Aliens: Phalanx: Novel Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: February 25, 2020
Author: Scott Sigler
Publisher: Titan Books
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 512
ISBN: 978-1-78909-525-8
Series: Titan Aliens novels
Setting: Ataegina, after the Rising

Aliens: Phalanx is a 2020 novel by Scott Sigler, published by Titan Books on 25 February 2020. It followed runner Ahiliyah Cooper on the lost colony world Ataegina, where survivors lived in mountain holds and fought Xenomorphs with spears, shields, bows, and crossbows. The locals called the creatures demons. They had no guns, no ships, and no memory of Earth. Ahiliyah, Brandun Barrow, and Creen Dinashin found a way to stop demon blood from burning, then led a march to the hive under Black Smoke Mountain.

Novel Overview

Ataegina had once held about 500,000 people in lowland cities such as Hellan, Swarmore, and Tinsella. In local year 252, a Rising of demons emptied the plains. More than 400,000 died in the first two years. Survivors fled into old mountain forts from King Paul's Crown of War. About 67 years later, fewer than 30,000 people remained in holds such as Lemeth, Keflan, Dakatera, Takanta, Vinden, Jantal, and Biseth. Hibernia and Pendaran were already lost, closest to the southern coast and Black Smoke Mountain.

Trade between holds depended on runners, youths from 16 to 30 who walked by day in leaf hidey-suits. Crews of three carried salt, medicine, and messages. They hid, listened, and waited if a stick snapped, because demons usually hunted after dark. Ahiliyah was 19 and on her fifth run. Brandun was 15. Creen was 16. They used bronze armor, halfstaff spears, demon forks, and a short knife they called little friend.

Plot Summary

In the years after the Rising, the last people on Ataegina lived in mountain holds and sent young runners out by day to trade. Ahiliyah Cooper was a nineteen-year-old runner from Lemeth Hold, on her fifth circuit with Brandun Barrow and Creen Dinashin. Aiko Laster was Lemeth's senior runner. She had trained them to hide, listen, and wait if anything snapped on the trail. A demon crawled toward the crew in daylight after Brandun broke a stick. They froze until it moved on. One of the three had to get the packs home.

The Fifth Run

The crew finished a nine-day circuit through Keflan and Dakatera. They carried capertine powder, Dakateran iron powder and paper, spice, candy, and letters that families had not seen in months. At the wall they signaled with a gish throat-box, then walked into a flower-throw welcome before they were allowed to bathe. Hold Guard Drasko Lamech took the capertine on the Margrave's order. Brandun's mother, Cadence Barrow, was among the sick who needed that powder for forgetter's syndrome.

Ahiliyah earned a slash mark for completing five runs. She still wanted to keep walking rather than stay inside the hold. Former general Sinesh Bishor trained her in stillness and shield-line work. Most of Lemeth called him Spider because acid blood had ruined his face, arm, and eye. Sinesh had once killed a demon with a crossbow bolt through the inner jaw. His friend Christuno Cooper cut the burning flesh away and dragged him home.

Preacher Ramirus taught that the Demon Mother used magic spiders at Black Smoke Mountain to turn people into demons. No one alive had seen a real spider. The hold still sent runners, and the Margrave of Lemeth, Aulus Darby, still treated the outside world as a problem for other people.

Caminus And The First Kill

On Ahiliyah's sixth run a demon ambushed the crew. Brandun drove a spear into it. Ahiliyah finished it with a rock and cut out the inner jaw as proof. Demon blood hit crimson caminus leaves and turned grey instead of eating through the plant. Pressed leaves also stopped the burn on Brandun's hand. That was the first clear Xenomorph weakness the holds could use. It was not fire and it was not a gun.

Keflan then fell. About 1,300 people had lived there. Hundreds died or hid when the hold opened. Lemeth's council pulled Creen off the runner roster and put him in the factory lab to study the leaves. He boiled caminus mush with starch into a paste. The paste stopped burning blood on contact and poisoned demons when smeared on blades. Margrave Darby blocked warrior tests of the mix. The trio hunted a demon anyway and brought a dead one back.

Keflan And Lemeth

Aiko came back from Jantal with wounds that killed her. That hold was gone. Brandun joined the Hold Guard under Drasko. He grew hard with the other warriors and treated Jantal refugees badly. Ahiliyah stayed a runner and kept seeing Tolio Minsala, a baker who had already finished his five runs. On the mountain above the hold, Panda and signalmyn Daneton Sander kept the lamp posts working so allied holds could still talk.

Diggers then opened Lemeth from below. Demons came through the factory levels and the living corridors. Sinesh died when a demon punched its inner jaw through his face. Aulus Darby was carried away alive. Margravine Herriet Lumos of Dakatera took command of the survivors. Ahiliyah formed a corridor shield wall, smeared the spears with Creen's paste, and held the line until about 2,000 people reached the plateau.

The March To Black Smoke

About 1,000 fighters from Lemeth, Dakatera, and the Keflan remnant circled on a hilltop and locked shields. They killed more than 150 demons there. The Margravine treated that stand as the proof that a paste-smeared phalanx could move. Takanta promised 1,500 warriors. Vinden promised 1,000. The combined army of about 3,000 marched through Bigsby's Pass and onto the Boiling Plains.

Thousands of demons hit the column in daylight and after dark. The Takantan line broke. Whole ranks vanished into the steam. Survivors still pushed on to Black Smoke Mountain. Tolio lost his right arm and an eye in that campaign. Cadence Barrow was already gone by the time they reached the hive.

The Demon Mother

Demons took the last fighters into the mountain instead of killing them on the slope. The hive sat inside the wreck of the colony ship Nan-Shan. Egg rooms already held living prisoners. A synthetic named Zachariah, registration WY2100023, had served Weyland-Yutani and had lived in the wreck for about 318 years. He had taken 119 children aged ten and under off the dying ship. Every colonist aged eleven or older had died in cryosleep. The crew had already killed each other and thrown the guns away. Those children became the Ataeginians. Their family names included Cooper, Barrow, and Dinashin.

Zachariah used the old words. The demons were Xenomorphs, also listed as Internecivus raptus. The magic spiders were Facehuggers. The worms that came out of chests were Chestbursters. Creen ate caminus leaves after a Facehugger took him, hoping the paste in his blood would poison the implant. The Demon Mother was a Queen hanging over an egg sac and a geyser, with two large protectors. The first geyser plan failed. Mineral crust on the Queen's body kept the heat from killing her. A protector killed Zachariah. Brandun climbed the egg sac, killed a protector, and drove a poison tail spike into the Queen's chest. She crushed him. The poison still killed her. Ahiliyah and Creen lived. The killing blow was Brandun's.

Two Years Later

Drasko reached the chamber with about a thousand Vindenian warriors and began clearing the remaining demons and eggs. Two years later, Ahiliyah was General Cooper. She drilled mixed units on the open plains, now with hard-iron shields painted for a unified Ataegina. She held a spear in one hand and her baby, also named Brandun, in the other. Tolio brought food to the troops. Creen designed faster mortar, harder iron, a new street grid for Hellan, and a far-seeing tool he called a farglass. He kept learning from the Nan-Shan wreck.

Scout Susannah then reported three Northerner ships off the coast. Ahiliyah sent word up the lamp line to Keflan, Dakatera, Jantal, Hibernia, and Pendaran. She kept drilling smaller groups she called modules. She would not use demons as a weapon against other humans.

Demons And Caminus

Ataeginians knew adult demons as four-backed black hunters with a blade tail and an inner jaw they called a toothtongue. The creatures hid well at night and were easier to see at noon. They took living people to Black Smoke Mountain instead of always killing on the spot. Eggs held Facehuggers. The hold religion had called those Facehuggers spiders for generations, after Zachariah's warning to the first children. There was a Queen. The holds had been right about that part, even when they wrapped it in sermon.

Caminus was a red mountain bush. Demon blood that touched the leaves dried into a grey powder instead of burning through. Creen's paste stopped acid blood on armor and skin, and it made spearheads lethal enough for a shield wall to stand. Plinton fruit from Dakatera treated forgetter's syndrome. It did not harm demons. The holds never found a lemon or other Earth citrus trick. The plant that mattered grew on Ataegina.

Confirmed Xenomorph Kills

Sinesh killed one demon on a return from Black Smoke, then lost almost all of a later 5,000-warrior attack on the mountain. Ahiliyah and Brandun killed the first named demon of the present war on the sixth run. The hilltop fight left more than 150 demon bodies. The Boiling Plains fight killed thousands more, at a cost of most of the army's order. Zachariah counted more than 1,000 demons marching out of the hive for that last war, with about a quarter coming back.

Brandun killed a protector and the Queen. Ahiliyah and Creen killed more adults in the chamber. Drasko's thousand were still hunting the leftover hive when Ahiliyah was carried out. The Rising years had already killed hundreds of thousands of people. Those demon deaths were never counted one by one.

Key Characters

Ahiliyah Cooper - Lemeth runner who became General of unified Ataegina after the Queen died.
Brandun Barrow - Young runner turned warrior, killed the Queen with a poison tail spike and died in her grip.
Creen Dinashin - Runner and later inventor who made the caminus paste and kept working from the Nan-Shan wreck.
Sinesh Bishor - Crippled former general and net-weaver, killed during the Lemeth breach.
Aiko Laster - Lemeth's senior runner and trainer, died after the fall of Jantal.
Tolio Minsala - Baker and Ahiliyah's partner, lost an arm and an eye, later raised their son Brandun.
Herriet Lumos - Margravine of Dakatera, took command after Lemeth fell and survived the war.
Drasko Lamech - Lemeth Hold Guard who later led Vindenian troops into the Queen chamber.
Aulus Darby - Margrave of Lemeth, carried off during the invasion.
Zachariah - Weyland-Yutani synthetic who saved the first children and died in the Queen chamber.
Cadence Barrow - Brandun's mother, already dead before the hive fight.

Place In The Titan Line

Sigler had already written the short story Dangerous Prey for Aliens: Bug Hunt in 2017. Phalanx was his first Alien novel. Titan released it on 25 February 2020, after Prototype and before Into Charybdis. Titan later bundled Phalanx with Aliens: Infiltrator and Aliens: Vasquez as The Complete Aliens Collection: Living Nightmares on 5 November 2024.

Sigler later wrote the short sequel Another Mother for Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey. It is set on Ataegina after the 2020 novel. An unblooded female Predator, Yeh'kull, came to survey the planet and hunted there. Clan elders had kept her off hunts because she was the last of her line. She then fought beside Ahiliyah against the demons still left on that world.

Continuity

No Colonial Marines reach Ataegina in this book. No company auditor, no dropship, and no pulse rifle appear on the surface. The only company mark is Zachariah's Weyland-Yutani registration inside the Nan-Shan. The local calendar starts from the Rising, not from Earth years, so the novel does not sit on a numbered line next to Aliens.

The holds kept a Queen, eggs, Facehuggers, and acid blood. They lost the names and the rest of the map. Northerners across the ocean were still human. They had not come to help during the Rising. Ahiliyah treated any plan to breed demons as a weapon as insane.

Editions And Adaptations

Titan's limited hardcover and the trade paperback both came out on 25 February 2020 at 512 pages. Blackstone Publishing released an audiobook the same day, read by Bronson Pinchot. The 2024 Living Nightmares omnibus reprints the text with Infiltrator and Vasquez.

Behind The Scenes

Sigler dedicated the book to Myke Cole, whose Legion vs. Phalanx answered questions about ranks, spears, and shields. He thanked Dr. Joseph Albietz, Clara Fei-Fei Carija, Scott Middlebrook, and Alex White. Jonathan Maberry had first brought him into Bug Hunt. That short story led to the novel.

Sigler asked Titan to brand the book Aliens rather than Alien, because he wanted the larger war tone of the second film. He opened with a request that readers not post the late surprises, including the ship under the mountain.

Conclusion

Ahiliyah Cooper, Brandun Barrow, and Creen Dinashin started as runners between the last holds, then tried to end the demon war. The holds fought with spears and shields on a world that had forgotten Earth. The novel is often ranked among the best Alien books, and it is praised for deep characters and its ancient, unique setting.