Aliens: Advent/Terminus: Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: July and August 1990, in Dark Horse Presents #42 and #43
Script: Anina Bennett and Paul Guinan
Art And Cover: Paul Guinan
Colors: Rachelle Menashe, in later collections
Lettering: Willie Schubert
Title Illustration: Kilian Plunkett
Editor: Randy Stradley
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Format: Two-part black-and-white short story, later colored, 16 story pages
Setting: A parched world and an uncharted pyramid

Aliens: Advent/Terminus was a two-part short story first published in Dark Horse Presents #42 and #43 in July and August 1990. Anina Bennett and Paul Guinan wrote the script, Guinan drew the art, Willie Schubert lettered it, and Kilian Plunkett provided the title illustration. It followed freelance reporter Posada on a treasure hunt into a pyramid on a parched world, alongside bankrupt playboy Wellington Frick, his synthetic secretary Belle, and the cyborg hired gun Emil Zorn. After Belle was destroyed and Zorn was killed, Posada took Frick's prize and reached their ship, where a Xenomorph was already waiting, as a new expedition arrived at the same uncharted site.

Plot Summary

The Pyramid

Frick, Belle, Zorn, and Posada stand before a pyramid on a parched world in Aliens: Advent/Terminus

Posada later described a parched world whose stormy magnetosphere blocked remote scans from orbit, so prospectors came armed and scoured the land in low-flying craft. Other expeditions into pyramids on the planet had already brought back gems, metals, unfamiliar alloys, inscribed tablets, and artifacts of a long-extinct race. They had also reported finding Alien eggs. Several teams had already gone missing, and there was no telling which site had claimed their lives. A physical foray into one of these structures still counted as news, because real adventure, in her account, had grown scarce enough to qualify.

Freelance reporter Posada had come for that story, and she hoped it would lead to a regular correspondent post. She needed the fee from Kolchar, and she treated the assignment as a chance to sell the networks a piece they could not ignore. She stood with the others before a pyramid that rose from the sand, already wondering whether this was the site that had swallowed the missing teams. For all they knew, she thought, it could have been this one.

Frick's Expedition

Wellington Frick, the synthetic Belle, and hired gun Emil Zorn prepare to enter the pyramid

None of that fazed the man behind the mission, Wellington Frick, a one-time playboy whose recent bankruptcy had made interplanetary headlines. He told his secretary Belle that they were about to buy a lifelong meal ticket. Belle, a synthetic, said she was happy for him but did not need to eat, and he snapped that it was only an expression and told her to quit hamming. Hired gun Emil Zorn led the way, and Posada filmed the small team as they closed on the structure.

Emil Zorn was the only known survivor of a chestburster, and about fifteen percent of him was still human. Rumor had it that after the technics fitted him with an artificial torso, he demanded that his undamaged limbs be replaced as well. Posada was not sure which made her more nervous, Zorn or the unknown contents of the pyramid. Frick gave ten-to-one odds that the place had already been sacked, and said what he liked about Zorn was his overweening optimism. Zorn answered that he had a feeling about this one, and they went in.

Into The Pyramid

Frick, Belle, and Zorn descend a stair toward the pyramid's main chamber

Frick thought it stupid to build something so huge only to put the goods in the basement. Belle began a lecture on current theory, that structures of this kind were a spiritual focal point for communion with the galaxies, until Frick switched her to response mode and forbade unsolicited lectures. She asked whether that meant she should speak only when spoken to. Frick then told Posada she was not there as an ethical advisor, only to document his discoveries, and Posada said she would do so as soon as he discovered something.

When Frick asked what the inscriptions said, Belle joked that they barred females beyond that point, then gave a rough reading. She could not guarantee full accuracy, but the sense of it was that sacred was the sleep of the ages, and safe within the second womb, and that death follows upon birth. As they descended toward the main chamber, Posada felt vague fears tighten into a knot, and thought their leader and their protector were both outclassed by their android sidekick. She wondered if this was how adventure was supposed to feel. Belle said the seal had been broken, and Frick hoped a few trinkets had been left behind.

The Tomb

A decorated tomb dais in the pyramid's main chamber, with eggs along its side

Their goal came into sight at last, a tomb that Posada thought even the ancient pharaohs would have appreciated. A decorated dais filled the chamber, carved with signs and set with a row of eggs along its side. Someone called it nice digs as the team stepped into the light around the platform. Posada wished only that her stomach would stop trying to digest itself as Frick, Belle, and Zorn moved in around the find, weapons and camera ready.

The eggs along the dais confirmed what earlier expeditions had already reported from other pyramids on the world. Belle would soon study the inscriptions on that same platform and separate the tomb-builders from the creatures those eggs belonged to. For the moment the chamber still looked like a prize to Frick, a sealed room of treasure and relics rather than a hatchery already used by something else. The quiet in the tomb did not last long enough for them to take that prize unchallenged.

The Last Expedition

Emil Zorn finds the corpses of the previous expedition, used as a hatchery inside the tomb

Zorn found the last expedition first. The bodies had been used as a hatchery, and he told Frick that Posada had been right, that three adults had to be somewhere in the chamber. Frick told Zorn to cover them while he went for the loot bags, and called Posada in close, just as she had wanted it. She thought of the moment as their test of fire, and told herself that no adventure would be complete without a treasure of some sort.

Zorn asked where the synthetic was headed as Frick moved on the bags. Belle had gone to the inscriptions along the dais, which she found more intriguing than the loot. She said the tomb-builders were definitely not of the same race as these eggs, and she kept at the markings while the others worked the bags. The warning in her earlier translation, that death follows upon birth, was already taking shape around the corpses on the floor of the hatchery.

Belle Destroyed

A Xenomorph tears open Belle as Zorn opens fire in the tomb chamber

Belle was still comparing the structure to something when a Xenomorph struck and tore her open. The blow exposed the machinery inside her body, and she had time only for a brief word of thanks as she came apart. Frick shouted her name. Posada cried that she had known it. Zorn opened fire, told the others to head for the door, and raked the creature as Belle's ruined body fell to the floor of the tomb.

They reached the doors as a second Alien was driven off. Zorn shouted to close them, and Frick snapped back at him. Zorn said a couple of extra guns would have been helpful in there. Frick told him to say again how he had once fought off a half-dozen of those things single-handed. The team was out of the burial chamber, but the two remaining Aliens were still inside, and so was the fortune Frick refused to leave behind.

The Argument After The Escape

Zorn, Frick, and Posada argue after escaping the tomb, with two live Aliens still inside

Posada asked why they should not beat a hasty retreat while they still had the chance. Zorn said they had left two live Aliens in there. Frick added that they had also left a fortune. Zorn went further, and told Posada she wanted another chance at exclusive footage of him kicking Alien butt. The argument turned on money, pride, and the footage, not on any plan to finish the creatures for their own sake.

Posada admitted that the footage was part of why she had come along. The networks, she said, would not pick up a stringer report unless it had a strong action sequence. That was enough. Their various goals won out over the instinct for self-preservation, and they turned back toward the maw of the tomb rather than run for the ship. Frick still wanted the treasure, Zorn still wanted a fight, and Posada still wanted a story the networks would buy.

The Return To The Burial Chamber

Posada, Zorn, and Frick re-enter the pyramid's main burial chamber with lamps and weapons ready

As they re-entered the main burial chamber, Posada thought of retreating to the ship while she still could. They had already lost Frick's android Belle to one of the guardian Aliens in the tomb, and Belle had been the most reliable member of the crew. Then she pictured herself trying to sell the footage to the networks without the requisite action, and saw no chance in that. She told herself she had known from the start that glory came with a steep price, and that she had to keep believing it was worth it.

Zorn reported no movement on the tracker yet as they crossed the chamber again. The decorated dais still waited in the dark, with the eggs and the loot bags of the last expedition around it. The two surviving Aliens were still somewhere in that room. Frick had come back for the fortune, and Posada had come back for the pictures, and the tomb was no quieter than it had been when Belle was destroyed.

The Fight In The Burial Chamber

Zorn fires on a Xenomorph in the burial chamber as Posada films the fight

Zorn told them to look alive, because he was reading two heartbeats on the move. He said the Aliens were running in, and told Posada to get it all in frame. The creatures came at them through the chamber, and Posada called on Zorn to keep them busy for another minute so they would be rich. Then Posada shouted that one was behind him, and the fight closed to close quarters around the dais and the stairs.

Zorn held his ground with his weapon as the Aliens closed in, and one of them took him down beside the dais. He called out for Frick as the creature pinned him. Frick did not come back to help his hired gun. He went for the loot bags instead, leaving Zorn to the fight he had asked for and Posada to the footage she had come to sell to the networks.

The Facehugger

Wellington Frick recoils from a Facehugger on the tomb floor as he flees with a loot bag

Frick ran with a bag and told Zorn to hold on for one more second, then saw a Facehugger on the floor of the chamber. He tried to keep it off, kicked free, and said it would not happen when he was this close. He got back on his feet, looked at what he had taken, and remarked that there was not enough there to split three ways. The hired gun he had left behind, Zorn, was no longer part of that split.

Posada kept her lens on him as he fled the chamber. Every instinct screamed at her to run, yet she could not tear her eyes, or her camera, away from the scene in front of her. She thought that if she got out alive, the networks would be begging for this footage. Frick was already heading for the way out with the prize, and she stayed long enough to watch him go and to keep recording.

Zorn Dies In The Burial Chamber

Emil Zorn grips a Xenomorph's inner jaw as the Alien attacks him in the burial chamber

Zorn was still in the chamber, grappling with an Alien until its acid blood burned him. He went down with the creature on top of him, his torso torn open, and died there. Posada thought it was not the wrap-up she had expected, but that she would still get a fat fee, because the greater the shock, the better the payoff. She then caught Frick leaving and accused him of abandoning her and of failing to help Zorn.

Frick said they had both known Zorn was cannon fodder, and that they were alive only because he had been such durable, tenacious cannon fodder. He told Posada to save her breath, because it was a long sprint to the ship. Posada struck him, knocked him out, and took the chip from her camera, which she called her meal ticket. She also took a prize from his bag, and was not sure what had possessed her, except perhaps a wish to do the galaxy a favor. "Thanks for the bonus, Frick," she said, and left him on the floor.

Frick And Posada Fail To Escape

A member of a new expedition walks into the uncharted pyramid as someone calls greed a losing proposition

Frick woke, cursed her, and found she had not taken every bag. He said the ship's controls were keyed to his thumbprints, and that he would love to see the look on her face when she learned it. A Facehugger reached him before he could finish. Posada climbed toward their ship and thought of Kolchar's talk of happy endings, and of a line that comedy played better if only one person survived. An Alien was already inside the ship behind her, and the next view of that ladder showed blood on the rungs. Her last thought was that she would hate for someone else to have the last word.

A new expedition landed at the same uncharted pyramid. One of them told Junco they were not the first ones there, and another was sure the site had not even been charted yet, so there was plenty left to go around. By all accounts, one of them said, one of these things held enough to make Earth a rich planet again, and if their predecessors were not willing to share, well. They walked toward the entrance, and one of them said that greed was a losing proposition.

Key Characters

Posada was a freelance reporter who joined the expedition to sell footage to the networks through Kolchar. She filmed the tomb, the fight, and Frick's flight, knocked Frick down after he left Zorn to die, took her camera chip and a prize from his bag, and was killed on their ship by an Alien already waiting inside.
Wellington Frick was a bankrupt former playboy who financed the hunt and treated Belle as his secretary. He went back into the tomb for the loot, left Zorn to the Aliens, and was subdued by Posada, then taken by a Facehugger after he woke.
Belle was Frick's synthetic secretary, the most reliable member of the crew in Posada's judgment, and the one who translated the pyramid's inscriptions. A Xenomorph destroyed her in the tomb as she studied the structure.
Emil Zorn was the hired gun who led the team, a cyborg and the only known survivor of a chestburster, about fifteen percent human. He found the previous expedition, fought the Aliens when the team returned, and was killed by acid blood in the burial chamber.
Junco was named among a later expedition that landed at the same uncharted pyramid after Posada's team was gone, as the new arrivals walked toward the entrance.

Editions

Aliens: Advent/Terminus was first published by Dark Horse in Dark Horse Presents #42 and #43, in July and August 1990, as two black-and-white stories, Advent and Terminus. Paul Guinan drew the covers for those issues as well as the interior art. Dark Horse reprinted the story in color, with colors by Rachelle Menashe, in the Dark Horse Presents: Aliens trade paperback in May 1992. It was collected again in Aliens Omnibus Volume 3 in March 2008, alongside Aliens: Salvation, Aliens: Sacrifice, Aliens: Rogue, and Aliens: Labyrinth. Marvel reprinted it in Aliens: The Original Years Volume 1 and in Aliens Epic Collection: The Original Years Volume 1.

Behind The Scenes

Anina Bennett and Paul Guinan wrote the script, and Guinan penciled, inked, and covered the original Dark Horse Presents issues. Willie Schubert lettered the story, Randy Stradley edited it, and Kilian Plunkett drew the title illustration used in later collections. Rachelle Menashe colored the story for the 1992 Dark Horse Presents: Aliens collection, and that coloring is the version reprinted in Aliens Omnibus Volume 3. Guinan later worked on Aliens: Colonial Marines, a separate series rather than a continuation of this hunt.

The two parts ran eight pages each in an anthology that also featured other Dark Horse series in those months. Advent opened the story in Dark Horse Presents #42, and Terminus closed it in #43. The later collections kept that two-part structure, with the same script and art, and added Menashe's colors to a story that had first appeared in black and white. The Omnibus Volume 3 edition places the pyramid hunt with other early 1990s Dark Horse shorts and miniseries from the same period.

Conclusion

Aliens: Advent/Terminus was Anina Bennett and Paul Guinan's 1990 Dark Horse Presents story of a pyramid treasure hunt that collapsed as soon as the tomb was opened. Belle was destroyed, Zorn was killed, Frick was taken by a Facehugger, and Posada reached the ship only to find a Xenomorph already inside. A new expedition landed at the same uncharted site and walked toward the entrance, sure there was plenty left to go around. The last word on the hunt was that greed was a losing proposition.