Aliens: Original Sin: Novel Plot, Characters & Lore

Aliens: Original Sin is a 2005 novel by Michael Jan Friedman, published by DH Press on 26 October 2005. It followed Ripley 8, Call, Johner, and Vriess after they left the USM Auriga in Alien: Resurrection. The Betty crew stole border-station data, then reached the orbital garden colony Domes Epsilon, where a Mala'kak-engineered egg produced a litter of adult Xenomorphs. Ripley destroyed the colony, took Angie Philipakos and the dog Rex aboard, and waited for Loki to come back with a larger ship.

Plot Summary

After the Auriga, Ripley, Call, Johner, and Vriess landed on Earth with the Betty and talked about staying on the ground. Years later Ripley captained the same ship, and the crew stole records from a border station that sent them to an orbital garden colony. An alien egg had already reached those gardens. Most of the botanists died in the outbreak, and Ripley destroyed the colony rather than leave the creatures alive.

Earth After The Auriga

The Betty set down on a long beach in New Zealand, the first flat open ground the survivors saw after the Auriga. Johner walked the pines above the sand and found no towers or roads, while Call covered the hole under her ribs with a fresh jumpsuit. Vriess stayed in his wheelchair on a planet that was not built for it.

After Acheron, Fiorina 161, the Auriga labs, and the Newborn she had just killed on the Betty, Ripley treated her own blood as the last alien blood left in known space. Earth's government might disavow the Auriga project or try to kill her before she talked. Call had spoken of people who had left corporate life for nature, and Ripley considered staying on the ground. Years later she captained the Betty, and the crew was hitting border stations for data.

Data Theft On Byzantium Station

Johner started a fight in Byzantium's mess hall among about thirty cargo haulers so station security would leave their posts. Vriess dropped two of them with a palm-shocker from his chair, and the new blond hire Krakke drop-kicked a third. When the intercom called security to the mess, Ripley and Call dropped through a deck hatch to an older backup computer.

Call had burned her modem after her model rebelled, so she jacked in through a port hidden under a fake mole on her forearm. She stripped the nodes they needed and saw a larger cache of the same kind of records. The haul was enough that they would not have to sneak into another data center. Vriess's hidden chair compartment then dumped stolen parts in the corridor, and the clean exit became a running fight.

Simoni Boards The Betty

Bolero, the Betty's new pilot, had already inched the ship off the magnetic clamps while she worked Corcoran, the station's chief traffic officer. Call cracked Immigration with the three-digit password 362. A short red-haired net reporter named Simoni saw Ripley in the crowd, recognized her from banned histories by Morse, and ran for the Betty. Bolero saw him hide in the hold and left him there until they were clear.

Corcoran withdrew clearance once security reported a theft, and Bolero bluffed explosives on the bay gates. When the gates started to close again inside fifty meters, she rolled the Betty 180 degrees to fit the narrowest dimension through. Krakke dragged Simoni out of a bulkhead locker, and Johner stuffed him into a waste hatch until Ripley stopped it. She kept the reporter and would not tell Johner why.

The Cryo Tube From Gamma

On Domes Epsilon, administrator Philip Philipakos protected his old Chicago friend Tristan Benedict, a botanist who chewed hallucinogenic sinjaba leaves from the world Kali. Benedict ducked the job of checking a silver cryo tube from Gamma, so Elijah Pandor opened it instead. The manifest listed violets for botanist Gogolac. Under the flowers sat a blue-black leathery egg. It split in an X, and a Facehugger took Pandor's face.

Safety officer Aidan Shepherd found him on the supply-bay deck with the hugger still locked on and pulsing. Philipakos's daughter Angie, twenty-four and barely a meter tall, treated Pandor in the infirmary. The creature was breathing for him, and scans showed an appendage down his throat, so they left it on. He woke two days later ravenous, with no memory of the attack.

Loki Boards The Betty

Ripley had asked about Simoni's writing because of Amanda. The original Ellen Ripley had left a ten-year-old daughter and promised to be home for the girl's eleventh birthday. The Narcissus came back 57 years later. Amanda had worked as a journalist, married, divorced, had no children, and died of a disease that a later cure would have stopped.

A ship then closed on the Betty, and Bolero did not run. Masked boarders blew the cargo doors and took Call at gunpoint. Ripley broke two men in the engineering alcove, and Krakke dropped Call's captor with non-explosive plastic bullets built so they would not hole the hull. Johner and Call finished the firefight in the bay. The crew crossed into the assault ship and found two more boarders already dead of poison, one of them a redhead who looked younger than 22. The hull then self-destructed, and Bolero yawed the Betty free of the lock before the shockwave hit.

Ripley Names Loki

Ripley sat Simoni down and walked him through what happened on the Nostromo. Weyland-Yutani had wanted an encephalopod, her word for the species, and had replaced science officer Umbulu with Ash two days before the ship left Thedus. Special Order 937 sent them to Acheron. The eggs sat in an alien ship, not a cave, under a pilot about five meters tall whose chest had already burst. Only the pilot's people could have known that wreck was there.

Call had named the broker Loki, after the Norse god, from hints she first saw in an Earthgov mainframe. Loki had passed Acheron to the Company. Payment to the pilot's people was a human research colony on Bahgreb, taken about a year later. Earthgov had wanted a bioweapon for political insurgents and did not understand the life cycle.

The current deal traded a mineral world the pilot's people had claimed for a colony of human hosts. The Betty had the location from Byzantium and was going there to stop it.

Pandor Dies In The Domes

Thursday dinner on Epsilon was Italian, with meat scarce until the next supply ship. Pandor ate calamari and felt pressure behind the sternum that seemed to pass. The next day he was planting Gamma violets with Hendricks and Cody when the pain returned. A Chestburster tore a fist-sized hole through his ribs and ran into the underbrush. Shepherd then picked up a silent cargo hauler about an hour out.

Ripley came on visual, refused the usual identification, and asked if anyone had found a leathery egg. Philipakos did not deny it. He said the colony would handle it, then Cody's death message arrived and he opened the primary supply bay. The hatch locked again as soon as the Betty was committed, and colony comms failed at the same time. Call treated both failures as sabotage.

The Betty Cuts Into Dome Seven

Bolero parked aft-down on Dome Seven. Vriess sealed a flexible dock and cut a meter-square hole with a laser torch, then Ripley, Johner, Call, and Krakke dropped in on cargo chains. That dome's air and plants were forfeit once the Betty left. Benedict was still unaccounted for, comm off, after a sinjaba nap under the mahogany.

Ripley told the control center the creature was the hunter and that they had to leave. Philipakos would not abandon the Domes until he had tried every option, then accepted that the visitors knew the threat better than botanists did. Some colonists could not climb the chains, so the plan shifted to a backup supply bay at the far end of Dome Sixteen, reached in solar Wal-Mart Runabout flivvers. Ripley left Krakke on the control-center door and took Johner to check that bay. Simoni slipped down the chain to watch her hunt, and engineer Rama followed him. A young Xenomorph hit Rama on the chain, and both fell through the canopy.

Twelve On The Heat Scan

Ripley and Johner opened the backup bay and, on the way back, killed an adult Xenomorph in crossfire. The corpse was wrong: a ridge from shoulder to elbow, and a head too large for the body. Call and Shepherd then found Benedict in pieces by a stream and met a second adult Xenomorph with a filigreed oversized head. Call shot it off her ankle and blew a door-control node so it could not follow their flivver through.

Angie and Philipakos revived a heat-sensing net unused for twenty years, built after Angie's mother died in a fire at a mining colony a system away. The scan showed an even dozen living marks that were not the known humans. Ripley had expected one birth, the way Kane, Purvis on the Auriga, and she herself had each produced one. The count told her this was another breed, a litter unknown to her Company, military, and personal history. They tried for the backup bay before full dark.

The Rainforest Ambush

Two flivvers took the shortest path through an African rainforest dome that the scan had marked clear. An adult Xenomorph lurched into Shepherd's Runabout, and the car ran up its side and dumped the passengers. A second adult came in behind them. Ripley forced that one back with a shock rifle and told Cody to keep going, but colonists scattered into the trees instead of the hatch. Philipakos sent Angie ahead and stayed to face a third. Ripley later judged that too much time had passed and that Angie's father was dead.

Shepherd hid, then tried to get Hendricks to a hatch, where an adult waited in the branches. Hendricks climbed a kapok, and the creature followed, broke her, and came down the trunk. Neither of them reached the Betty. Seigo righted a flivver, hit a tree, and was later found resin-webbed to a cinnamon tree. Ripley treated Seigo as a host, the way Pandor had been, which meant one of the adult Xenomorphs was a Queen, then broke his neck with a rifle stock rather than cut him down.

Simoni Dies In The Domes

Call had driven Cody and Gogolac to the backup bay and found it sabotaged since Ripley and Johner had checked it. She sent those two up the Dome Seven chain and went back for the others. In the dark of Dome Three an adult Xenomorph knocked Ripley's burner away, and shared DNA did not stop this breed the way the Auriga hive had. Simoni tackled its flank, and the creature slashed him open. Ripley and Krakke burned it until the flesh charred. Simoni died after pulling that adult Xenomorph off her.

Cody's Confession

On the Betty, Cody attacked Bolero in the cockpit. Vriess put two projectile slugs in his back, and white fluid came out of his mouth. He was a second-generation android, and the second shot wrecked his coordination module. Gogolac dragged him to an acid-stained engineering tub, where he could still talk.

Ripley carried Rex, the colony's black Lab, up the chain one-handed. An adult Xenomorph jumped the chain the way Rama's killer had, and she burned it off. A stowaway adult that had molted in the cargo bay then killed Gogolac. Ripley, Johner, and Call burned that one until the inner jaw went limp. Krakke took a concussion and lived.

Cody would not say certain things unless asked. He did not deny he was insurance that the humans would be impregnated. The unnamed pilot of the brown Gamma supply ship had sabotaged the main bay, and Cody had sabotaged the backup bay.

The Mala'kak were a very old species with worsening sterility. Xenomorph DNA helped them, and they needed a supply of aliens to extract it. They could have used their own people as hosts, the way the Acheron pilot had carried an embryo without knowing, but they would not inflict that on their own kind. They had bargained for humans who would not be missed, including the Epsilon botanists. In their experiments they had engineered a variant with their own genetic material and treated it as stronger than the original strain. That matched the ridge, the oversized heads, and Pandor's litter of twelve. A degradation module then wiped Cody back to a botanist assigned to Domes Epsilon, and he shut down.

The Domes Burn

Bolero sealed the hatch and backed the Betty off before anything could grab the hull. Air tore leaves, trees, and a dark serpentine shape toward the hole Vriess had cut. Ripley thumbed a remote Krakke had rigged. The first charge wrecked the control center, the second turned the backup bay into an inferno, and more charges lit the domes between. The fires would last only until the oxygen ran out.

In the mess, the crew toasted Rama with Johner's moonshine. Johner offered to help Call free other second-generation androids if Cody's list was real. Call did not believe that many had survived the purge, then turned her attention back to that work anyway. Angie blamed Loki for her father's death and joined the Betty to stop the next deal. Ripley took her aboard. The next Loki attack would not be a small assault vessel, and Ripley waited for a larger ship.

Domes Epsilon, Loki, And The Mala'kak

The Domes began as multi-domed botanical gardens when Earth grew too crowded for rainforests. Their main use was pharmaceutical. About thirty years before the outbreak, Earth switched to synthetics, and all six garden colonies in regulated space became afterthoughts. Dismantling them cost more than leaving them running. Domes Epsilon hung in high orbit, with named chambers such as Dome Four, Dome Five, Dome Seven, and Dome Sixteen. The gardens covered about a hundred thousand square meters of rare plants, and the doors were left open so Rex could wander. Those open doors also let the litter move.

Loki was a hidden broker between Earthgov and the Mala'kak, the novel's name for the beings once called Space Jockeys. The Acheron derelict was a Mala'kak ship. Later deals included Bahgreb and the Epsilon botanists. The Gamma cryo tube was the delivery: violets on the manifest, plus one engineered egg. The engineered adult Xenomorphs grew faster and larger than Ripley expected, hunted together, and did not accept her shared blood the way the Auriga hive had. One host produced twelve. Ripley inferred a Queen from Seigo's embryo. No named Queen corpse appears in the story.

Confirmed Xenomorph Kills

The Facehugger from the Gamma tube implanted Elijah Pandor and died after the two-day coma, and the Chestburster killed him in Dome Four. An adult Xenomorph killed Rama on the Dome Seven chain and later killed Benedict off-page. Ripley judged Philipakos dead after he stayed behind at the wrecked flivver, and Shepherd and Hendricks never reached the ship after an adult caught them in the trees. An adult Xenomorph eviscerated Simoni after he tackled it off Ripley. The cargo-bay molter killed Gogolac. Ripley killed Seigo herself as an impregnated host.

Ripley and Johner burned one engineered adult Xenomorph near the backup bay. Ripley and Krakke burned the adult Xenomorph that killed Simoni, and Ripley burned another off the Dome Seven chain. Ripley, Johner, and Call burned the stowaway in the cargo bay. The rest of the adult Xenomorphs died in the colony charges and the vented dome. Loki's boarding crew died by implanted poison and the assault ship's self-destruct, not by Xenomorphs. Cody was shot by Vriess, then wiped by his own degradation module.

Key Characters

• Ripley 8 captained the Betty after the Auriga. She killed several engineered adult Xenomorphs, destroyed Domes Epsilon, and took Angie and Rex aboard.
• Annalee Call was a second-generation android who had burned her modem. She stole the Byzantium data, extracted Cody and Gogolac, and took Cody's charge to free other androids.
• Johner started the Byzantium brawl, nearly spaced Simoni, and helped burn the backup-bay and cargo-bay adult Xenomorphs.
• Dom Vriess cut the hole in Dome Seven and shot Cody in the cockpit when the android went for Bolero.
• Bolero piloted the Betty off Byzantium and off the Domes. She survived Cody's attack and held position for the demolition.
• Krakke was a taciturn new hire and weapons man. He helped kill the adult Xenomorph that attacked Simoni, took a concussion in the cargo bay, and lived.
• Rama was the Betty's cultured engineer. An adult Xenomorph killed him on the chain while he followed Simoni.
• Simoni was a net reporter who stowed away for a Ripley story. He died after pulling an adult Xenomorph off her.
• Angie Philipakos was Philipakos's daughter, twenty-four, who treated Pandor and later joined the Betty as the only confirmed human colonist to leave.
• Philip Philipakos ran Domes Epsilon. He opened the bay after Pandor died, then stayed to cover Angie and did not survive.
• Aidan Shepherd was the colony safety officer. He found the Facehugger on Pandor and did not reach the Betty.
• Elijah Pandor opened the Gamma tube. The Chestburster killed him and produced the litter.
• Tristan Benedict was Philipakos's protected friend and a sinjaba addict. An adult Xenomorph killed him while his comm was off.
• Cody posed as a botanist and was a Loki android. Vriess shot him, and he confessed the Mala'kak deal before his memory wiped.
• Gogolac took in the Gamma tube and reached the Betty. The cargo-bay adult Xenomorph killed her.
• Seigo was resin-webbed with an embryo. Ripley killed him rather than cut him free.
• Rex was the colony dog, once owned by Colin Hamilton-Cross. Ripley carried him up the chain.

Place In The DH Press Line

DH Press opened its original Aliens novels with Original Sin on 26 October 2005, the first new English Aliens novel in more than five years and the first that was not an adaptation of a Dark Horse comic. Diane Carey's Aliens: DNA War followed and stayed on Rosamond 6, not with Ripley's crew. Carey's Aliens: Cauldron followed in 2007 with another separate cast aboard two cargo ships. John Shirley's Aliens: Steel Egg completed the 2007 releases with a first-contact story near Iapetus. Titan later bound Original Sin and DNA War as The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 5 on 26 December 2017. Brendan Deneen's Alien: Uncivil War is a later Titan original also set after Resurrection, in May 2381, on a different wreck and a different colony.

Friedman told AvP Galaxy he wanted the book to set the stage for more Ripley-clone novels. DH Press did not continue that thread under his name. He later wrote Predator: Flesh and Blood with Robert Greenberger for the same imprint.

Continuity

The prologue puts the Betty on a pristine New Zealand beach. The Resurrection Special Edition puts the same ship down near ruined Paris. Vriess kept his wheelchair, which the film left on the Auriga. The main plot then jumps years without a calendar date. Uncivil War treats May 2381 as the weeks after the Auriga hit Earth, a different slice of the same aftermath.

Friedman treats the events on the Nostromo as a Loki-Mala'kak setup, with Ash, Order 937, and Bahgreb as payment. Other stories treat the derelict as an accident the Company only exploited after the signal. The Mala'kak here are a living trading species with a sterility crisis, not the mute Engineer giants of Prometheus. Alien: Sea of Sorrows later routes a living Ripley line through Ripley 8, because the Aliens file listed Amanda as dying without children. Aliens versus Predator versus The Terminator kills the clone in another war. This book has no Yautja.

The outbreak on Domes Epsilon came from one engineered egg and a litter of twelve, not a seeded hive. Angie's heat net tracked the adult Xenomorphs as living flame-icons. In Aliens the creatures throw no thermal mark. Ripley uses encephalopod for the species and Earthgov for the government that looks away from Loki. The film's United Systems Military ran the Auriga, a name the novel does not use.

Editions And Adaptations

DH Press released the first edition in the United States on 26 October 2005 as a mass-market paperback. Catalog listings settle on 252 pages. Some later counts print 256 or 300. Cover art was by Stephen Youll. The book did not get a separate United Kingdom paperback in that DH Press run. Titan's Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 5 reprinted it with DNA War on 26 December 2017 at 592 pages. The story does not continue as a numbered sequel under Friedman's name.

Behind The Scenes

Editor Rob Simpson asked the first DH Press Aliens writers what they would do if they could do anything. Friedman asked for a Ripley story. The Fox background notes had forbidden Ripley stories, because a new film might use the clone. Simpson sent the outline to Debbie at Fox anyway, and the studio allowed it. Friedman watched the films several times, read scripts, and kept other novels out of the research on purpose. Original Sin was his 62nd book. He wanted a conspiracy novel rather than a Colonial Marines shoot-em-up, and he hoped it would open more Ripley-clone books.

Stephen Youll painted the cover from Alien: Resurrection stills of Ripley and her crew, then moved them into a jungle that matches the Domes. Fox would not show Sigourney Weaver's face, because a likeness approval would have delayed production. Youll had a day to turn a smaller, back-to-camera Ripley. His first unused sketch put a larger Ripley in the foreground and an adult Xenomorph confronting Call behind her. The garden-colony setting also tracks a deleted Resurrection scene in which the Betty crew met cloned Xenomorphs in a botanical garden on the Auriga, complete with small buggies and a dome that later vents to space.

The acknowledgements thank Friedman's wife and two sons for five months of late hours, Simpson as editor and friend, and the film-side names Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett, Ridley Scott, Weaver, James Cameron, David Giler, Walter Hill, David Fincher, Larry Ferguson, Vincent Ward, Joss Whedon, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, and Dominique Pinon.

Conclusion

Aliens: Original Sin is Michael Jan Friedman's 2005 DH Press novel about the Betty crew after Alien: Resurrection, the Loki-Mala'kak host trade, and the litter that wrecked Domes Epsilon. It ends with the garden colony destroyed, Rama and Simoni dead, Angie and Rex aboard, and Ripley waiting for Loki to come back with a larger ship.

External Sources

• Aliens: Original Sin at Dark Horse
• The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 5 at Titan Books
• Michael Jan Friedman interview at AvP Galaxy

---

Tag Categories: Alien Merchandise