Aliens vs. Predator: Pursuit: Comic Overview
Aliens vs. Predator: Pursuit is an eight-page story in Aliens vs. Predator Annual #1, written by Ian Edginton and penciled by Mel Rubi. The annual is dated July 7, 1999. Captain Lotus Hernandez of the Adelaide and Bombay Holding Alliance lost her unit on LK176 while the team hunted Eloise, an android-Xenomorph hybrid. Yautja hunters had set a trap for Eloise. She and her brood broke that hunt, and she warned the Alliance to leave her people alone.
Plot Summary
The Inquiry
Lotus Hernandez stood before a board of inquiry of the Adelaide and Bombay Holding Alliance. The board wanted the loss of her whole unit on LK176 explained, and the account that followed was her retelling of the events on that planet. Her team was one of several sent to take the subject back. A report of squatters on that world matched Eloise and the people with her, and Lotus went after the report at once.
LK176
LK176 was a grade-nine colony world, with heavy tropical forest that Lotus took as good ground for a hidden fight. She had expected the squatters to resist. Her squad moved under the trees in the rain, with a small craft overhead, looking for the people named in the squatter report. What they walked into was worse than a fight with settlers.
The Bait
The people hanging in the trees were lepers, Eloise's followers, and they were alive. Their throats had been crushed so they could not call out. Then the hunters struck the squad. Lotus had heard old stories about aliens who hunted people for sport and had taken those stories for tales. The hunters were real, and they killed her men. One cut her face open, and it took a full clip to bring that hunter down. She understood then that the hanging people were bait, and that the trap had been laid for someone else.
Eloise
The trap had been laid for Eloise, the android-alien hybrid the Alliance had sent the squad to take. She came out of the jungle with adult Xenomorphs at her heels after the hunters had already hit the squad, and Lotus called her a harder enemy than the unit had come to fight. Eloise gave the creatures no order. They ran with her by instinct while Lotus stayed down in the leaves, her face cut open from the hunter, and watched them go past.
The Brood
The brood hit the hunters in the trees where the ambush had been set. Adult Xenomorphs pulled a hunter down while Eloise moved through the fight, and the hunt that had killed Lotus's squad broke up around her. The Yautja had been more than her men could handle, and they were not ready for Eloise and the creatures with her. Her unit did not come out of that jungle.
The Warning
Eloise was a new life-form, not a product the Alliance could file away. She had escaped with a swarm of Xenomorphs and the other test subjects, the infected lepers she called her people and her children. Their illness slowed the Chestburster in them, and they lived with the embryo inside them. Dorsal tubes ran along her back.
Lotus had a rifle on her and expected to die, and she never saw Eloise move. Eloise spoke in a quiet human voice and gave her a message for the board. The Alliance was to leave Eloise and her people alone. They had been chased from system to system, and that running was how they had met the hunters, who wanted Eloise for a hunt of their own. If another unit came after her, she would take it as a war the Alliance could not win. Lotus was alive to carry that warning, and she told the board she believed her.
Key Characters
- Lotus Hernandez led one of the Alliance teams sent after Eloise. She lost her unit in the trap on LK176, carried Eloise's warning back to the board, and told them she believed it.
- Eloise was the android-Xenomorph hybrid the Alliance wanted back. She came out of the jungle on LK176 with her brood, broke the hunters' trap, and warned that another unit sent after her would be a war.
- The Yautja hunters strung Eloise's leper followers in the trees as bait. They killed Lotus's squad, and Eloise's brood pulled them down.
Editions
Dark Horse Comics published Aliens vs. Predator: Pursuit in full color, as an eight-page story in Aliens vs. Predator Annual #1, dated July 7, 1999. Ian Edginton wrote it. Mel Rubi penciled it, Rob Hunter inked it, Dave Stewart colored it, and Sean Konot lettered it. Daniel Torres drew the title illustration, and Stewart colored that painting. Philip Amara edited the annual, and Jeremy Perkins designed it. The story was later reprinted in Aliens vs. Predator Omnibus Volume 2.
Behind The Scenes
Pursuit continues Eloise from Aliens: Purge, which Ian Edginton also wrote. He had written Aliens vs. Predator: Eternal the year before. The story was one of five in the annual, with Hell-Bent, Old Secrets, Lefty's Revenge, and Chained to Life and Death. Daniel Torres drew the title illustration with Dave Stewart, separate from Mel Rubi's story pages.
Conclusion
Aliens vs. Predator: Pursuit is Ian Edginton's 1999 Dark Horse story, penciled by Mel Rubi. It follows Captain Lotus Hernandez from an Alliance inquiry into the loss of her unit on LK176, and it ends with Eloise's warning that another pursuit would be a war, and with Lotus telling the board she believed her.
External Sources
- Aliens vs. Predator Annual #1 (Dark Horse Comics)
- Eloise, the Alien/Synthetic Hybrid (Alien vs. Predator Galaxy)
Tag Categories: Avp Comics
