Aliens: The Female War: Plot, Characters & Lore

Aliens: The Female War is a 1993 novel by Steve Perry and S. D. Perry, published by Bantam Spectra in August 1993. It novelized Mark Verheiden and Sam Kieth's Dark Horse comic, first printed as Earth War, and it kept Wilks and Billie after Alien 3 killed Hicks and Newt on screen. The book followed Aliens: Nightmare Asylum with an android Ripley who did not know what she was. They stole the Kurtz from Gateway Station, took the Queen Mother off Xenomorph Prime, and brought her to Earth so the hive there would gather on unused nuclear bombs. The novel ended with Earth girl Amy alive on the Kurtz and with Ripley starting a six-month timer on those bombs.

Plot Summary

Ripley sat with Billie in a Gateway cafeteria and could not remember the years after she left LV-426. The last thing she held onto was a Queen in a processor shaft, a marine, and Newt at a lift on the Sulaco. She woke among Earth refugees six weeks before this story, then spent a month on the station. Gateway held about 17,000 people by then, almost twice what it was built for. A midday shipment of real vegetables from a hydroponic garden packed the dining hall, and the halls stayed quiet because most of the people there had lost someone on Earth.

Billie kept watching Earth broadcasts for a girl named Amy. She had first seen that family at Third Base during Nightmare Asylum. On Gateway the later casts showed her at about twelve or thirteen, with her father.

Ripley Has No Memory After LV-426

Billie had reached Gateway about two weeks after Earth Hive and Nightmare Asylum. She and Ripley both dreamed of a Queen of queens calling her children across space. The early dreams showed the mother gathering her children, and later ones showed where she was. Wilks dreamed of Rim and of Billie, not of that mother. A Gateway hacker named Leslie Elliot, an old friend of Wilks, pulled a week of psych visits and found 37 people who had heard the same voice. Six of them could describe a star system well enough for a map. Ripley wanted that mother brought to Earth. If the planet's Xenomorphs all walked to one place, unused bombs laid by a scientist named Orona could finish them.

They spoke to twelve of the dreamers and put ten of those names in front of the military. Falk came in after a late military cast. His wife Marla had been killed on Earth, and he wanted the hunt more than a station posting. Keith Dunston taught hand-to-hand in a Gateway dojo and had no field record, but he signed on with the rest.

They Steal The Kurtz

Wilks took the files to General Peters in a warm office with pastel paintings and synthetic leather chairs. Peters read the names, called the trip unauthorized, and would not approve another volunteer run. He treated Wilks as a troublemaker and kept military hardware under his hand. Ripley told the people who had signed on that asking again would waste the days they had left. They stole the military freighter Kurtz instead, using Peters's own access code to sign out weapons and to clear the pad as Operation Arrowhead. The ship could land in atmosphere. Its hold was lined with carbslip for toxic sludge and could take thousands of cubic liters, which they meant for the Queen Mother.

Captain McQuade, Brewster, Carvey, Lieutenant Charlene Adcox, Ana Moto, Falk, Dunston, Tully, and Doctor Jon Jones went with Ripley, Wilks, and Billie. Leslie stayed on Gateway to watch traffic and to hide a map that put their destination weeks farther out than it was. The Kurtz carried an APC and food paste good for years. McQuade and Ripley cut the two power loaders into four lighter suits before they slept.

Landing On The Homeworld

The Kurtz came down through thick cloud onto a wet, hot world. The air was short of oxygen, gravity sat higher than Earth's, and water covered most of the surface. Wind over the rocks made the landing a hard job. Tully's sensors put the nest in the hottest stretch, a ring of fleshy orbs in a shallow poisoned sea, with a larger sphere in the middle. Brewster set the APC down and lifted back above the weather. Wilks drove toward the ring to look, not to park on the nest itself. The treads hit something underwater, bent an axle strut, and they rocked free less than a hundred meters from the nearest orb.

The orb was pink-gray, veined, and about as long as the APC. A thick cord ran from it to a larger sphere farther in. Billie wanted to back off and send a probe. The robots they had could not do the job, and Falk argued that looking was why they had come. Carvey, Dunston, and Falk walked out in the rebuilt loader suits. Wind gusts hit more than a hundred kilometers an hour, and the water stank like spoiled food. A drone bigger than an Earth adult Xenomorph tore out of the nearest orb, lifted Carvey by the helmet, and tore his throat out. Dunston's carbine jammed when a second drone landed on him. Its inner jaw punched through the steel head armor. Falk made it back inside. More drones lifted the transport, cracked its cooling, and started the reactor toward a blowout.

They Capture The Queen Mother

Ripley left the wrecked APC on foot while Wilks, Billie, Adcox, and Falk tried to reach a pickup point the Kurtz could use. The local wind dropped, and she called the ship down over the nest. The Queen Mother climbed from the center orb. She was about eight meters of body, with as much tail again, four arms, and a wet comb. Ripley hung from the open hold and shot the smaller orbs until the mother climbed after her. A tail blow knocked Ripley out. Moto sealed the inner door.

Brewster reported a force-three hurricane over the APC wreck and a valley too tight for a safe lift. He wanted to leave the squad and get clear before the reactor went. Ripley came up from the hold in the top half of a loader suit and ordered him back. They crushed drones under the hull to reach the four people left on the ground. Adcox fell in the water a few meters short of the bay. A drone put a claw through her neck before the lock closed. The APC detonated after they lifted and threw the Kurtz hard to one side. Carvey, Dunston, and Adcox were dead, and the Queen Mother was in the hold.

Ripley Learns She Is An Android

They delayed hypersleep for a few days so the crew could eat and work instead of dropping straight into the tanks. Jones treated Ripley's head wound and ran a full scan because the blow should have killed her. Her blood had no RH factor. The color looked human, and he found no ports he could plug into. She had thought she was A-positive and had stayed away from doctors on purpose. She quit the lead and warned Wilks she might be programmed to turn on them when they reached Earth. Billie compared her to Mitch Bueller, the wrecked combat android from the earlier books, and later talked her back into running the mission.

Ripley sat two days at the hold door with a carbine while the others slept. The Queen Mother screamed and hammered the carbslip for a few minutes, then went quiet. Ripley did not dream, but after they slept the mother sent the rest of the crew a pull toward the release. Wilks woke with a false calm, walked down to the hold, and reached for the button. The pull turned into a command to open the door, and he took his hand back. Billie heard Mitch call from inside the chamber, then Adcox, then Ripley. She stopped when she remembered Adcox was dead and that the Queen Mother was the thing behind the door. Wilks kept them in the sleep room until they talked. Billie, Moto, McQuade, Jones, and Brewster had all dreamed of opening that lock.

Gateway Sends A Ship After Them

Outside Gateway sensor range they called Leslie on a scrambled channel. Official traffic called them subversive and mentally unstable. Warrants were out for the whole crew. Peters had taken the blame for letting the Kurtz go, and the fake map meant Gateway did not expect them for another six weeks. Earth casts had failed for weeks. The last tape of that Earth girl Amy was more than a month old. It came from a microchip plant in Northern California. She was with her father and a man named Mordecai. Her uncle Paul had gone for food two weeks before that recording and had not come back. Mordecai thought nesting material had heated the ground, and the drones had started grouping and staying quiet.

Major Stone ordered the Kurtz to open its modem so Gateway could fly the ship in. Captain McQuade refused. Wilks told Stone they had the Queen Mother aboard and were taking her to Earth. The cutter Adams, under Commander Hsu, was faster than the Kurtz. It hit them with an electromagnetic pulse and locked a magnetic tow. Billie had them shut the ship down, wait for the cable, then power up and ram the Adams's drive surfaces. The cable tore free, and the Adams flew in circles while the Kurtz fell toward Earth.

They Leave The Queen At Orona's Mountain

The Kurtz crossed wrecked cities and put the Queen Mother into a cave near Orona's mountain in the northwestern woods. They hoped the dark would keep her there while they flew a few minutes west to the bunker. That order was a mistake. The drones started moving toward the mountain faster than the crew had planned, and the bombs were not wired when the first groups closed in. The painted gate had been melted open months earlier, and the barracks were empty. Someone had pulled the sequential wiring apart on purpose so the hidden bombs, some of them kilometers away, would not all fire.

Tully and Moto rebuilt most of the board. Ripley miswired one panel and had to pull it loose and start that stretch over. The finished relay would start a six-month clock once the Kurtz sent a signal from a safe range. That delay was for drones on the far side of the planet, who would need months to walk or swim in. Fanatics from the trees shot at the gate, wounded Falk, and died when Wilks played dead and then fired. Those Chosen wanted live hosts for the mother they called She.

Billie Goes After Amy

Billie took a landhopper from the pad and flew south to the Endotech Micro plant on Amy's last coordinates. Ripley and Wilks told her there was no time, and she went anyway. Amy's father met her in a dark hall. Fanatics had taken the girl two days earlier and had killed Mordecai when he tried to stop them. He had been trying to reach a basement nest at the east end of the plant. Most of the drone guards had run north toward the mountain after ships passed overhead.

Billie and the old man went down resin-coated stairs into that basement, killed the leftover drones, and found no Amy among the webbed hosts. A dying cultist on the wall had an implant in him, and he told them the Chosen had flown their hosts to the holy land. That was the mountain where they had left the Queen Mother. The first wave of drones reached the trees, and the Kurtz had to lift. Brewster circled back when Billie's flier returned with the old man. Ripley went with Billie to a fanatic ship parked east of the cave. They found Amy alive under a pile of dead passengers. Drones tore into the hull. Billie shot one on a ruptured fuel tank, and the landhopper caught fire. They stole the crippled Coleman, sheared off treetops, and crashed short of the pad. Jones checked Amy for a Facehugger implant and found her clean.

They Start The Bomb Timer

The Kurtz climbed until Orona's dish could take a signal. Ripley sat at the keys with Tully, Wilks, and McQuade nearby. Any four-letter command on the right frequency would start the clock. She typed Life and sent it. That pulse armed a six-month timer on the mountain bombs. Amy and her father sat with Billie in medlab. The Queen Mother waited in the cave for the Earth's drones. The book does not show the explosions.

Gateway And The Kurtz

Gateway sat in L-5 orbit as a cold stack of tubes, cubes, and extra refugee modules. The newer rooms used cheap lunar metal and exposed plastic, and the air never quite warmed. Wilks spent his days in the small gyms. Leslie Elliot did data entry after a drop in grade, and she was the one who opened the psych files and later hid a destination map from Peters.

The Kurtz was a bullet-shaped military freighter that could land in atmosphere. The upper deck held crew rooms, a mess, a gym, and a med center. Below that sat computers, an APC bay, and the coated hold they meant for the Queen Mother. McQuade and Ripley cut the ship's two power loaders into four lighter suits. The hold doors got extra braces before they landed on the homeworld.

The Queen Mother On The Homeworld

The dreams grew sharper as the Kurtz closed on the planet. Adcox saw a rounded nest in warm, shallow water. Dunston counted hundreds of drones around a body larger and stronger than an Earth Queen, and Jones put her at the hottest stretch of the world. Tully's board showed thin air, dirty lakes, and wind over rock that made a landing a hard job.

The orbs sat in a circle about twenty meters apart, the center one about thirty meters high, with jelly leaking from their cores. The drones that came out of them were faster than the Earth breed and strong enough to crumple steel head armor. The comic put crested Palatines around that nest, an elite royal guard for the Queen Mother, and this novel does not name that caste. Thousands later ran past the crippled APC toward the mother when she called.

Android Ripley

Jones needed a microscope to see what she was. The sample had the right color, and he found no mechanical ports. Ripley could not open her own program. She remembered the Nostromo android as a killer and Bishop as someone she did not trust, so she treated her own body as a possible trap. Billie treated Mitch's love as real, not a glitch, and treated this Ripley as the woman from the old casts.

The crew took the news badly at first. They kept her in the lead because she had pulled the Queen Mother aboard and turned the Kurtz around for the squad. At Orona's gate she fired on the fanatics, which showed she was not bound by the First Law that had stopped Bueller from shooting men. She also knew the bunker wiring without ever having taken an electronics course. Billie talked her back into finishing the job after that.

Earth And Orona's Bombs

Orona had been a government scientist. He laid a chain of hidden bombs through the northwestern mountains and died before anyone fired them. McQuade had never heard the name, which bothered Ripley until Wilks and Moto confirmed the same story. The bunker sat behind a painted gate on a cleared pad with barracks, a mess, two fliers, and an APC. The armory door on one branch had stayed sealed. The control room on the other had been stripped.

From the air the Kurtz saw wrecked cities, empty houses, and a few armed groups dragging chained people. Leslie's last Earth files showed the drones grouping and staying quiet weeks earlier, about the time the Kurtz took the mother. Ripley set the delay at six months so a drone twenty thousand kilometers away would have time to reach the mountain, eat, and rest.

Key Characters

• Ripley was an android copy who woke on Earth with no memory after LV-426. She stole the Kurtz, took the Queen Mother by herself, learned what she was from Jones, and sent the signal that started the bomb timer.
• Wilks was the Rim Colonial Marine who had pulled Billie out as a child. He drove the APC on the homeworld, held Orona's gate, and took the lead when Ripley quit.
• Billie was the Rim girl the military had failed to wipe. She planned how the Kurtz would ram the Adams, stole a flier for Amy, and got the child off the Coleman wreck with Ripley.
• Amy was an Earth girl Billie had watched on old broadcasts since Third Base. Fanatics took her from Endotech Micro, and Billie found her alive on a fanatic ship near the mountain.
• Amy's father survived the plant with her until the kidnapping. He flew back with Billie and waited on the Kurtz while Ripley went after the girl.
• Leslie Elliot was a Gateway hacker and an old friend of Wilks. She stayed behind, hid their destination, and later warned them about warrants and the Adams.
• Charlene Adcox was a lieutenant who had dreamed of the nest in water. She died during the homeworld pickup when a drone put a claw through her neck.
• Dylan Brewster flew the Kurtz, lost Carvey on the scout, and spent a night with Billie before they landed. He turned the ship around when Ripley refused to leave the squad.
• Tom Carvey and Keith Dunston died at the orbs. Carvey was Brewster's closest friend. Dunston had been a teacher.
• Falk went after the Queen Mother after Marla's death on Earth, survived the orbs, and took two gunshot wounds at the bunker.
• McQuade, Moto, Tully, and Jones kept the Kurtz flying, the hold sealed, the bombs wired, and the wounded alive.
• The Queen Mother called dreamers across space, climbed into the Kurtz when Ripley wrecked her nest, and waited in the northwestern cave for the Earth's drones.

Place In The Bantam Line

The Female War closed Bantam Spectra's first three Dark Horse Science Fiction Novels, after Earth Hive in October 1992 and Nightmare Asylum in May 1993. Steve Perry wrote the first two alone. He wrote this one with his daughter Stephani Perry, credited on the book as Stephani Perry and later as S. D. Perry. Those three books are the Wilks, Billie, and Bueller trilogy, also called the Earth Hive trilogy or the Earth War trilogy.

The first comic printing used Hicks and Newt after Aliens. After Alien 3, later comic printings renamed them Wilks and Billie and recast Ripley as an android. No edition of this novel used the Hicks and Newt names. The Perrys wrote it after the rename, so the book uses Wilks and Billie throughout, and this Ripley is a copy built from records. Bueller does not appear except in Billie's memory and in the Queen's sleep dreams.

Titan Books reprinted The Female War with Earth Hive and Nightmare Asylum as The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume One on 19 January 2016. Titan lists that paperback at 832 pages. Perry and S. D. Perry later wrote Aliens vs. Predator: Prey, and Steve Perry later wrote Predator: Turnabout.

Continuity

Later Earth War material and the Alien timeline put the Gateway theft and the Earth landing in 2193. The book never names the homeworld. Ripley, Wilks, and the crew treat it as the planet the dreams point to after the earlier bombing failed to end the species. The grown aliens match the usual lifecycle, with acid blood, eggs, and hosts checked for implantation. The drones here are larger than the Earth breed and can take loader armor apart with their inner jaws.

This novel ends when Ripley starts the six-month timer, and neither this book nor the Female War comic shows those mountain bombs going off. John Arcudi's short comic Aliens: The Alien, published in November 1991, picks up after that and shows Earth as a nuclear wreck, with a Space Jockey ship changing the climate from orbit. Aliens: Genocide, which followed later that year, treats Orona's bombs as the strike that killed most of the Earth hive, then jumps years ahead to a rebuilt planet.

Ripley's missing years after LV-426 are the novel's way of lining her up with Alien 3 without putting Hicks and Newt on the page. Jones's blood test, the missing First Law, and the buried electronics knowledge are how the book states that she is a synthetic. Amy is the same Earth girl whose old casts reached Third Base in Nightmare Asylum. Ripley's daughter Amanda was also called Amy in this book, but the girl Billie hunted lived on Earth with her father. In this novel she was about twelve or thirteen, a few years older than the child Billie first saw on those broadcasts.

Editions

Bantam Spectra released the American paperback in August 1993 in the Dark Horse Science Fiction Novels line. The copyright page uses that month. The text runs 293 pages. Dave Dorman, also credited as David Dorman, painted the cover. Millennium published a British paperback in June 1994 at 293 pages. Titan's 2016 omnibus reprints the novel with the two books before it, and no film or game adaptation of this text followed.

Behind The Scenes

Steve Perry dedicated the book to Dianne and to Little Flower. Stephani Perry dedicated it to her friends, her mother and brother, and to her father as collaborator. The epigraph is an old cavalry line about capture: if the Indians take you, do not let them give you to the women. The title page says the story is based on the Fox films, the designs of H. R. Giger, and the graphic novel by Verheiden and Kieth.

Compared with Verheiden and Kieth's comic, the novel keeps the stolen ship, the homeworld grab, the Earth lure, and the unused bombs. The comic put crested Palatines around the homeworld nest, and this book uses larger drones and no named royal-guard caste. The comic's first run used Hicks, Newt, and a human Ripley, and this book never does. Perry and S. D. Perry add Jones's blood test, Ripley's refusal to lead after the scan, Billie's night with Brewster, the Kurtz ramming the Adams, the Endotech Micro side trip, and Amy's father on the Kurtz. Ripley walking into Gateway at the end of Nightmare Asylum is the start of this novel in both versions.

Conclusion

Aliens: The Female War is Steve Perry and S. D. Perry's 1993 Bantam novel of Mark Verheiden and Sam Kieth's Dark Horse comic. It follows android Ripley, Wilks, and Billie from Gateway to the homeworld and back to Earth with the Queen Mother in the Kurtz hold. The novel ended with Amy alive on the Kurtz and with Ripley starting a six-month timer on Orona's unused bombs.

External Sources

• The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume One at Titan Books
• The Female War at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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