Alien vs. Predator: Life and Death
Alien vs. Predator: Life and Death is a four-issue Dark Horse series written by Dan Abnett and drawn by Brian Albert Thies. Issue #1 is dated December 28, 2016. After Aliens: Life and Death, Captain Paget's remaining Colonial Marines were stranded on LV-223 with Chris Hanlock carrying a Xenomorph Queen, while hunters from the Tartarus Clan slaughtered the crew of the USS Hasdrubal in orbit. Ahab killed the clan champion Hornhead so those Yautja would fight beside the Marines, and the swarm that came for Chris ended when she walked into it with a live grenade.
Plot Summary
The Hasdrubal
The rapid-response combat ship USS Hasdrubal hung in orbit over LV-223 with hunters from the Tartarus Clan already inside the hull. They had boarded during the earlier fighting around LV-797 and finished the remaining crew once the ship reached this moon. A hunter in pink mesh stood over the bridge boards while another in bone and mesh filled a rack with skulls, and the open channel from the surface kept asking for a response that never came. Down in the brig, Lorimer had Laurence Goode locked in a cell and dragged him out for a weapons locker, certain that Weyland-Yutani clearance could override Marine safety locks. Goode could not open it, so Lorimer beat him in that corridor for being useless, and the pink-mesh hunter killed both men with wristblades before either of them reached a rifle.
On the ground, Captain Paget told the survivors they were not getting an evacuation. Ammunition was low after the wrecked dropship and the running fight that had left them on LV-223. Chris Hanlock was carrying a Queen embryo, and Jill wanted her put into stasis the way Lorimer had promised before contact with orbit was lost, but Paget cut that argument off. The adult Xenomorphs on the moon were coming for the new Queen, and the platoon had to move while it still could. Cross asked whether the unmanned freight bus on the Hasdrubal could be flown down on remote. Freebody backed that hope, and Sergeant Roth counted the time: an hour to raise an uplink, hours more to turn the craft, then the flight itself, which would take longer than they had before the hive arrived.
Melville treated the Engineer mountain temple as the only solid bunker left, with thick walls and few ways in. One Engineer had already left the moon. The other had gone after the earlier Queen, and Melville would not pretend that giant was gone for good. Roth wanted a working shield in the open rather than a walk into that site, but Paget took the pyramid over waiting in the valley for a swarm that was on the move. She ordered Azzopardi and Cross to strip every round they could carry from the wreck, then moved the column toward the stone.
Retreat To The Pyramid
The Marines reached the Engineer site and treated it as a fort. Paget set a perimeter, sent Azzopardi to portion the remaining ammunition and watch the valley from the main door, and sent Freebody and Cross to sweep the exterior for other ways in. Chris was failing under the weight of the embryo, and Melville stayed close enough to ask how she was holding, which she was not, because she could feel the hive coming through the rock.
Freebody and Cross climbed that exterior sweep along the cliff face until long-bodied adult Xenomorphs came out of the LV-223 stone the way so much else on the moon had after the accelerant. Cross went down first, and Freebody emptied a pulse rifle into one of them and still lost the fight until Galgo Helder and Ahab came in from the ridge. Ahab burned the first creature with a plasma bolt and cut the rest apart with blades. Galgo finished the last of them with a hand cannon and walked the two Marines back toward the temple.
Freebody had taken Galgo for dead after the earlier fighting on the moon. Galgo said the same about Freebody, then told Cross that the hunter with them was on their side for the moment, and that more trouble was coming that was not the hive. Roth spotted the new arrivals through binoculars from the doorway and pulled Melville and everybody else into the crush at the threshold. Galgo reached Paget there, introduced himself as the mercenary the Marines had heard about, and told her the Marines could not take command of the hunters. He wanted them to stay in the doorway and not provoke a fight, and he pointed to Ahab as the hunter who might keep the clan from attacking them.
Inside the doorway, Jill held Chris while Azzopardi laughed at the condition they were in. Paget shut him down at once: nobody was to mouth off at Chris, and someone had to keep her stable. Chris laughed through the pain anyway, because the Queen wanted out, it was getting ready, and she could hear the hive whispering as it came to take it. Paget asked again what they were supposed to do, and Roth wanted defensive positions and reloads. Before that plan could settle, Freebody and Cross came back in with Galgo, and the hunters Roth had seen on the horizon were forming a line on the stone.
The Tartarus Clan
The Tartarus Clan landed at the pyramid in a Yautja ship and formed a line on the stone, cloaks, spears, and masks from the same hunting party that had taken the Hasdrubal. They had tracked that hull from LV-797 to this moon, and the Engineer temple was as much the prize as any leftover Marine. Melville treated that boarding as the reason the surface team had lost the ship. Ahab knew the clan. He unmasked, walked out alone, and met them on the open ground in front of Paget's doorway while Galgo and Roth watched through binoculars. Roth could not tell the hunters apart as individuals, only that they were the same breed, and Galgo treated the landing as proof they had tracked the Marines from the ship to this crater.
Paget wanted to fire, and Galgo stopped her because a shot would start a fight on the steps. The hunters did not all attack Ahab. One of them came forward for single combat. Galgo took that as either a test of whether Ahab still belonged with them after hunting beside humans, or a contest over leadership of the clan. If Ahab lost, the Marines on the steps would be next. While Ahab and that champion faced each other, Paget put Cross and Roth on a transponder and a data lock into the Hasdrubal, then told them to start bringing the freight bus down on remote even if the ship was hours away. The clan's champion stepped forward, the horned hunter Galgo had named the Champion, Hornhead.
Ahab And Hornhead
Ahab and Hornhead fought a Predator duel with fists in the dust in front of the clan. The champion was larger, and the first wristblade exchange put a blade into Ahab's shoulder. Green blood ran down Ahab's face after a punch that split him open, and one of his gauntlet blades broke in that clinch. He still cut Hornhead's hand off and drove his remaining blades through the champion's chest. Hornhead went down in front of the hunters who had followed him from Tartarus. Ahab stood over the body with both arms raised, and the clan answered with a roar that accepted him as leader. One of the remaining hunters answered him in the Yautja language.
Galgo took the roar as a delay, not as a hunt Ahab had wanted for its own sake. The clan had come for trophies and for the temple. With Hornhead dead they stayed to fight the swarm instead, because adult Xenomorphs were filling the ridge, some of them winged Xenomorphs. Chris doubled over in the doorway as the Queen moved. Melville told Jill to look after her while Cross patched into the ship's automatics and prepped the freight bus for a remote launch. That delay ended as soon as the hive reached the pyramid.
The Xenomorph Swarm
The hive came over the rocks, winged forms among the runners, all of it aimed at the pyramid and at Chris. Cross stayed on the Hasdrubal remote until the prep cycle finally took, then Roth pulled him onto the firing line as well. Melville kept Chris on her feet with the argument that the company would spend whatever it took to pull a live Queen out of her, and that the hive wanting her alive was the only hope they had of living through the hour. Chris hated that company, and she still used the point. Jill stayed with her until Roth pulled Jill onto the wall, where Marines were firing smartguns into the swarm. Chris sent her anyway, claiming she could manage on her own.
Ahab's hunters met the front of the swarm with plasma, discs, and blades. Marines and Yautja both started to fall as more adult Xenomorphs came over the ridge. Azzopardi ran his rifle empty at the wall, called for a reload, and was dragged down before he could seat another magazine. An inner jaw went through his mouth. Melville fired into that creature from behind, and Paget shot the Xenomorphs coming up the steps. Galgo told Paget they were being overrun, so he called for Ahab. Ahab was fighting in the swarm, and the extra hunters were not enough.
Chris And The Swarm
Chris felt the Queen chestburster moving and knew the swarm would not leave while she was alive with it. She took a live grenade from a crate, walked out of the Marine position, and kept going when Paget, Roth, and Jill tried to pull her back. Melville treated that walk as the only choice left, because there was no lander and nowhere to run, and Ahab's hunters were failing in the open. The adult Xenomorphs closed around her instead of the temple.
After the accelerant the Engineers had spilled on this moon, they could not breed on their own, and the Queen in her chest was the only future they had left. The Queen tore out of her in that circle, and she set the grenade off, killing herself and the newborn Queen and tearing a hole through the center of the horde. The Xenomorphs that were left broke and ran, and Jill saw it from the line with Paget, Roth, Melville, Galgo, Freebody, and Cross.
Departure From LV-223
Trackers showed no Xenomorphs left around the pyramid. Freebody treated that as proof there had been nothing else they wanted once Chris and the Queen were gone. Melville stayed with Jill while Cross worked the freight-bus telemetry. Flight prep had hit delays, then auto repair took hold, and Cross put the pickup at about ninety minutes. Roth thought ninety minutes was too long. A hunter in red mesh raised a disc, and the Tartarus Clan left the crater because the hunt was over, taking Ahab with them. Paget wanted a translation of the clicks, and Galgo treated them as a notice that the hive was broken and that there was nothing left here worth hunting, then admitted he was guessing from a long stretch of traveling with that hunter.
Galgo caught Ahab on the way to the dropship and put the Engineer rifle in his hands as a parting gift, the same weapon Galgo had used against the giants on this moon. Ahab took it and boarded the clan ship without Galgo, then looked the rifle over in the red light of the hull as it left LV-223.
Cross then reported another forty minutes for the freight bus after autoflight held on the Hasdrubal remote. Paget and the handful of Marines who were left waited at the pyramid for that pickup, with no hunters left on the line and no swarm on the scanners. Roth thought he heard movement in the dark beyond the temple, and Paget did not. In the rocks, the wounded second Engineer was on his feet and coming toward them, the same armored giant from Ahab's earlier fight with an Engineer, before that shuttle could reach the steps.
Key Characters
- Captain Paget commanded the remaining Hasdrubal Marines on LV-223. She pulled them into the Engineer pyramid, held fire on the Tartarus Clan, and was among the survivors waiting for the freight bus when the wounded Engineer closed in.
- Chris Hanlock carried a Queen from the fight before this miniseries. She walked into the swarm with a grenade, told the hive the embryo was their only future, and detonated it as the chestburster came out, killing herself and breaking the attack.
- Jill stayed with Chris from the wreck through the pyramid, left her only when Roth pulled her onto the wall, tried to stop the walk into the hive, and watched the grenade from the Marine line.
- Sergeant Roth timed the freight-bus remote, spotted the clan through binoculars, held the firing line at the temple door, and thought he heard the Engineer in the dark after the hunters left.
- Melville chose the Engineer pyramid as a bunker, kept Chris moving with the company's interest in a live Queen, fired when Azzopardi went down, and treated her walk into the swarm as the only choice left.
- Cross asked for the Hasdrubal freight bus, survived the exterior Xenomorph attack with Freebody, and ran the remote uplink from a delayed prep cycle through auto repair until the survivors had about forty minutes left to wait.
- Freebody swept the pyramid exterior with Cross, was saved by Galgo and Ahab, fought on the temple line through the swarm, and treated the empty trackers as proof the hive had only wanted Chris.
- Azzopardi pulled ammunition from the wreck, watched the valley from the main door, and was killed at the wall when his rifle ran empty and an inner jaw went through his mouth.
- Laurence Goode was locked in a Hasdrubal cell. Lorimer beat him over a weapons locker he could not open, and a Tartarus hunter killed both men in that corridor.
- Lorimer was a Weyland-Yutani man left aboard the Hasdrubal. He tried to force an override of the Marine locker and died with Goode before he reached a gun.
- Ahab was the Elder hunter stranded on the moon with Galgo Helder. He saved Freebody and Cross, killed Hornhead for the Tartarus Clan, fought the swarm at the pyramid, and left on the clan ship with Galgo's Engineer rifle.
- Hornhead was the Tartarus Clan champion, a horned hunter who met Ahab in single combat at the pyramid. He put a blade in Ahab's shoulder, lost his hand, and died when Ahab ran wristblades through his chest.
- Galgo Helder stopped Paget from opening fire on the clan, read the duel as a leadership ritual, called Ahab when the line started to fail, and gave him the Engineer rifle before the dropship left.
- The wounded second Engineer had been left on LV-223 after the earlier fight. The four issues end with him walking toward the pyramid while the Marines waited for the freight bus.
Editions
Issue #1 is dated December 28, 2016, with script by Dan Abnett, art by Brian Albert Thies, colors by Rain Beredo, lettering by Michael Heisler, and cover painting by David Palumbo. Sachin Teng and Carlos D'Anda drew variant covers for that issue. Randy Stradley edited the collection, with Kevin Burkhalter and Freddye Miller as assistant editors. Issue #2 is dated January 25, 2017, issue #3 February 22, 2017, and issue #4 March 29, 2017, with the same interior team across all four issues. Palumbo's paintings are the regular issue covers. The issues also went out through Dark Horse Digital.
The miniseries is the Alien vs. Predator leg of Dark Horse's 2016-2017 Life and Death crossover, after Predator: Life and Death, Prometheus: Life and Death, and Aliens: Life and Death, and a year after Alien vs. Predator: Fire and Stone. The trade paperback recap places the story about forty-three years after Aliens.
Dark Horse Books collected #1-#4 with the one-shot Prometheus: Life and Death - Final Conflict as Alien vs. Predator: Life and Death on August 9, 2017, 136 pages, with design by Patrick Satterfield and publisher Mike Richardson. That one-shot continues from the wounded Engineer at the pyramid rather than repeating these four issues. On September 19, 2018 the miniseries was reprinted in the hardcover Aliens Predator Prometheus AVP: The Complete Life and Death, which gathered the Predator, Prometheus, Aliens, and Alien vs. Predator legs of the crossover.
Behind The Scenes
Dan Abnett wrote every leg of the Life and Death cycle for Dark Horse, with Brian Albert Thies drawing this Alien vs. Predator miniseries and Rain Beredo coloring it. David Palumbo painted the four issue covers and the 2017 trade painting of the unmasked hunter among Xenomorphs, and he also painted the Part Four promo of the wounded Engineer among dead Marines. Sachin Teng's issue #1 variant stacked cutaway heads of an Engineer, a Yautja, a Xenomorph, and a human. Several Tartarus Clan designs, including Hornhead, follow the 1990s Kenner Predator toys that NECA had brought back in plastic before this series reached shops.
Conclusion
Alien vs. Predator: Life and Death is Dan Abnett's 2016 Dark Horse miniseries, drawn by Brian Albert Thies. It covers the Hasdrubal slaughter in orbit, Paget's stand at the Engineer pyramid on LV-223, Ahab's duel with Hornhead for the Tartarus Clan, and the swarm that came for the Queen inside Chris Hanlock. Chris killed herself and the Queen with a grenade, Ahab left with Galgo's Engineer rifle, and the four issues end with the wounded Engineer walking toward the Marines who were waiting for the freight bus.
External Sources
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