The Biodrone, tagged XX121B, was an engineered drone from Weyland-Yutani's Project Life Force. Dr. N.L. Babak's team built the type to copy a natural drone, stay at that stage, live about six days, and kill without starting a hive, but those limits failed in the field. In Mary SanGiovanni's Alien: Enemy of My Enemy, biodrones wrecked the USS Alexiares and overran the LV-846 peace summit in 2187.
Project Life Force
Project Life Force was a Weyland-Yutani weapons program from before the company's Menhit lab on dying moon BG-791. Babak, the lead Xenomorphologist, treated Xenomorphs as something a greater intelligence had already built, and he wanted to copy that work without losing control of it. The team held growth at the drone stage, stopped reproduction, and limited each soldier to about six days, so a strike could clear a target and leave no hive behind. Dr. Martin Fowler later built his gestation serum from that same research. Leftover samples were sold after the six-day limit and the reproduction lock failed. When Fowler was asked who bought them, he looked toward the Pushan summit on LV-846.
Appearance
A natural drone has a smooth dome, a black frame, and an inner jaw. Fowler described the biodrones as copies of that caste with extra changes from the lab. They kept the drone silhouette, including the smooth head and a bony chest, but they were a little smaller, a little faster, and not quite as strong, while remaining fatal. The Colonial Marines Operations Manual lists them as a Stage IV drone for tabletop combat. Fowler's version stayed the close copy with those size, speed, and strength changes.
Behavior
At the Pushan conference center the dead were cut apart, with arms, legs, or heads missing, and most of those bodies did not have burst chests. The type had been built to kill people outright instead of farming hosts. They used claws, razor-edged tails, and the inner jaw. Rifle hits to the smooth head made the blood geyser and hiss on the carpet, but a wounded biodrone could recover and charge again. Some pulled back from fire, others leaped the flames or climbed a wall, and one stayed near the fire, watching it.
The biodrones were louder than a natural drone. Botanist Siobhan McCormick heard call-and-response chirps and squeals from the conference hub before she saw them. They could not work the locked doors, so they killed one of their own and used the acid to melt the metal. They were hostile to ordinary adult Xenomorphs, which is why the lab kept the two stocks apart and why Siobhan sent Fowler's Queen into the remaining swarm. The six-day lifespan limit failed in practice. Fowler judged the changes unreliable, and an ovomorphing reflex got around the ban on reproduction and later growth.
LV-846
The biodrones reached LV-846 in 2187 aboard the Marine ship USS Alexiares, which crashed near the peace summit at Pushan. The United Americas, the UPP, and the ICSC had gathered there. Captain Angela Forrester's log first treated the lower-deck cargo as an unnamed bio-weapon, then named the things biodrones after the synthetic Gene appeared to let them out. Gene also wrecked the escape pods and the other vehicles on the ship. The hull had carried 2,103 Colonial Marines, rifle fire only spread the acid, and Vaughn knew the cargo was on board.
Biodrones killed Sam and Gavin in the inner halls, then Elkins, Kira, Koslowski, and the summit staff. Three of them pinned Sam and drove their tails into his back. Another raked Gavin's face and tore his throat, and a third dropped from the ceiling, lifted Elkins by the neck, and punched the inner jaw through his temple. Fowler had grown a Queen inside himself and burst at Pushan. Siobhan led that Queen into the main conference room after about twenty-four biodrones had filled it. The Queen, about three times the size of the BG-791 drones, crushed one head underfoot, speared others, and tore a clinging biodrone off her arm after its inner jaw punched her. She died later, after Siobhan drove a metal spike through her during a lightning storm. Siobhan and Alec left without knowing whether every biodrone on the moon was dead.
Other Outbreaks
The Colonial Marines Operations Manual uses the same XX121B tag for a USCMC black project. In that book, Deep Void tested the type at Corinth Colony around 2184 by implanting hosts from the captured transport PSV Yuvula while they slept. The biodrones overran the colony, and some missed the six-day death. Those survivors were called Reborn. One of them, nicknamed Bol'Shoy, nested in the wreck and kept the line going through ovomorphing.
Razor Claws
The same XX121B designation later belonged to Razor Claws, a fast adult Xenomorph from Capcom's Alien vs. Predator arcade game. Both types keep a drone-shaped body and kill with claws and a spear tail rather than farming hosts. Razor Claws is a purple sewer boss with oversized talons, forearm blades, and a long tail spike. It hunted through War in the Underpass, then came back in later San Drad stages. In the novel they looked like slightly smaller smooth-headed drones. They hunted together and gave themselves away with chirps and squeals, instead of staying quiet like a natural drone. NECA issued a figure in 2019, then a Movie Deco version with purple highlights.
Conclusion
The Biodrone was Project Life Force's attempt to turn a drone into a short-lived soldier that would not leave a hive. The six-day limit and the reproduction lock failed, and at LV-846 a Queen killed the conference-center swarm.
Appearances
- Colonial Marines Operations Manual (Free League, 2021)
- Alien: Enemy of My Enemy (Titan Books, 2023)
- Alien vs. Predator (arcade, 1994) and NECA Razor Claws (2019, Movie Deco) - later XX121B tag reuse, not the novel type
External Sources
Tag Categories: Xenomorph Appearance | Alien Lore | Xenomorphs From The Games
