Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War: Novel Plot & Lore
Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War is a 2022 novel by Weston Ochse and Yvonne Navarro, published by Titan Books on 16 August 2022 in the UK and 6 September 2022 in the US. It followed a Yautja blooding hunt on LV-363, a rift world where a cartel forced addicts to harvest the narcotic flower Khatura. The seeder Ar'Wen planted Xenomorph eggs in those rifts, and some hosts were the local winged insectoids. The hunt produced flying hybrids the hunters called Xenowings, killed most of the party, and ended with hunting captain Ca'toll taking three living young bloods back toward Yautja Prime.
Plot Summary
The novel follows three groups on LV-363. Ar'Wen seeded the rifts and stayed to settle a score with Ca'toll. Three hunting captains brought nine unblooded for a blooding after a mothership dropped them at the edge of the system. Cartel boss Murray ran a harvest camp on the rim, with mercenaries Shrapnel and Margo lowering addicts such as Enid, Khaleed, and Fetch into the flowers.
Seeding LV-363
Humans called the world LV-363. The Yautja treated it as a rift world, the surface split by deep gashes, and the elders chose it for a hunt because the local mammals and primates could host embryos. Senior xenobiologists on the homeworld also wanted to test a theory that the apex insectoids, later called riftwings, might produce a mutation. Those flyers sat at the top of the food chain, held back only by a microphage that slowed their hunger.
Ar'Wen had seeded four worlds before this one. He placed the eggs, set a beacon, hid his ship, and then read the hunt manifest and stayed. Fifteen years earlier a trusted partner had left him broken on another planet, and he meant to take that debt out of the party that was coming.
He also found humans already on the rock. Scattered groups collected fuchsia pollen from Khatura along the upper rims. Ar'Wen treated them as extra hosts if the hunt needed them, then went back to watching the unblooded arrive.
The Harvest Camp
Murray ran the camp for a cartel contact he messaged as Scar Face Major. The addicts harvested under locked masks that filtered the pollen. Shrapnel, a former Colonial Marine in black-market armor, carried an M41A pulse rifle and shot riftwings off the cables. Margo, another former Marine, worked the same rim with a shotgun.
Khaleed had once been a Weyland-Yutani officer. A vacation party put him on Khatura, and the cartel later used him as property on a cable. He unlocked his mask, overdosed on raw pollen, and later died when a juvenile Xenomorph climbed his line, ignored the metal mask, and tore into his chest. Enid saw the kill from her own net and was hauled up screaming about a second figure in armor hanging on its own cable.
Murray asked the cartel for a withdrawal, and Scar Face Major refused. Worker supply was treated as unlimited, and the harvest was to continue. After Margo went down to look at Khaleed's remains, a Xenomorph caught her cable, and its acid blood burned her legs badly enough that medic Jackson took her out of the operation.
The Blooding Party
Ny'ytap commanded the hunt ship that landed in a clearing, cloaked, and moved supplies half a kilometre toward the nearest rift. He had been a Battlemaster, then dropped to elite captain after an acid scar from his own blooding, and the elders had put him on the training circuit instead of the clan-leader path his father and grandfather had held. Ca'toll and the younger captain T'U'Sa each took three unblooded.
All twelve wore the clan symbol of the Judone Tree. Ny'ytap's group wore jet black. T'U'Sa's colors were black and green. Ca'toll, a female hunting captain, wore red, gray, and white, and her three students were the female Hetah, the large Ptah'Ra, and the thick-waisted Sta'kta.
Ny'ytap's wards were Vai'ke, son of a clan leader, the bully Cau'dki, and the small, quiet Ba'sta. T'U'Sa chose Stea'Pua, U'Brea'Sua, and T'See'Ka for speed. The captains could cloak. The unblooded could not, by clan order, and were expected to survive while being seen.
Ny'ytap found an ion trace and a human ship near the seeded eggs. He ordered the party to avoid the humans and not interfere if a Xenomorph attacked them. Ca'toll spotted an armored man with a weapon on the rim during a tree-running drill, then left him alone. The captains treated the riftwings as a test they would not mention to the young.
First Kills In The Rift
Ca'toll took her three down the wall and found a juvenile Xenomorph already hunting rodents on the floor. It climbed Sta'kta's cable, then jumped onto Khaleed's net and killed him while Shrapnel's shots missed. Ca'toll left that kill and led her students along the wall past unhatched eggs, froze one with nitrogen sprayers, and sent it up in a non-acid net. When another juvenile came at them, she killed it with a combistick and wristblades, then took the head as a first trophy.
On the ship she thawed that egg in an isolation cube and caught the Facehugger in midair. She then put a local deer-like quadruped in with it, let the parasite lock on, and killed both to show that the host could not be saved once implantation started. T'U'Sa watched from the corridor and walked away laughing. Later he made his three fight over a combistick, then took them into the rift after a live riftwing dove at U'Brea'Sua and T'U'Sa cut it apart.
Xenowings
T'U'Sa found a riftwing that had already taken a Facehugger. He wanted a flying Xenomorph as prey. On a later descent a Xenomorph charged the group, T'See'Ka shoved Stea'Pua aside, and T'See'Ka took the kill on the stolen spear. T'U'Sa punched him for the theft, then a winged hybrid the young called a Xenowing came down through the canopy.
T'U'Sa's shoulder cannon missed, and a tail dragged U'Brea'Sua until Stea'Pua cut that tail free and kept it. A second Xenowing smashed T'U'Sa into the floor, wrapped him in its wings, and began to feed. T'See'Ka and U'Brea'Sua fled up the wall, and Stea'Pua cut one wing and followed them rather than die over the body.
Ny'ytap made T'See'Ka answer for leaving a hunt leader, then took Ba'sta and Stea'Pua back down at night and carried T'U'Sa's wrecked body out. He later gave every remaining student a combistick. Ca'toll absorbed T'U'Sa's three and struck T'See'Ka down when he claimed equality. She held their blooding until she decided they had earned it.
The Camp Attack
Xenomorphs multiplied on the floor through eggmorphing after no Queen appeared. They climbed the walls, fought riftwings in the Khatura nets, and went wild for a short time when red pollen covered them. A Xenowing took the merc Clayton off the rim. Enid dropped to the floor and hid in a cave too narrow for an adult Xenomorph. Fetch, a former casino counter who had been hooked on a Weyland-Yutani station, climbed out, was saved when a plasma bolt cut a Xenomorph off his tree, then fell back into the rift and hid under a bush.
At night the hive surrounded the Yautja forward camp. Plasmacasters and combisticks cut the first wave down, then a larger Xenomorph dropped into the circle and Ptah'Ra took its head with wristblades. Cau'dki, Hetah, and U'Brea'Sua died in that fight. The survivors followed a wounded giant toward the human camp, saw three Xenomorph corpses hung and beaten, and watched the hive hit the tents. Ca'toll treated it as not their fight and took her people back.
Shrapnel emptied rifles through the tents, then chased Murray to the cartel ship. Murray locked him out. Shrapnel killed one Xenomorph at the hatch, burned his legs in the blood, and went down a harvest cable into a cave. Khatura dust on his face put him under. Enid was already in the same hole.
Ny'ytap Taken
The remaining hunters took the three dead unblooded to their ship and held a farewell. Ny'ytap had his bio-helmet off when a Xenowing came out of the trees, hooked his neck, and carried him toward the rift. He cut the creature's head off in the air, and both fell. A tree branch impaled him above the floor, and later a Xenowing landed on his chest and finished him while he was still moving.
Ca'toll sent Vai'ke, Stea'Pua, and T'See'Ka down for the body. They came back empty-handed. She struck them and sent them again, then led a second descent when Xenowings and wall-climbers hit the cables. Sta'kta jumped onto a Xenowing that had Ptah'Ra, carved a wing out, and split its head as they fell. The hybrid's body broke his landing, and he lived.
The Cave
Enid and Shrapnel found a second chamber behind their hole. It was a riftwing nest, the floor thick with droppings, the walls packed with white sacs, and a bloated mother hanging from the ceiling. A living mucus strand seized Enid's leg. When a newborn came out, both humans went under the mother's control and tucked it into a wall hollow.
A Xenomorph came through the larger tunnel, killed the mother, and broke that control. Shrapnel put bone and a knife into it, lost an arm to acid, and gave Enid his cargo-door card. She climbed out while he shoved the ruined arm down the Xenomorph's throat and tore it from the inside until both of them were gone.
On the cartel ship, a juvenile that had slipped under the infrared beams killed Murray at an exterior hatch. His remains later held that door open just enough for another small Xenomorph to be waiting inside.
The Rift Floor
Ca'toll planted a plasmacaster on the floor and had the young pass it down the cables to Ptah'Ra. In the close fight Vai'ke pushed Sta'kta into the weapon's blast and cut him in half. Ca'toll marked that as murder. A large Xenowing then lifted her, she sheared its front legs, and she killed it on the ground by sliding under the head and cutting the neck with her combistick.
Fetch watched from a bush, saw a cloaked hunter behind a tree, and walked out with empty hands. He drew the hidden Yautja in the dirt and pointed. Ca'toll understood enough to hold Vai'ke back from killing him. Then the cloaked hunter attacked, Vai'ke stood aside, and Ca'toll pinned the stranger and found Ar'Wen.
Ar'Wen
Ar'Wen had been her blooding partner and her brother. In training she had been Mei-Jadhi Kaail, Sister Rage. His indicator lights had gone dark on their blooding hunt, and the clan treated him as dead. He had not died. He treated her as the partner who had left him, and that split is what later put him against her on LV-363. He had smuggled off a terraformed world, become a seeder, and waited fifteen years for this hunt. Vai'ke had already taken his side.
After the rift fight, Vai'ke and Ar'Wen ran. Ca'toll gutted T'See'Ka when he treated her honor as worthless and wanted to leave Ny'ytap's remains for the animals. She put T'See'Ka's death down as combat, then cut the Xenowing's head for a trophy and hauled the dead up to the ship.
At the hull Vai'ke treated her as a bad blood and accused her of never finishing her own blooding. The charge was true, and a rescue team had found her injured and covered in blood. The clan had treated her as blooded, and she had later admitted to a hunt captain that the ceremony was incomplete. Vai'ke tried to arrest her, then lunged, and she put a combistick through his neck.
Ar'Wen came out of cloak for the last fight with an electrified double-bladed stick. Before they fought, she gave the three remaining young her account of what had happened. A court had already heard her account, and Ar'Wen had been hungry for the fight and had refused to leave. Their parents had held his funeral and then refused them both. They fought until three Xenowings dove, and two of them hauled Ar'Wen into the air. He struck them, the fall smashed him against the ship, and acid from the killing blows opened his torso. Ca'toll pulled him free too late.
Survivors
Ca'toll put the dead, including Ar'Wen, into cryogenic chambers and set course for the mothership. Ptah'Ra, Ba'sta, and Stea'Pua were the only unblooded who lived. Fetch tried to follow them up the ramp and was knocked down. He later found Murray's passcode card in the muck by the cartel ship and let himself in.
Enid reached that ship first, pulled Murray's boot out of the cargo door, and killed a mustard-colored juvenile in the breakroom with a screwdriver. She then found a pistol in the cockpit. When Fetch came around a corner she shot him three times. The card was destroyed with his body, and she was locked in with whatever Khatura she could find.
In the Yautja hold, a winged newborn pushed out of Ny'ytap's chewed corpse. The leftover agent was Plagiarus praepotens. The creature tucked itself between his arm and torso, went dormant in the cold, and waited for a later thaw on another world.
The Yautja
Ca'toll ran the hunt after both other captains died. Other captains treated her as already at a ceiling because she was female, and T'U'Sa used that as a reason to push for elite rank. She taught the egg lesson, absorbed the leftover students, killed T'See'Ka and Vai'ke for breaches of the honor code, and took a Xenowing head so her ceremonial dagger would carry Xenomorph blood rather than Yautja blood. She left LV-363 expecting to answer the elders for the death count and for the old confession about her unfinished blooding.
Ny'ytap wanted a death in battle more than another training tour. He forbade contact with the humans, retrieved T'U'Sa's body, and died in the air after he took his helmet off for the farewell. T'U'Sa was the youngest hunting captain, first to the prey, and the first adult Xenowing kill. Ar'Wen seeded the world, cloaked through the hunt, and turned Vai'ke against his sister until the hybrids he had planted killed him.
The unblooded split along the same lines as their captains. Stea'Pua kept a Xenowing tail and later stood with Ca'toll against T'See'Ka. Ba'sta heard Ny'ytap through cloak on the first scout, used a netgun on a juvenile, and treated T'See'Ka as a coward for refusing the dead. Ptah'Ra hid a fear of heights, then killed the Xenomorph that dropped into the camp circle and planted the floor caster. Hetah died in that same night attack.
The Xenowings
The Xenowing was a host-born hybrid of Xenomorph and riftwing. It kept the elongated head, inner jaw, tail, and acid blood of an adult Xenomorph, and it kept insect eyes, extra mid-legs, and cutting wings from the local flyer. T'U'Sa died under the first one the party fully saw. Later ones snatched Ny'ytap, Clayton, and Ca'toll, and one pair hauled Ar'Wen off the ground.
Ordinary adult Xenomorphs still did most of the killing on the floor and in the camp. They used eggmorphing in the absence of a Queen, climbed slick walls by testing plant holds, and went into a short pollen rage in the harvest nets. Ca'toll left the living Xenowings on LV-363 for later bloodings rather than burn the world, because other human mining sites sat too far away to treat as prey. A winged newborn later sat in Ny'ytap's cryo tube, closer to a Yautja-host birth than to the riftwing strain.
Confirmed Kills
A juvenile Xenomorph killed Khaleed on his harvest net. Acid from another burned Margo out of the fight, and the later camp attack wrecked that site. A Xenowing took Clayton off the rim. T'U'Sa died under a Xenowing on the rift floor. Cau'dki, Hetah, and U'Brea'Sua died in the night attack on the forward camp.
A Xenowing carried Ny'ytap into the rift, and a second one finished him on the tree. Vai'ke pushed Sta'kta into the plasmacaster. Ca'toll gutted T'See'Ka, then killed Vai'ke at the ship. Xenowing acid killed Ar'Wen. Shrapnel and a Xenomorph killed each other in the riftwing nest, a juvenile killed Murray on the cartel ship, Enid killed another juvenile in the breakroom, and she shot Fetch in the corridor.
Key Characters
- Ca'toll (Mei-Jadhi Kaail, Sister Rage) was a hunting captain. She ran the blooding after the other captains died, killed T'See'Ka and Vai'ke, and left with a Xenowing trophy and three young bloods toward the mothership.
- Ar'Wen was the seeder and Ca'toll's brother. He stayed fifteen years to settle a score, turned Vai'ke against her, and died when acid from the Xenowings he planted opened his torso.
- Ny'ytap was a former Battlemaster who served as elite captain and commanded the party. A Xenowing took him during the farewell with his helmet off, and a winged newborn later left his cryo corpse.
- T'U'Sa was the youngest hunting captain, first to the prey, and the first adult Xenowing kill. He died under that hybrid on the rift floor.
- Ptah'Ra, Ba'sta, and Stea'Pua were the unblooded who lived. Ptah'Ra took a camp-circle kill, Ba'sta used a netgun, and Stea'Pua kept a Xenowing tail.
- Hetah, Cau'dki, and U'Brea'Sua died when the hive hit the forward camp at night. Hetah was Ca'toll's only female student, Cau'dki was Ny'ytap's bully, and U'Brea'Sua had fled after T'U'Sa went down.
- Sta'kta was one of Ca'toll's three. He lived through a Xenowing fall, then Vai'ke pushed him into the plasmacaster and cut him in half.
- T'See'Ka stole Stea'Pua's first kill and fled when T'U'Sa died. Ca'toll gutted him after he treated her honor as worthless and wanted Ny'ytap's remains left for the animals.
- Vai'ke was Ny'ytap's ward and the son of a clan leader. He murdered Sta'kta, sided with Ar'Wen, tried to arrest Ca'toll as a bad blood, and died on her combistick at the ship.
- Murray ran the harvest camp for a cartel contact he messaged as Scar Face Major. He locked Shrapnel out of the ship, and a juvenile Xenomorph killed him at an exterior hatch. His remains later held that door open.
- Shrapnel was a former Colonial Marine in black-market armor who guarded the cables with a pulse rifle. After Murray locked him out, he went down a harvest line, hid with Enid in a riftwing nest, and died there tearing a Xenomorph apart from the inside.
- Margo was a former Marine who worked the rim with a shotgun. Acid from a Xenomorph burned her legs after she went down to look at Khaleed, and she was last seen when the camp was overrun.
- Enid was a harvester who saw Khaleed die and later hid in a cave too narrow for an adult Xenomorph. She climbed out of the nest with Shrapnel's cargo-door card, killed a mustard-colored juvenile with a screwdriver, shot Fetch, and was locked on the cartel ship with whatever Khatura she could find.
- Fetch was a former casino counter who had been hooked on a Weyland-Yutani station. He pointed out a cloaked hunter to Ca'toll, later found Murray's passcode card in the muck, and Enid shot him when he came around a corridor corner.
- Khaleed had been a Weyland-Yutani officer before a vacation put him on Khatura and the cartel used him as property. He unlocked his mask, overdosed on raw pollen, and a juvenile Xenomorph climbed his cable and tore into his chest.
- Clayton was one of the camp mercenaries. A Xenowing took him off the rim during the attack that sent Enid into the rift.
- Jackson was the camp medic. He took Margo out of the harvest after the acid burn, and he was last seen treating her before the hive hit the tents.
Place In The Books
Titan's first original novel under an Alien vs. Predator title was Lebbon's Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon in 2016, the close of the Rage War. Rift War arrived six years later as a separate story, not a sequel. It is the last of the seven core Alien vs. Predator novels after Prey, Hunter's Planet, War, the 2004 novelization, Ultimate Prey, and Armageddon. The hunt is a single-clan blooding on one world, not a Sphere-wide war.
Ochse and Navarro had already written short fiction in the Predator and Alien lines before Titan gave them a full crossover. The novel is the first of those core books to use the homeworld name Yautja Prime in the main text, alongside the 2022 anthology story Proving Ground in Predator: Eyes of the Demon. It also names the Battlemaster rank. Hunters who take that post fight in open war, and like a Temple Guard they cannot later become clan leader.
Editions
Titan Books released the first edition as a paperback on 16 August 2022 in the UK and 6 September 2022 in the US. The catalog length is 368 pages. The cover uses a promotional Predator-and-Xenomorph split rather than a painted scene from LV-363. Blackstone released an audiobook the same day as the UK print, read by Kate Rudd, running about eleven and a half hours.
Behind The Scenes
Weston Ochse and Yvonne Navarro are married horror novelists who live in Arizona. Ochse has a Bram Stoker Award and an MFA from work that includes SEAL Team 666 and the Grunt Life books. Navarro has a Bram Stoker Award and a long list of franchise shorts across Alien, Predator, The X-Files, and Buffy. The acknowledgments treat Rift War as the first time they were given a full Aliens vs. Predators novel after years of shorter work in that universe.
Conclusion
Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War is Weston Ochse and Yvonne Navarro's 2022 Titan novel about a blooding hunt on LV-363. It covers the Khatura harvest, the seeding of the rifts, the rise of the Xenowings, and the collapse of Ny'ytap's party. The book ends with Ca'toll leaving for the mothership with three living young bloods, Enid locked on the cartel ship, and a winged newborn dormant in Ny'ytap's cryo corpse.
External Sources
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