Aliens: Dead Orbit is a four-issue Dark Horse Comics miniseries written and drawn by James Stokoe, published from April to December 2017 and collected in a 2018 trade paperback. Set in 2295 aboard the way station Sphacteria, it cut between two timelines, one following the engineer Wasylewski alone on the wrecked station against a countdown, and one showing how the crew of six took in three frozen survivors from a salvage ship and lost everything to the Xenomorphs that came with them.
The Story
Wasylewski Wakes Alone On The Wreck
In 2295, the Weyland-Yutani way station Sphacteria was a fuel depot with a crew of six, orbiting the gas giant Pylos in the Pelops system. The first pages showed the station already wrecked and drifting, with debris and fires along its hull. The engineer Wasylewski, called Wassy by the crew, was alone inside. A countdown timer read just over four hours as he coughed in the thin air, pulled on a suit, and went out through an airlock to cross the outside of the broken station.
Wasylewski jumped between sections of hull and pulled himself along the wreck toward another part of the station. The story then cut back to the days before the disaster, and that split ran through all four issues. One thread followed Wassy in the present as the clock ran down, and the other showed how the six crew members had come to that point. The flashback scenes opened on the bridge, where the station had picked up an unmarked vessel coming into orbit.
The Crew Boards The Salvage Ship
Captain Hassan hailed the vessel and got no answer. The crew was the bearded Hassan, Wassy, Park, the hungover comms officer Rook, the security officer Torrenson, and the station doctor Harrow. Park read out that the ship was an old Company freighter rebuilt by salvagers, with several rigs fused into one hull. Hassan took a shuttle across with Wassy, Park and Torrenson, and they found a filthy ship and a bulkhead that had been melted through, a sign of the acid blood the crew did not yet understand.
Deeper in, they found three cryotubes holding two men and a woman, still frozen. Hassan decided not to leave anybody behind and ordered the tubes brought back to the station. Wassy began the defrost, but a coolant tank ruptured and flooded the tubes. When the crew cracked the lids, the three survivors came out badly frost-burned, their skin raw and peeling. The boarding party carried them to the airlock and took them back to Sphacteria for treatment, breaking the station's quarantine rules in the process.
Wasylewski Finds The Hive
In the present, Wassy reached the inside of the station and found the corridors covered in dark resin growths, with the lights flickering. A damaged robotic arm sprayed into the corridor, and he dived out of its way and lost hold of the case he had been carrying. The first issue ended on a full-page splash of a Xenomorph rising out of the smoke over the case, with Wassy out of reach of it.
The Survivors Give Birth To Chestbursters
The second issue opened with Wassy running for the medical bay to hide, his wristwatch still counting down. In the past, Doc Harrow and Park put the three survivors on drips while the men convulsed. Hassan admitted he had broken quarantine to take in three unlicensed passengers and had Wassy crack the salvage ship's logs. The manifest showed crates traded for Chinese yuan in the frontier colonies and rumours of a cholera outbreak. The payroll listed eight crew, which raised the question of what had happened to the other five.
Hassan told Rook to call head office, which was two weeks away by signal. Then the survivors seized. A chestburster tore out of the first man while Park tried to hold him down, and two more burst from the second man, the twins the woman salvager later spoke of. The six crew watched from the doorway as the creatures escaped into the station, and Harrow told everyone to stay back. The third survivor, the woman, was still alive under sedation in the medical bay.
The Hull Blows Out In Section E
In the present, Wassy followed a trail of blood through the station and found his case again in the medical area. A warning came up for a hull breach in Section E, and the section blew out around him. The decompression threw him across the corridor, and he held on as debris and air streamed out into space. He was left clinging to the wreckage while the station shook around him, with Wassy still carrying the case he had gone back for.
Wasylewski Wakes In The Hive
Wassy managed to seal a bulkhead behind him, but the air in the section had gone bad and he passed out. While he was unconscious, the Xenomorphs dragged him away. He woke cocooned in resin inside a hive the creatures had built from the station's interior, held fast against the wall. The second issue ended there, with Wassy trapped in the resin and checking his watch, the countdown still running in the dark.
Captain Hassan Is Taken
The third issue went back to the past. A Xenomorph reached down through a ceiling grate and pulled Captain Hassan up out of sight while Park, Wassy and Torrenson watched. Rook had already been killed. The three survivors welded hatches and sealed off decks, and Torrenson argued that they should load the shuttle and run on the salvage ship. Park said Rook had sent a message to head office and that a rescue could come in three months. She called Torrenson a coward, and the argument split the group.
They went to check on Harrow in the medical bay, where he had been watching the last salvager. She had woken and was holding the doctor at knifepoint. She told them the salvage crew had frozen the three of them after taking cargo from a dead colony, where they had been infected, and that the infected had given birth to twins. Torrenson moved in with a shock prod, and the woman slit Harrow's throat before fleeing.
The Salvager Takes The Shuttle
Harrow died on the floor of the medical bay. Torrenson wanted to leave him and go, and Wassy guessed that the salvager would head straight for the shuttle. The three ran for the shuttle bay, but the doors locked in their faces before they could stop her. Wassy said they could shut the shuttle down from operations, but by the time they arrived the woman was already pulling away from the station.
She had forgotten to unhook the shuttle's umbilical. The line snapped taut, swung the shuttle around, and slung it back toward Sphacteria. The heavy line wrenched the little craft off course and turned it in a wide arc while debris spun away from the docking clamps. Through the observation windows, Park, Wassy and Torrenson saw that the shuttle was swinging back around on the end of the cable and was going to hit them. Wassy shouted for everyone to get down, and the three of them threw themselves to the floor.
The Shuttle Hits The Station
The shuttle struck the station and blew apart in a fireball that showed across the face of Pylos. The crash left Sphacteria burning and broken, the state it was in at the start of the first issue. In the present, Wassy was still cocooned. A Xenomorph crept up to the resin and called "Hellooo" in a mimicking voice. After it left, Wassy tore his arm free, broke out of the resin, recovered the case, and climbed toward the engineering deck.
In engineering he found Torrenson alive, drunk, and perched on a crate with a bottle. Wassy demanded to know what he had been doing and told him to keep quiet because they could hear him. Torrenson only laughed, throwing his arms wide while two Xenomorphs rose out of the dark behind him. He showed no fear of the creatures at all, and Wassy stared at the shapes behind him. The third issue ended on that image.
Torrenson Laughs In Engineering
The final issue opened with the timer under an hour and the station seen as a burning speck against Pylos. Wassy ran as the Xenomorphs fell on Torrenson, and one killed him with a strike of its inner jaw through his head. In the past, fire spread along the decks after the crash and the computer began sealing bulkheads on its own. The shuttle was gone, the station was sinking, and Torrenson panicked about what the three of them were supposed to do now.
Wassy had an answer in a crate of mining charges. The station was modular, so they would lock themselves into the life support module, blow the struts holding it to the main deck, and ride it out like a lifeboat while the rest of Sphacteria burned up in orbit. Park thought it was too much of a long shot, but there was no other choice. While Wassy suited up and took a carton of cigarettes from a locker, a Xenomorph dropped on him. Torrenson lost his nerve in the attack and ran, and the others could not find him.
Wasylewski Blows The Module Free
Wassy, in his suit, armed a charge with a ten-second timer while Park ran for the observation deck. A Xenomorph burst out of the door ahead of her and killed her as Wassy shouted her name. He said he was sorry and detonated the charges. The blast tore the module loose, and Wassy went out onto the hull, where a Xenomorph followed him. He fought it off with a knife and a flare as the explosions spread across Sphacteria.
The creature came at him again on the outside of the module. Wassy opened a hatch marked for oxygen, pulled the release on a pressurised tank, and let it vent. The blast of gas threw the Weyland-Yutani station's Xenomorph off the hull and out into space. The module drifted free as the rest of the station broke apart behind it, and Wassy lay flat on the hull, holding on with his eyes shut. Behind him the burning remains of the station fell away toward the gas giant.
Wasylewski Waits At The Airlock
Wassy climbed back in through the module's emergency hatch, settled on the deck, and opened the carton of cigarettes from the locker. A warning screen showed critical oxygen, a main line breach, and a clock of just over four hours. Wassy lit a cigarette and slumped against the airlock door while the numbers ran down. The last page showed the module drifting alone in the dark, with no sign of whether a rescue ever came.
Main Characters
- Wasylewski, called Wassy, was the station engineer, who came up with the plan to blow the life support module free and was the only crew member left alive at the end.
- Captain Hassan commanded Sphacteria, broke quarantine to bring the three frozen salvagers aboard, and was dragged into a ceiling duct by a Xenomorph.
- Park was the crew member who argued for waiting on a rescue from head office and was killed by a Xenomorph on the way to the observation deck.
- Torrenson was the station's security officer, who wanted to flee on the salvage ship, lost his nerve, and was found drunk in engineering before a Xenomorph killed him.
- Doc Harrow was the station doctor, who treated the three survivors and was killed by the woman salvager when she woke.
- Rook was the hungover comms officer, who sent the message to head office and was the first of the crew to be killed.
- The salvager woman was the third survivor from the cryotubes. She revealed that her crew had been infected at a dead colony, killed Harrow, and died when her stolen shuttle crashed into the station.
Behind The Scenes
James Stokoe, the creator of Orc Stain and the artist of Godzilla: The Half-Century War, wrote and drew the series himself. Dark Horse released the first issue on Alien Day, 26 April 2017, with a variant cover by Geof Darrow, and the second followed in May 2017. The fourth and final issue came out on 13 December 2017, and the publisher collected all four as a 104-page trade paperback on 21 March 2018. The collection reprinted the covers, including Rafael Albuquerque's C2E2 2017 exclusive, along with pages of Stokoe's sketches.
In the notes at the back of the collection, Stokoe showed pages from his original pitch to Dark Horse. It was planned as a far more action-driven story with Colonial Marines fighting through a crowded city, in the vein of the second film. He then decided to try a claustrophobic horror story with a handful of characters instead, which became Dead Orbit. Stokoe also wrote that he toned down the bright candy colors he usually worked in, and that deciding how to ink the first glimpses of the Xenomorph had been a crucial choice.
Closing Thoughts
Aliens: Dead Orbit told a small story with only six crew members, three frozen salvagers and one station. By cutting between the countdown in the present and the disaster that led up to it, Stokoe let readers watch the crew make every mistake while already knowing that only Wasylewski would be left. The dense artwork and long stretches without dialogue gave the series its reputation as one of the strongest Alien comics, and it ended on a man alone in a drifting module with a cigarette and a few hours of air.
External Sources
- Aliens: Dead Orbit #1 at Dark Horse
- Aliens: Dead Orbit #4 at Dark Horse
- Aliens: Dead Orbit trade paperback at Dark Horse
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