Aliens: No Exit: Plot, Characters & Lore
Aliens: No Exit is a 2008 novel by B. K. Evenson, published by DH Press on 8 October 2008. It followed Anders Kramm, a former Weyland-Yutani investigator, after adult Xenomorphs wrecked his family on the terraform world Soulages and he spent thirty years in cryo. Planetus woke him for a shared world called C-3 L/M, where the Company had staged an outbreak to cheapen a takeover. The trail led back to a hidden Xenomorph farm on Soulages, and the book ended with Kramm, Frances Stauff, and a maimed Bjorn Heyward holding a moon station while Company ships were inbound.
Plot Summary
Kramm woke from thirty years of cryo at a Planetus facility. He had left Weyland-Yutani after Soulages and signed as an on-call sleeper for a small firm called Omnitech. Planetus later absorbed Omnitech and paid to keep him frozen until it needed an Alien investigator who did not work for the Company.
Xenomorphs Kill Kramm's Family On Soulages
Kramm came home to a settler prefab outside the walled colony on Soulages and found hive slime in the main room. His unnamed wife sat dazed on the bed with a sore throat after a Facehugger came through a closet tunnel under the house. A juvenile Xenomorph came up through that hole, and he shot it. Company policy treated a host as lost, so he smothered her under a pillow.
He cut her open afterward and found a mostly grown Chestburster, already dead. In the chamber below, his daughter Becca was built into the hive wall, with the space between her shoulders and hips gone, and eight emptied eggs sat in that room. An adult Xenomorph broke his wrist, tore his shoulder, and burned him with acid blood before he fought free in the dark. He reached the surface eight days later and called the Colonial Marines.
Planetus Wakes Kramm After Thirty Years
A technician dated Kramm's waiver at about thirty years. Withdrawal from cryo left him shaking, and a Planetus psychiatrist marked him marginal but fit for work. Official representative Matthew Darby then hired him as an independent Alien expert. Darby presented Planetus as a smaller firm than Weyland-Yutani or Biotech, and he wanted someone the Company could not buy.
The job was C-3 L/M, a world the two firms had bought together about five years earlier and split down the middle. They never agreed on a proper name, so the planet kept its old survey code, C-3 L/M. Weyland-Yutani had reported Aliens on the Planetus side, and Darby needed Kramm close enough to judge the site before the Company wrote the official finding.
Kramm Is Sent To A Shared Terraform World
At the C-3 L/M spaceport, Planetus security officer Frances Stauff met Kramm before Company man Charles Braley could take him aside. She slipped contraband onto Braley at customs so she could reach Kramm first. Braley brought up Kramm's old Soulages file. Frances kept Kramm off a written finding that would hand the site to Weyland-Yutani.
The team for the border outpost included Frances, Braley, armed Company guards, and three Planetus technicians, Duncan, Gavin, and Kelly. Former Marines Bjorn Heyward and Jolena Heyward stayed at the port as extra muscle. They entered the sealed station through a torus field that was supposed to keep anything living from walking out.
The Outpost Bodies Do Not Match A Real Attack
Inside, six human bodies lay in a neat row beside a shredded synth whose face patent read LaFargue, a Planetus look. The wounds, the fake goo, the wrong blood, and the calm faces did not match a live hive. Fingerprints on the tools belonged to manual labor, not to the skilled crew the files had named. The scene had been arranged.
Kramm still had to give Braley an Alien finding for the official record. Darby had given him a black data device that paired with implants in the corpses. Frances pulled a recording from an eye camera in the Planetus spy Tobin A. Marshall. That tape showed how the row of bodies had been made.
A Spy Camera Records A Staged Massacre
Marshall's eye-cam followed work at the so-called prototype terraformer. The machine was ordinary, and a black box inside it was empty when the crew drilled it. Site manager Sven Crocker and skilled hands such as engineer Victor Standish, Stewart Michaels, Gershom Roth, and Karim Ghahwagi were pulled off the post and replaced with cheap new hires. Planetus had also planted the synth LaFargue among them.
Braley later hit the outpost with a marine-style raid, tear gas, and plexene masks. He took Marshall and the replacement crew alive. The recording then showed him torture LaFargue, destroy the synth in an industrial shredder, and turn on the captured men. The skilled staff who had been transferred earlier did not appear again on the tape.
Weyland-Yutani Fakes The Chestburster Deaths
Braley drugged the prisoners and fed them nanotech metal strips that stomach acid assembled into mechanical chestbursters. Those devices burst upward through the men and gave later security footage a shiny false head. Marshall died the same way. The replacement names on the site were Matthew Benjamin, Thomas Hora, Bultmann, and William Judge.
A fake Alien crisis on a shared world would drive Planetus shares down so Weyland-Yutani could buy the other half of C-3 L/M cheap. The display corpses at the outpost were expendables arranged for an inspection, not a natural hive.
Real Xenomorphs Are Planted On Kramm's Ship
Back on Kramm's shuttle, a live juvenile Xenomorph and two eggs had been left in the engine room. A Facehugger took Frances into a vent. Kramm killed that juvenile Xenomorph and the Facehuggers before they finished the job. In a cryo unit he also found Standish's corpse, cuffed, a Company kill from after the transfer.
Weyland-Yutani broadcast that Kramm and Frances were dead before the shuttle fight ended. The pair then crashed a hop to pick up Bjorn and Jolena, who had killed three Company assassins sent for them. Duncan, Gavin, and Kelly came with them.
The Company Takes Planetus And Sends Kramm Home
A Planetus remote navigator then seized the ship and pointed it at Soulages. A message showed Darby under torture, fingers gone, after Weyland-Yutani took his firm. Braley said a farm on that old world had supplied the Aliens on the shuttle, and he forced the ship onto that course. Someone also tried to sabotage Bjorn's sleeper on the way.
The crew woke, overrode what they could, and rode the forced course. Kramm had left Soulages quarantined, with the colonists withdrawn after the Marines came. The probe showed his prefab half buried in dust, two stripped wrecks named Hume and Climacus, and a new metal-and-plexene dome over the old colony walls. Braley's farm was under that roof.
Soulages Has Become A Xenomorph Farm
The dome hid egg rooms, a Queen behind a metal and plexene wall, a human cage the workers called the Fodder Gate, and a remote egg harvester run from a moon station. Maintenance tunnels used micro-robots to dissolve hive resin along Company routes, so staff could move without walking the real hive. Gavin, who was a synth, hacked the old cameras and counted more than 176 recorded human deaths on the farm. The observers themselves sat off-world and dropped people in as fodder.
A sortie through the old houses found a male corpse in Kramm's prefab, not his wife, and a suicide note numbered five that used the words no exit. The writer named a prior test subject, Sarval, who had not come back. An immature Chestburster was in that dead man's belly. The wrecks had been stripped years earlier and gave the team nothing they could fly.
The Hive Kills Most Of Kramm's Team
Inside the farm, an adult Xenomorph took Duncan. Kelly became a host, and Kramm shot both of them rather than leave them to the lifecycle. Frances argued against those killings, and Kramm shot them anyway.
A tail went through Jolena's chest in the hive. Bjorn was maimed and later crushed under the harvester, then pulled free. Gavin died when a Company virus hit him after he plugged into the network. The remaining three reached a bay, took a short-range C-40 flyer, and smashed out through the tracked roof.
Kramm Reaches The Moon Station
A stowaway adult Xenomorph got aboard the C-40 through an open emergency lock. Kramm killed it with a metal rod before Frances flew the half-hour hop to the moon, a rock a few hundred miles across. The C-40 was a short-range farm flyer, not a deep-space ship, so they crashed it through the station airlock. Seven Company men in lab coats met them with guns. Kramm had one round left, shot the dark-haired man in charge, and bluffed the other six into handing over their weapons. Bjorn was unconscious, his legs wrecked.
Kramm meant to put Bjorn into surgery, treat the infection in his own hand, and have Frances send a general distress call plus a second message about the farm. They would freeze the six surviving scientists and wait for colonial law. Company ships had been tracking them since they crossed the hive and would reach the moon before the galactic council could send Colonial Marines. Those ships were likely to stop at the Soulages farm first and bring adult Xenomorphs with them.
Soulages And C-3 L/M
Soulages had been a Weyland-Yutani terraform world with a walled colony and settler prefabs outside the walls. After the family attack the Company pulled the colonists and listed the planet as quarantined. Terraforming stopped, and the air stayed only just breathable. Long exposure brought shortness of breath, migraine, and hallucination.
C-3 L/M was the old survey code for a world Planetus and Weyland-Yutani bought together and split in half. They never agreed on a proper name, so the code stuck. Each firm terraformed its half. The border outpost's prototype gear was a decoy for the staged massacre that let Weyland-Yutani take Planetus.
Fake Outbreaks And The Farm
The bodies at the border outpost were not killed by Xenomorphs. Braley used mechanical chestbursters, wrong spatter, and a shredded synth to sell an Alien story to inspectors. He later put a real juvenile Xenomorph and two eggs on Kramm's ship so the public deaths would match the broadcast. Those live creatures came from Soulages.
The farm under the new dome bred eggs, adults, and a Queen for Company use. Soulages had no suitable native hosts, so the observers imported people through the Fodder Gate. Synths could not carry a Xenomorph, which is why Gavin could walk the systems and LaFargue could not be used as a host. Inner and outer jaws matched the usual adult plan. Kramm used the short pause after an inner-jaw strike to break free.
Key Characters
- Anders Kramm was a former Weyland-Yutani Alien assault investigator who became a Planetus sleeper. He smothered his wife on Soulages, killed the planted Xenomorphs on his ship, shot Duncan, Kelly, and the moon-station leader, and was alive on that station at the last page.
- Frances Stauff was Planetus security and the second official on the C-3 L/M job. She warned Kramm about Braley, decrypted Marshall's eye-cam, survived a Facehugger on the shuttle, and reached the moon station with him.
- Charles Braley ran the Weyland-Yutani side of the outpost fraud, the fake chestburster killings, the public death notice, and the takeover of Planetus. He was alive off-page and sending a force as the book ended.
- Matthew Darby hired Kramm for Planetus. Weyland-Yutani captured him, tortured him, and held him after the firm changed hands.
- Bjorn Heyward was a former Marine hired by Planetus. He killed Company assassins at the port, lost Jolena in the hive, and was alive but wrecked after the harvester ran over him.
- Jolena Heyward was Bjorn's partner and a former Marine. An adult Xenomorph killed her in the Soulages hive.
- Duncan and Kelly were Planetus technicians on the outpost team. An adult Xenomorph took Duncan, Kelly was implanted, and Kramm shot both.
- Gavin posed as a technician and was a Planetus synth. He hacked the farm cameras, then died when a Company virus hit him on the network.
- Tobin A. Marshall was a human Planetus spy with an eye camera. Braley's mechanical chestburster killed him.
- LaFargue was a Planetus spy synth, model M/83b.03, using a face patent the firm owned. Braley tortured him and ran him through a shredder.
- Victor Standish was the outpost engineer. Weyland-Yutani removed him from the site, and Kramm later found his cuffed body in a cryo unit.
- Sven Crocker, Stewart Michaels, Gershom Roth, and Karim Ghahwagi were the skilled outpost staff Braley replaced. The book did not show what happened to them after the transfer.
- Matthew Benjamin, Thomas Hora, Bultmann, and William Judge were the cheap replacements. Braley's fake chestbursters killed them.
- Kramm's wife was never named. A Facehugger implanted her in the prefab, and he smothered her before the Chestburster came out.
- Becca was Kramm's daughter. The hive took her into the wall under the house.
- Hermann Ungar was an ex-Marine on an earlier Kramm job. Kramm shot him after a Facehugger took him.
- Sarval was named in a Soulages suicide note as a earlier farm subject who did not return.
- The moon station held seven Company men in lab coats. Kramm shot the leader. The other six were disarmed and not yet in cryo when the book stopped.
On an earlier job, an unnamed ex-Marine vanished into a hive. Kramm found limb pieces, planted a nuke, and accepted a Company story that a nuclear generator had been lost. The book did not confirm whether that man was already dead.
Place In The DH Press Line
DH Press published No Exit after Aliens: Original Sin, Aliens: DNA War, Aliens: Cauldron, Aliens: Steel Egg, and Aliens: Criminal Enterprise. It was Brian Evenson's Aliens novel for the imprint, released under the name B. K. Evenson, and it closed the DH Press Aliens run in October 2008. The book used a new cast and had no link to Ripley, Fantasia, the Hornblower, or the cargo ships from Cauldron.
Titan Books reprinted No Exit with Criminal Enterprise in The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume Seven on 24 December 2018. Titan lists that paperback at 576 pages. The two novels shared no characters or locations. No Exit spent thirty years of cryo between Soulages and the C-3 L/M job, then sent Kramm back to his old world.
Continuity
The novel gave no calendar year. Kramm's thirty years in cryo and the five-year joint claim on C-3 L/M sat inside the story only. The text never named Ripley, the Nostromo, LV-426, or Hadley's Hope. Colonial Marines appeared as the force Kramm called after Soulages, as the style of Braley's raid, and as the slow legal help he hoped would follow a distress call.
Weyland-Yutani ran the fraud, the farm, and the takeover of Planetus. Kramm's briefing of the adult body plan, acid blood, eggs, Facehuggers, and Chestbursters matched the usual lifecycle. The mechanical chestbursters and the remote-run farm were this book's additions. Dark Horse cover copy claimed the Company had killed twelve scientists. The outpost tape showed seven people on that site, two of them spies, and the moon lab held seven men at the end.
Editions
DH Press released the American paperback on 8 October 2008. Dark Horse lists the format at 288 pages, while library and science-fiction catalogs count 283. Stephen Youll painted the cover. Titan's 2018 omnibus reprinted the novel with Criminal Enterprise at 576 pages.
Le Cherche Midi published a French edition, Alien : no exit, on 18 August 2011, with a cover by Marc Bruckert. Catalogs list that edition at 326 pages. Evenson appeared there under his full name.
Behind The Scenes
Brian Evenson wrote the novel as B. K. Evenson, the name he used on media tie-in work. He was a literary horror novelist when DH Press closed its Aliens line with this book. The copyright page on the first Dark Horse printing reads First Dark Horse Books Edition: October 2008.
Stephen Youll painted an adult Xenomorph close behind a human figure on a dark field, under the DH Press title stack and the line about knowledge as a danger. The cover did not show the Soulages dome, the C-3 L/M outpost, or the moon station. Youll had painted the earlier DH Press Aliens covers as well, including Original Sin, DNA War, Cauldron, Steel Egg, and Criminal Enterprise.
Conclusion
Aliens: No Exit is B. K. Evenson's 2008 DH Press novel about Anders Kramm after Soulages and the thirty-year freeze. It covers a fake outbreak on C-3 L/M, the fall of Planetus, and a Company Xenomorph farm on Kramm's old world. The book ends on the Soulages moon, with Frances and a wrecked Bjorn beside him, the farm observers disarmed, and Company ships inbound before any Marines.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Alien Merchandise | DH Press Alien Novels
