Aliens: Harvest (Aliens: Hive) Comic: Plot & Lore
Aliens: Harvest was a four-issue Dark Horse comic written by Jerry Prosser and drawn by Kelley Jones, first published from February to May 1992 as Aliens: Hive. Dying scientist Stanislaw Mayakovsky built XL1, an android Xenomorph that thief Julian Lish called Norbert, to walk into an alien hive the way his cybernetic ant Ari had walked into an ant nest. Julian brought the ship Dolomite and a plan to steal royal jelly from a super-hive on the planet A6 454. The Lancet, a Grant Corporation ship, was already guarding the harvest there. Robert Sheckley later retold the story in prose as the novel Aliens: Harvest.
Plot Summary
Training Against Norbert
In the dark corridors of a ship, Julian Lish ran from a Xenomorph with only a flashlight. She sealed a door behind her, hit a blind alley and doubled back while the creature crawled after her through the ducts. It finally pinned her to the floor. A voice called the priority override code Myrmidon, cancelled its predation functions and returned it to its standard program. The alien was a machine, and the chase was a drill. Stan Mayakovsky told her she had lasted fifteen seconds longer than the day before.
The robot then picked up a ball and played fetch with Mac, the ship's dog. Stan ordered it to report to the lab at 15:30 for a download and to keep Mac quiet because the crew was still in hypersleep. Julian admitted that it kept getting better and that she could barely stay ahead of it. Stan said XL1 had every characteristic they were looking for. When she asked what ten thousand of the real thing would be like, he answered that they would not be playing fetch. He called her plan a good one, said he had little choice, and went to his cabin to rest.
Stan's Illness And Julian's Offer
In his cabin Stan asked Ari, his robot ant, whether it had enjoyed the show, and noted that his symptoms were coming closer together. With so little time left, he took a dropper of blue royal jelly and slipped into his memories. He returned to a doctor's verdict that his cancer was advancing, and to a vial the doctor gave him as relief rather than a cure. The effects of unprocessed jelly varied widely, the doctor warned. Soon after, Julian Lish appeared at his door and said they had something to discuss.
By a fire she told him he was running out of money and time, and that the best place to get honey was from bees. His book Cyberantics had given her the idea, since an artificial alien might walk into a hive the way his artificial ant had walked into a nest. She had persuaded a Bio-National executive not to take certain secrets to his grave, and she knew where the jelly was, a mountain of gold. The pair made a pheromone bracelet charged with jelly, and the robot took the name Norbert. Julian had a ship, the Dolomite, and a captain she had worked with before.
Norbert At The Briefing
The Dolomite reached orbit around a planet charted as A6 454, far off the usual routes and never formally surveyed. Its atmosphere was barely breathable, and storms battered it constantly. Stan and Julian told the crew that the planet held material of great value whose nature was need-to-know. When a crewman asked who needed to know, Stan said the captain already knew and that he would be looking for volunteers. Mac barked, and Norbert stepped out of an alcove at the back of the hall.
Stan shouted that nobody should move and that the robot would not attack unless provoked. A crewman in orange fired a pistol at it, and Norbert's inner jaw blew his head apart. The machine tore into the men around it until Stan shouted the override code Myrmidon and it stopped short of another victim. The mission platform later dropped toward the surface with Stan, Julian, Norbert and the android pilot Gill aboard. Captain Hoban told Gill not to pick fights with his uglier cousin, and the platform came down through storms beside a hive nearly a kilometer high.
The Lancet Recording
In his log, Captain Hoban recorded that the Dolomite had found debris in orbit and the remains of a ship. Two men in spacesuits went aboard to look for its black box, nervous that one of the creatures might be waiting, and came back with the recorder. Hoban played it for Gill on the platform. A voice named himself Captain Potter of the Lancet, accused the ship of criminal trespass and promised its crew would not live to regret the decision before the Lancet opened fire. Hoban ordered Gill to tell no one.
Julian asked Gill what he made of the mission. The android said he felt like any other member of the crew, with a job to do, and admitted that he found most humans quite boring. She told him his hands looked like her father's and that she sometimes wished she could reprogram herself. In his room Stan lay under the jelly and dreamed of walks in Central Park, reading to children, making love, and Norbert's first steps. When he woke he asked Julie, if she was making any of this up for his benefit, not to stop.
Norbert Finds The Beekeepers
Stan fitted Mac with a new collar, told the dog he would always be a good memory and sent Norbert out of the hatch with him. Through the robot's camera, Stan saw a cow skeleton that he assumed had been brought from Earth for the aliens. Beyond it lay a field of motionless Xenomorphs whose organs worked at a very slow rate, as if they were sleeping. Beside a parked harvester ship, two men in blue suits found the dog. One of them shouted to Tony that one of the creatures was awake, and Tony opened fire as Norbert rose behind them.
Norbert killed both men, and a third ran for the ship. Stan asked Julian to take Gill out of the room, fearing that his behavioral programming would force him to act if he watched any more. Norbert ripped out the door keypad and turned the handle by hand, and the men inside, who were waiting to meet the Lancet, fired and died. The harvester held tanks of jelly, and Stan saw that the beekeepers had been there first, using an infrasonic suppression system the way a beekeeper uses smoke. When Norbert walked Mac outside to test their equipment, the aliens woke around the dog.
Norbert Inside The Hive
Stan told Norbert to switch on his tracking system and leave a trail they could follow later. Lines from his book Cyberantics told how Ari had followed a pheromone trail into an ant nest. An alien carried Mac into the hive, and Norbert followed it past workers tending eggs and larvae to the center, where the Queen waited. Stan ordered XL1 to advance and switch on its recognition programming. A guard did not recognize the robot's scent and took a defensive posture.
Stan waited, then shouted for Norbert to get out as the robot switched to defense mode alpha. A phalanx of aliens chased it through the nest into a dead end, its cooling system overloaded, and Stan's monitor went dark. Stan cursed himself for sending the robot inside after it had already found everything they came for. Hoban radioed that a storm full of charged clouds was moving in, and Julian told him they already had a full hold of jelly but had lost the cybernetic alien. Stan held a vial and told Ari he had bad news, and then lightning hit the platform.
Lightning Hits The Platform
An explosion tore through the platform and the stabilizers failed. Julie shouted that they had to reach a pod, and Gill called for all hands to abandon ship. The android wanted to go back inside to look for survivors until Julie reminded him he was programmed to keep humans alive and that they needed him. Their escape pod blasted out into the storm and slammed into the ground. At sunset two humans and an android waited beside the wreck while the activity of the hive reached its peak and the aliens moved toward them.
Gill had saved weapons, a tracker, a light, a communicator and inhibitors with a dampening field of about three meters, good for three hours. Hoban promised a lander in a couple of hours, which was too late. Stan proposed going into the hive, out of the storm, and following XL1's trail back to the harvester to fly it to the Dolomite. Gill called the plan inadvisable but refused to let them go alone. Stan held a vial of jelly and thought of escaping into it, but crushed it in his fist rather than leave Julie alone.
Through The Hive
With their timers counting down, the three climbed into the hive tunnels. An alien passed within reach, and Julie stopped breathing until it had gone. She took comfort in the sound of Stan's breathing and wondered why she was drawn to a man whose quest for solitary immortality kept leaving her lonely. They kissed for luck and moved on through chambers full of Xenomorphs. One hung over Stan and Julie, sensed something it could not place, and moved away. The locator showed no sign of the radioactive trail left by the spur on XL1's foot.
Deeper down they found a midden, a garbage dump that Stan wanted to examine because ant middens revealed the life of a hive. In it he found Mac's body with its chest burst open. He reached for the collar in case they needed it, slipped, and tumbled into a pit of remains, landing face down among the aliens. The creatures could see him, and Julie shouted for Gill to lock and load. She and the android opened fire from above, and alien heads burst under their shots.
Norbert's Last Stand
Stan woke dazed and without pain for the first time in a long while, glad to be alive so close to death. Aliens closed on him until a battered Norbert appeared and said, "Hello, Doctor Mayakovsky." The robot had not been destroyed after all. It fought the creatures around Stan, firing a cold plasma laser while they tore at it. In Cyberantics, Stan had been asked why an ant needed such a weapon and had answered that he would want one. Julie reached down for his hand with minutes left on the inhibitors.
Norbert told her, "I shall protect your retreat, Ms. Lish." Stan felt a draft and guessed they had found a chimney that controlled the heat and humidity of the hive and would take them outside. When Julie asked where Norbert was, Stan said he was doing the best he could and that he was broken. Behind them the aliens ripped the machine apart. Gill warned that the creatures were coming closer, and the party climbed toward a light ahead.
Reaching The Harvester
They climbed out of the hive into the storm with the harvester in sight across the plain. Stan called it their last chance as the timers fell under five minutes. Julie urged him to hurry, but Stan told them not to slow down for him, so Gill carried him over his shoulder with a pistol in his other hand. The inhibitors ran out, and the aliens poured after them. At the hatch the creatures leaped on them, and one tore off Gill's forearm as the door shut. Gill sealed the hatch and took the damaged arm offline, but an alien was already inside with Julie.
She shot it apart, and another alien bled from above. Its acid poured over her head and face, and she screamed for Stan. Among the canisters of blue jelly, the sight and the smell made him salivate, but he told himself there would be more than enough time later. He scooped jelly from a container, gave it to Julie and held her, promising that everything would be fine. The jelly took away her pain, and Stan told her to rest because he was there with her.
Freeing Gill
A perimeter field went up around the harvester, and Stan expected visitors soon. He asked Gill whether he had any data on ancient Greece, regretted that he did not, and said it was time for their little talk. Afterward the android felt confused and exhilarated, and Stan called it freedom. When Gill asked about his stiff wrist, Stan told him he had fallen and should not think about it any more. Later Gill touched Julie's lips and confessed he had tripped a few circuits too many, and Stan said Julie made him feel that way too.
A screen buzzed with Captain Potter of the Grant Corporation ship Lancet, who said they were trespassing on Neo-Pharm property. Stan gave his full name, Stanislaw Mayakovsky, and claimed that he, a woman and an android were all that was left of a survey mission forced down beside the hive. Potter ordered them to prepare for boarding and said he would take the ship and everything in it. Stan thanked him, asked for medical help, and wondered whether the creatures would cause trouble, and Potter answered that his men were prepared. Stan told Gill the aliens were their protection, because Potter's men would never get through them.
Slaughter Of The Lancet Soldiers
The soldiers of the Lancet ran for the aperture in the perimeter field, and Stan pointed it out to Gill as classic strategy. Potter had not anticipated the cleverness of the aliens, which struck from the spires faster than anything Stan had seen. Acid burst over the men, and inner jaws punched through heads. Most died quickly, and the creatures carried some of the others away alive. Stan remarked that he would hate to meet the predator that acid defense had evolved to thwart.
Inside, Stan held up Ari to watch and compared the slaughter to the slave-making ant Formica subintegra from the robot's own adventures. A soldier pounded on the window and begged for someone to open the door. An alien killed him against the glass, and his blood smeared across it. "Very similar to the Subintegra, eh, Ari? Ruthless," Stan said. He told the ant not to look if it upset it.
Gill Goes To The Lancet
Potter called back in a rage, shouting that the creatures were killing his men, and Stan said he had been expecting the call and had a plan. Julie woke unable to remember what had happened, and Gill told her she had been injured and that he had been caring for her. He could not remember what had happened to his own hand and guessed he had fallen. Stan assured Potter that Gill was a synthetic who posed no danger and could carry on the negotiations. Potter warned that any games would leave them staked out for the monsters.
Stan recharged an inhibitor with jelly and told Gill to say that a dying man would destroy the ship and its cargo because he had nothing to lose. Gill asked him to take care of Julie and walked alone across the plain, past a dead soldier and through the field. The soldiers checked him, agreed he was a synthetic, and took him aboard as aliens crowded around their craft. Asked how he had passed the creatures, Gill said he had access to all the right technology. Inside the Lancet craft, Potter faced him beside a dome of collected jelly and told him to get it over with.
Gill Destroys The Lancet
In the harvester, Julie said she was freezing and grinned that they would get out one way or another. Gill reported that only the collected jelly kept Potter from destroying the harvester with them inside. Stan told Potter to be ready to go home empty-handed and gave him twenty minutes to lift off, and Potter refused to leave the cargo. Stan then reached Hoban and told him to send a lander if they were not off the ground in twenty-five minutes. He recorded a message for Ari to remember in case they did not make it out, admitting that he knew Julie would not survive.
Outside, the aliens gathered into a living wall around the two craft. Potter decided to raise the Lancet and throw his perimeter field around the harvester, and Gill told Stan that the captain planned to take it. Stan said good-bye to Potter, thanked Gill, and told him to activate his subroutine programs. Gill broke his own fingers one after another as he said, "Gentlemen, in the rich man's house there is no place to spit but in his face." An explosion tore through the Lancet craft, and the aliens surged over it.
Into The Hive Together
Aliens pounded on the harvester door, agitated by the chemical changes in the creatures outside, and Julie struggled to breathe. Hoban called to ask what had happened, but his lander was still fifteen minutes away. Stan said that when Hoban arrived he could have it all. He told Julie he was sorry, that things were not supposed to be this way, and that there was still a place they could go together. She asked whether this was the place he had wanted to reach all along, to go inside and never come out, and told him to take her with him.
Stan said he would remember her this way forever, dropped jelly into his eyes and held her. Aliens closed in, reflected in his glasses, and blood spattered the lenses as a warm darkness came over him, like her kiss. He remembered the Japanese poet Ota Dokan, who wrote with a knife in his chest, "Had I not known that I was dead already, I would have mourned the loss of my life." Stan ended cocooned in the hive, smiling, as a Chestburster broke out of his chest. Julie's fate was not shown.
Key Characters
- Stanislaw "Stan" Mayakovsky was a mad scientist dying of cancer who eased his symptoms with royal jelly. The author of Cyberantics built the robot ant Ari and the robot Xenomorph XL1, reprogrammed Gill to think for himself, and died in the hive with a Chestburster breaking out of his chest.
- Julian "Julie" Lish was a thief who read Stan's book, recruited him for the jelly raid and arranged the Dolomite. Acid burned her face inside the harvester, Stan dosed her with jelly, and at the end she asked him to take her with him.
- Norbert was XL1, the robot Xenomorph Stan built to fool the hive. It killed a crewman at the Dolomite briefing, wiped out the harvester crew, was chased out of the Queen's chamber, and returned battered to cover Stan and Julie before the aliens tore it apart.
- Gill was the android pilot of the mission platform. He lost a forearm at the harvester hatch, was reprogrammed by Stan, and destroyed the Lancet craft while quoting a line about spitting in a rich man's face.
- Mac was the ship's dog who played fetch with Norbert. Stan sent him outside to test their equipment among the aliens, and the party later found his burst body in a midden.
- Ari was Stan's robot ant from Cyberantics, the model for Norbert. Stan talked to it throughout the mission and recorded a last message for it before the end.
- Captain Hoban commanded the Dolomite, recovered the Lancet recording from a wreck in orbit, and was still fifteen minutes away with a lander when Stan and Julie gave up.
- Captain Potter commanded the Grant Corporation ship Lancet and claimed the planet as Neo-Pharm property. He lost his landing party to the aliens and his craft to Gill.
- Tony was one of the harvester crew who found Mac among the dormant aliens and fired at Norbert before the robot killed him.
- The Queen ruled the hive on A6 454. Her guard did not recognize Norbert's scent, and the hive chased the robot out.
Editions
Dark Horse published the story as Aliens: Hive, four color issues from February 1992 to May 1992. Jerry Prosser wrote the script, Kelley Jones drew and inked the art, Les Dorscheid colored it, Clem Robins lettered it and Barbara Kesel edited it. Dark Horse collected the four issues as a trade paperback in February 1993 with a cover by Dave Dorman. A later collection retitled the story Aliens: Harvest, and the Aliens Omnibus Volume 2 kept that title with a John Bolton title painting of a facehugger over a woman's face. Marvel reprinted the story in 2021 in Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Volume 1.
Robert Sheckley novelized the comic for Bantam Spectra in 1995 as Aliens: Harvest. The novel follows the same spine of a dying scientist, a thief, a robot Xenomorph and a jelly harvest guarded by a corporate ship. It expands the crew of the Dolomite and the voyage out, and it ends with Stan dying on a hive wall when a Chestburster comes through his chest. This article covers the comic itself, while the novel article covers Sheckley's prose version and its added characters.
Differences From The Novel
The comic names its hero Stanislaw Mayakovsky, while the novel calls him Stanley Myakovsky. The comic sets the hive on a planet charted as A6 454, and the novel moves it to AR-32 Vista. In the comic the Lancet belongs to the Grant Corporation and Potter calls the planet Neo-Pharm property, while the novel gives the ship to Bio-Pharm. The comic also keeps Gill's sabotage of the Lancet craft and the reprogramming talk that freed him before it.
Behind The Scenes
Jerry Prosser built the story around a scientist who had already written a book about sending a robot ant into a nest. Lines from that book, Cyberantics, ran through the comic as narration, including the joke that an ant needed a cold plasma laser because Stan would want one. Kelley Jones gave the aliens long, bony heads and huge teeth, and Les Dorscheid colored the hive in deep reds and golds. The planet of the jelly harvest, A6 454, was never named as the homeworld, although later lore grouped barren hive planets of this kind with Xenomorph Prime.
The Grant Corporation and Neo-Pharm tied the comic to Daniel Grant, the jelly profiteer of Aliens: Genocide. In Harvest the company never sent Grant himself, only Potter and an armed crew already milking the hive with an infrasonic suppression system. Norbert anticipated later robot Xenomorphs in Dark Horse stories, and the comic gave him a death in the hive after a final rescue. The story ended with Stan's chestburster and a closing image of Ari rather than a return to Earth.
Conclusion
Aliens: Harvest sent a dying scientist, a thief, an android and a robot Xenomorph after royal jelly, and the raid ended inside the hive rather than on the way home. Norbert fell covering the retreat, Gill blew up the Lancet craft, and Stan chose the hive and the jelly over Hoban's lander. The comic closed on Stan cocooned and smiling as a Chestburster broke out of him, with Ari's face as the last image. Robert Sheckley's novel later retold the raid in prose, but the comic remains the first telling of Stan, Julie and Norbert.
External Sources
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