Aliens: Salvation Comic: Plot, Characters & Lore
Aliens: Salvation was a November 1993 Dark Horse one-shot written by Dave Gibbons, with pencils by Mike Mignola, inks by Kevin Nowlan, colors by Matt Hollingsworth, and lettering by Clem Robins. It followed Selkirk, the cook of the company freighter Nova Maru, who was forced into the ship's only lifeboat by Captain Foss during a cargo emergency. They crashed on a remote world, where Foss was killed and Selkirk later found First Officer Dean at the wreck. Dean was revealed as a machine assigned to release the ship's Xenomorph cargo among the planet's natives, and Selkirk destroyed the wreck rather than leave the company its reserve.
Plot Summary
Selkirk's Prayer
Selkirk opened his account with a prayer over a distant, cloud-wrapped world, asking the Lord to see him and to forgive his sins. He said he had done terrible things, and that the confession that followed was part of that prayer. He remembered how the company had recruited the crew of the Nova Maru from the Backworlds, with no questions asked, and how the pay had meant only money to some of them. For Selkirk it had meant a freehold on a farm planet, a future he still hoped to reach when the voyage began.
The prayer framed the story as a confession after the events it described, rather than as a report written in the moment of the crash. Selkirk already spoke of guilt, of a captain who had saved himself instead of the others, and of a cargo whose nature he had not understood at the time. He asked whether what had happened had been part of a plan to test his faith. The world below him, later named in a missionary report as PCW9512, was still only a distant sphere when that prayer began.
The Galley Of The Nova Maru
In the galley of the Nova Maru, Selkirk served a meal and named the people the voyage was supposed to reward: Foss, Stutz, Lee, Boyd, and Dean. One of the men mocked his cooking and his faith, and joked that the Lord was watching them. First Officer Dean was asked what lay at the end of the run, and she described their destination as one big island in one big sea. Boyd asked what kind of cargo had to be hauled halfway around the universe just to be left in a place like that.
Dean told him he did not need to know, and that he should take his pay. Emergency calls then reported a malfunction in cargo hold four, which was Stutz's responsibility, and he answered that he had already checked it. The warning continued as the crew argued over the hold, and it was already too late to contain whatever had gone wrong there. Whatever the Maru was carrying, the company had not trusted the whole crew with its nature.
The Lifeboat
The ship went to condition red, and the crew was called to cargo jettison stations. There was only one lifeboat on the Nova Maru, with two seats and no hypersleep. Captain Foss was already badly hurt, and he took Selkirk with him as a pilot rather than try to save the rest of the crew. The two men launched while the others were still below, leaving Stutz, Lee, Boyd, and Dean behind in the emergency.
In his later prayer, Selkirk said Foss could have saved them all, and that he had saved himself instead. He asked whether that was why the captain's pain had been made so bad, so that Foss would not forget what he had done. On the first night after the crash, Selkirk pleaded for mercy on the injured man even as he tried to keep him alive. Foss remained too badly hurt to fend for himself, and Selkirk believed they would both need each other until salvation came.
An Alien In The Surf
Fire and thunder filled the sky on the night after the crash, a sign Selkirk took as a promise that salvation would come if he was patient. Foss later dragged himself down to the beach and opened fire on something in the surf, shouting at it to die. The thing was already dead, burnt and partly eaten by the creatures in the water. Selkirk recognized it as an Alien, and he understood at last what the Nova Maru had been carrying.
If the cargo had reached the beach, he reasoned, the Nova Maru itself might have come down on the same world. Unless the freighter had been destroyed on impact or had sunk, there would be food, water, and a deep-space distress beacon. He fell to his knees in thanks, believing they had been saved. That night Foss took the last of his drugs and slept, while Selkirk was too excited by the thought of rescue to rest.
Foss's Death
Captain Foss then turned on Selkirk, bursting from cover and firing at him in a frenzy, calling him a bastard as if he no longer knew who was with him. Selkirk tried to stop him, believing the injured captain was possessed, and the struggle ended when he drove a screwdriver through Foss's eye. He told himself he had no choice, and that Foss would have killed him. The captain who had left the rest of the crew to die on the Nova Maru now lay dead on the beach.
With no other food left, Selkirk ate from Foss's body, an act he later called worse than the killing itself. He said his belly was comforted but his mind was not, and he prayed that night for Foss's soul. In the morning he gave thanks, took the captain's rifle and the last of their supplies, and set off to find the wreck. He still believed the landing of the Nova Maru was part of a plan that would lead him to salvation.
Into The Jungle
Deep in the jungle, Selkirk felt more lost than he had ever been in the Backworlds. There, at least, the stars had been reminders of distant humanity, but here strangeness pressed in from every side. He carried Foss's rifle and the last of the beach supplies, and only a compass gave him direction. Time itself seemed to lose its meaning as he walked among huge insects and plants unlike anything he knew.
When Selkirk realized it was the holy Sabbath, he stopped and gave thanks for humankind, animals, and plant life, then killed a creature he later recognized as a frightened native of the world. It was not like the thing on the beach, and he had taken an innocent life on the Sabbath. The days grew longer as his food and water ran out, and he was bitten, stung, and cut as he went on. Faint with hope, he crawled to the crest of a hill, pleaded for salvation as never before, and saw a sign that made his heart leap with gratitude as he searched for the Nova Maru.
The Wreck Of The Nova Maru
The Nova Maru lay in a valley below him, fallen from heaven, with smoke still rising from the wreck. Selkirk was overcome with relief and exhaustion, and even though he believed salvation was at hand, he had to rest. So much had happened since Foss and he had left the ship, and he had already seen too many terrible things. He collapsed near the hull, still carrying the rifle he had taken from the beach.
A fever dream returned Selkirk to the killing of Foss, to the meal that followed, and to the guilt he had already confessed in prayer. He told himself it had been only a dream, then begged to be forgiven, repeating that the captain would have killed him. When he woke, the gun was gone. He was no longer alone at the wreck, though he did not yet know who had found him.
Dean Finds Selkirk
For a moment Selkirk thought he had woken in heaven, but the figure standing over him was First Officer Dean. She asked where Foss was, then said it looked as if Selkirk was the only survivor. She gave him water to wash the taste from his mouth and told him there would be plenty of time for praying once they were off the world. He tried to confess what he had done, but she did not want to hear it.
Dean said the landing had taken time, yet she knew a few emergency routines, and the computer had got the Maru down in one piece. Selkirk was surprised that she had brought the ship in alone. She would not then explain how the others had died, or what had become of the cargo. Soon afterward they saw a frightened family of natives moving through the jungle, and it was clear that something was hunting them.
The Cargo Hunts The Natives
A Xenomorph came through the jungle very fast and killed one of the natives in front of them. Dean told Selkirk not to shoot and to keep quiet, but the sight of the cargo still alive broke his nerve. He cried out, and the creature's attention turned toward them. The jungle around the wreck then seemed to fill with the same hunters, and the two of them had to run.
They fled through the trees while Dean told him to shoot anything that moved, and the pursuit drove them to a waterfall. Selkirk jumped and feared he had come this far only to drown, until he felt Dean's body against his and she held him up, guiding him to safety. When his breath returned, so did his questions about whether the Maru had brought the demons to this world. Dean called it company business and said they should concentrate on getting out.
The Diversion
Dean would only tell him that the Maru's shuttle was still serviceable, and that the way to it passed more of the creatures. She was confident and unafraid, and Selkirk began to think her composure might be another test of his faith. She told him to hide for a few minutes, then gave him a weapon, warned him to stay close, and said she had fixed a diversion. When they reached the shuttle, she said, they would be home free.
The diversion exploded against the wreck of the Nova Maru, and the two of them ran through fire and smoke as the creatures were drawn toward the blast. Selkirk prayed that he could keep up with Dean. In that rush he did not see a wire stretched in their path, and the fall that followed took him down through the ruined ship. He lost Dean in the chaos and plunged into the dark spaces beneath the hull.
The Hive Beneath The Maru
In that long fall Selkirk saw many terrible things, but what waited beneath the wreck seemed to him the pit of hell itself. A Xenomorph Queen filled the chamber, with victims hanging in the dark and eggs gathered below. He later made his way through the silent wreck, dreading death at every turn and begging for guidance. He recognized the central systems console just aft of his own galley, a familiar place now buried in the ruin of the Nova Maru.
The way to the shuttle lay over open ground, and Selkirk had to reach it without Dean. Soon he heard the hum of the shuttle's life-support system and believed she was already safe inside. He hoped she had made it through the diversion and was waiting for him. Then he heard her voice, strangely thicker than before, and saw something on the floor that stopped him before he could answer.
Dean Is Revealed As An Android
What Selkirk saw was not a wounded human being. First Officer Dean had been torn open, and the body that spoke to him was a machine. He would not aid her until she told him why the Maru had brought the demons to this world. Dean said the military wanted the creatures eradicated, but the company wanted reserves of bio-weapons kept under controlled conditions. The planet was no good for terraforming, yet its single landmass and fast-breeding natives made perfect conditions for those reserves. The crew was to leave in the shuttle before release, but Stutz failed, the stasis fields collapsed, and only Foss and Dean had known the truth.
Foss had lost his nerve and tried to save himself, leaving the others no chance. An automatic mayday could not be overridden, and without a human survivor the wreck would have been salvage, which was why Dean had come looking for Selkirk. She wanted him to fly the shuttle into orbit and finish the mission. Selkirk killed her, started the emergency destruction system, and prayed as a creature reached him in the last seconds before the blast. More than four years later, the missionary vessel St. Peter found no life on the diminished landmass of PCW9512, and could not say whether the disaster had been of human or divine origin.
Key Characters
- Selkirk was the cook of the Nova Maru, a man of faith recruited from the Backworlds with the promise of a freehold on a farm planet. Forced into the only lifeboat with Captain Foss, he survived the crash, killed Foss, reached the wreck with First Officer Dean, and destroyed the ship rather than leave the company its reserve.
- Captain Foss commanded the Nova Maru and was one of the two people who knew what the cargo was. He fled in the lifeboat with Selkirk, was badly injured in the crash, later attacked his companion, and was killed on the beach.
- First Officer Dean appeared to Selkirk as the other survivor of the crash and led him toward the ship's shuttle. She was a machine assigned with Foss to deliver the Xenomorph cargo, and she sought a human survivor so the wreck would not be claimed as salvage. Selkirk killed her after the truth came out.
- Stutz was a crew member of the Nova Maru and was responsible for cargo hold four. Dean later said his failure allowed the stasis fields around the cargo to collapse.
- Lee was named by Selkirk among the freighter's crew in the galley and was left aboard when Foss and Selkirk took the only lifeboat.
- Boyd was also named among the crew. He asked what kind of cargo had to be hauled so far to such a destination, and Dean told him to take his pay.
Editions
Aliens: Salvation was published by Dark Horse as a color one-shot in November 1993, with a 47-page story. The later collection Aliens: Salvation and Sacrifice paired it with Peter Milligan and Paul Johnson's Aliens: Sacrifice in March 2001, with a new cover by Mike Mignola. Dark Horse collected it again in Aliens Omnibus Volume 3 in March 2008, alongside Sacrifice, Aliens: Rogue, Aliens: Labyrinth, and Aliens: Advent/Terminus. A deluxe hardcover followed in September 2015, and Marvel later reprinted the story in Aliens: The Original Years Volume 2.
Behind The Scenes
Dave Gibbons wrote the one-shot, and Mike Mignola penciled it and drew the cover. Kevin Nowlan inked the story, Matt Hollingsworth colored it, and Clem Robins lettered it. Anina Bennett and Ryder Windham edited the original edition, and Scott Tice was credited with its design. Dark Horse published Salvation in the same period as Aliens: Colonial Marines and Labyrinth, but the voyage of the Nova Maru stood as a separate story rather than a chapter of those series.
Conclusion
Aliens: Salvation was Dave Gibbons and Mike Mignola's 1993 story of a company cook who survived the loss of the Nova Maru only to learn why the ship had come to PCW9512. Selkirk killed Captain Foss, followed First Officer Dean to the wreck, and discovered that Dean was a machine assigned to seed the world with Xenomorph reserves. He destroyed the ship rather than become the human survivor the company needed to keep the site from being claimed as salvage. Years later, the missionary vessel St. Peter found no life on the diminished landmass.
External Sources
Tag Categories: Alien Comics
