Aliens vs. Predator: The Web

Published: September 15 and October 20, 1999
Writer: Ian Edginton
Artist: Derek Thompson and Brian O'Connell
Lettering: Clem Robins
Cover: David Michael Beck
Editor: Randy Stradley
Designer: Darcy Hockett
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Format: Two-part story, black and white
Setting: Tempus/Sipas Orion

Aliens vs. Predator: The Web is a two-part story in Dark Horse Presents, written by Ian Edginton and drawn by Derek Thompson and Brian O'Connell. Part 1 shipped in issue 146 on September 15, 1999, and part 2 in issue 147 on October 20, 1999. The freighter Herakles followed a computer distress call down to an unnamed planetoid. Robert Sheldon, who had survived the killing of his family on Ryushi, held a Xenomorph hive there as bait for Yautja hunters. Captain Rebeck got Icart back to the ship, and a neutron blast killed them both while Sheldon set the trap again.

Plot Summary

The Herakles Adrift

The Herakles was off the commercial lanes. The navigation computer was dead, so Captain Rebeck and the crew had no record of how far they had drifted in hypersleep, and the exterior sensors were full of false contacts. Icart argued with him over how much of the ship's money went to maintenance, and he refused to discuss it. Cord stepped in and stopped the fight, which she took as cabin fever after too long aboard. A computer distress beacon interrupted them. He did not intend to rescue the sender. He wanted the computer that was transmitting, and he had Jude fire the thrusters and take the ship down.

The Derelict Factory

Captain Rebeck landed the Herakles beside a derelict the crew took for an orbital factory, and it had been on that ground for years. The crew took the scrap for a fortune. A crew member was reading multiple traces and could not get a fix, while the distress signal stayed strong about thirty kilometers out. Xenomorphs caught Rebeck, Jude, Panzer, and the others in the open before they could move on. An adult Xenomorph killed Jude. Panzer was killed at a rusted hatch while Rebeck and the rest of the crew forced their way inside. The Xenomorphs did not follow them down to the next deck, where a light was burning, and the survivors went toward it.

Sheldon In The Tank

Robert Sheldon wired into a spider-legged machine and suspended in a tank

A pheromone field held the Xenomorphs out of the inner complex, so the corridor Rebeck's crew walked was quiet. Robert Sheldon rarely had guests. The halls were dressed with fittings taken from old estates on Earth. At the end of the walk he was waiting in a tank of liquid, his body wired into a machine on spider legs. He introduced himself, and Rebeck recognized the name of a multi-billionaire industrialist whose public face did not match the body in the tank. Sheldon put up a hologram of a healthy man, the face he used so investors would not have to look at the illness. He had lived in that house for close to thirty years.

Sheldon had been born on Ryushi, on a Chigusa Corporation colony. His parents had wanted open country and a new life, and Yautja hunters killed them. Hunters had seeded the colony with Xenomorphs, and only a handful of people escaped. He made his fortune by his own intellect and spent decades paying mercenaries to hunt the killers. After he fell ill, he built the planetoid trap.

The Hunters Arrive

Yautja hunters fighting Xenomorphs on the ground outside Sheldon's complex

An alarm told Sheldon that more visitors had arrived. He had expected the hunters. They had followed the Herakles, and the distress call had drawn the freighter in with them. He watched their fight with the Xenomorphs on a screen and waited a few minutes before he used the device, so the two sides could fight.

The factory was the trap. Hunters followed a call for help onto ground stocked with Xenomorphs, and a low-yield neutron device was set to burn everything outside the walls. The complex was shielded, and the plants on the planetoid absorbed the radiation. Sheldon's drones reseeded the site from a Xenomorph Queen in the lower levels, and he had a new set of eggs ready every six months. He described the hive as an ant farm.

Escape To The Herakles

A Yautja hunter holding a Xenomorph overhead while the Herakles crew runs for the ship

Sheldon would not let Rebeck's crew leave, because a report from the Herakles would expose the complex. He intended to fit the survivors into his drones. The machines in the hall carried human heads taken from people who had landed there before. Cord led the others toward a hatch, and a drone took her in the corridor. Icart turned back for her. Rebeck would not, and he pushed Icart on toward the hatch.

Rebeck and Icart had to cross the open ground, where Yautja and Xenomorphs were killing each other, before they reached the Herakles. Rebeck closed the hatch, put the ship's remaining power into the thrusters, and lifted off with Icart. Sheldon watched the freighter climb away from the complex.

The Neutron Blast

Rebeck and Icart had not flown clear when the charge went off. In the cockpit he apologized, and she accepted it. The neutron blast destroyed the Herakles and killed them both, and it killed the hunters and the Xenomorphs outside the shield. The blast left a human skull and a Yautja skull in the wreckage.

Sheldon was inside the shield. His drones started seeding the ground again from the Queen, with eggs in the lower hive, on the same six-month cycle. He concluded that he had gone on with the hunt because he enjoyed it. The planetoid was where he meant to stay, and he set the web between the stars again.

Key Characters

Robert Sheldon was the child who escaped the hunter attack that killed his parents on Ryushi. After he made his fortune, illness put him in a tank on an unnamed planetoid, where he baited Yautja with a Xenomorph queen and refused to let his guests leave.
Captain Rebeck commanded the Herakles. He wanted the distress computer rather than a rescue, refused to go back for Cord, and died with Icart in the neutron blast.
Icart pressed Rebeck over the maintenance money, turned back when a drone took Cord, and reached the cockpit with him. She died in the same blast.
Cord broke up the fight on the bridge and led the break for the hatch. One of Sheldon's drones took her in the corridor.
Jude fired the thrusters on the way down and was killed by an adult Xenomorph in the open outside the factory.
Panzer was killed at a rusted hatch while the rest of the crew forced their way inside the wreck.

Editions

Dark Horse Comics published Aliens vs. Predator: The Web in black and white, across two issues of Dark Horse Presents. Issue 146 is dated September 15, 1999, and issue 147 is dated October 20, 1999. Ian Edginton wrote both parts. Derek Thompson and Brian O'Connell drew them. Clem Robins lettered them. David Michael Beck painted the cover of issue 146. Randy Stradley edited that issue, and Darcy Hockett designed it. The story was later reprinted in Aliens vs. Predator Omnibus Volume 1.

Behind The Scenes

The child in the Ryushi flashback is Bobby Sheldon, from the first Aliens vs. Predator comic. Hunters killed his parents when he was eleven, and he escaped with a handful of other colonists. The Web does not date his return. He had lived in the complex for close to thirty years, after decades of hiring mercenaries, and the illness led him to build the neutron trap.

Ian Edginton wrote Aliens: Rogue, and then Aliens vs. Predator: Eternal, before this story. The Web ran in an anthology, so David Michael Beck's painting is the Dark Horse Presents #146 cover, shared with the other stories in that issue. The first page is a star chart labeling the region Tempus and Sipas Orion, with the planetoid marked unknown. The ship in the story is the Herakles.

Conclusion

Aliens vs. Predator: The Web is Ian Edginton's 1999 Dark Horse story, drawn by Derek Thompson and Brian O'Connell. It follows Robert Sheldon from the Ryushi child to the man in the tank, then ends with the Herakles destroyed, Rebeck and Icart dead with the hunters outside the shield, and the neutron trap set for the next ship.