Aliens: DNA War: Novel Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: May 17, 2006
Author: Diane Carey
Publisher: DH Press
Format: Mass market paperback
Pages: 275
ISBN: 978-1-59582-032-7
Series: DH Press Aliens novels
Setting: Rosamond 6

Aliens: DNA War is a 2006 novel by Diane Carey, published by DH Press on 17 May 2006. It followed Milwaukee homicide detective Rory Malvaux to Rosamond 6, where his mother had lost most of a fifty-two-person research expedition to a Xenomorph infestation. Jocasta Malvaux refused evacuation because the adult Xenomorphs had stopped attacking her team, but the pause came from a war between two Xenomorph hives. The humans were being preserved as hosts for whichever hive won.

Plot Summary

On 14 July, the container ship Vinza reached Rosamond 6 under a contract with the PlanCom Nebula Habitation Division. A flying fox that ship's doctor Bonnie Bardolf had hidden aboard escaped during the descent and frightened pilot Barry. Captain Clark Sparren and his crew recovered from the interrupted landing sequence while Rory trapped the animal in his jacket. The Vinza landed without damage.

Arrival On Rosamond 6

Rosamond 6 had a breathable atmosphere, two oceans, a large green moon, and native life. Automated scouts had reached it about eight years earlier, and PlanCom had claimed it three years before Rory arrived. Sixty-two advance scouts and settlers died after Xenomorphs reached the planet. The landing region contained translucent red pillars, deep ravines, fibrous white growth, and a ground layer of tiny skeletons called skulch.

Rory was not part of the ship's crew. He was a twenty-eight-year-old homicide detective and PlanCom's legal officer for the mission. Jocasta Malvaux, his famous scientist mother, had taken fifty-one other researchers to study the infestation. PlanCom expected her to resist an evacuation order, so Clark had asked Rory to bring her home.

The Poison-Packer Mission

The Vinza carried automated poison-packers intended to remove every non-native animal from the planet. Rory had to certify that Jocasta's team was dead or evacuated before Clark could release them. Each six-legged robot identified foreign DNA and fired hypersonic darts filled with poison. Humans and Xenomorphs were both targets, while the native ecosystem would be spared.

Colonel MacCormac led the Colonial Marine escort. His group included Corporal Edney, Sergeant Berooz, Marines Donahue and Brand, and Private Kensington "Ken" Carmichael. MacCormac ordered his Marines to kill any attached Facehugger and its host together. He would not risk carrying an implanted person back to the ship.

The Abandoned Camp

Rory found the first expedition camp empty. Its huts had been clamped from outside and left partly open. Inside, Rory's party found researchers killed by Chestbursters, a pregnant woman who had hanged herself before her embryo emerged, and bodies strangled or pierced with Xenomorph parts. More than a dozen opened eggs lay in a nearby grotto.

Berooz slipped into an expended egg. Residual acid entered the back of his sensor cap and dissolved his skull. Edney burned her hand while trying to help him. Hundreds of Facehuggers then rushed the party across the ground and along the pillars, forcing the Marines to retreat with electrical fire, flame, and bullets.

A Facehugger attached to Axell, the Vinza's computer specialist. MacCormac followed his standing order and shot through the parasite and Axell's head. Donahue and Brand disappeared while guarding the ship. Donahue was found pinned to a pillar with a severed adult Xenomorph tail, but the missing acid and undamaged ground made Rory suspect that a human had staged the death.

The Hidden Research Base

Jocasta contacted Rory and guided the group through a projected curtain into a concealed base. The researchers had fitted natural caves with compact tunnels, cameras, scent control, sound masking, and holographic camouflage. They had also built blue suits that refracted light, contained skin cells and body odor, and confused Xenomorph senses. The disguise worked while its wearer remained motionless, but energy weapons disrupted it.

Brand's body was inside the base with a dead Facehugger tail wrapped around his neck. He had no wounds from trying to remove it. The researchers also kept a reconstructed adult Xenomorph, severed tails, claws, dorsal tubes, skull pieces, and inner jaws. They believed its visual system lay beneath the translucent head covering. Rory treated Brand and Donahue as murders committed with recovered Xenomorph remains.

Jocasta claimed that only nine members of the expedition had died and blamed each loss on an individual mistake. Her surviving specialists included Rory's sister Graciella Malvaux, stealth technician Tad, chemist Rusty, veterinarian Chantal, virologist Diego, and camp director Neil. Jocasta's count did not match the bodies at the first camp.

Jocasta Refuses Evacuation

Jocasta opposed the extermination order under the Alien Species Act, which she had helped establish through the Malvaux Amendment. Clark carried a later court order that allowed PlanCom to remove an invasive species when it threatened a whole ecosystem. Jocasta showed Rory and Clark the untouched Blue Valley as evidence that Rosamond 6 was adapting to the infestation. She gave her followers a choice to leave, but only Rusty volunteered.

Bonnie, Pocket, and Edney received a false distress call from the research team while they were aboard the Vinza. Bonnie, Pocket, and Edney left the Vinza and walked into a Facehugger ambush. Rory, Carmichael, and Tad reached them before anyone was implanted. Tad drew the parasites away with sparks and an odor bomb, then disappeared under one of the blue stealth suits. No researcher admitted sending the signal.

Rusty's Last Walk

Rusty took Rory beyond Blue Valley and showed him where Xenomorphs had slaughtered native herds without using them as hosts. A two-thousand-foot ravine, not ecological balance, had kept the creatures out of the valley. Rusty also confirmed that thirty-six of the original fifty-two researchers were dead. Every remote outpost had been found, and the locked huts had served as incubation chambers for implanted members of the expedition.

A blue suit power pack that Gracie had installed for Rusty failed when an adult Xenomorph found them. Rory killed the creature with several plasma shots, but Rusty and the corpse fell into the ravine. Rory returned believing Rusty was dead and that Jocasta had arranged the failure. Gracie later admitted that she had changed the pack on her mother's orders.

Adult Xenomorphs Kill The Facehuggers

Adult Xenomorphs cornered Rory near the hidden base. A low horn-like call passed across the land, and the creatures stopped before they killed him. Jocasta walked among them and treated their restraint as proof that nature had changed their behavior. She brought the researchers outside to witness it.

Facehuggers attacked the assembled humans, but the adult Xenomorphs caught and tore apart the parasites. Several adult Xenomorphs deliberately kept them away from Bonnie and MacCormac. Jocasta believed the creatures had accepted her team. Bonnie offered the simpler possibilities: predators protected their young, their territory, or prey they intended to use later.

The Vinza Is Breached

Xenomorphs entered the Vinza after someone opened its ramp and disabled the protection field. First mate Theo locked the crew in the provisions hold, threw a communicator outside, and activated one pallet of twenty poison-packers. The robots killed several Xenomorphs. Dying adult Xenomorphs clung to the machines until their acid remains burned through the armored casings.

MacCormac took Edney and Carmichael outside and destroyed several robots with grenades. Rory later threw severed Xenomorph tissue onto two more poison-packers. Their sensors read each other as contaminated targets, and the machines destroyed one another with darts. Six robots remained loose near the route back to the ship.

Two Hives Go To War

Rory and Bonnie found two armies of adult Xenomorphs closing on a meadow. One hive was uniformly black. The second had blue between its ribs and green tissue inside its mouth and under its arms. The two groups ignored the humans and attacked each other in rolling masses. Edney was caught inside one of those masses and killed.

Gracie concluded that the rival Queens had produced separate genetic lines. The hives had stopped hunting and reproducing while they fought to decide which line would spread across Rosamond 6. Humans were not allies. They were living hosts preserved for the winning hive, which gave the conflict its name.

Facehuggers also entered a dispersal phase. Their side lobes inflated into wing membranes, and groups of them flew toward Blue Valley to establish another colony. The temporary wings resembled the reproductive flight of ants rather than a permanent caste. A final horn-like call announced that one hive had won.

The Final Evacuation

Rory ordered an evacuation and authorized the poison-packer deployment. Jocasta hid her followers with personal holographic screens, then withdrew the protection around Rory's group and collapsed the main blind. A flying Facehugger attacked MacCormac at the old camp. Carmichael followed the colonel's own rule and shot through MacCormac's head and the parasite.

Rusty returned after surviving the fall into the ravine. He confirmed that Jocasta had exposed dissenters to Facehuggers or sabotaged their stealth equipment. Tad independently confirmed that she would kill anyone who left her. Gracie, Tad, and the remaining researchers then chose evacuation and reached the Vinza.

Jocasta Is Left Behind

Rusty had been implanted while running through the Xenomorph swarm. He collapsed on the loading ramp as the Chestburster began to emerge. At his request, Rory shot through his chest and killed them both. Jocasta then held Bonnie hostage with the spike from a severed Xenomorph tail.

Rory signaled Bonnie to raise her arm for the flying fox. Bonnie ducked as the animal landed, and its wings closed around Jocasta's head. Rory pulled Bonnie aboard and recovered the bat. Jocasta remained behind as adult Xenomorphs surrounded her. The novel did not confirm her death.

The Vinza launched with Rory, Bonnie, Gracie, Tad, Carmichael, and the surviving researchers aboard. Clark asked Rory for the final legal decision. Rory ordered him to deploy the poison-packers across Rosamond 6. The book ended before the robots completed the extermination.

Xenomorph Biology And The DNA War

DNA War presented the infestation as several related hives competing for reproductive control. One line remained black, while another developed blue tissue between the ribs and green tissue around the mouth and under the arms. Adult Xenomorphs recognized members of the rival hive, answered long-distance calls, used scouts, and suspended attacks on humans while the hive war continued. They preserved people because the winning line would need hosts.

Adult Xenomorphs stood more than seven feet tall and carried translucent armor over internal structures in the head. They learned from attacks on the poison-packers and used their own dying bodies to destroy the robots with acid. Their coordination did not make them peaceful or open to reason. Their priorities had temporarily shifted from feeding and implantation to eliminating the rival genetic line.

Flying Facehuggers were the novel's clearest new lifecycle form. They stood on their fingers, inflated their side lobes into broad membranes, and took off in flocks. Gracie compared that phase to winged carpenter ants leaving to establish new colonies. The book did not present them as a separate permanent species.

Poison-Packers

Poison-packers were six-legged PlanCom extermination robots with armored sensor hoods and hypersonic dart launchers. They compared nearby DNA with the native life of Rosamond 6. Their darts carried DNA-targeted poison that caused Xenomorphs to tear at their own bodies. The machines would also kill humans, so they could not be released until the expedition had left.

The Vinza carried ninety containers. Clark first described five hundred robots in each container, which would mean forty-five thousand aboard. A later count used one hundred per container in five pallets of twenty. PlanCom intended to send another ten million robots if the first operation worked. The book did not resolve the conflicting cargo totals.

Confirmed Human Deaths

Sixty-two PlanCom scouts and settlers had died before Jocasta's expedition. Rusty confirmed that thirty-six of her fifty-two researchers were dead before the Vinza arrived. Named expedition losses included Amelia Forbish, Donald Kent, Richard Hochleitner, Samantha North, and Niko Refinado. The abandoned camp contained more bodies than Jocasta admitted.

During Rory's mission, residual egg acid killed Berooz. MacCormac killed Axell with the attached Facehugger, and Donahue and Brand were found dead in scenes Rory treated as human murders. The hive battle killed Edney. Carmichael killed MacCormac and an attached flying Facehugger, while Rory killed Rusty and his emerging Chestburster. Jocasta's final fate was not shown.

Key Characters

Rory Theodore Malvaux was a Milwaukee homicide detective and PlanCom's legal officer. He exposed Jocasta's concealed deaths, ordered the evacuation, and authorized extermination.
Jocasta Malvaux led the fifty-two-person research expedition and had helped write the Alien Species Act. She arranged the deaths of dissenters, refused evacuation, and was left on Rosamond 6.
Graciella Malvaux was Rory's sister and Jocasta's principal defender. She had replaced Rusty's suit power pack on Jocasta's orders, then rejected her mother and evacuated with Tad.
Clark Sparren captained the Vinza. He carried the court order and poison-packers, then deployed them after Rory gave legal approval.
Bonnie Bardolf was the ship's resident physician. She survived the Facehugger attacks, identified the adult Xenomorphs' treatment of humans as protection of future prey, and left with Rory.
Colonel MacCormac commanded the Colonial Marines. Carmichael killed him after a flying Facehugger attached to his head.
Kensington "Ken" Carmichael was the youngest Marine. He killed MacCormac and the parasite, then led the surviving researchers back to the ship.
Rusty was the expedition chemist who exposed Jocasta's casualty count and the slaughter beyond Blue Valley. Rory killed him when a Chestburster began to emerge.
Tad maintained the stealth systems and was Gracie's partner. He confirmed Jocasta's killings and left with the other survivors.
Pocket handled cargo aboard the Vinza. He survived the landing, the first expedition, and the final evacuation.
Theo was the Vinza's first mate. He protected the crew in the provisions hold and released twenty poison-packers after Xenomorphs boarded.
Buttercup, first called Butterball, was Bonnie's flying fox. The animal distracted Jocasta during the hostage attempt and left aboard the Vinza.

Place In The DH Press Line

DH Press published DNA War after Aliens: Original Sin. It was a separate story with a new cast, a new ship, and no Ripley connection. Original Sin used a conspiracy around one engineered egg. DNA War instead followed an established planetary infestation and the fight between two Xenomorph hives.

Aliens: Cauldron, also by Diane Carey, followed in 2007. It did not continue Rory Malvaux or the Rosamond 6 evacuation. John Shirley's Aliens: Steel Egg followed Cauldron with a separate 2058 first-contact story. Titan later paired Original Sin and DNA War in The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 5, released on 26 December 2017.

Continuity

Rory referred only to an uncertain ship incident about fifty years earlier and a later expedition with no known survivors. That distance kept Rosamond 6 outside the film characters' stories. No year was attached to the July 14 landing.

The DNA War hive conflict resembled the war between red and black Xenomorphs in Aliens: Genocide, but it used subtler coloring and did not take place on Xenomorph Prime. The black hive fought adult Xenomorphs with blue ribs and green tissue around the mouth and underarms. The winning Queen and the end of the planetary extermination were not shown.

Jocasta's casualty figures did not agree. Jocasta claimed nine deaths, the first camp appeared to contain more than that, and Rusty later gave the full loss as thirty-six. The Marine roster and poison-packer cargo also changed between passages. Edney briefly appeared in a group description after her explicit death in the hive battle.

Editions

DH Press released the American mass-market paperback on 17 May 2006. Dark Horse lists the book at 275 pages, while other catalogs use 269 or 276. Stephen Youll painted the cover. Titan's 2017 omnibus reprinted DNA War with Original Sin. The DH Press edition did not receive a separate United Kingdom paperback.

Behind The Scenes

Diane Carey wrote the entire novel in Rory's first-person voice. Other Alien stories had used first-person narration, but DNA War was the first full-length Alien novel built entirely around one narrator's account. Carey later opened Aliens: Cauldron with another ship crew struggling through an immediate flight emergency.

The edition's author note credited Carey with fifty-three books, including nine New York Times bestsellers from her Star Trek work. It named her adaptations of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine finale and the Star Trek: Enterprise premiere. The extracted omnibus text also carried a Michael Jan Friedman biography because Original Sin shared that volume.

Stephen Youll painted DNA War for the new DH Press Alien and Predator line. He described the cover work as a current treatment of the established creature design rather than a full redesign. Fox allowed only subtle changes to the Xenomorph head and arms. The finished cover put a lone woman among adult Xenomorphs in dense vegetation.

Conclusion

Aliens: DNA War is Diane Carey's 2006 novel about Rory Malvaux's attempt to remove his mother's expedition from Rosamond 6. It ends with Jocasta abandoned, the surviving researchers aboard the Vinza, and Rory ordering the poison-packers released after one Xenomorph hive destroys its rival.