Aliens: Renegade: Plot, Characters & Lore
Aliens: Renegade, originally published as Renegade, was a two-part science-fiction comic written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by Vince Giarrano. It appeared in Dark Horse Comics #1-2 in 1992 and introduced Ash Parnall before Aliens vs. Predator: Deadliest of the Species. The story followed her defense of the peaceful colony of Descartes against mercenaries seeking control of its resources. Neither Xenomorphs nor Predators appeared in the short, which acquired the Aliens title for its British reprint.
Plot Summary
The Descartes Colony
The colony of Descartes celebrated its Founders' Day centennial with a gala attended by local families. Its inhabitants had built a peaceful society and had not organized an indigenous military force. Their celebration was interrupted by armed visitors led by Commander Javier Milan, who introduced himself as the commanding officer of the Descartes Indigenous Self-Defense Forces. Caleb Deschanel, a colony leader attending with his daughter Frederika, questioned the existence of an organization his people had never established.
Milan introduced Moira Delgado as his executive officer and assured the gathering that his troops had come to protect them. Schoolteacher Ash Parnall intervened before the confrontation escalated and invited the commander to dance. Milan accepted, allowing her to question him away from Caleb. Moira remained at the celebration and took an interest in Caleb's son Stephen, a musician whose abilities gave her a reason to invite him to the visitors' camp.
The Mercenary Takeover
During the dance, Milan explained that Descartes possessed valuable resources which its small population had left largely unexploited. Ash replied that the colony could not support the exports he demanded without changing its population and way of life. Milan proposed importing a much larger workforce and argued that the colonists themselves formed part of the property his employers wanted. He offered compensation for cooperation while making clear that resistance would bring a more destructive takeover.
Ash learned that the mercenaries were based on Goth, forty-three lights away in another administrative sector. Their arrival followed an established method, and defeating the small landing force would not remove the people who had sent it. The real threat was the mother ship Ransome, whose eccentric seventy-minute orbit brought the major communities beneath its weapons. Moira reported that the camp was secure and the ship was in position, leaving the colonists exposed to retaliation if they attacked the troops on the ground.
Ash Parnall's Decision
Stephen accepted Moira's invitation after seeing equipment that could expand his musical performances. His enthusiasm alarmed Caleb, while Ash recognized that the visitors could undermine the colony by making its younger inhabitants want what they offered. Caleb asked her to bring his son home and protect Descartes. Ash warned him that removing Milan would only postpone another intervention and that defending their independence would require sacrifices beyond the immediate confrontation.
Caleb nevertheless insisted that there was nobody else who could help. Ash agreed and declined to take a weapon, then embraced Frederika before leaving. The girl asked where she was going and whether she would return, but Ash could only promise to find a way. Her departure left the family waiting while she approached a force whose commander and equipment the colonists could not match through conventional resistance.
The Landing Barge
At dawn, Ash entered the mercenary camp beside a heavily armed Thunderer-class landing barge. The craft could carry a regiment but needed only a small crew to operate. She timed her arrival for the moment Ransome passed below the planetary horizon, creating a thirty-seven-minute interruption in communications between the troops and their ship. Milan received her without recognizing how precisely she had chosen the encounter's timing.
Milan described Moira as an unusually capable field-first who had joined his cadre two missions earlier. Ash asked him to return Stephen and suggested that he could abandon his employers and make Descartes his home. He refused, expecting pursuit if he deserted and seeing no reason to join what he considered a lost cause. Their discussion ended when a sentry reported a possible hostile on the ridge above the camp. The supposed intruder was twelve-year-old Frederika, who had followed Ash.
The Camp Battle
When the sentries aimed their weapons at Frederika, Ash struck Milan and seized his gun. She shot a guard before offering the commander one final chance to spare the colonists in exchange for their freedom. Milan rejected the offer and ordered his troops to fire. Ash had entered the camp unarmed, but the danger to the girl ended her attempt to negotiate a peaceful withdrawal.
The mercenaries' shots tore through Ash's clothing without stopping her advance. She attacked at close quarters with blades, killing several of the armored soldiers and breaking through their resistance. Milan survived long enough to ask what she was, having seen the schoolteacher defeat troops equipped to conquer the colony. Before Ash could explain, Moira intervened and severed her head with an extending blade.
The Chimera Confrontation
Moira Delgado revealed that a master computer on Goth had calculated a forty-three percent probability of finding Renegade in this cluster. She had accompanied Milan's cadre to expose and eliminate that target, using the takeover as an opportunity to force Ash into action. Stephen fired at her after witnessing the attack, but the bullet wounds did not incapacitate her. She dismissed his resistance while claiming abilities comparable to Renegade's.
Ash's body recovered her severed head and drove a blade through Moira from behind. The strike left Moira impaled as Ash threw her into the landing barge, followed by an explosion that destroyed the craft. Ash then began repairing the injuries inflicted during the battle. Her recovery left her able to protect Stephen and Frederika, although she also had to remove the threat posed by Ransome before the colony could be safe.
The Colony's Reprieve
Ash healed her injuries, concealing the worst of the damage from Frederika and Stephen. She told Frederika that Moira had been a Chimera and that others like her would have to be tracked down along with their creator. Defeating the landing force had not removed the ship in orbit. Ash left to deal with Ransome and estimated that her actions would buy the colony perhaps twenty years before another hostile arrival.
When Ash returned, the colonists had used that time to prepare a much stronger defense. Her approaching ship was detected beyond the system's periphery and tracked by weapons sufficient to threaten a fleet, largely through Frederika's efforts. At another celebration, Ash saw Frederika with a partner and learned that she had three children. She chose not to interrupt the reunion of families around her, while Frederika identified the departing woman as Renegade and remembered her as the colony's protector.
Key Characters
- Ash Parnall was a schoolteacher living on Descartes and the woman known as Renegade. Her concealed combat abilities and capacity to recover from catastrophic injuries allowed her to defeat the mercenaries and Moira Delgado.
- Caleb Deschanel was a colony leader and the father of Stephen and Frederika. He asked Ash to recover his son and protect the settlement despite the danger of future attacks.
- Frederika Deschanel, called Freddie, was Caleb's twelve-year-old daughter. She followed Ash to the camp and later helped build the defenses that protected Descartes when Ash returned.
- Stephen Deschanel was a musician attracted by Moira's advanced recording and synthesizer equipment. He accompanied her to the camp but turned his weapon against her when her true nature was revealed.
- Javier Milan commanded the mercenary cadre and claimed authority over the colony's defense. He offered compensation for submission while relying on Ransome's orbital weapons to discourage resistance.
- Moira Delgado was Milan's executive officer and a Chimera secretly assigned to locate Renegade. Her apparent deathblow failed to stop Ash, who defeated her at the landing barge.
Editions
Renegade originally appeared in Dark Horse Comics #1 and #2, dated August and September 1992. Each installment occupied eight pages, including the first part's two-page festival spread. Chris Claremont wrote the story, Vince Giarrano supplied pencils and inks, Gregory Wright colored it and Tom Orzechowski lettered it. The story's opening credits named Diana Schutz and Jerry Prosser as editors. Dave Dorman illustrated the first anthology issue's gatefold cover, while Mike Mignola supplied the second issue's cover art.
The British Aliens magazine reprinted the story in volume 2, issues #18-19, in December 1993 and January 1994, under the title Aliens: Renegade. Those installments were reprints of the same short rather than additional chapters. The original American issues also contained unrelated Predator, RoboCop and Timecop serials. Renegade was not included in the Deadliest of the Species collected editions.
Behind The Scenes
Chris Claremont introduced Ash Parnall in Renegade before using that identity in Deadliest of the Species. The short established her connection to the Deschanel family, the name Renegade and a conflict with artificial beings directed by a computer on Goth. Its account of her life on Descartes preceded the later story of Caryn Delacroix, whose suppressed identity was Ash Parnall. The mercenary takeover formed a complete adventure without an Alien or Predator encounter.
The original Dark Horse Comics credits treated Renegade as a separately owned feature alongside the anthology's licensed properties. The story's first issue credited Claremont for Renegade and Giarrano for its art in the copyright notice. The later British title connected it explicitly to the Aliens publishing line. Its Chimera terminology described Moira, while the origin and limits of Ash's comparable abilities were not fully explained in these sixteen pages.
Conclusion
Aliens: Renegade introduced Ash Parnall through the defense of Descartes and her confrontation with Moira Delgado. The two-part story ended with the colony preparing to defend itself and Ash returning after Frederika had grown up and started a family. It provided an earlier adventure for a character who returned in Claremont's Deadliest of the Species.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Alien Comics
