Aliens: Rogue: Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: December 1995
Author: Sandy Schofield
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Format: Mass market paperback
Pages: 288
ISBN: 978-0-553-56442-6
Series: Bantam Aliens novels
Setting: Charon Base and the Caliban

Aliens: Rogue is a 1995 novel by Sandy Schofield, published by Bantam Spectra in December 1995. It novelized Ian Edginton and Will Simpson's Dark Horse comic of the same name. Captain Joyce Palmer brought Grant operative John Cray to Charon Base on the transport Caliban, where Professor Ernst Kleist ran Project Chimera for Z.C.T. Corporation. Sergeant Green's Marines worked the sealed hive on the rock.

Plot Summary

Charon Base sat on a rock in elliptical orbit around a class-three yellow star. Convicts had cut thousands of kilometers of tunnels when it was an Earth government prison. After humans retook Earth from the Alien-Earth War, Z.C.T. Corporation bought the rock, sealed a tunnel section, and released five captured Xenomorphs and one queen for Project Chimera. A government Marine platoon stayed to handle the hive and protect the government share.

Boone Dies In The Hive

Sergeant Green took five armored Marines after a live adult Xenomorph: McPhillips on point, Dillon with the Sound Cannon, Choi, and Boone. Taser Webs were the standing order unless Green called for Kramer rifles. A warrior dragged Boone up a wall. A second inner jaw punched through her helmet, and pieces of helmet, face, and brain hit the corridor. Choi shot the warrior, and acid covered her body.

More warriors came in. Dillon's Sound Cannon froze them long enough for McPhillips and Dillon to web a large specimen. The cannon then started a critical countdown. They dragged the captured warrior through the airlock. Green dove through as the doors closed. Boone stayed in the hive. Professor Kleist asked security chief Larson if her body could be salvaged for use, then praised the capture and complained they had slaughtered the other warrior. Choi exploded at him. Kleist told Larson that Choi had volunteered as hive breeding stock.

Caliban Reaches Charon

Captain Joyce Palmer woke from seven months of cold sleep on the transport Caliban with copilot Deegan and passenger Mr. Cray. They were six hours out from Charon. She treated the run as her last: pay enough to raise Drake and Cass in Geneva with her mother. Her husband Danny had been killed in the war. They docked Hangar 12. Flight controller Hank cleared them. After decontamination, Kleist, Larson, and android secretary Grace met Cray. Kleist took Cray's Z.C.T. transmission disk.

Behind sealed doors Kleist played an Eyes Only hologram from G. D. Squaza, Z.C.T. Controller of Research and Development. Chimera had drawn Grant Corporation, B.M.I. Affairs, and an Asian-Chinese consortium. The last project update had been intercepted, decoded, altered, and loaded with viral time bombs. Transmissions to Earth were to stop under security code Alpha C fifty-one. Cray was to carry disk copies home. Squaza called him the best operative and credited him with the acid-reducing gel and Taser Web specs. Kleist knew more about Cray than Cray would want, including a karate black belt, and he laughed after the message.

Choi Kills Bergren

Choi beat three of Larson's security men in a human corridor and likely killed two of them, Pavin and Thomas. Bergren, Larson's second in command, webbed him and dumped him just inside the west airlock of the alien sector. Bergren shot Choi in the leg and started to leave him for implantation. Choi palmed a small knife from the boot holster on the wounded leg, sat up, and flicked it underhand into Bergren's chest. Bergren staggered and fell back into the alien sector. The airlock closed on Choi's side.

Choi pulled the knife from Bergren, drew a second boot knife, and shouted into the dark for the queen. An adult Xenomorph broke his back and dragged him toward the hive center. Kleist watched on camera and told Larson to retrieve Bergren's body for use, and to make sure Green learned Choi was dead.

Jerry's Disk And The Resistance

Two years earlier Charon had held more than 1,500 people and about 40 Marines. Hank put the count under 1,400, with 20 Marines and more than a hundred security. People who opposed Kleist, Larson, or Bergren vanished. Bartender Jonathan treated Joyce's friend Jerry as dead in an airlock two months earlier, then slipped her a napkin with a hidden disk and sent her to her ship.

The disk showed a Chestburster coming out of a tank clone. Joyce froze the frame on a black raven tattoo. She, Danny, and Jerry had gotten matching ravens in Melbourne twelve years earlier at the Black Raven bar. The official report had been explosive decompression. The body in Kleist's tank was intact. An underground group used dead spots in the East Lounge. Members included Jonathan, doctor Ray, maintenance man Kent, and Hank. Hank's Marine contact had been Choi.

Andy Carrier Finds The Heads

Kitchen worker Andy Carrier robbed convict graves in unused tunnels and found a hidden lab of living wired heads, including poker buddy Charlie, who had officially shipped to Earth six months earlier. Larson caught him. Kleist needed live heads so Facehuggers would accept the lab bodies as living hosts. Andy was to carry the new queen. The next time he woke, he was a head on a shelf, and he felt a body elsewhere with something growing inside it.

Kleist Breaks Cray

Kleist toured Cray through dissection rooms, dummy tanks, and the hive. Small tame Xenomorphs crawled to him when he called. Grace later took a tissue scrape when she shook Cray's hand. Joyce passed Cray a note in the observation lounge and showed him Jerry's disk on the Caliban. Larson's men stormed the cockpit. Cray snapped one guard's neck, used the body as a shield, and kicked another before Larson held him at pistol point. Joyce was knocked out.

Kleist's men strapped Cray nude to a probe chair. Cray worked for Grant Corporation, not Z.C.T. Grade 9 and higher Z.C.T. agents have a security code surface-coated on the right kidney. Cray, supposedly grade 12, did not. Z.C.T. had known for years, let him feed them Taser and gel data, and lured him to Charon. The Squaza hologram was a trap. Larson threatened him with a boxed Facehugger, and Cray talked. During the Earth invasion his wife Linda, a Grant account executive, had been pulled through the window of his Ford by a Xenomorph four kilometers from a spaceport. Her body was never found. Marines later picked Cray off the road. Kleist judged Joyce clean of Cray's mission and ordered her given to the Xenomorphs anyway.

Green Is Dumped Into The Hive

Grace beat Green in the outer office. Kleist then relieved the Marines and promised an Earth return on the battle cruiser Saundakaur. Grace flew the shuttle on remote to an unused dock on the far side of the alien sector. Their ammunition had been swapped for blanks. Green led nineteen men plus himself out unarmed.

They entered stone ventilation ducts, dumped tracer-bugged armor as decoys, and went down. Lynch found tracer bugs in the com units. Robinsen and O'Keefe took point. At a sealed plug into abandoned prison levels they packed blank-powder bombs in canteens. The first blast opened the hole, and they plugged it with tied rifles and gear. A second blast caved the ceiling and threw Lynch into the vertical shaft with a broken neck. Green made Robinsen number two and Young number three. They left Lynch in a convict bunk with his rifle and a photo of his dead wife Karen. Green's own wife Marybeth had also been taken in the Earth invasion. Nineteen Marines including Green walked on.

The Rogue Breaks Loose

Hank and Kent shot Joyce's two escorts in a corridor headed to the hive, and the revolt started on camera. Joyce freed Cray and pulled Deegan out of bed. Kleist's special cage held a mature male Xenomorph the size of a queen, maybe bigger, grown from alien DNA, concentrated human male hormone, biochemical soup, and Cray's DNA. The first test strapped Cray in a chair. The creature inspected him, dripped acid, and cut him from nipple to navel, then left him alive. Kleist treated it as the first tame male Xenomorph and as Cray's son.

Kleist then put ten adult Xenomorphs in with it. It tore them apart. He reversed the theory: Cray had lived because he was strapped down, not because the creature was tame. Kleist named it an alien king, then a rogue male. Grace picked up dual EF-band signals, one from the hive heart and one from the rogue, a challenge. The rogue smashed lab glass that was supposed to be unbreakable, tore into a corridor with a roughly ten-meter ceiling, and headed for the queen. Kleist cancelled Grace's Red Alert and forbade anyone to scratch it.

Marines Join The Revolt

Joyce's group found Marine combat-boot tracks in the deep tunnels. Green's nineteen walked in on the rebel meeting. Hank, late after two guards pinned him, reported the rogue breach. Green judged a male that size would tear a hole from the labs into the hive, and about three hundred warriors would enter the human sector. Kleist and Grace followed in armor through Kleist's three private tunnels. The rogue crushed a barrier airlock and opened a hole about twenty meters across. Warriors poured through. Ten of Larson's men at the breach were torn apart.

Nineteen Marines and twenty civilians took Larson's armory. Green sent all civilians with Joyce to secure the hangar and prep the Caliban and any other ship, with orders to lift when full and not wait. Cray, Deegan, and Kent could fly. Green's hunt team was Dillon, McPhillips, Young, Rule, and Bosewell. Robinsen took twelve Marines on a sweep, with Hansen on point, one hour to the hangar, with orders to kill Xenomorphs and terminate implanted humans.

Cray Dies In The Labs

Joyce's column went through Kleist's labs. Twenty bodies floated in tanks. Hank recognized controller Steven, who had supposedly shipped home. Joyce and Hank grenaded the tank room. In the next lab a warrior took Cray from a tank top. The inner jaw hit his chest, and the back of his shirt exploded. Joyce judged heart and spine destroyed. They shot the warrior. Another warrior grabbed Joyce. Hank had the group blow the tank glass, water and jelly knocked the alien down, and they killed it. Kent bandaged Joyce.

The Queen Kills The Rogue

Green's team reached Kleist's office. Monitors showed the breach, Larson's men dying near the kitchens, civilians hiding, and a warrior in the west lounge. They found Larson in a small lab behind the office repairing the mission-broken Sound Cannon, beside tanks of live Facehuggers. Green shot both of Larson's legs, locked him in, and broke three hugger tanks. Larson's last shout was for God. Green did not stay to watch the implantation.

The same monitors showed Teppo with his head cut off, Freeman with his face gone to acid, and Bond with an inner jaw through the chest, plus about fifteen civilians melted after someone shot a warrior in the body. Green read it as one ambush on a Robinsen escort, not the whole sweep. He abandoned hunting Kleist in the hive and used a private tunnel to the hangar.

In the queen's chamber the rogue and a maroon Queen circled among eggs and royal jelly. The rogue smashed eggs and took the first bite. After about thirty minutes the queen held the advantage. She was faster, slashed him, cut off his left arm, bit his neck, and cut his carapace. Kleist ordered Grace to fire. The queen's tail cut Grace in half, then into three parts, with white android fluid. Grace's last words to Kleist were that he was a real ass. The queen finished the rogue, his neck almost bitten through and his remaining arm torn off. Kleist fired a Kramer and the Sound Cannon on high. The queen's tail cut off his right arm at the shoulder. The arm still held the cannon, the impact jammed the trigger, and the cannon went critical.

Caliban Leaves Charon

Joyce's group opened hangar doors onto a deck packed with warriors and killed outward about fifty meters. Green's balcony team covered a run to the Caliban. The hatch was sealed, and the ship was empty of Xenomorphs. Then warriors flooded from the storage room, the decontamination entrance, the balcony, and the far shadows. Every visible warrior froze from the Sound Cannon in the hive. Green ordered everyone aboard. A freeze never lasted more than a minute, then the unit went critical. McPhillips, Dillon, and Young checked the ship. Joyce and Deegan launched. Rocks fell as the hangar failed. The Caliban cleared the bay doors by meters, and the hangar doors exploded into space.

They held orbit looking for more survivors and found none. Static came from the base. Green put the containment break and tunnel collapse on a Sound Cannon going critical in the alien section. His men ran full-body scans for implants, including Green. Palmer set course for Moreno Station, eight months, all in cold sleep. Her log counted about fourteen hundred dead on the rock and said the aliens had won.

Charon Base And Project Chimera

Professor Ernst Kleist from Aliens: Rogue

Charon Base mixed upgraded scientist levels with a sealed hive and unused convict tunnels, a nest that fits with the largest Xenomorph hives. Z.C.T. bought the rock after the Earth war and put Professor Ernst Kleist in charge of profit from acid blood, royal jelly, and everything else the species could yield. His office had a corporation-grade camera wall. Larson ran security. Grace ran his outer office.

Project Chimera used a gel adapted from a Grant Corporation acid-neutralizer, Taser Webs, host swapping, and a DNA reflex so adult Xenomorphs inherited host traits. Dummy clone torsos were the cover story. Live human heads on shelves kept floating bodies accepted as living hosts. Passive-DNA splicing with sheep, llamas, and cattle failed to produce a controllable queen. The Sound Cannon was a larger version of a pocket dog whistle that disrupted alien nervous systems, froze them, often failed, seldom lasted more than sixty seconds, and could go critical and wreck the station.

The Rogue

The Rogue was a queen-sized male grown from alien DNA, concentrated human male hormone, and Cray's tissue. Kleist first treated it as a tame control animal, then as a king, then as a living engine of destruction and a prototype for a Z.C.T. bio-weapons arsenal. It ignored strapped-down Cray, tore apart ten adult Xenomorphs, smashed out of the lab, and opened the hive wall. Dual EF-band signals marked a challenge with the queen.

The queen won the chamber fight by speed. She took his left arm, cut his carapace, and finished him after Grace was cut apart. Kleist's Sound Cannon then went critical in that chamber. The flash wrecked containment, collapsed tunnels, and blew the hangar doors into space. Neither creature left the rock.

Key Characters

Captain Joyce Palmer flew the Caliban. She meant the Charon run to be her last so she could raise Drake and Cass in Geneva. She launched with Hank and the survivors and set course for Moreno Station.
John Cray was a Grant spy posing as a Z.C.T. courier. Kleist used his DNA for the rogue, Joyce freed him from the cell, and a warrior killed him in the labs with an inner jaw through the chest.
Professor Ernst Kleist ran Chimera. The queen took his right arm in her chamber, and his own Sound Cannon went critical in his remaining hand.
Sergeant Green commanded the Marine platoon. Kleist dumped him into the hive with blanks. He brought a hunt team to the hangar and left on the Caliban.
Private Choi lost Boone in the opening hive job, wrecked Larson's men, and killed Bergren with a boot knife at the west airlock before an adult Xenomorph broke his back.
Boone was the last woman in Green's squad and Choi's lover from New York. An inner jaw killed her on the capture mission, and her body stayed in the hive.
Larson was chief of security. Green shot both of his legs, locked him in with Facehuggers, and left him there.
Bergren was Larson's second. He dumped Choi for implantation, took a knife in the chest, and fell back into the alien sector.
Grace was Kleist's android secretary. She beat Green, flew the dump shuttle, and was cut apart when Kleist ordered her to shoot the queen.
Hank was the hangar flight controller and a rebel. He cleared the Caliban in, filmed nothing of Jerry's death for the official file, and left with Palmer.
Deegan was Palmer's copilot. He launched the Caliban after the freeze.
Andy Carrier found Kleist's living heads, including Charlie, and woke as another head on that shelf with a body elsewhere carrying Kleist's new queen.
Lynch died in the unused prison tunnels when the second blast threw him into a shaft and broke his neck.
Teppo, Freeman, and Bond died on a Robinsen civilian escort. Robinsen's sweep did not reach orbit.
McPhillips, Dillon, and Young boarded the Caliban with Green and swept the ship after launch.

Place In The Bantam Line

Rogue was the sixth book in Bantam Spectra's Dark Horse Science Fiction Novels line, after Earth Hive in October 1992, Aliens: Nightmare Asylum in May 1993, The Female War in August 1993, Aliens: Genocide in January 1994, and Aliens: Harvest in September 1995. Schofield's book followed Sheckley's Harvest by three months. It follows Palmer, Cray, Green, and Kleist.

The comic was a four-issue Dark Horse series from April 1993 to July 1993, written by Edginton, drawn by Simpson, and colored by Robbie Busch. Titan Books reprinted Schofield's novel with S. D. Perry's Aliens: Labyrinth as The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume Three on 27 December 2016. Titan lists that paperback at 496 pages.

Continuity

Earth has been retaken after the Alien-Earth War. Charon began as a government prison and became a Z.C.T. research rock. Grant Corporation, B.M.I. Affairs, and an Asian-Chinese consortium were watching Chimera. Cray's stolen gel and Taser Web specs were in Z.C.T. hands before he landed.

The hive on Charon is a contained brood, not the homeworld from the Wilks and Billie landings. One history paragraph names the director John Kleist. Squaza's hologram addresses him as Ernst. Green's command is not wiped in the dump. Lynch dies later in unused tunnels. Green, McPhillips, Dillon, and Young leave on the Caliban. Rule and Bosewell were with the hangar hunt team and are not later listed dead. Robinsen's sweep does not make orbit. Cray dies in the labs.

Editions

Bantam Spectra released the American paperback in December 1995 in the Dark Horse Science Fiction Novels line, under the cover title Aliens: Rogue. The copyright year is 1995. The text runs 288 pages. John Bolton painted the cover, with a short-haired woman aiming a rifle at a large Xenomorph while a man in a lab coat films it. Millennium published a British paperback in April 1996 at 288 pages. Titan's 2016 omnibus reprints the novel with Labyrinth, and no film or game adaptation followed.

Behind The Scenes

Schofield dedicated the book to Steve Perry. There is no epigraph. Sandy Schofield is the house name used by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. The title page says the story is adapted from the Dark Horse comic written by Ian Edginton, spelled Edington on that page, with art by Will Simpson. Bolton painted this Bantam paperback.

Schofield keeps the same spine as Edginton's comic: Kleist, Charon, Cray, Palmer, Green, and a queen-sized engineered male that fights the hive queen. Schofield also changed names and who lives:

The Grant spy is John Cray. Early comic copy often uses Kray.
Cray dies in the labs. In the comic he leaves on the Caliban.
Green's Marines cut through unused prison tunnels after the dump and lose Lynch on the second blast. Several of the hunt team board the Caliban. The issues wipe almost all of them in the hive after Kleist's betrayal, and only Green gets back.
The dumped Marine who kills his captor is Choi. He puts a boot knife in Bergren, Larson's second, at the west airlock. There is no Lee in this text, and Larson, not Bergren, is chief of security.
Kitchen worker Andy Carrier wakes as a living head. The comic uses Paulie Finn and kills him when he is found.
Hank stays in the plot, joins the revolt, and leaves with Palmer. In the comic he clears the Caliban by radio and then drops out.
Grace keeps talking after the queen cuts her apart. Her last line calls Kleist a real ass. Comic Grace dies without that line, and her blood is drawn red there.

Conclusion

Aliens: Rogue is Sandy Schofield's 1995 Bantam novel of Ian Edginton and Will Simpson's Dark Horse comic. It follows Joyce Palmer, John Cray, Sergeant Green, and Ernst Kleist on Charon Base through Project Chimera. The book ends with Cray dead in the labs, Kleist dead beside his Sound Cannon, the Caliban clear of the rock, and Green among the Marines who got off.