Aliens: Havoc: Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: June-July 1997
Writer: Mark Schultz
Art: Various artists, including Arthur Adams, Kelley Jones, Moebius and Sergio Aragonés
Colors: Pamela Rambo
Lettering: Clem Robins
Title illustration: Kent Williams
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Format: Two-issue miniseries, forty-four story pages
Setting: The Lunar Maru, stranded in an asteroid belt

Aliens: Havoc was a two-issue Dark Horse Comics miniseries written by Mark Schultz and published in June and July 1997. Its forty-four-page story followed a salvage team boarding the abandoned luxury liner Lunar Maru, where Xenomorphs and a scientist's disembodied consciousness survived the deaths of its passengers. The comic used an artists' jam format, bringing together more than forty artists, with colors by Pamela Rambo and lettering by Clem Robins.

Plot Summary

Boarding The Lunar Maru

Salvage vessels approaching the Lunar Maru through an asteroid belt

The Lunar Maru, flagship of the Red Giant Line, had dropped out of hyperspace during a voyage and transmitted a fragmentary distress call. Months later, the luxury liner remained trapped in an asteroid belt without contact from its passengers or crew. Trispast Salvage sent a team from the St. Clair to investigate and recover the vessel, which had been promoted as an exceptionally safe passenger ship.

Ziska led the boarding operation, dividing the salvagers between hull repairs, life-support work and engineering. They entered in sealed suits and found human remains throughout the liner, including its cabins, dining areas and bridge. An unseen consciousness watched them arrive and wanted to warn them against restarting the ship. To communicate with the newcomers, it needed a living person through whom it could speak.

Restoring Life Support

Human remains at the deserted bridge controls of the Lunar Maru

The Salvagers found no immediate explanation for the deaths. The life-support equipment had been shut down but remained functional, while the repair team sealed breaches in the hull. Before the systems were restored, Cleg began warning his companions not to reactivate them. He collapsed, recovered and could not explain what had happened to him. Similar warnings then came through Madison.

Ziska authorized the restart after receiving confirmation that the damaged sections had been sealed. Air and gravity returned, allowing the team to remove their helmets. Their medic, Battle, considered whether stress could explain the strange behaviour, but the warnings continued to move between different salvagers. Ponselle stared into the machinery and told the others that something had awakened and was approaching them.

Ambush And Abandonment

Ziska using a cutting torch as Xenomorphs attack near the docking bay

Several adult Xenomorphs emerged from the passageways and attacked the boarding party. Ziska ordered everyone back to the docking area and called for the other survey teams to retreat. Two people were reported down, while the St. Clair failed to answer the distress calls. The return shuttle closed its airlock and departed, abandoning the salvagers aboard the infested liner.

Ziska used his cutting torch to drive back a creature at close range, buying the survivors time to regroup. They watched the shuttle return to the St. Clair and realized that they had lost their immediate route off the ship. The remaining team needed weapons and another means of escape. Their unusual warnings continued, including advice about where the creatures were waiting and when they would attack.

Lysenko's Guidance

A Xenomorph moving through the Lunar Maru passenger lounge

The consciousness identified itself as Gropius Lysenko, a research biochemist whose name Battle recognized. Moving between the salvagers, it warned them of ambushes and directed Avril to a cache of M41 pulse rifles. The weapons allowed them to repel an attack that their work equipment could not have stopped. Ziska reluctantly followed the guidance, despite having no clear explanation for its source.

Lysenko urged the team to leave the confined service passages and move into the passenger areas, where they would have more room to defend themselves. Cleg shot a creature there and was splashed with acidic blood, suffering severe burns. Battle treated him while the others helped him onward. The injured salvager remained with the group as Lysenko guided them toward his former stateroom.

The Hidden Laboratory

The armed salvagers entering Lysenko's luxurious stateroom

The Stateroom concealed a laboratory containing preserved parasites, research notes and Royal Jelly. The equipment showed that the Lunar Maru had carried more than ordinary passengers. Lysenko wanted the team to take both the substance and his records. Battle recognized its connection with Xeno-Zip and began to understand that the creatures had been transported aboard the liner deliberately.

Through a large viewport, the team saw the St. Clair drift into an asteroid and break apart. Lysenko attributed the disaster to a Xenomorph that had boarded the departing shuttle. Battle also recalled that Weyland-Yutani had hired Lysenko from Neo-Pharm. She suspected that the Company owned both the Red Giant Line and Trispast, making the salvage operation an expendable investigation into its own failed experiments.

The Bridge And The Nest

Xenomorph Eggs beneath the creatures nesting in the liner's engineering machinery

The badly injured Cleg panicked and fired through the passenger area, striking a viewport. It shattered, pulling him and a Xenomorph into space before the others sealed the compartment. Lysenko reported that eight of the original ten creatures remained. The survivors reached the bridge, but found that the engines would not respond to commands from its controls.

Avril traced the fault to the sequencing coils near the gravitron chamber. Lysenko left his current host to investigate and discovered a Xenomorph nest obstructing that machinery. Remaining near the creatures threatened his disembodied mind, but he returned with the information. The team would have to enter engineering and clear the infestation before the liner could carry them to a government-controlled port.

Lysenko's Confession

Lysenko removing the restraints from the concealed Xenomorph Eggs

The notes showed that Lysenko had experimented on himself with altered Royal Jelly, gaining the ability to separate his consciousness from his body and enter other people. Speaking through Battle, he admitted that his host's impulses had influenced him and that he had committed an atrocity against a passenger. When security pursued him, he fled into the hidden chamber holding thirty Xenomorph Eggs and removed their timer clamps.

Ten Eggs opened and their Facehuggers infected ten people, including Lysenko. He abandoned his own body as the parasite attached itself to him. The resulting infestation spread through the liner in a day. Company synthetic operatives seized the controls and shut down the ship's systems to conceal the outbreak, killing the surviving passengers and crew. The Xenomorphs endured the conditions in hibernation until the salvage team restored life support.

Battle's Countermeasure

Battle examining the Royal Jelly recovered from Lysenko's laboratory

Sharing a body with Lysenko damaged a host's nervous system if he remained for more than a few minutes. Battle had proved unusually receptive and retained enough of his memories to understand his research. She knew that he had tried to make Xenomorph consciousness accessible to human understanding, and that the Royal Jelly's effects on his own mind had been an unintended result.

Battle proposed using the altered substance against the creatures. It accelerated their reproductive cycle, but the psychic changes it caused were dangerous to newly developing parasites. If the salvagers could expose the remaining Eggs to it, the resulting hatchlings might destabilize the colony. The plan required them to carry the laboratory sample into the nest rather than simply destroy the creatures blocking their path.

Return To Engineering

The salvagers fighting Company synthetic operatives in the engineering passages

During the advance, a Xenomorph killed Drowser with its tail. Ziska kept the other survivors moving, using the torch where gunfire risked splashing them with acid. Surrounded in the service passages, they escaped through a freight tube that carried them toward engineering. The tube delivered them close to the machinery they needed to restore, but also brought them into contact with the Company's remaining operatives.

The apparent Survivors were the synthetics responsible for shutting down the liner. They attacked the salvagers, who shot them while Lysenko warned the group of their identity. With the torch running low, Ziska used particle shields to hold off the pursuing creatures. Battle found a grease gun that could deliver the Royal Jelly, and the team forced its way toward the nest.

The Attack On The Nest

The salvagers confronting Xenomorphs and Eggs inside the nest

The surviving Salvagers reached the nest but could not get close enough to spray the Eggs directly. Gunfire and the remaining shields gave them only temporary protection against the Xenomorphs. Battle noticed the fire-suppression system overhead and prepared to use it to distribute the sample. Ziska helped connect the Royal Jelly to the sprinklers while the others held the creatures back.

Ziska threw the burning torch into the nest, triggering the sprinklers and spreading the altered substance over the Eggs. The creatures continued their attack while the team waited for the treatment to work. His pulse rifle ran empty as a Xenomorph closed on him. Lysenko then abandoned the safety of a human host and directed his consciousness into the creature threatening the salvage leader.

Lysenko's Final Intervention

Lysenko's consciousness confronting the alien mind of a Xenomorph

Lysenko tried to destroy the Xenomorph from within and prevent it from taking Ziska. The encounter exposed him directly to an alien mind that he could not control. At the same time, the treated Eggs opened and twenty parasites entered the colony with psychic abilities they could not manage. Their reactions spread through the nest and overwhelmed the adult creatures.

The Hive collapsed as the newborn parasites projected their disturbed minds into the other Xenomorphs. Lysenko attributed the effect to the brain-stem fluid he had introduced into his experimental Royal Jelly. His effort to understand the creatures had instead produced a substance that made their shared mental environment intolerable. The surviving humans moved through the stricken colony to reach the engines.

Escape Aboard The Lunar Maru

The restored Lunar Maru firing its engines to leave the asteroid belt

With the Xenomorphs incapacitated, the salvagers restored the Lunar Maru's engines and engaged its gravity drive. They left the asteroid belt aboard the liner they had originally boarded to recover. Their plan was to reach an independent port before the Company could intercept them, preserving both their lives and evidence of what had happened to the passengers.

Lysenko watched the liner depart and hoped that its survivors would expose the Company's crimes. He considered his attempt to save them complete and prepared to rest. The story ended with the ship escaping, without showing its arrival at a port or the public release of the evidence. Ziska, Battle, Phibbs and Avril survived the operation aboard the recovered vessel.

Key Characters

Ziska led the Trispast boarding team. He organized the repairs, defended the survivors with a cutting torch and helped deliver the altered Royal Jelly through the nest's sprinklers. He escaped aboard the restored liner.
Battle was the team's medic. Her receptiveness to Lysenko's consciousness allowed her to retain his memories and understand the experiments. She devised the attack on the Eggs and survived the mission.
Gropius Lysenko was a biochemist recruited by Weyland-Yutani from Neo-Pharm. His self-experimentation separated his mind from his body, and his release of the parasites caused the liner's infestation. He later guided the salvagers and intervened to save Ziska.
Phibbs And Avril were surviving members of the salvage team. Avril obtained the pulse rifle that saved the group and investigated the failed engines. Phibbs remained with the armed survivors during their advance through the liner.
Cleg was a salvager burned by Xenomorph blood. His panicked gunfire shattered a viewport, pulling him into space. Drowser survived the earlier attacks but was killed by a Xenomorph's tail during the journey to engineering.
The Synthetic Operatives were Company agents concealed among the liner's crew. They shut down its systems to disguise the infestation as another kind of disaster, then attacked the salvagers who discovered them.

Editions

Aliens: Havoc #1-2 carried June and July 1997 cover dates. Mark Schultz wrote the story, Pamela Rambo colored it and Clem Robins supplied the lettering. The collected edition credited Kent Williams with its title illustration. Williams provided the first issue's cover, while Duncan Fegredo illustrated the second issue's cover.

Dark Horse collected both issues in Aliens Omnibus Volume 5 in 2008. The collection placed Havoc after Aliens: Incubation, bringing the two original installments together as a continuous forty-four-page story. Its collected credits retained the long list of contributing artists rather than assigning the miniseries to one penciller or inker.

Marvel subsequently included both issues in Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Volume 3, published in 2022. Its contents also included Aliens: Alchemy, Aliens: Kidnapped and Aliens: Survival, alongside other Dark Horse miniseries and anthology stories. Havoc remained a self-contained story about the Lunar Maru's salvage operation.

Behind The Scenes

The Artists' Jam brought together a large group of illustrators working on successive portions of Schultz's story. The collected credits included Leif Jones and John Stokes, Duncan Fegredo, D'Israeli, John Totleben, Arthur Adams, Gary Gianni and Geof Darrow, George Pratt, Igor Kordey, Paul Lee, John K. Snyder III, Mark A. Nelson, Pete Bagge, Brian Horton, Dave Taylor and Kelley Jones. The changes between their styles occurred within one continuing narrative, rather than separating the book into unrelated short stories.

Other credited Artists included Guy Davis, Kellie Strøm, Jay Stephens, Jerry Bingham, Kevin Nowlan, Frank Teran, Joel Naprstek, Travis Charest, P. Craig Russell, Aidan Potts, Sean Phillips, Rebecca Guay, Jon Muth, Kilian Plunkett, Ron Randall, John Pound, Gene Ha, Vania Zarouliov, Sergio Aragonés, John Paul Leon, Derek Thompson, David Lloyd, Moebius, Dave Cooper, Mike Allred and Tony Millionaire. Pamela Rambo's coloring and Clem Robins' lettering accompanied these changes in illustration throughout the collected story.

Havoc used the name Linguafoeda acheronsis for the Xenomorph species. Lysenko supplied the term through his human hosts, while Battle recognized the creatures through his research and the Royal Jelly samples. The story distinguished his temporary possession of the salvagers from the psychic collapse produced when his altered substance reached the nest's remaining Eggs.

Conclusion

Aliens: Havoc followed a civilian salvage team's discovery of Company experiments aboard an abandoned passenger liner. Schultz's story ended with Battle's countermeasure disabling the infestation and the survivors escaping aboard the recovered Lunar Maru, while Lysenko's attempt to make amends concluded outside its departing hull.