Beatrix Maloney: Profile Of The Rage Leader

Full name: Beatrix Maloney
Also known as: Mistress Maloney
Species: Human
Affiliation: Founders, then the Rage
Role: Rage leader on Macbeth
Known for: Killing Wordsworth · Xenomorph invasion · Sol jump
Setting: Midsummer and Macbeth, 2400-2692
First appearance: Predator: Incursion (2015)
Status: Dead, Queen's hall on Macbeth, December 2692
Injuries (novels): Ancient body held in a gel suit · rebuilt heart
Kills (novels): Wordsworth

Beatrix Maloney was the Rage leader in Tim Lebbon's Rage War novels Predator: Incursion, Alien: Invasion, and Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon. Around 2400 she left the Human Sphere with the Founders. After they reached Midsummer, an ancient habitat beyond known space, she killed Wordsworth, the Founders' leader, took the flagship Macbeth, and turned that group into the Rage. In 2692 she ran the invasion from a gel suit, jumped Macbeth into Sol, and died in the Queen's hall when Liliya burned the android command.

Biography

The Founders

Around 2400 the Founders left human space after persecution over longevity work and secret faster-than-light drives. They took delivery of three ships, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, fitted the drives at an independent port near the edge of the Sphere, and jumped for the edge of known space. About a thousand people boarded each hull. Maloney stood on Othello's bridge with Wordsworth, the Founders' leader, and other leading members for that launch. She was more open then, and Hamlet vanished on the outbound run.

Midsummer And Wordsworth

The survivors found a gel that lengthened human life, then the ancient habitat Midsummer, built by slug-like creatures and holding thousands of sleeping adult Xenomorphs. A dog-like fossil there tied the place to the Drukathi. Wordsworth wanted those sleepers left alone. Maloney gathered an inner group in secret under the habitat, saw what the hibernating creatures could become, and took the Founders the other way. The conflict between her and Wordsworth was brief and private. She killed him, and Liliya treated that death as murder and suspected the general Alexander had been the weapon used against him.

Wordsworth had refused to bring the Faze aboard, the leftover tool from Midsummer that lived in a ship and rebuilt it. After his death the Founders stayed in orbit long enough to load Xenomorphs into Macbeth's holds and run them against research Liliya had stolen from the Weyland-Yutani destroyer USS Evelyn-Tew in 2351. Macbeth and Othello then left on separate courses toward the Human Sphere, so that the loss of one hull would not end the return.

Leader Of The Rage

Maloney renamed the group the Rage and preached a violent return. She framed the Founders as people driven into the cold, and she meant to take the Sphere by war and hold it afterward. Shipborn on Othello later treated that exile story as false. They held that the Founders had left by choice to work in the open. Macbeth became a cult around Maloney. Othello held more of Wordsworth's memory, and a remnant there later killed most of that ship's elders.

The Rage ran adult Xenomorphs as soldiers under android generals, using the Evelyn-Tew research, science taken from Midsummer, and the Faze. Each general could direct about two thousand hatched troops. Maloney's inner group called early fights Trials, mock assaults that tested those armies on Yautja habitats before the Sphere campaign. A second Founders layer that had stayed in human space could hear an old prayer frequency. In 2692 that same frequency carried orders in Maloney's name, and historian Angela Svenlap at Love Grove Base was one of the sleepers who acted on a short message and began wiring bombs.

Maloney On Macbeth

By the war Maloney was almost three hundred years old, a thin woman on a hover platform, torso and limbs held in a clear gel suit, with only her face in open air. She refused full submersion because she wanted some claim on being human. Attendants Dana and Kareth steered that platform. Elder Challar was older than she was, missing both legs and one arm. A Watcher, a fragment of the Faze no larger than a human head, tracked the nano in Liliya's blood across space.

A bound Queen lived in a Macbeth hold, her egg sac running half the compartment. After more than twenty years of searches from Midsummer she laid forty to fifty eggs a day, and controlled Xenomorphs carried them off. Scientist Wilder had naked Fiennes sleepers brought in as food. Maloney spent hours in an observation pod with that Queen and treated the creature as the source of the Rage army. No human had entered that hold and lived in decades.

The Invasion

In July 2692 she sent Liliya a coded return prayer that hid a nano command. Liliya refused it, wrecked the eyes of general Napoleon, injected inactive Rage nano into her own neck, and left Macbeth to reach the Sphere ahead of the invasion. In October Maloney ordered Alexander to take Liliya alive if he could, so she could make the android suffer, and dead if he could not, because the control secret was in Liliya's blood. She meant to finish the war with Macbeth after contact with Othello failed and general Patton was lost.

In November Rage attack ships took a drophole and shipped about a thousand of the moon's people to Macbeth as food and hosts. Maloney treated Othello's destruction as a change of plan rather than the end of the campaign. She meant to move the Faze onto that captured hole for thirty to sixty days of rebuild work, then jump far past the usual eight to twelve light years, straight into Sol, and split Macbeth into a dozen attack craft. General Mashima was to take the rebuilt Fiennes sleeper Aaron-Percival against Weaver's World and pull Colonial Marine attention while that work went on.

The Jump Into Sol

The Faze rebuilt the captured Outer Rim drophole for almost forty days. Maloney ordered a jump of about five hundred light years. Three elders never woke, five people died in failed freezers, and Kareth came through raving. Macbeth emerged at Alpha 7, a billion miles inside Pluto's orbit, wrecked the portal's defences, and seventeen minutes later split into a dozen destroyer-sized hulls. Two of those ships went at Charon Station, Colonial Marine central command in Sol. Four turned inward toward Earth.

The first Rage hull dumped adult Xenomorphs into Charon's nano-thread net, and the second dumped more than four thousand more, then ran. General Paul Bassett died there after the docked ship Demidov cooked off its reactor. Maloney ordered the wreck filmed and sent across the Sphere. Youngest Thirteen member James Barclay called her from Mars and offered a ceasefire after treating the war as lost, with Yautja ships fighting because the Rage had hit the hunters first. She ended the call without ordering Mashima to stop the massacre on Weaver's World.

Death In The Queen's Hall

The Arrow Pixie dropped a million kilometres out and attacked so Maloney would haul it into Macbeth rather than destroy it. Liliya walked out of the lock alone. Maloney wanted the android's eyes, not a wreck at long range, and she had the hangar searched. Isa Palant and Major Akoko Halley's DevilDogs came in behind a cloaked Yautja hull while twenty-three adult Xenomorphs held the bay.

After she understood she had lost, Maloney took Liliya to the Queen's hall to be killed. Liliya sent one command through the android network, a self-destruct, and Pixie's computer dumped the hyperdrive and slammed that signal through other planes. Maloney's rebuilt heart heated. Most of Macbeth burned with the generals, and she died there in December 2692.

Personality And Traits

Early on, Beatrix Maloney was open, honest, and optimistic with the other Founder leaders. Centuries later she was a preacher of hate, and Macbeth ran as a cult around her will. She treated disagreement as weakness, preferred inner circles to open argument, and took power in secret.

She was vengeful toward the Human Sphere she blamed for driving the Founders into the cold, even though that exile story was a lie she preferred. She was greedy for rule, not for money. After a win she meant to hold the Sphere long enough to remake it as hers, and she spoke of whole worlds as things that belonged to her.

She was cruel when she had the upper hand, and proud enough to want an enemy's face rather than a clean end at a distance. She could be gentle with attendants Dana and Kareth, and she used the captive Queen as a private listener. She had stopped believing in God and treated the Faze as a tool she would not provoke, because she feared losing what it had given her.

Conclusion

Beatrix Maloney was the Founder who turned Macbeth's people into the Rage after she killed Wordsworth, the Founders' leader, at the habitat Midsummer. She ran the 2692 invasion from a gel suit, jumped the flagship into Sol, and died in the Queen's hall when Liliya burned the android command.