorph hit her first, tore her throat, and killed her on the ground.

Alicia forced the dome door one last time through a failing grid. Outside, the smaller Xenomorph pinned her, then Chris. Jane threw him the rifle after a tail blow dropped it, Alicia and the girls threw rocks to break the pin, and Chris shot the creature through the inner jaw. His old passcode started the USM ship. Alicia put another outpost about five hundred trillion miles away, roughly two months at hyperdrive. Chris sat in the captain's chair with the girls asleep as they left orbit. The OST had lost power, and people were still shooting in the square as the ship passed over.

LV-1213 And The OST

Mining Outpost Omega Seven Tango sat under an oblong plastic dome on a wind-scoured world with three moons and nights that lasted far longer than a terrestrial day. Founders copied an old American main street, with a hospital, square, grocery, bakery, pharmacy, movie theater, a bar named Delilah's, and a farm. Miners went outside the dome for quadromite. Electrical storms the eye could not see broke radios.

The USM later flagged the spending on that town and sent Jennifer Chu to put the site back on ore and profit. Lexa's people hid the crashed transport in the warehouse and kept the wreck off Chris's map. Only two eggs came off that hull. There is no Queen and no hive under the mine, only the two adults that grow from the Travers twins and hunt while the civil war fills the streets.

Confirmed Xenomorph Kills

The adult Xenomorph on the ship VX-72383 killed at least one guard with its tail. Alicia tackled it so the Temples could reach a pod, and that first creature is not seen again after the crash. Tommy and Francis Travers died when the two Chestbursters came out of them.

Once they had grown into adult Xenomorphs, the larger one killed handler John Wilkins in the barn, then helped tear a lone person on the road. One of the two later ate Milliken behind the warehouse. Chris killed the larger adult Xenomorph in the theater after Alicia held its tail. The smaller one killed Lexa at the exit, then Chris shot it through the mouth on the rocks outside the dome. Civil-war deaths, including Taggert and Chu, were human fire, not Xenomorph kills.

Key Characters

Chris Temple was a retired USM colonel moving his daughters off a ruined Earth. He killed both adult Xenomorphs that hunted the OST and flew an empty USM ship off LV-1213.
Jane Temple was eleven. She threw Chris the rifle outside the dome after the smaller adult Xenomorph knocked it away.
Emma Temple was eight. She left the planet with her father, her sister, and Alicia.
Alicia was the family auton. She saved them on the transport, survived Margaret's rebuild missing an arm, and opened the dome so they could reach the ship.
Elizabeth Temple was Chris's dead wife. She does not appear in the present-day story.
Lexa Phelan led the Weyland-Yutani cult that took the OST from Jennifer Chu. The smaller adult Xenomorph killed her at the main exit.
Jennifer Chu was the USM commander sent to run the mine. Taggert shot her in the forehead during the blackout fight and died beside her.
James Taggert captained the USS Weaver. He lost Parsons and Ashraf, killed Chu by mistake, and bled out from a femoral hit.
Riya Ashraf was Taggert's first lieutenant. She was shot in the street fight inside the dome.
Douglas Parsons was Taggert's second lieutenant and best marksman. He died outside the dome during the hatch breach.
Moira Campbell was Parsons's hatch specialist. She cut the dome's power after turrets that were not on the Weaver schematics opened fire.
Margaret Livingston was the OST scientist who grew accelerated trees and rebuilt Alicia so Lexa could try to hack the USM.
Cosgrove ran warehouse security after six years in the USM. He hid the wreck and later fought Chris during the insurgency.
Anthony Milliken was a warehouse guard. Chris beat him behind the building, and a Xenomorph later ate him.
Tommy Travers and Francis Travers were miner twins sent into the wreck. Facehuggers took both, and they died together when the Chestbursters emerged.
John Wilkins worked the barn animals. The larger adult Xenomorph killed him after it grew up in the trees.

Place In The Titan Line

Titan released David Barnett's Alien: Colony War and Philippa Ballantine's Alien: Inferno's Fall in 2022, then Mary SanGiovanni's Alien: Enemy of My Enemy in 2023, all set in the 2180s. Uncivil War landed on 30 July 2024 as a standalone after Alien: Resurrection, not as a numbered sequel to that run. Ballantine and Clara Carija's Alien: Seventh Circle followed in 2025 and stayed with the Jackals.

This paperback does not bind a Free League Alien RPG scenario the way Colony War and Inferno's Fall did. Carija advised Deneen on when to set the story, the same consulting role she had held on earlier Titan Alien novels.

Continuity

The story is set in May 2381, after the Auriga crashed into Earth in Alien: Resurrection. Chris treats the Nostromo and Auriga outbreaks as classified military history. The name Ripley turns up only as a rumor about cloning and genetic cargo on the transport. The book never shows a Ripley clone.

Deneen's USM history puts the corporate ban in 2349, with cult remnants and moles fighting after the Company was stripped. That is a different picture from stories that treat Weyland-Yutani as fully gone, or as a later rebuilt firm after the military itself collapsed. The OST outbreak is two eggs and two adults, not a seeded hive and not a pathogen strike. This book has no Yautja.

Editions And Adaptations

Titan's trade paperback came out in the United States and the United Kingdom on 30 July 2024 at 384 pages. Titan also released an ebook the same day. Some later listings print a 352-page count. Cover art was by Marco Turini. Blackstone Publishing released an audiobook on 30 July 2024, read by Austin Rising, about ten hours and eighteen minutes.

Behind The Scenes

Deneen first wrote a private Alien 3 treatment in which Ripley, Hicks, and Newt crashed as a family into a conflict with a Xenomorph in the mix. He sent it to Titan editor Steve Saffel after William Gibson's unproduced Alien 3 graphic novel left him unsatisfied, and Saffel refused another Alien 3. About a year and a half later Saffel asked for an original novel that kept the family-and-war shape and cut every film-cast tie. Titan lore consultant Clara Carija told him to set it shortly after Alien: Resurrection.

He wrote Alicia as a warm auton on purpose, against the cold-android pattern he named as one of the franchise's three core pieces, alongside the Company and the monster. He listened to the Tron: Legacy score while drafting. Daquan Cadogan edited the manuscript. The acknowledgements thank Saffel, Cadogan, Carija, earlier agents and editors, teachers, his parents Irene Murray and Rich Deneen, his wife Kim, and their daughters Eloise and Charlotte.

AvP Galaxy posted the title in October 2023 from a Spring 2024 catalogue listing dated 16 April 2024. Titan moved the paperback and ebook to 30 July 2024. Deneen had written Morbius: Blood Ties and a Guardians of the Galaxy novel for Titan, plus his own novel The Ninth Circle.

Conclusion

Alien: Uncivil War is Brendan Deneen's 2024 Titan novel about the May 2381 wreck of the transport ship VX-72383 and the civil war at Mining Outpost Omega Seven Tango. It covers Chris Temple's attempt to keep Jane, Emma, and Alicia safe after Alien: Resurrection, and it ends with the family leaving LV-1213 on a USM ship while the civil war in the OST continued.