Jocasta Malvaux: The DNA War Expedition Leader

Full name: Jocasta Malvaux
Occupation: Scientist and leader of the Rosamond 6 research expedition
Species: Human
Affiliation: Rosamond 6 research expedition
Family: Rory Malvaux (son), Graciella Malvaux (daughter)
First appearance: Aliens: DNA War (2006)
Status: Unknown, left on Rosamond 6 surrounded by adult Xenomorphs

Jocasta Malvaux was a prominent scientist and the leader of a fifty-two-person research expedition on Rosamond 6 in Aliens: DNA War. She had helped establish the Alien Species Act through the Malvaux Amendment, and she refused to leave when PlanCom sent the container ship Vinza to evacuate her team and destroy the Xenomorphs on the planet. She treated the creatures' pause in attacks as proof that they had accepted her researchers, and she concealed how many of her people had died. After a confrontation with her son, the Milwaukee homicide detective Rory Malvaux, she remained on the planet as adult Xenomorphs surrounded her. Her death was not confirmed.

Biography

Earlier Life And Scientific Career

Jocasta Malvaux was a well-known scientist before she went to Rosamond 6. She published books, articles, and videos, and she was known for explaining discoveries in language that drew admirers outside her field. She addressed Congress to push the Alien Species Act, and she later worked with fifteen senators on a subsection of that law called the Malvaux Amendment. The amendment restricted the destruction of species as a way to secure a claim on a planet. People around her treated her as a powerful figure who moved in high circles, and even crew members who had never met her already knew her name.

Jocasta had two children, Rory Malvaux and Graciella Malvaux, who grew up around the family mansion and in the shadow of her career. Rory later said that he and his sister were often identified as her son and daughter rather than by their own names. He did not follow her into research and instead became a Milwaukee homicide detective. Graciella stayed in science and later joined the Rosamond 6 expedition, where her mother planned for her to inherit the outpost and continue the work. Rory had not spoken to Jocasta or to his sister in about five years when PlanCom asked him to bring his mother home.

The Expedition To Rosamond 6

After Xenomorphs appeared on Rosamond 6, Jocasta led a fifty-two-person team of specialists, interns, and students, all hand-picked by her, to study the infestation. PlanCom, a colonization company based in Cincinnati, had claimed the planet for later settlement, and sixty-two of its scouts and settlers had died there before her expedition arrived. She meant to observe the creatures, not to wipe them out, and she would not allow weapons in the field. In her view, her people had entered the animals' territory, and anyone killed there had made a fatal mistake rather than earned the right to shoot back.

The PlanCom container ship Vinza landed on 14 July under Captain Clark Sparren, carrying Rory as the company's legal officer and a Colonial Marine escort under Colonel MacCormac. Clark carried a court order that treated the planet as an exception to the Alien Species Act and allowed the company to deploy poison-packer robots against non-native fauna once the researchers were dead or evacuated. PlanCom expected Jocasta to resist, which is why Sparren asked her son to bring her out. Rory had to certify the evacuation or the deaths before the robots could be released. Jocasta was still on the planet with her remaining team when the ship arrived.

The Hidden Base

Rory found the first expedition camp empty of the living. His party found researchers killed by Chestbursters, a pregnant woman who had hanged herself before an embryo emerged, and other bodies left in the open. Jocasta contacted him and guided the group through a projector curtain into a concealed base. The researchers had fitted a natural cave system with compact tunnels, a main stealth curtain, cameras, and holographic projectors, and they could disappear into personal blinds when they needed to hide. The outpost followed the existing caves rather than a full complex dug in hostile ground.

The expedition also used close-fitting blue suits and hoods. The suits limited the natural shedding of skin cells, and the hoods used a one-way fabric that was clearer from the inside than from the outside. Together with the holographic curtain, the clothing was meant to keep Xenomorph senses from fixing on the camp. Jocasta ran the base as a sealed research post and expected her people to stay inside the blind when the surrounding area was not clear. The disguise still depended on power packs and projectors, and it would fail if those systems went down.

The Disputed Deaths

When Rory asked how many of her people were dead, Jocasta said they had lost nine, and her face flushed when he asked whether those were the same nine found at the first camp. She said the dead had made mistakes in an environment that took getting used to. Her figure did not match the bodies at the abandoned camp. The expedition chemist Rusty later told Rory that thirty-six of the original fifty-two were dead, and that the creatures had found every other outpost and did not give up. The gap between those numbers became a central break between Jocasta and the son sent to bring her home.

Rory treated the deaths of Brand and Donahue as murders, including a man pinned to a pillar with a severed adult Xenomorph tail. Graciella replaced a blue-suit power pack for Rusty on her mother's orders, and that pack failed when an adult Xenomorph found them. Rory killed the creature, but Rusty and the corpse fell into a ravine, and Rory returned believing the failure had been arranged. Tad later said Jocasta would kill anybody who betrayed her, and that he had been trying for months to get Gracie to leave.

Refusal Of Evacuation

Jocasta opposed the extermination order as a violation of the Alien Species Act, the law she had helped establish. Captain Clark Sparren presented a sealed court order that declared Rosamond 6 an exception and treated the Xenomorphs as a threat to the planet's native life. She called that claim a lie and said there was no such clause in the Act. Clark answered that the amendment had been added after she left on the mission, because people had come to see the original law as too inflexible. She replied that the planet would adapt, that it was already adapting, and that she would prove it.

Jocasta took Rory and Clark to the Blue Valley, a sheltered shelf where native herds still grazed, and she presented that landscape as evidence that Rosamond 6 was absorbing the infestation. She told Clark that the only hope for a later human settlement was to let her continue, and that her daughter would inherit the outpost from her. She said people could not live in spite of the Xenomorphs. Once she had discovered their secrets, she claimed, humans would be able to live with them.

Walking Among The Xenomorphs

Jocasta walked out of the blind to meet adult Xenomorphs that were moving through the area. Several of the creatures noticed her and came close, while Colonel MacCormac warned that they were about to kill her. She raised her hands to them, and they touched her with the tips of their tails and ran their jaws along her body without killing her. She treated that restraint as proof that their behavior had changed, and she later said the creatures had accepted her team. She said her researchers could not leave, and that no one should leave the blind until the area was clear.

The Hive War

The pause did not mean what Jocasta said it did. Rory and the Vinza's resident physician, Bonnie Bardolf, found two armies of adult Xenomorphs closing on a meadow in a war between two Xenomorph hives. One hive was uniformly black. The second had blue tissue between its ribs and green tissue inside its mouth and under its arms. The two groups ignored the humans and attacked each other, and the Marine private Edney was caught in that fighting and killed.

Graciella concluded that rival Queens had produced separate genetic lines, and that both hives had stopped hunting and reproducing while they fought over which line would spread across Rosamond 6. The humans were not allies in that struggle. They were being kept as living hosts for whichever hive won. Jocasta still did not treat the war as a reason to abandon the planet. When Rory ordered an evacuation, she said that if that was the verdict, the others should be gathered, then watched as her daughter and Tad began to lead researchers toward the ship.

Withdrawal Of Protection

As Graciella left, Jocasta kept her composure and told Rory that he had won, and that he had taken her daughter away from her. She hid her followers with personal blinds and spoke over the base sound system. She told the Vinza party that her people were in hiding, that the visitors were there without invitation and had worn out their welcome, and that they should leave. When Rory kept searching, she said that if he and his friends were so strong, they could live or die on their own, and she withdrew her protection from them. The monitors went dark, and the projector curtain failed, leaving his group exposed.

Adult Xenomorphs and flying Facehuggers reached the open ground around the ruined blind. A flying Facehugger struck Colonel MacCormac in the face, and Private Carmichael shot through the colonel's head and the parasite together. Rusty came back from the ravine alive and reached the Vinza's loading ramp, then collapsed as a Chestburster began to emerge. At his request, Rory shot through Rusty's chest and killed them both. Jocasta used that moment to take a final hostage rather than board the ship.

Left On Rosamond 6

At the base of two red pillars, Jocasta held Bonnie by the arm and pressed a disembodied Xenomorph tail spike to her throat, hard enough to raise a welt on the physician's neck. Rory could not risk a shot that might hit Bonnie or his own mother. He signaled Bonnie to raise her arm for Buttercup, the flying fox that Bonnie kept aboard the Vinza, an animal that had also been called Butterball. Bonnie ducked as the animal came down, and its wings closed around Jocasta's head. The spike lost its place at Bonnie's throat as Jocasta tried to deal with the creature on top of her.

Jocasta broke the animal loose enough for it to launch from her head and return to Rory. She was on her knees, then stood and recovered her poise. She and Rory looked at each other for a few seconds, and adult Xenomorphs came around the pillars and surrounded her as he pulled Bonnie aboard and the ramp closed. The Vinza launched with Rory, Bonnie, Graciella, Tad, Carmichael, and the surviving researchers. At Clark's request, Rory gave the legal order to deploy the poison-packers across Rosamond 6. Jocasta's death was not confirmed.

Personality And Traits

Jocasta Malvaux presented herself as a calm public scientist, and people who had read her books or watched her address Congress treated her as an iconic figure. She spoke with a firm, practiced method before captains and courts, and she kept her composure even when her daughter walked away. She also refused to accept a legal defeat, called the court order a lie, and held to the idea that Rosamond 6 was already bringing the Xenomorphs under the control of a living world. Admirers heard poetry in her descriptions of strange places. The same certainty made it almost impossible for her to abandon a conclusion once she had formed it.

Jocasta demanded loyalty from the expedition she had hand-picked, forbade weapons, and treated individual deaths as personal mistakes rather than a failure of her method. She concealed the scale of the losses and, in Tad's account, would kill anyone who betrayed her. In the last hour she was willing to take a hostage to hold her position, then stood and faced the approaching adults after the flying fox knocked her down. Her confidence in her own work did not break in front of her son.

Relationships

Rory Malvaux

Rory Malvaux was Jocasta's son, a Milwaukee homicide detective, and PlanCom's legal officer for the evacuation. He had grown up around her career, then stayed away for about five years, and he came to Rosamond 6 already expecting her to resist the court order. He questioned her casualty figures, read several of the deaths as murders, and finally ordered the evacuation and the release of the poison-packers. In the last confrontation he could not bring himself to shoot her while she held Bonnie, and the two of them looked at each other for a few seconds before the adults closed in.

Graciella Malvaux

Graciella Malvaux was Jocasta's daughter and the researcher her mother meant to leave in charge of the outpost. For most of the expedition she defended her mother's work, and she replaced Rusty's suit power pack on Jocasta's orders. She also stood between Rory and Jocasta when the hive war had to be explained, and she was the first of the inner circle to show doubt once an evacuation was ordered. When she left with Tad, Jocasta treated the loss as Rory taking her daughter away from her. Graciella boarded the Vinza with the other surviving researchers and did not stay behind.

The Research Team

Jocasta had chosen every member of the fifty-two-person team, and the specialists who remained with her included the stealth technician Tad, the chemist Rusty, the veterinarian Chantal, the virologist Diego, and the camp director Neil. Most of them followed her lead until the evacuation. Rusty was the one who told Rory the true scale of the dead and who wanted to leave. Tad later confirmed that he had been trying to get Graciella out for months because he believed Jocasta would kill a betrayer. Bonnie Bardolf arrived as an admirer who had watched Jocasta address Congress, then turned against that picture once the claim of acceptance collapsed.

Equipment

Jocasta forbade firearms in the field, so the expedition depended on concealment rather than weapons. The base used a natural cave system, a main holographic blind and projector curtain, personal holographic screens, and blue suits and hoods that reduced the shedding of skin cells and hid the wearer's face behind one-way fabric. Those systems needed live power packs, and a dead pack or a shutdown of the main curtain could leave a person or a whole group exposed. In the last confrontation she used a severed Xenomorph tail spike as a weapon, the same kind of recovered remain Rory had already seen driven through a murdered researcher.

Famous Quotes

"This planet will adapt. It is adapting. I'll be able to prove it. I will prove it."
"We've stumbled upon a treasure. Everything is different. They've accepted us."
"If you are so strong, my son, and your friends are so strong, then you can live or die on your own. I withdraw my protection from you."

Behind The Scenes

Jocasta Malvaux first appeared in Aliens: DNA War, a novel by Diane Carey published by DH Press on 17 May 2006. The book is told entirely in the first-person voice of her son, Rory, so the picture of her work, her hidden base, and her final hours comes through his investigation and their confrontations. Carey used that narrow point of view to keep Jocasta both famous and difficult to read, a public scientist whose private decisions are revealed only as Rory uncovers them. The novel ends with her still on Rosamond 6 as the Vinza leaves, and it does not return to her after the ship lifts off.

Conclusion

Jocasta Malvaux was a scientist who took a hand-picked expedition to Rosamond 6 to study a Xenomorph infestation and refused to give that work up. She used the Alien Species Act and the untouched Blue Valley to argue that the planet was adapting, and she treated the creatures' pause as acceptance even after a hive war showed that her people were being kept as hosts. She hid the true number of her dead, lost her daughter and most of her remaining team to the evacuation, and stayed behind after a last attempt to hold Bonnie hostage. Adult Xenomorphs surrounded her as the Vinza left. Her death was not confirmed.