Aliens: Music of the Spears Comic: Plot & Lore

Published: January to April 1994, as a four-issue Dark Horse limited series
Script: Chet Williamson
Pencils: Tim Hamilton
Inks: Timothy Bradstreet
Colors: Matt Webb
Lettering: Clem Robins
Title Illustration: Timothy Bradstreet with Guy Burwell
Editors: Jerry Prosser and Bob Cooper
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Format: Four-issue color limited series, 24 story pages each
Setting: Manhattan, on Christmas Eve, after the infestation of Earth

Aliens: Music of the Spears was a four-issue series first published by Dark Horse from January to April 1994. Chet Williamson wrote the script, Tim Hamilton penciled the interior art, and Timothy Bradstreet inked it, with colors by Matt Webb and lettering by Clem Robins. The story was set on Earth, in Manhattan, on Christmas Eve after the infestation, and followed Synsound composer Damon Eddington as he tried to record a live Xenomorph for a symphony of hate. The company stole an egg from MedTech, Eddington named the resulting creature Mozart, and the work ended in a massacre at Presley Hall that was later restaged with androids.

Plot Summary

Eddington's Request

Composer Damon Eddington, surrounded by pale Xenomorph heads, says the work is for the sound

Composer Damon Eddington worked under Synsound in a market that favored android copies of famous voices and a constant flood of new electronic songs. Few people still listened to the live acoustic work he wrote, and the company kept him on just enough to look as if it still cared about older forms. Eddington wanted a sound no synthesizer could fake. He took that request to his superior, Keene, and said he needed a living alien, recorded by his own hand.

Keene had little personal interest in the composer, but he took the idea upstairs. Synsound's head, Yoriku, allowed the project to go forward, and Keene gave the job of getting a specimen to his most trusted agent, the ninja Ahiro. When Eddington spoke of recording the creature's rage for a symphony of hate, even Keene thought he could hear something that sang from a throat of steel. Ahiro did whatever Keene and the company asked, and the next step was a raid on a rival's hidden stock.

The Raid On MedTech

On Christmas Eve in Manhattan, Ahiro led a team of ninjas into a MedTech laboratory that not even the company's own vice presidents knew about. Ahiro had planned how to neutralize the guards and evade the cameras, but no human security met them at the door. Xenomorphs used as guard animals attacked the raiders in the dark. Ahiro's sword was as hard and as sharp as the creatures' teeth, and he was fast enough to live.

Other men in the team were slower. Something struck Higuchi, and he fell, and more raiders died before the group reached the eggs. The survivors sealed one egg and fought their way back out toward Synsound. Ahiro did not stop to ask whether that prize had been worth the men already lost, with the night still unfinished. Three were gone, and he expected to lose more before they were clear.

The Apiary At Presley Hall

Michael Brangwen, Darcy Vance, and Damon Eddington walk into the Apiary, the containment hall under Presley Hall

The stolen egg was installed in a containment cell in the basement of Synsound's Presley Hall, a space the staff called the Apiary. Bioengineers Michael Brangwen and Darcy Vance joined Eddington there after a long descent through elevators, halls, and a final flight of stairs. Brangwen was a devoted listener of Eddington's work and talked about the compositions all the way down. Darcy had less time for that music, and her first concern was the work in front of her.

Ahiro stayed on as a watchman over the team, the same agent who had taken the egg from MedTech. The specimen was already locked in its cell, but the group still needed a host for the facehugger inside. Darcy Vance asked where the donor clone was, and it was clear that none had been delivered to the Apiary. Without that clone, the next task was to find a living body, and that search took Ahiro back into the city.

Ken And The Facehugger

A facehugger clamps onto Ken, a former musician chosen as the host for Synsound's stolen egg

Ahiro brought in Ken, a former musician Eddington had known, now a jelly addict who said the drug had opened a music only he could hear. Ken had come to worship what he called the source, and he asked to be joined with the egg so that he could live on in that sound. Eddington knew the man and was shaken by the idea of offering him to the creature. The composer tried to talk Ken out of dying that way.

Ahiro did not wait for a change of heart, and he ended the argument in the Apiary. Ken was presented to the egg, and the facehugger inside subdued him. Eddington looked on as the host was taken, already regretting the cost of the sound he wanted from a man he had known. The project had its body, the egg had done its work, and the waiting in the Apiary began.

The Birth Of Mozart

A chestburster tears out of Ken, the birth of the Xenomorph Eddington later names Mozart

The chestburster killed Ken when it tore its way out of him in the Apiary. Eddington was left with the death of a man he had once made music with, and with a newborn Xenomorph in the cell under Presley Hall. Recording gear packed the enclosure, ready to take every sound the creature made as it grew. Eddington named the animal Mozart and began to treat the cage as a studio.

Mozart grew quickly in the cell beneath Presley Hall. The microphones and boards around the cage were meant to catch screams of rage, but the young animal at first gave Eddington little that he could use. The composer watched the enclosure and waited for a sound worth putting into the symphony of hate he still meant to write. That silence did not last once he began to demand live prey.

The Vial Of Jelly

A burst of alien jelly fills the air after Damon Eddington begins using the drug himself

Before Ken was given to the egg, Eddington had found a vial of jelly among his clothes, and after the birth he took that drug himself. The jelly began to rule his judgment and to tighten his obsession with Mozart. Ordinary prey no longer seemed enough to force the cry he wanted. Eddington started to talk of stimulation, of feeding the creature things that would make it work for a kill.

Cats and dogs thrown into the Apiary died too quickly and too quietly to be of any use on the boards. Mozart dispatched them with almost no struggle and almost no sound, and the recordings were useless for a symphony of hate. Eddington pressed Ahiro for harder prey, larger animals that would fight back and stay alive long enough to force a cry. The ninja went out into the city to steal what the composer asked for.

Mozart And The Bull

Mozart, the captive Xenomorph, tears into a bull stolen for the recordings in the Apiary

Ahiro stole a bull and sent it into the Apiary as the next test for the recordings. Mozart met the animal in the open cage and killed it in a short, violent fight. The recording picked up the struggle in the enclosure, but Eddington still did not have the cry he was after. He wanted a sound that would come only when Mozart had to fight hard for the death, not a kill that ended in moments.

The bull had been a larger test than the dogs and cats, and it still had not been enough for the symphony. Eddington's hunger for a louder rage grew as the jelly worked on him and the boards kept coming up short. He asked for another predator, something faster than a bull and more used to hunting live prey. Ahiro went out again to take that animal and bring it back to the Apiary.

The Panther

A stolen panther leaps at Mozart inside the Apiary cage during another of Eddington's recording tests

A stolen panther went into the cage next, a faster hunter than the bull that had already died there. Mozart faced the cat in the Apiary and killed it as well, after a faster, sharper fight than the one with the bull. Blood and motion filled the enclosure, and the boards recorded the kill from every microphone in the cell. The sound still fell short of the symphony in Eddington's head, and he was no longer satisfied with animals.

Eddington decided that only human prey would force the rage he wanted to capture for the climax of the work. Brangwen was already uneasy with the turn the project had taken, and the idea of putting men in the cage appalled him. Eddington, further gone on jelly, cared more about the recordings than about who might die to make them. Ahiro was sent into the city to find those men and bring them back to the Apiary under Presley Hall.

Human Prey

A kidnapped man waits in the feeder cage under Presley Hall, with Darcy Vance and Michael Brangwen looking on

Ahiro kidnapped men and had them locked, one at a time, into a feeder cage that opened into Mozart's enclosure. Each man was given an electrostun rifle and told that the harder he fought, the longer he might live, and that leaving the small cage was the only way to survive. The weapon, they were told, mattered only at close range, within about three feet of the creature. The first man was placed in that cage, the rifle at his side, and then made ready.

Brangwen watched the new arrangement with open disgust as the first prisoner was put on display. Darcy stood with him as that man waited behind the glass, the rifle at his side and the cage ready to open. Eddington wanted the audio of those fights and was ready to throw the men in one after another until the boards were full. The Apiary had become a place for hunting people, and the recordings were about to change.

The Electro-Stun Fights

The first man out of the cage fired, and the shock rocked Mozart. A cry of pain came from the Xenomorph's mouth, the sound Eddington had been waiting for through all the earlier, quieter kills. He called it the most glorious sound he had ever heard, and he wanted it again as soon as the boards had taken it. The recording captured that scream, and the composer leaned into every replay.

Man after man went in with a rifle as the fights continued in the Apiary under Presley Hall. Some got off shots, and some died quickly, pierced by the spears of Mozart's fangs. By the time the fifth man was killed, Eddington believed he had what he needed for the body of the work. He still wanted one last scream of rage for the climax, and that want did not let go.

Darcy Thrown To Mozart

Darcy Vance stands in Mozart's cage after Damon Eddington throws her to the Xenomorph

With the main recordings made, Brangwen went upstairs to the concert hall for a break from the basement work. Darcy stayed behind for a few more minutes with Mozart, still in the Apiary after the last of the men had died. Eddington, still chasing a final scream for the climax, attacked her and threw her into the enclosure. Mozart came for her at once, and the boards were opened wide to catch whatever sound followed.

Darcy had a stunner and a hidden way out that she and Brangwen knew about, a service run under the cage floor. Mozart reached for her as she moved for that gap, trying to catch her before she could slip under the floor. Eddington turned every sonic booster on the board, certain that the kill he wanted was only moments away. The fight in the cage was about to give him a cry, though not in the way he expected, and not from a death he would be able to finish recording.

Darcy's Escape

Darcy Vance fires an electrostun rifle at Mozart, a white arc of fire tearing through the Xenomorph

Darcy fired the stunner, and a white arc of fire tore through Mozart, forcing a cry from the creature. In that cry Eddington finally heard the sound he wanted, the rage he had failed to take from the men and the animals. Mozart could not hold her leg in time as she pulled away from the strike. Darcy crawled into the tunnel under the cage, badly wounded, and dragged herself beyond his reach.

The power in the booth began to fail as the breakers did their work. Darcy lay a short way under the floor, losing blood, while Mozart scrabbled at the mouth of the tunnel. Eddington listened and heard nothing more from the cage. Desperate not to lose the moment, he grabbed a portable recorder and a microphone, then faced the fact that he would have to open the door to capture the rest of the sound.

Mozart Kills Eddington

Mozart kills Damon Eddington after the composer opens the Apiary door with a portable recorder

An electrical failure shorted the recording booth as the breakers cut the power to the boards. Eddington, afraid of losing the sound, took the portable unit and opened the chamber himself, sure that Darcy was still inside to be killed on tape. Mozart was already loose in that space, free of the cage Eddington had just unlocked. The Xenomorph killed Eddington in the open doorway, and the portable recorder never got the death he had come to take.

The composer never heard the death scream he had built the symphony around, and he died in the Apiary still chasing it in the open doorway. Mozart left the Apiary and headed up, toward the music and the crowd in Presley Hall. Brangwen was already in that hall, unaware of what was climbing the stairs from the basement. The night's recordings were over, and the real slaughter was about to start above.

The Presley Hall Massacre

Mozart leaps into the packed Presley Hall crowd after tearing through the android band on stage

Mozart came up into Presley Hall, where an android band, the Helltones, was playing to a packed house. The Xenomorph tore through the performers on the stage and then waded into the crowd below. People in the hall took the first moments for part of the show, a droid alien added to a set that had been running hot for weeks. The killing that followed left the concert a slaughter, and the cheers in the room turned into something else.

Bodies fell in the stalls and on the stairs as Mozart moved through the audience. Some of the crowd still screamed as if they were cheering, while others tried to reach the exits of Presley Hall. The creature used the stage, the mezzanine, and the floor of the hall as one killing ground. Nothing in Eddington's recordings had prepared the people in those seats for the night that followed the escape.

MedTech In The Apiary

MedTech security open fire in the Apiary after tracking the stolen egg to Presley Hall

A MedTech security team that had been tracking the stolen egg, under an officer named Rice, broke into Presley Hall in the middle of the massacre. The team killed Mozart in the hall before the slaughter could run any further through the remaining crowd. In the basement they found the Apiary and the equipment around the empty cage, the proof of where the egg had been taken. Ahiro was still there, waiting in the same rooms where the recordings had been made.

Ahiro attacked the MedTech team and was shot down in the Apiary during that search. Brangwen, who had come back down from the hall, found Darcy still alive in the tunnels and got her out for treatment. The stolen egg's trail ended in that basement, along with the ninja who had taken it from MedTech on Christmas Eve. The composer was already dead in the doorway, and the creature he had named was dead upstairs.

The Rage Symphony And The Restaging

The death scream recorded on the night of the Presley Hall massacre plays as a grenade splits an android alien's carapace

Three months later, Brangwen premiered the completed work, billed as the "Rage" Symphony by Damon Eddington, in a small recital hall. The audience was thin, a few critics and a few fans, and the room was nothing like Presley Hall on the night of the massacre. Darcy attended with a crutch, still recovering from the wounds Mozart had given her. Yoriku, the head of Synsound, was there with a new mistress, and the official story of Eddington's death was a skiing accident, which the people who knew better did not believe.

The reviews of that small premiere were not kind, and the completed symphony failed to hold the thin crowd. That same evening, two blocks away in Presley Hall, the massacre was restaged with androids, both on the stage and in the audience, and the house cheered the show. At the climax a grenade split the android alien's carapace. No blood and no acid came out, only the death scream recorded on the night of the real killing, the sound Eddington had hungered for and never heard, until the crowd's own shouts swallowed it.

Key Characters

Damon Eddington was a Synsound composer who wanted live Xenomorph screams for a symphony of hate. He used jelly taken from Ken, threw people into the Apiary to make Mozart rage, and was killed when he opened the cage himself with a portable recorder.
Mozart was the Xenomorph hatched from the stolen MedTech egg, named by Eddington and raised in the Apiary under Presley Hall. After the recordings, the creature escaped, slaughtered the Helltones and the concert crowd, and was later killed by MedTech. An android copy of that night was then staged in the same hall.
Darcy Vance was a bioengineer assigned to the Apiary, more concerned with the work than with Eddington's music. Eddington threw her to Mozart while chasing a final scream. She wounded the creature with a stunner, escaped through a service tunnel, and later attended the premiere on a crutch.
Michael Brangwen was the other bioengineer on the project and a devoted listener of Eddington's work. He was appalled when the Apiary turned to human prey, found the wounded Darcy after the escape, and three months later completed and premiered the "Rage" Symphony under Eddington's name.
Ahiro was a ninja in Synsound's service, sent by Keene to steal the egg from MedTech and later to collect animals and men for the cage. He survived the raid, watched the team in the Apiary, and was shot dead when he attacked the MedTech unit that followed the egg.
Ken was a former musician known to Eddington, a jelly addict who had come to worship what he called the source and who asked to be joined with the egg. Ahiro presented him to the facehugger, and the chestburster later killed him. Eddington took a vial of jelly from Ken's clothes and used it himself.
Other named figures included Keene, Eddington's superior at Synsound, Yoriku, the head of the company, Higuchi, a raider killed during the MedTech theft, and Rice, the MedTech officer who tracked the stolen egg to Presley Hall. The android band in the hall was the Helltones.

Editions

Aliens: Music of the Spears was first published by Dark Horse as a four-issue limited series from January to April 1994, each issue a monthly color comic of 24 story pages. Chet Williamson wrote the script, Tim Hamilton penciled the art, and Timothy Bradstreet inked it, with colors by Matt Webb and lettering by Clem Robins. Jerry Prosser and Bob Cooper edited the issues, and Bradstreet made the covers with Guy Burwell. In the Dark Horse Aliens line the series was preceded by Aliens: Cargo, ran alongside Aliens: Colonial Marines, Aliens: Earth Angel, Aliens: Crusade, Aliens: Labyrinth, Aliens: The Alien, and Operation: Aliens, and was followed by Aliens: Stronghold.

The story was collected in Aliens Omnibus Volume 4 in July 2008, as the first comic in that volume, under the editorship of Chris Warner. Dark Horse released a digital edition on 17 April 2013, reusing Bradstreet and Burwell's cover art from issue 4. Marvel reprinted the series in Aliens: The Original Years Volume 2 in January 2022. Yvonne Navarro novelized the story in October 1996 as Aliens: Music of the Spears, a Bantam book that added a set date and other details not present in the comic.

Behind The Scenes

Timothy Bradstreet inked the series and, with Guy Burwell, made its covers and title illustration. Bradstreet later became widely known for cover work, including his run of covers on Marvel's The Punisher, and for building those images from photography and photographic reference. For Dark Horse he also drew cover images of Imperial fighter pilot Baron Soontir Fel for Star Wars: X-Wing Rogue Squadron. Series editor Jerry Prosser was already a veteran of the Dark Horse Aliens line, having written Aliens: Harvest.

Yvonne Navarro's later novel of the same name added a number of details to the story, including a set date for the events, and should not be read back into the comic where the two differ. The comic is one of the Dark Horse Aliens stories set on Earth after the infestation, in the same period of rebuilding also seen in Aliens: Genocide and Aliens: The Alien. The "music of the spears" of the title is the sound of Mozart's rage, taken from a mouthful of fangs, a cry Eddington hunted for and only the later android restaging finally played in full to a cheering hall.

Conclusion

Aliens: Music of the Spears was Chet Williamson and Tim Hamilton's 1994 story of a Synsound composer who tried to build a symphony out of a living Xenomorph's pain. Damon Eddington got his egg, named the creature Mozart, and threw animals and then men into the Apiary to make it scream. The work killed Ken, wrecked Darcy, and finally killed Eddington himself, then spilled upstairs into Presley Hall. Three months later a thin crowd heard Brangwen's completed "Rage" Symphony, while two blocks away an android restaging of the massacre played the death scream Eddington had never lived to hear.