Aliens: Rescue: Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: July 24, 2019
Writer: Brian Wood
Pencils: Kieran McKeown
Inks: JL Straw
Colors: Dan Jackson
Lettering: Nate Piekos
Cover: Roberto De La Torre
Editor: Spencer Cushing
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Format: Four-issue miniseries
Setting: Luna, Mars, and a classified world

Aliens: Rescue was a four-issue Dark Horse Comics miniseries written by Brian Wood and drawn by Kieran McKeown and JL Straw, with colors by Dan Jackson. The first issue went on sale on July 24, 2019, and the series followed Alec Brand after Aliens: Resistance. Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks had pulled him off a classified moon as a boy. A Colonial Marine recruiter then sent him into that classified space with them, and the miniseries ends with the hive vault brought down and a hearing on Earth that recorded nothing found.

Plot Summary

Luna-Base

Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks fire from a cavern ledge into Xenomorphs in Aliens: Rescue

Private Alec Brand was ordered into a room at United Americas Allied Command, Luna-Base. A red-haired woman in a brown jacket asked him to treat the meeting as a friendly talk and set two photographs in front of him. They were Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks. He knew both of them, and he knew them as heroes. What he remembered was that fight. Two women stood on a rock ledge in a cavern, one with a ponytail and a large rifle, the other with a red headband, firing into a mass of Xenomorphs.

El Hoyo

Alec Brand was born and raised in El Hoyo, on Earth. The district was poor, and climate damage had hit it hard, but his family was close and he was loved, which was why they chose him as the one person who would leave for another world. He measured that choice against money. If colonization took nothing but funds, his people were as deserving as anyone, including the richest men in Mexico City. Neighbors saw him off through a street of stacked homes and cables. He expected to step off a colony ship equal to the person beside him, with Earth's problems left behind.

The Gaspar

The colony ship Gaspar beside its tower under a yellow sky in Aliens: Rescue

The ship in that account was the Gaspar. The colony company operating her changed its name often enough to stay ahead of the rules, and Alec Brand did not know what she was called when he went aboard. He was sorry to leave his family and afraid of the destination, and he walked past armed guards with a bag and into a cryo pod. He expected to wake on a new world. Back in the room on Luna, the interviewer told him the ship had been intercepted, that he had never reached that world, and that the moon had been a disaster. She offered him the Colonial Marines, Deep Space Recon, and a posting on worlds that needed protection. He accepted.

He put the photographs down and added one condition. Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks had given themselves up so that he could live, and he wanted the name of that moon and where it was. The name and the location were classified. She told him his orders would come by the end of the day, and that she would see him around.

Mars

A generation earlier, Mars had been treated as lifeless. Nukes were dropped on it, and later it was terraformed for training. Warming the ground brought a swarm of red-shelled, many-legged creatures up from underground. An unnamed instructor told the Marines that breathable air was about seventy percent nitrogen, and that the nitrogen made those creatures breed. Dropships put the squad on the plain. The creatures charged, the Marines fired, and green fluid filled the fight. One Marine was grabbed. Brand was bitten, and he shot a creature in the head. The instructor told him everyone gets bitten, and welcomed him to the Colonial Marines. The training cuts to a younger Alec in a green jungle, a Xenomorph coming at him along a fallen trunk, and then to him pinned against a wall of tubes with the creature in front of him.

Three months later, Brand was on Luna, playing cards with other Marines, when the interviewer called him out. She congratulated him on Deep Space Recon and told him Ripley and Hendricks would be proud. They were the reason he had joined. She was glad he had dropped the formal address, because he was no longer in her chain of command. He asked what he could do for her and addressed her as Bowden. She had lied to him. Newer photographs, taken three days earlier, showed Ripley and Hendricks alive. The location was undisclosed, the operation was large, and they had asked for him. He was to report at 0500 to Hangar Nine. She then put him back in her chain of command.

The Forward Base

A USCM forward operating base in orbit over a classified planet in Aliens: Rescue

Alec Brand was the only passenger on the ship Borneo. A voice he did not recognize at first, later named Davis, had the scanners cleared so Alec could take a sidearm into the cryo pod. Davis told him they had met before. The ship crossed open space toward an unlabeled world ringed by a debris field, with objects burning down into the atmosphere. He came aboard a USCM forward operating base in classified space, in orbit over a blue planet. In the briefing room, Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks were on maps of the northern hemisphere. The movement on those maps ran north, not south, and food, terrain, and climate were all left as possible reasons.

Davis was at Luna-Base and in that room at the same time. He could do it as an artificial intelligence, and he told Zula he did not want to give up being with her. A Marine at the hatch announced their man. Alec walked in. Zula spoke his name, and both women reacted as if they had believed he was dead. He had been sure they were dead, and he wanted to know why that had been hidden from him. Zula had called him so they could tell him in person. She embraced him and told him the situation was bigger than him and bigger than all of them.

Amanda put two screens in front of him, the moon and the home planet, with a nuclear-detonation mark on the planet. The yield had been low enough that the moon held its orbit at first, then broke apart. Debris had been falling for years and was in its final hours. The moon's biome had been a hint of the planet: bacteria through the whole system that eat radiation. Hex shelters had protected Amanda and Zula from the first blast. Heat, radiation, carbon monoxide, and heavy metals should have killed them in the hours after, and the planet was thriving under the fall of debris anyway. Zula's home, El Hoyo, had been evacuated five years earlier after drought, temperatures in the 140s, and a water table contaminated by radiocarbons. She named Weyland-Yutani as the company that would want the rights. This time the prize was the bacteria, not the acid-blooded creatures, though those creatures had been riding the meteorites for about six years. Amanda counted the creatures with the bacteria.

The Descent

A modified lander leaves the station with the planet and debris behind it in Aliens: Rescue

Alec Brand asked if the mission was the Colonial Marines working for the corporations. He was deep-space recon, not a mercenary. Zula Hendricks answered with the Corps charter, which forbids a profit motive on off-world discoveries. She set the military using the bacteria to terraform and colonize against Weyland-Yutani locking the find away until it paid. She was back in uniform because the discovery could preserve the human species. Amanda Ripley flew a modified lander down from the station. Alec knew spaceflight as rockets and hard drops. Once the lander bit into the atmosphere, they were flying. The world below looked untouched. The world was ten times the size of Earth, an agricultural prize whose location was classified and left off public records. Weyland-Yutani had bid on the whole system, then decided the moon was worth more as a genetic incubator.

The Plain

A pack of adult Xenomorphs running across open ground in Aliens: Rescue

A fire was burning on the horizon. Ground-facing radar lit a field of returns, and Alec Brand recognized the migration. From the open side door he saw scattered figures, then a pack of adult Xenomorphs at close range. He took them for the creatures from the moon, dozens of them. Zula Hendricks put the number on the planet at hundreds, and said they did not really know. The mission was to clear the planet of them before anything else could happen. Alec remembered that they had nearly killed him the last time. Zula's answer was that they had that chance because he had not been a Marine, and that killing them was the whole of his duty.

The Migration

A lander passes low over a long line of Xenomorphs in Aliens: Rescue

Zula Hendricks promoted Alec Brand to E-5 and gave him a squad. He fired from the lander and hit at least one Xenomorph. Acid burst from the wound. The lander passed low over a long scattered line of creatures headed north, and more of them were hit. Zula told him she, Alec, and thirty Marines would take the fight to that migration. Amanda Ripley warned that the shooting was using reserve fuel. Zula tied the Corps' knowledge of the system to Alec's colony ship. He measured the life he would have had on a finished colony against what had happened instead. Weyland-Yutani had killed about a thousand colonists from that ship and turned the creatures into weapons. The thirty Marines were not on the ground yet, and no one in the lander knew where the migration was going.

The Canyon

On the classified world, Alec Brand, Zula Hendricks, Amanda Ripley, and a squad of unnamed soldiers climbed a rock canyon, with a small aircraft flying it beside them. Alec thanked Zula. He had thought his own people were dead, and he had thought Davis was riding in her rifle. Amanda told him Davis had refused: too much jostling, and the view was terrible. Alec wanted the rest of the story of the nuke. Zula told it on the hike. A big flash and a lot of heat, then one-time hex shelters that covered the first blast, with the ecosystem doing the rest. Alec had seen orbital nuclear detonations terraform worlds, and he knew shelters of that kind gave about six hours. He had not seen this blast. On the last day he saw Zula, Davis put him into a cryobed on the Celestial to shield him from the radiation, and he slept until Luna-Base.

Five Years Earlier

A ship comes down through red dust while two people run toward it in Aliens: Rescue

Davis came back for Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks after the blast. He took a host body that already had medical programming so he could treat them. A large ship came down through a red, dusty landscape, and the two of them ran toward it. Aboard, he sedated both of them for tests. He had not expected either of them to be alive. The body was not enough for long use, and he did not expect it to last. Zula told him he had come back for her, and that they had work left.

On Earth, Amanda and Zula were in beds in a glass room above a tropical shore. Amanda expected them to be separated. She was on probation with Weyland-Yutani, and Zula was a fugitive. Amanda expected both of them to be labeled terrorists and used against each other. After her time on the Europa she had been debriefed for weeks, her spine had been fixed, and they had tried to give her back pay. She set the three of them, Davis included, against the companies that sold the creatures as a weapon. Zula's answer was that they had survived the nuke and that no one knew how or why, so the next step was theirs.

The Camp

A drone flies through rain and lightning over the forest in Aliens: Rescue

That night the squad camped in a forest. Davis, through a drone, told Amanda Ripley he could see the ground, and he put up a heat map of Xenomorph travel from the last twelve hours. The paths were regular enough that the creatures might as well have been on a fixed track north. Zula Hendricks compared it to birds on a seasonal migration, and she stumbled on the word Xenomorph. Davis told her it was Greek for strange forms. He had detected no signals. The group threw out a beacon, pheromones, ground tremors, or a sixth sense as the thing drawing them. One of the soldiers asked if Weyland-Yutani had managed to control them. Zula said no. At the fire she described the company's change after the Gaspar hijacking and an illegal test site. Instead of working around the bioweapons laws, they went after the laws. They were indicted when they were exposed, paid a massive fine, then spent triple that on bribes and lobbyists. She expected them to come back to this system, and after that anything they wanted would be legal.

Brand had felt that split loyalty. Zula had been a Marine before the Corps became what she was describing, and the Marines she had taken on later wore the same uniform, had no honor, and were bought. Weyland-Yutani had been after these creatures for a long time and had corrupted other people to get them. Brand told her that was not the USCM he knew. Her answer was that a lot had changed.

The Rain

Xenomorphs move through a rainy forest around the Marine camp in Aliens: Rescue

Rain flooded the lower valleys, so the migration left the low ground. Davis, on Brand's earpiece, told him to switch to subvocal, not to wake the others, and not to move. The Xenomorphs were almost on him. They moved through the trees and over the dome tents. One passed the tent where Amanda Ripley was asleep and did not touch her. Brand brought his rifle up. It only clicked. He did not fire. A Xenomorph came close enough to look him in the eye, then kept going. The group moved on.

Davis told him they were gone, and that he should wake the others, find higher ground, and make a plan. Brand told Davis to wake them. Brand was leaving, by himself. Sunrise was less than an hour off, and Davis warned that the creatures would kill him if they saw him. Brand did not think so. Davis could not watch him and stay with the team. Brand took the way they looked at him and walked on as proof that something was controlling them, and he would not let them out of his sight. He told Davis to tell Zula Hendricks, and that she would understand. He walked into the rain alone. The camp was asleep behind him.

The Crater

A dropship crosses a cratered desert in Aliens: Rescue

A dropship crossed a desert of craters on the unnamed world, and the squad roped into one of the holes. Bones covered the bottom. The crater was the place the migration had been gathering, a hive with a lot of corpses in it. Someone on the squad warned that there was no way to know what was inside, and that they would not be much help in there. Zula Hendricks took them in anyway. They would kill whatever they found. Amanda Ripley and Alec Brand went down the ropes with her. During the descent he thought of the moon they had pulled him off, and of El Hoyo, whose people had starved for a month to get him off-world.

The Hive

The tunnels were full of muzzle flashes. A Xenomorph got onto one Marine and put him on his back, bleeding, and acid sprayed back through the gunfire as the squad pushed on toward the chamber. More Marines went down on the way. Zula Hendricks, Amanda Ripley, and Alec Brand were moving, with one more Marine beside them, when Zula called the last magazine.

The Egg Vault

Three huge Xenomorphs stand over a vault floor packed with eggs in Aliens: Rescue

The tunnels opened into a round vault. Thousands of Alien eggs covered the floor, and three huge Xenomorphs stood over them. Amanda Ripley described it to Davis on a weak but stable signal: a massive chamber, eggs like the ones at the Seegson facility on LV-44-40, about a hundred times as big, with three of those creatures tending them. She judged it too much for the squad. A Marine asked if the eggs hatched the creatures directly. Amanda explained the next stage. A Facehugger comes out of the egg and fixes on a host, and a Chestburster comes out of the torso later. Anyone who came to colonize or strip the planet, Marines or Weyland-Yutani or anyone else, would walk into that vault and become hosts. Alec Brand took it as something the squad could stop.

The plan was to bring the ceiling down. Alec pointed out uprights for the charges. Zula told him the only charges they had were shaped breaching charges, meant to open doors, not drop a mountain. Davis's drone carried a minigun and two JDAMs, which he judged too little for the ceiling. The squad's Gremlins were not weapons. They were seismic charges for mapping the rock. Amanda argued that light in the chamber and Davis's signal meant the ceiling was thin, so the breaching charges and the Gremlins could be timed together. She also told Alec that burying the creatures would not kill them. The answer in the room was that a million tons of rock might, if nobody had a better idea.

The Blast

The egg vault detonates, with Xenomorphs and eggs inside the fire and falling rock in Aliens: Rescue

Alec Brand ran the charges in among the eggs while Xenomorphs closed on him. Someone gave him ten seconds and told him he was on the mark. A hand hit the detonator. Amanda Ripley, Zula Hendricks, and the other Marine climbed for the rope. Alec was under the three Xenomorphs with five seconds left. The drones punched into the rock overhead, and the vault went up in fire, eggs and Xenomorphs inside the blast. Amanda and Zula made the crater rim. Alec crawled out of the rubble alive and told Davis to tell the others he was on his way out.

On Earth, that mission was put to Lieutenant Commander Lena Bowden of the USCM at the Department of Justice. She was told it was not a trial. She was asked whether she had personally sent Colonial Marine assets into a restricted sector to destroy classified material. She had issued that order. Asked whether the material was destroyed, she answered that no such material had been found, and that the report she sent up her chain of command said the mission was a failure of intelligence. Anything further was classified Level Four, above that hearing's mandate. She picked up her bag and left. The series ends on Alec in the rocks, calling Davis.

Key Characters

Alec Brand left El Hoyo on the Gaspar, woke on a classified moon, and joined the Colonial Marines after Bowden showed him photographs of Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks. He trained on Mars, flew to the classified world as the only passenger on the Borneo, and was promoted to E-5. He set the charges in the egg vault and crawled out of the rubble alive.
Amanda Ripley flew the modified lander, compared the vault to the Seegson eggs on LV-44-40, and argued that the breaching charges and the Gremlins could bring the ceiling down. In the flashback she was on probation with Weyland-Yutani after the nuke. She reached the crater rim with Zula.
Zula Hendricks called Alec to the forward base, cited the Corps charter against a company profit on the bacteria, and took the squad into the crater hive. Her home in El Hoyo had been evacuated five years earlier. She called the last magazine in the tunnels and climbed out with Amanda.
Davis cleared Alec's sidearm onto the Borneo, ran at Luna-Base and at the station at the same time, and came back after the nuke in a medical host body he did not expect to use for long. His drone carried a minigun and two JDAMs, mapped the migration, and punched the vault ceiling. In the last fight he speaks through the drone.
Lena Bowden interviewed Alec at Luna-Base, told him Amanda and Zula were dead, then showed him photographs taken three days earlier and ordered him to Hangar Nine at 0500. At the Department of Justice, as a lieutenant commander, she confirmed that she had sent the mission, said nothing had been found, and left the rest at Level Four.

Editions

Dark Horse Comics published Aliens: Rescue as a four-issue miniseries. Issue 1 went on sale July 24, 2019. Issues 2, 3, and 4 went on sale on August 21, September 25, and October 23, 2019. Brian Wood wrote all four issues. Kieran McKeown penciled them, JL Straw inked them, Dan Jackson colored them, and Nate Piekos of Blambot lettered them. Mike Richardson was the publisher, Spencer Cushing edited the series, and Konner Knudsen was the assistant editor. Skyler Weissenfluh designed the issues, and Josie Christensen was the digital art technician. The issues were printed in Canada.

The issues carried episode titles: Selection, Recon, Projection, and Deniability. Roberto De La Torre painted the main covers. Mack Chater painted variant covers for the four issues. Issue 1 thanked Carol Roeder, Steve Tzirlin, and Nicole Spiegel at Twentieth Century Fox. Dark Horse collected the miniseries as a 96-page trade paperback on January 29, 2020, with a De La Torre cover. Marvel reprinted the four issues in Aliens: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 4, a hardcover released on March 15, 2023.

Dark Horse announced Aliens: Rescue on February 20, 2019, as Brian Wood's next Alien series after Aliens: Resistance, with Kieran McKeown and JL Straw on the art. The solicitation followed Alec Brand from that earlier miniseries and paired him again with Amanda Ripley and Zula Hendricks. Dark Horse later announced Aliens: Colonial Marines - Rising Threat as a follow-up.

Conclusion

Aliens: Rescue is Brian Wood, Kieran McKeown, and JL Straw's 2019 Dark Horse miniseries about Alec Brand after Aliens: Resistance. It follows him from an interview on Luna through Colonial Marine training on Mars to a classified world, where he, Amanda Ripley, and Zula Hendricks brought down a vault of eggs. Lieutenant Commander Lena Bowden told a Department of Justice hearing that the mission found nothing, and the miniseries ends with Alec alive in the rocks, calling Davis.