The Frontier War was the war between the United Americas and the Union of Progressive Peoples on the colonial border in 2183 and 2184. In those two years the Union took LV-038 and annexed the 61 Cygni system. Unknown attackers destroyed colonies along that border with a black biochemical agent, and the United Americas held its first colonial draft in more than twenty years. Fort Nebraska was lost at Kruger 60, and the Extrasolar Colonial Administration then evacuated the 70 Ophiuchi sector.
Prelude
Before 2183, the border between the United Americas and the Union had been quiet since the end of the Tientsin campaign. In 2163 the Pang Ho Treaty set aside a demilitarized Borderline Region there, about one parsec wide and six parsecs long. Settlements in that strip were not allowed an army, and Colonial marshals shared the police work with the Union's armed police. The last large battle on that border was on 8 Eta Boötis A III, also called Tientsin, where nuclear strikes in 2165 wrecked the planet's ecology and both powers pulled their troops back.
Hadley's Hope And Rodina
In 2179, four years before the Frontier War, a thermonuclear blast destroyed Hadley's Hope on LV-426. The Sulaco's 2nd Battalion Bravo Team was among the people killed there. Weyland-Yutani blamed a nuclear strike by the Space Operating Forces and denied that a bioweapon had been on the moon. Alien: The Roleplaying Game gives the other version of that story: the company had been developing a bioweapon on LV-426, and an enemy state destroyed the colony from orbit. The same year, the Union destroyed its own station Rodina with the battlecruiser SSV Nikolai Stoiko after an unidentified disease broke out on board. A reactor overload wrecked Anchorpoint I, and an outbreak destroyed the colony world Rim.
The 2180 Redraw
In 2180 the Colonial Marine Corps changed the areas covered by its three Marine Space Forces, because the settled Frontier had grown. Sol guarded the core systems and the blockade along the Independent Core System Colonies border. It also had a second division for the Sol system, with a major base at Rigel Kentaurus. Eridani covered the Anglo-Japanese Arm and the Tartarus Sector, out as far as Alpha Caeli, and it ran the only Colonial Marine base inside Union space, at 52 Tau Ceti. Herculis was the force on the border where the Union and the Border Bombings struck in 2183 and 2184.
Timeline
Andrew E.C. Gaska's Colonial Marines Operations Manual is the main account of the fighting in 2183 and 2184. It also includes a Colonial Marine campaign set in those years. Alien: The Roleplaying Game is set in 2183, and its notes on the Tartarus sector list the Frontier War as a war that has not started, next to a Three World Empire move, a Union advance, a second J'Har revolt, and ordinary freight runs and labor disputes.
Annexation And The Draft
Open fighting began in 2183 and continued through 2184. The Union took LV-038, then annexed the 61 Cygni system. Unknown attackers destroyed colonies on the border with a black biochemical agent, and those attacks became known as the Border Bombings. The United Americas had not called a colonial draft in more than twenty years, and it started one again after those losses. Reserve Marines were sent to Herculis, the force on that border, once the bombings had destroyed the ships of several battalions and killed the Marines on board. Colonies that expected to be hit next armed themselves, including Lebanon II, Linna 349, Ariarcus, and Rigel 9.
Fort Nebraska And The Evacuation
Fort Nebraska, the Colonial Marine post at Kruger 60, was lost during the war. The Extrasolar Colonial Administration then ordered the 70 Ophiuchi sector evacuated. Refugees from that evacuation raised the population of Georgia 525 from about 125,000 people to about 500,000. The Latin American Colonial Navy had lost its 6th Fleet in the fight for 61 Cygni, so the Colonial Marines moved most of the civilians, with liners and freighters sent by Weyland-Yutani. The scenario Destroyer of Worlds takes place at that same fort, on the ice moon Ariarcus, where a small Marine unit was sent to find four Marines who went missing just before a Union attack.
Close At Darwin Island
The Colonial Marines Operations Manual does not describe a peace between the United Americas and the Union. The fighting in that book runs through 2184, and the campaign ends on Darwin Island at Pandora. A Marine battalion on the USS Tamb'Itam, a Bougainville-class attack transport, was sent there for the last operation. The squad had exposed Deep Void, the secret office of Assistant Commandant General Delyla S. Vaughn. Senior officers were under arrest, Vaughn and her staff had broken with the Corps, and the squad was ordered to arrest them at a bioweapons lab under a rig on the island.
Other Wars And Conflicts In The Same Years
Titan's Alien novels from 2184 to 2187 tell other stories from the same period. They include a vote for war by the Independent Core System Colonies, the British colony New Albion leaving the Three World Empire, and a later search for the bombers. Those novels do not follow the battalion on the USS Tamb'Itam.
The Border Bombings
In 2183 the Colonial Marshal Bureau began investigating violent groups on the Frontier that might be planning attacks. After the Border Bombings started, a cult called the Children of the Two Divines claimed responsibility. Director P. O'Neil's office and the FBI looked into that claim and decided the cult did not have the ships or the weapons to destroy those colonies. Inside the Corps, Assistant Commandant General Delyla S. Vaughn ran a secret office called Deep Void, and that office used the war to hide research on Xenomorphs and on a black chemical agent. Deep Void's weapon was the XX121B biodrone, a Xenomorph grown only to the drone stage and meant to die about six days after it killed.
Hasanova Attack And ICSC War Vote
Alex White's Alien: Into Charybdis takes place in 2184 at Hasanova, Iran's data colony on LV-991. The United Americas wanted that colony back. In December 2183 American officers approved a secret raid called Cannery Grim, and the raid seized Hasanova the next year. At the end of the novel, the Independent Core System Colonies Board of Ministers voted for war on the United Americas. That vote began a war with the colonies. The Frontier War is the separate fight between the United Americas and the Union.
New Albion's Secession
David Barnett's Alien: Colony War takes place in July 2186. On 17 July 2186, Prime Minister Maurice Pepper ordered the British colony New Albion to prepare for war and declared it independent of Britain and the Three World Empire. New Albion then claimed LV-187, an empty oil world of the Independent Core System Colonies. Royal Marines from the colony took more than 150 Xenomorph eggs from a hive under the fusion reactor there. New Albion's break with the Three World Empire is not the Frontier War.
Shānmén And The Bombers
Philippa Ballantine's Alien: Inferno's Fall, from a story with Clara Carija, takes place in 2186 on the Union mining world Shānmén. An Engineer Juggernaut released Black Goo over the colony, and the people and animals there began to change. Colonel Zula Hendricks sent the Jackals from the warship Righteous Fury to get the survivors out of Svarog Mine. After that rescue, the generals who paid for the Jackals ordered them to find who was giving orders to the synthetic pilots of the Border Bombings. Alien: Seventh Circle continues that search, and the Jackals followed the bomber from Shānmén to Minos station.
The LV-846 Summit Attack
Mary SanGiovanni's Alien: Enemy of My Enemy takes place in 2187, about a year after Inferno's Fall. A Marine squad was on its way to a meeting on LV-846, where the United Americas, the Union, and the Independent Core System Colonies were going to discuss the pathogen bombs and a peace agreement. Assistant Commandant General Vaughn had also sent that squad to the moon as extra security. Biodrones killed the delegates at the summit. Six months later the public account called the deaths a lightning fire, and the new Joint Chiefs investigated them as Vaughn's bio-warfare attack. Files from the summit name Vaughn, Weyland-Yutani scientists, and Deep Void, and they describe the bombs as a copy of Plagiarus praepotens taken from an Engineer ship. The three governments then agreed to an armistice, but the bombs did not stop, and Vaughn and Deep Void were not arrested.
Conclusion
The Frontier War was the 2183 and 2184 border war between the United Americas and the Union of Progressive Peoples. Andrew E.C. Gaska's Colonial Marines Operations Manual does not give that war a treaty or a surrender. Its last operation is on Darwin Island at Pandora in 2184, where a Marine squad was sent to arrest General Vaughn.
Appearances
- Alien: The Roleplaying Game (Free League, 2019) and the Evolved Edition (2025)
- Destroyer of Worlds (Free League)
- Colonial Marines Operations Manual by Andrew E.C. Gaska (Free League, 2021)
- Alien: Inferno's Fall by Philippa Ballantine, from a story with Clara Carija (Titan Books, 2022)
- Alien: Enemy of My Enemy by Mary SanGiovanni (Titan Books, 2023)
- Alien: Seventh Circle by Philippa Ballantine, from a story with Clara Carija (Titan Books, 2025)
Tag Categories: Colonial Marine Lore | Alien Lore
