Aliens: Life and Death (2016): Plot, Characters & Lore
Aliens: Life and Death is a four-issue Dark Horse miniseries written by Dan Abnett and drawn by Moritat, with colors by Rain Beredo, lettering by Michael Heisler, and painted covers by David Palumbo. The issues reached shops from September to December 2016 as the Aliens branch of Dark Horse's Life and Death crossover. After Prometheus: Life and Death, survivors stranded on LV-223 faced a Xenomorph swarm while Captain Paget's Colonial Marines aboard the USS Hasdrubal chose whether to leave or go back for Chris Hanlock. The story takes place about forty-three years after Aliens and a little over a year after Aliens: Fire and Stone.
Plot Summary
Xenomorphs Ambush The Survivors
On LV-223, the survivors of the failed escape from the Engineer sites came under a Xenomorph assault that tore their already broken group apart. Freebody shouted for covering fire while Melville tried to haul a wounded companion clear of the swarm. Adults dropped from the trees and cut into the line before anyone could form a proper perimeter. Wearing died in the rush, and the remaining fighters burned ammunition they could not spare. The ambush finished what the earlier Engineer chase had started and left the party scattered across the jungle.
During the fight the Xenomorphs seized Chris Hanlock the way they had earlier taken Rucker, and they dragged her into the brush before Jill or Melville could reach her. Jill screamed after her wife and refused to accept that Chris was gone. Freebody and Melville pulled Jill away only when more drones closed in and the ground around them turned into a killing zone. By the time the attack broke, Wearing was dead, Chris was missing, and the handful left alive had no clear path back to shelter. The survivors radioed into the dark and hoped someone still held a working beacon.
Roth Contacts Freebody
Sergeant Roth answered Freebody's call from the Hasdrubal side of the net and forced a status report through the static. Freebody told him the bugs had jumped them from three sides, that Wearing was dead, and that Chris had been snatched the same way Rucker had been taken. He also confirmed that Foster, Singer, and the others who boarded the Engineer ship were gone with that craft when an Engineer launched it. Roth ordered Freebody to keep the beacon lit so a pickup could find him. Freebody asked about Galgo and got only a negative from the sergeant.
The exchange made clear how thin the LV-223 party had become after Prometheus: Life and Death. An Engineer had stolen the juggernaut with humans still aboard, another clash had wrecked part of the group, and the rear team now faced a hive that hunted in force. Roth treated Freebody's channel as proof that at least one Marine still held ground on the moon. Freebody held his position and waited for whoever could still reach him. The Hasdrubal now had a living contact on a world the officers already wanted to leave.
Jill After The Ambush
In the quiet after the rush, Jill insisted Chris was not dead and that her wife would never leave her alone on that moon. Melville asked whether they had ammo or sedatives left to calm her, and Freebody warned that knocking her out would only make her dead weight when the bugs returned. Jill kept repeating that Chris was coming back any minute while the two men counted magazines and listened for movement in the trees. They agreed that once they had rested they would head for the shelter rather than make a last stand with empty rifles. The snatch had left Jill barely able to walk a straight line.
Melville asked whether Singer and the others had really been on the Engineer ship when it left, and Freebody said they had been, with almost no serious firepower among them. Both men treated those passengers as dead even before they knew where the ship had gone. A new sound cut through the jungle and made them think Engineers were returning, until the noise resolved into something mechanical instead of footsteps. The survivors froze and waited to learn which threat had found them first. Help arrived before another swarm did.
Marine APC Reaches The Survivors
An armored personnel carrier from the Hasdrubal rolled out of the trees and stopped over the survivors before another Xenomorph wave could finish them. Sergeant Roth climbed down and greeted Freebody like a man who had refused to stay lost forever. Captain Paget's unit took the civilians and remaining Marines aboard and pulled them off the killing ground. Freebody told the captain he wanted off the moon, and Paget already shared the feeling that nothing on LV-223 justified staying. The APC ride ended the immediate ambush and put the LV-223 survivors under Marine protection for the first time since the Engineer escape failed.
Back among the platoon, the rescued party learned how few of the original thirty-one Marines still lived after Tartarus and the later losses. Eighteen remained, and that number did not feel like a win to the people who had buried the rest. Jill kept asking about Chris while the Marines logged what Freebody could tell them about the snatch and the beacon. Roth already knew he would argue for a return trip once they reached the ship. The Hasdrubal now held both a weak surface transmission and living witnesses who said Chris was still a captive of the hive.
Hasdrubal Orbits LV-223
Aboard the rapid-response combat ship Hasdrubal, the crew logged twenty-two personnel while the vessel held orbit over LV-223. Officers briefed Captain Paget on the weak surface transmission and on Jill's claim that Chris was a captive of the Xenomorphs. Some voices argued they should go home, call the tour a win, and let Lorimer take his report to the company. Others counted the dead from the original platoon and refused to treat eighteen survivors out of thirty-one as success. The debate turned on whether a civilian still breathing in a hive was worth another drop.
Roth told Paget he would go back for Chris because she was a civilian in danger, because she had kept people alive on the surface, and because the Corps did not leave its own behind. He added that if Chris still lived, Rucker might still live as well. Paget listened without promising him a green light. The ship already carried a haul of xenotech notes and two new apex species logged for science, which made a clean exit look attractive on paper. The captain still had to decide whether paper mattered more than the people left under the jungle.
Paget Asks For Volunteers
Captain Paget told the platoon they had already taken the worst losses any of them had seen on a single tour. She called a return to the surface a tactically poor option with a high failure threshold that breached their standing orders. Because of that risk, she made the drop a volunteer run and said anyone who stepped out would not answer to her for refusing. Ancane took command of the ship in her absence once she chose to lead the drop herself. Roth and Freebody were already in, and more hands went up around the hangar.
Names stacked onto the volunteer slate until Paget had a fire team she could take without stripping the Hasdrubal bare. Anders, Wilson, Epperly, Cross, and others joined while a few Marines stayed to hold the ship. Melville asked to go as well, arguing that Paget had not limited the call to USCM personnel and that he had been beside Chris when she was taken. He said they would have to lock him in the brig with Coope to keep him off the dropship. Paget accepted the civilian and prepared Bird Two for a second surface run.
Jill Makes A Deal With Lorimer
Before the drop, Jill went to Lorimer, the Weyland-Yutani representative, and told him she had spent months praying to leave LV-223 and now needed to go back. Lorimer said Chris had almost no chance once implantation had begun, and Jill answered that her only chance was a live recovery, stasis, and top-level company medicine. She offered him legal rights to Chris if the company cut the embryo out and returned her wife alive. Lorimer admitted the bioweapons division wanted specimens and treated an implanted living host as a better prize than a corpse. Jill warned him not to cheat her on the deal.
The bargain gave the company a path to the hive through a civilian who would sign anything to keep Chris breathing. Lorimer stayed on the Hasdrubal with the freight bus and the remaining crew while Paget took the combat dropship. Jill boarded the rescue run anyway, having bought corporate backing for an extraction she still intended to control. Roth and Freebody treated the paperwork as Lorimer's problem and the surface as theirs. Bird Two became the platoon's last surface boat after Bird One's loss on Tartarus.
Bird Two Leaves The Hasdrubal
Paget ordered Delaria not to risk the Hasdrubal's last surface boat on a hero play if the drop team got into trouble. She told him that unless she gave express orders, he was to turn the ship for home and leave them rather than trash Bird Two's only backup. Delaria acknowledged the order as Bird Two cleared the bay. Ancane wished them luck on the outbound channel while the dropship began its burn toward the moon. The Marines inside checked weapons and reviewed Jill's brief on what the hive could do.
Talk on the ride down returned to Galgo, who had paired off with a hunter earlier in the crossover, and the squad treated him as dead after hearing nothing. Once Bird Two hit atmosphere, Paget reminded everyone they were entering Xenomorph country, where the bugs hunted freely away from Engineer sites. She ordered them to shoot anything that moved before it could kill them, then rolled the team out toward Chris's last known bearing. Jill kept trying Chris on the radio as the Marines advanced. The nest answered before Chris did.
Queen Stands Over Chris
Deep in the nest, Chris Hanlock lived under the gaze of a Xenomorph Queen while Jill's voice finally reached her headset. Jill told her they were coming and begged her to hold on, and Chris answered only that something had come up. The Queen kept the drones at a distance instead of killing the captive outright, which told Chris the hive wanted her alive for a reason. Roth patched into the channel and asked Chris to describe her location so the squad could move on her position. Chris stalled long enough to decide how much truth Jill could hear.
When Roth pressed her, Chris told him she was carrying one of them and that she had been implanted. She ordered him not to waste more lives and to back the squad off, and she made clear Jill must not hear the details. Chris said Jill loved her too much to give up, yet there was no hope left for the host. Roth still refused to abort while Paget's team pushed closer through the thickets. The Queen and her swarm waited as if they already knew the Marines would come.
Chris Tells Roth She Is Implanted
On the open channel Chris made Roth listen as a professional and then told him she was dead already. She said she was hosting and that Jill would never stop hoping if she learned the truth in the middle of a firefight. Roth still wanted a location, exits, and a path to pull her out. Jill overheard enough to promise company backing, stasis, and an extraction deal she had already cut with Lorimer. Chris told her she should not have done that and asked for a moment to describe what the hive was doing around her.
Before she could finish, an Engineer presence near the landing zone changed the rescue's odds again. Chris saw or heard the threat in time to warn the Marines that their ride was no longer safe. Paget kept the squad moving while Roth tried to hold Chris on the line. The nest was swarming, and Chris reported a brood queen in the chamber with her. The Marines now had to reach a captive the hive would not surrender without a fight.
Engineer Destroys The Dropship
An Engineer found Bird Two at the landing zone and destroyed the Cheyenne before the Marines could call it back as a clean extract. The blast and wreckage cut the drop team off from an easy return to orbit and forced them to keep pressing the nest on foot. On the Hasdrubal, Delaria lost the lander's transponder signal about ten minutes after the last routine check and argued with Lorimer over whether to prep a recovery. Paget's standing order still barred Delaria from risking the ship without her express authority. Lorimer called the lost contact disappointing while he eyed the xenotech still waiting on the surface.
With the dropship gone, Chris became both the mission and the only living guide the Marines had inside the hive. Paget patched into Roth and Jill and asked Chris for exits, entrances, and anything that would keep the squad alive. Chris said the bugs were keeping their distance and that the Queen was doing the same, which only deepened the sense that the hive was protecting a prize. The Marines tightened their spacing and moved toward her signal. Every meter forward now had to be paid for without a waiting bird.
Chestburster Kills Rucker
Deeper in the hive Chris found Rucker, still alive after the earlier snatch recorded in Prometheus: Life and Death. She told him her name and that his unit was coming, and she tried to keep him conscious while the embryo inside him finished its cycle. A chestburster tore out of Rucker and killed him in front of her. The newborn was malformed and dead soon after, which told Chris the hive's breeding had gone wrong. She reported the death to Paget and began to explain what the black pathogen on the moon had done to the swarm.
Chris said the Engineers' gene-active material had spilled across LV-223 and corrupted the Xenomorphs until they no longer bred properly. Stillbirths and deformities had piled up, and she believed the damage had left the Queen infertile. That was why the hive treated Chris with such care. She told the channel she was carrying the last viable Queen embryo and that the bugs would not let the Marines take her. Jill heard the words and still refused to leave her.
Chris And The Dead Offspring
Chris studied the dead offspring and tied it to the wider failure she had watched in the nest since the ambush. The hive needed a new Queen to replenish itself, and her implant was the only clean embryo left. She warned Paget that the drones would fight to the last rather than surrender that chance. On the Marine channel she could already feel the thing inside her responding as the Queen urged the swarm forward. The rescue had become a race between extraction and a birth the hive would kill to protect.
Paget ordered the squad to hustle while they still had a window Chris had bought them by drawing the Queen's attention. Roth and Freebody pushed the flanks as Anders and other volunteers moved on the chamber. Chris kept talking so the Marines would not lose her bearing in the resin and dark. Every delay favored the embryo and the drones gathering above the tunnels. The platoon chose speed over caution and went in.
Marines Under Xenomorph Attack
The swarm hit the advance in a single rush that killed Berlitz and Wilson before the others could form a clean kill zone. Marines shouted target calls and fell back into the thickets as drones poured through the trees. Freebody went down under fire discipline orders while Paget tried to keep the flanks from collapsing. The bugs then fell back without a clear reason, which bought the squad a short window to regroup. Paget used that pause to push everyone toward Chris before the Queen could organize another wave.
The next threat was not only Xenomorphs. An Engineer entered the fight at close range, shielded against small-arms fire, and killed Epperly while scattering the rest of the team. Azzopardi and Cross stayed in the brush, and Yun's status went unknown in the chaos. Paget nearly shot her own people in the dark while trying to track the giant through the trees. Jill still wanted Chris, and Paget still wanted a path that would not kill the entire volunteer slate for one recovery.
Queen Slams The Engineer
Chris warned the Marines that an Engineer was coming to wipe out the nest and everything in it, and she used that threat to force the drones into motion. The Queen met the Engineer in the open and slammed the giant hard enough to break the standoff around the captive. Paget ordered everyone into the nest while the two apex fighters tore into each other. Roth, Jill, and the remaining volunteers ran under that cover rather than stay pinned between acid blood and Engineer weapons. The Queen bought them a path that small-arms fire had failed to open.
Inside the resin corridors the Marines kept moving and refused to become spectators to the larger fight. Chris stayed on the channel so they would not lose her in the dark while the Queen and Engineer wrecked the ground outside. Paget told the squad they were not staying in the middle of that clash and pushed them toward the extract bearing Chris had given them. Casualties from Epperly's death and the earlier rush still weighed on the team, yet the volunteer slate held together long enough to reach their target. The hive's own war against the Engineer became the only reason any of them still had a chance.
Burning Dropship At The LZ
The squad broke out of the nest with Chris and ran for the landing zone, only to find Bird Two burned and useless on the pad. Paget called the Hasdrubal for emergency evac and reported that they had the survivor but no ride. Reception on their end stayed green, yet Delaria did not answer. Peet tried the channel next and still heard nothing from the ship that was supposed to be holding station. The rescue had recovered Chris and stranded the team beside a wreck they could not fly.
On the jungle side of the fight, the Queen and the Engineer were still tearing the clearing apart while the Marines kept Chris moving away from both. Paget's last order to Delaria now cut both ways, because the ship might already have followed her command to leave if contact looked lost. The volunteers still alive held the LZ with a captive who carried a Queen embryo and with no confirmation that orbit would ever come back for them. That standoff is where Aliens: Life and Death ends and where Alien vs. Predator: Life and Death begins. The Hasdrubal's silence left Paget, Jill, Roth, Freebody, and Chris alone under LV-223's sky.
Key Characters
- Captain Paget led the Hasdrubal Marines, called the LV-223 return a volunteer mission, and stayed with the surface team after Bird Two burned.
- Sergeant Roth argued for the rescue, kept Chris on the radio after the implant confession, and pushed the squad through the nest.
- Chris Hanlock was snatched during the opening ambush, implanted with a Queen embryo, and guided the Marines while warning them the hive would not let her go.
- Jill refused to accept Chris's death, cut a specimen deal with Lorimer, and joined the drop to bring her wife out alive.
- Freebody survived the ambush, held the beacon for Roth, and volunteered for the return to the surface.
- Melville stayed with Jill after the snatch and forced his way onto the volunteer drop as a civilian.
- Lorimer represented Weyland-Yutani on the Hasdrubal and accepted Jill's offer of an implanted living host.
- Rucker was found alive in the nest and died when a malformed chestburster killed him in front of Chris.
- Ancane took command of the Hasdrubal when Paget dropped, and Delaria held the ship under orders not to risk another recovery without her word.
- The Xenomorph Queen guarded Chris as the hive's last viable queen embryo and later fought an Engineer long enough for the Marines to break out.
Editions
Dark Horse Comics published Aliens: Life and Death as four issues from September to December 2016, with issue #1 on sale September 21, 2016. Dan Abnett wrote the miniseries, Moritat drew it, Rain Beredo colored it, and Michael Heisler lettered it, with David Palumbo on the main covers and Sachin Teng on a variant for issue #1. Randy Stradley edited the series, with Kevin Burkhalter and Freddye Miller as assistant editors, under publisher Mike Richardson. The collection designer on the later trade was Kate Z. Stone. The story opens after Prometheus: Life and Death and leads directly into Alien vs. Predator: Life and Death.
Dark Horse Books collected the miniseries in Aliens: Life and Death, a 96-page trade paperback released on April 12, 2017, with a digital ISBN of 978-1-63008-657-2 listed in the book's indicia. The four issues later appeared in the hardcover Aliens Predator Prometheus AVP: The Complete Life and Death on September 19, 2018, which gathered the Predator, Prometheus, Aliens, and Alien vs. Predator legs of the crossover. Each floppy carried the Life and Death event branding. The opening text places the story about forty-three years after Aliens and a little over a year after Fire and Stone.
Behind The Scenes
Dan Abnett wrote Aliens: Life and Death as the Aliens branch of Dark Horse's 2016 Life and Death line, after Predator: Life and Death and Prometheus: Life and Death and before the Alien vs. Predator wrap on LV-223. Moritat drew the interiors with a heavy ink style that shifted the look from Brian Albert Thies's earlier event issues, and Rain Beredo kept the color seat across those branches. David Palumbo painted the main covers, including the inverted Marine and Xenomorph image used on issue #1. The miniseries continues Captain Paget, Roth, Freebody, Lorimer, and the Hasdrubal crew introduced on Tartarus.
The comic treats Chris's implant and the corrupted hive as the cost of black goo already loose on LV-223 since Fire and Stone. Rucker's death confirms that hosts taken in Prometheus: Life and Death were not simply missing, and Chris's claim that she carries the last viable Queen embryo sets the stakes for the final crossover chapter. Abnett's script ends on the burning LZ and the unanswered Hasdrubal channel rather than on a clean extract. That cliffhanger hands the stranded Marines and Chris to Alien vs. Predator: Life and Death.
Conclusion
Aliens: Life and Death follows the LV-223 survivors and Captain Paget's Colonial Marines from a Xenomorph ambush to a volunteer rescue that recovers Chris Hanlock and loses Bird Two. Jill's deal with Lorimer, Chris's implant, Rucker's death, and the Queen-Engineer clash strip the mission down to a stranded fire team beside a burning dropship. The miniseries leaves Paget, Jill, Roth, Freebody, and Chris alive on the moon with a Queen embryo still inside Chris and with no answer from the Hasdrubal. Dark Horse continued that standoff in Alien vs. Predator: Life and Death.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Alien Comics
