Aliens: Reapers: Plot, Characters & Lore

Aliens: Reapers was a short story first published by Dark Horse in the Dark Horse Presents Fifth Anniversary Special in April 1991. John Arcudi wrote the script, and Simon Bisley drew both the interior art and the title illustration. The story first appeared in black and white, and later collections added colors by Chris Chalenor. It followed an armed band of green-skinned Reapers into a Xenomorph hive, where they fought the creatures that lived there, faced a gigantic Queen, and took eggs from her chamber. On their own world those eggs were sold in a market, and a live Facehugger was eaten as food.

Plot Summary

The Expedition Enters The Hive

A green-skinned Reaper in armor aims a heavy weapon as the expedition enters a hive

A Reaper ship came down through a hard yellow sky, and the expedition went in on foot with heavy weapons ready. The Reapers were a green-skinned, heavily muscled people, armored at the shoulders and arms, with clawed feet and faces unlike any human colonial crew. They passed through a high doorway into a dim structure already coated with yellow resin along the floor. The lead Reaper carried a bulky firearm across his chest, and others followed close behind him into the dark.

Before that crossing they had come down in a vertical blaze of light, and the party had stood together as silhouettes against a hard, bright sun. From the rise they could already see the way in. The Reapers closed on the doorway in a tight group, the nearest of them filling the opening with his weapon and armor. Nothing in that first advance suggested a cautious survey. They went in as hunters, and the hive received them in silence.

The Attack In The Hive

A Xenomorph lunges at a Reaper with its inner jaw as the Reaper bares his teeth

Deeper in, the expedition came upon a host body torn open from the chest, the remains still wet where something had forced its way out. One of the Reapers doubled over and vomited at the sight, while others kept moving through the close tunnels. A pale Xenomorph came at them there, all tail and teeth, already loose in the hive they had entered. The quiet of the first doorway was gone.

One of the Reapers was caught and driven down as the creature opened its jaws above him. The Xenomorph struck with its inner mouth, the second set of teeth punching toward the Reaper's face. He did not turn away. He bared his own teeth as the inner jaw came at him, still in the beast's grip, while the rest of the party fought to reach him in the narrow space of the hive.

The Fight In The Hive

A Reaper clubs a Xenomorph as a second Reaper falls in the hive

The Reapers met that rush with their weapons once the inner attack had closed. One of them clubbed a Xenomorph so hard the blow rang through the chamber, and the creature went down under the strike. Others fired as more of the beasts came on, and muzzle flash lit the close walls of the hive. A second Reaper was knocked off his feet in the same clash, still firing as he fell, while a third drove in from the side with his own weapon.

The fight did not last as a standoff. The Reapers broke the attack and walked on among the dead, stepping over fallen Xenomorphs as they pushed deeper into the hive. Two of them paused together after the clash, one with a hand on the other's shoulder, before the party moved on. They had paid for the path, and they kept it. The chamber behind them was a ruin of bodies, and the way ahead still led toward the heart of the hive.

The Queen

A gigantic purple Queen holds a Reaper in one hand inside the hive

That path ended in a chamber where a gigantic Queen rose over a floor already scattered with eggs. She was far larger than the beasts they had just killed, purple-hided, with a vast head and open jaws. One great hand already held a Reaper, lifting him like a toy against her chest. The surviving members of the expedition were small against her bulk, but they did not turn back from the eggs at her feet.

The captured Reaper hung in her grip, still alive in her fist as her mouth opened above him. Around her, the eggs waited in the dust of the chamber floor, a whole clutch within a few steps of the surviving hunters. The other Reapers kept coming, weapons in hand, toward that clutch rather than toward a rescue. Whatever they had lost on the way in, the prize they had come for was now in reach under the Queen.

The Facehugger

A Reaper bites a live Facehugger, yellow fluid running from his teeth

They turned to those eggs at once. One Reaper lifted a single egg from the floor of the Queen's chamber, and a Facehugger burst from it in a spray of fluid. He grinned as the creature came out into his hands, and he held the opened egg rather than dropping it or tearing the hugger away. The Facehugger did not take him. It came out struggling, already in the grip of the hunter who had pulled it from the clutch.

The rest of the party took more eggs from the same floor and left the chamber with that live hugger still in hand. On the way back a Reaper bit into that live Facehugger as its legs kicked in his grip. He crunched through it and kept eating, yellow fluid running from his teeth and dripping from his jaw. The first of the catch was already being consumed before they reached their own world.

The Market On The Homeworld

Reapers sell Xenomorph eggs in a market on their homeworld

The expedition returned to their own world with sacks of eggs taken from the Queen's chamber. The hunt had not been a desperate escape from the hive. It had been a harvest, and the armed Reapers who had fought for that clutch came home as sellers. What they carried was already bound for the stalls of their own market, treated as a catch rather than as a threat. The way back from the hive had delivered them to ordinary trade.

The expedition returned to their own world with sacks of eggs. In a crowded market, shelves were stacked high with those eggs, and a prepared one rested on a little cart by the vendor's table. Families moved among the stalls, a child pointed and shouted, and a shopkeeper waited on customers as if this were any other day's trade. The armed Reapers who had been in the hive stood at the back with their bags, ordinary sellers in a market that treated the Queen's brood as food.

Key Characters

The Reapers were a green-skinned, bipedal people who wore armor, carried heavy weapons, and entered a Xenomorph hive as an armed expedition. No individual among them was named. They fought the creatures in the hive, lost at least one of their number to a gigantic Queen, took eggs from her chamber, ate a live Facehugger, and sold the rest in a market on their own world.

Editions

Aliens: Reapers was first published by Dark Horse in the Dark Horse Presents Fifth Anniversary Special in April 1991, as an eight-page black-and-white story. Frank Miller and Lynn Varley provided the wraparound cover for that anthology, which gathered new work by many of the publisher's contributors for the fifth anniversary of Dark Horse Presents. Dark Horse reprinted the story in color, with colors by Chris Chalenor, in the Dark Horse Presents: Aliens trade paperback in April 1992.

It was collected again in Aliens Omnibus Volume 3 in March 2008, immediately after Aliens: Advent/Terminus and immediately before Aliens: Horror Show, in the same volume as Aliens: Salvation, Aliens: Sacrifice, Aliens: Rogue, and Aliens: Labyrinth. It was later reprinted in the United Kingdom in Aliens magazine, Volume 1 number 17, in June 1992. Marvel reprinted it in Aliens: The Original Years Volume 1. A digital edition from Dark Horse in June 2013 collected it with Aliens: Cargo.

Behind The Scenes

John Arcudi wrote the script, and Simon Bisley penciled and inked the art and drew the title illustration used in later collections. Randy Stradley edited the original special. The story first appeared in black and white, and Chris Chalenor colored it for the 1992 Dark Horse Presents: Aliens collection, the version reprinted in Aliens Omnibus Volume 3. Arcudi also wrote Aliens: Genocide, a later Dark Horse miniseries rather than a continuation of this raid.

The eight pages ran in a thick anniversary anthology, not in a regular monthly issue of Dark Horse Presents, and the Reapers were one of the few early Dark Horse Aliens stories to follow a species other than humans into a hive. In Aliens Omnibus Volume 3 the story stands immediately after Advent/Terminus and immediately before Horror Show, the last comic in that volume. The title plate in that collection is Bisley's grayscale image of a Xenomorph with a human head on its tail, lettered simply Reapers. No character in the story is named, and almost none of it is spoken, so the raid is told through what the Reapers do in the hive and what they sell when they get home.

Conclusion

Aliens: Reapers was John Arcudi and Simon Bisley's 1991 Dark Horse Presents story of a hive raid told from the hunters' side. The Reapers fought their way to a gigantic Queen, took her eggs, and ate a live Facehugger on the way home. They sold the rest in a market on their own world, where those eggs were stacked on shelves like any other food. The raid ended not in a last stand, but in a day's trade.