Chad McLaren: Profile Of Amanda Ripley's Husband
Chad McLaren was a former Weyland-Yutani biomedical scientist and the husband of Amanda Ripley in David Barnett's Alien: Colony War. In July 2186 he and the synthetic Davis pulled journalist Cher Hunt into a hunt for stolen eggs, reached the Independent Core System Colonies oil world LV-187, and killed the Queen under the fusion reactor. He left on the trade ship Victory to find Zula Hendricks and to track the eggs New Albion had taken.
Biography
Company Career
Chad spent seven years in college on Earth, then took a company biomedical post because he wanted to cure disease. The labs were using Xenomorph biology. One collaborator had lived through a hive, then ran tests on humans and Xenomorphs with no care for the hosts.
Chad tried to expose that work. Weyland-Yutani marked him for death, and he went into hiding. He later treated the creatures as weapons too dangerous to stay secret, even though he hoped their DNA reflex might unlock a cancer cure.
Amanda And The Cover Story
Amanda was a company engineer looking for what had happened to her mother Ellen Ripley. She saved Chad, and they married. Cancer later left her too weak to wake, so he put her in hypersleep at a hidden site. Their last night together was on a remote Thai island. At dawn he flew her to the cryo chamber.
The public file said Amanda McLaren died of cancer on 23 December 2178 and was cremated at Westlake Repository in Little Chute, Wisconsin. Davis treated that file as a cover, and waking Amanda as she was would kill her. Chad would not do that until he had a cure.
Davis And The Elvik
Davis had been a company security drone who broke his programming and learned to jump into hardware. After his humanoid body was destroyed, Chad carried him as transferable AI on a drive. The company had a price on Chad's head, and a humanoid partner would have made him easier to find.
On the fringe freeport LV-222, called Las Vegas by the people who ran it, company agents impounded Chad's ship. He won the cruiser Elvik at poker from a crime-family heir, then won a grey-market synthetic cockapoo from matriarch Dorothea Whittaker. Technician Mr. Higgs had built that dog as a copy of her dead pet Jasper. Davis used the body under the cover name Scooby. He wanted Zula found and kept safe. Chad would not bring her into this job.
New Albion
Chad was on New Albion in July 2186 looking for proof that a stock of eggs had moved through the wreck of the salvage ship Clara. He sent Cher a postcard from Hasanova so she would come, then met her at the Queen's Head. He walked her through the Nostromo story and named Captain Kylie Duncan's Midnighters as the unit that wiped Hasanova witnesses, including Cher's sister Cheyenne "Shy" Hunt.
He was also recruiting scientists at the bacterial lab Tark-Weyland Station and needed a journalist who could publish. After Prime Minister Maurice Pepper declared secession on 17 July 2186, Chad and Davis tied the empty-world claim on LV-187 to the Clara wreck in the Shires. They treated the oil colony as a seeded hive, then airspace closed. Davis bit a Duke of Wellington guard, Cher bluffed as Corporal Poppins, and they stole the Elvik off the terminus pad.
LV-187
The Elvik slammed the last two meters onto the pad in the storm at 6 PM GMT, and starboard engine damage kept them on-world. Victory captain Tom Moran waved them inside. Chad stopped him at Victory's hatch when blood showed on the glass and an adult Xenomorph appeared at the window. They left science officer Jerry Bough and sealed the comms tower with geologist Merrilyn Hambleton, her daughter Therese, Moran, crewman Teesha Bromley, Cher, and Davis.
Victory crewman Frank Priestley was not dead. The hive had webbed him, a Facehugger had implanted him, and the Queen had cut him free and sent him back as a living beacon. The group shot the adult Xenomorph that chased him to the door. At dinner a Chestburster tore out of Priestley.
When the tower lights failed, Moran opened the doors and adult Xenomorphs filled the corridor. The group shot out the observation glass about fifty meters above the pad and built a rope from blankets, ducting, and cable. Chad shot Priestley's growing Chestburster when it went for the line. After the doors blew in, he jumped with Davis strapped to his chest.
Jones And The Cheyenne
Five Marines rose out of a ravine in a Cheyenne and netted six live adult Xenomorphs. Corporal Barrington B. Jones III claimed the samples as company property, put Chad under corporate arrest, and shot Moran in the face when the captain argued jurisdiction. Jones admitted the rest in the hold: his team had boarded the Clara, taken the eggs, crashed the salvage ship on New Albion, and seeded LV-187 as a company test. The Bougainville-class attack transport USC Cronulla was then supposed to nuke the colony from orbit.
Jones drugged Chad and locked him with the six chained adult Xenomorphs, hoping for a lead on Amanda, Zula, and Davis, all on the company most-wanted list. Chad gave him nothing usable. A colony lab rat then burst aboard, a cat-sized Xenomorph killed two Marines, and the Cheyenne lurched into the comms tower and exploded. Jones ran for Victory, and the adult Xenomorph that had killed Bough killed him at the hatch.
The Queen
Captain Augustus Trent of the defecting warship HMS God's Hammer then took the survivors. He detained Chad, Cher, and Davis for the no-fly breach, and refused to destroy the plant from orbit because he wanted the hive. Colony scans showed at least twenty adult Xenomorphs and a stationary mark on the fusion reactor. Trent took a six-marine fire team in armored ape-suits, and Chad went with them.
Deeper in, Chad counted about 100 eggs in the lit area, then a Queen about ten meters tall. Royal Marine bullets ricocheted off her, and incinerators only slowed her. Trent's orders were not to destroy the eggs, because he wanted them for use on enemy ships and worlds. The fire team died in the chamber. Only Chad, a gut-wounded Trent, and the Queen were left.
Chad armed a grenade from Trent's suit and rammed it into the Queen's inner jaws. Backup Marines opened fire as the blast blew the back of her head out from inside. Chad woke in the canteen, and Trent confirmed the cryo boxes on the pad held more than 150 eggs. He left them the Victory after a two-hour control lock, then lifted off.
Aftermath
The Queen was not quite dead when they took the eggs. Her acid ate through a meter of lead over the reactor, her body fell in, and the plant went into alarm. Davis read 1 hour 38 minutes until the Victory unlocked, against about 60 minutes to critical. A human could not reach the manual shutoff in that heat and radiation.
Therese was a synthetic replica of Merrilyn's dead daughter. Contact with Davis ended her inhibitors, and she chose the reactor run. Davis stored the shutdown protocols, left Chad to find Zula, and went with her. The shutdown worked, then heat and radiation wrecked both bodies. On the pad a Praetorian came out of the comms-tower wreck, and Merrilyn killed it with a pulse cannon from Victory's hull.
Warrants then named Chad, Cher, Merrilyn, Therese, and Davis for New Albion, Weyland-Yutani, the United States Colonial Marine Corps, the ICSC, and the Three World Empire. They could not go to Earth, so Chad set course for unaffiliated border worlds to find Zula and to track the stolen eggs. Merrilyn and Cher went with him. Pepper treated Trent's mercy as payment of a debt, and any later meeting with McLaren as an enemy act.
Confirmed Kills
Colony War gives Chad a short confirmed line:
- Chestburster: 1. He shot Priestley's growing Chestburster when it went for the escape rope in the comms tower.
- Adult Xenomorphs: at least 3 in the comms room before the jump from the tower.
- Queen: 1. He armed a grenade from Trent's ape-suit and rammed it into her inner jaws. Marine fire hit her as the charge went off.
- Eggs / Facehuggers / Praetorian: 0. New Albion left with more than 150 eggs. Merrilyn killed the Praetorian on the pad.
McClaren Or McLaren
The surname starts in the special edition of Aliens. Carter Burke handed Ellen a file that named her daughter Amanda Ripley-McClaren, with two C's, and said she had died of cancer on 23 December 2178 at Westlake Repository, with no children. The Aliens novelization used that same spelling. Neither source named the husband.
Alien: Sea of Sorrows in 2014 was the first book to drop a C and write Amanda Ripley-McLaren. Barnett's novel then used McLaren for both Chad and Amanda, and never printed McClaren. The two strings are the same intended married name with a later spelling change, not two different families. McLaren is the form he carries in the book that features him.
Continuity Notes
Chad himself first appears in Colony War. He is not in Aliens: Defiance, Aliens: Resistance, or Aliens: Rescue. Those comics follow Amanda, Zula, and Davis. Editor Steve Saffel asked Barnett to use Chad and Davis anyway, so the novel gave a life to the husband implied by the Aliens file and put him beside the comic synthetic.
Colony War never mentions Alien: Isolation, Sevastopol, or the Torrens. Alien: Inferno's Fall, also set in 2186, has Zula treat Amanda as dead. Alan Decker is later presented as a descendant through Amanda, which sits beside the Burke file that said she had no children. The Ripley family line does not settle which of those records is true.
Conclusion
Chad McLaren was a former company scientist who married Amanda Ripley, hid her in hypersleep under a 2178 cancer-death file, and spent the years after that trying to keep Xenomorphs out of military hands. In Alien: Colony War he killed the Queen on LV-187. After Davis was destroyed in the reactor, Chad left on the Victory with Cher and Merrilyn to find Zula and the stolen eggs.
Appearances
- Alien: Colony War (novel, Titan Books, 2022)
- Alien: Colony War (audiobook, Blackstone Publishing, 2022)
Sources
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Alien Universe Scientists | Alien Lore | Xenomorph Encounter Survivors
