Kamran Afghanzadeh: Hasanova Safety Lead & Survivor

Full name: Kamran Afghanzadeh
Also known as: Tall Kamran; Dr. Afghanzadeh
Species: Human
Affiliation: Hasanova Colony Corporation (Iran)
Role: Safety Design branch manager
Known for: Halo B; lost an arm; Halo A test; tackled Duncan
Family: Mother died in Afghanistan; aunts; Marjan (adoptive mother, deceased)
Setting: LV-991 / Hasanova, 2184; Exeter Colony after the raid
First appearance: Alien: Into Charybdis (2021)
Status: Alive; woke at Exeter Colony after the 2184 hearing
Injuries (novel): Hydrogen sulfide in the Halo B shaft · right arm taken at the elbow · later bites to the face
Kills (novel): 1 Marine (Arnold, Halo A vortex) · 1 shared (Kylie Duncan, with Mary Fowler)

Kamran Afghanzadeh, called Tall Kamran at the colony, was the safety design branch manager at Iran's data site Hasanova in Alex White's Alien: Into Charybdis. His mother died in Afghanistan. In 2184 he worked for the Iranian colony on LV-991, lost his right arm to an adult Xenomorph in a buried lab, triggered a Halo A test that wrecked a Marine ship in the shaft, tackled Captain Kylie Duncan into a pathogen vault, and woke at Exeter Colony after a hearing that treated him as unreliable.

Biography

Early Life And Eton

Kamran learned English as a child, then finished the accent in graduate school at Eton, where he joined the boxing club and used his long reach. He had not left Earth before he moved into nuclear chemistry. Classmates had gone into space in primary school, and they mocked his first extra-vehicular walk as amateur work. A short post-doctoral stretch in Lyon put him around reactor movers used to shift fuel canisters.

A first overseas trip to Singapore taught him to like engineering, from a theme-park coaster he was too frightened to ride to ice cream in the heat. His real mother had died in Afghanistan. He loved Marjan like a second mother. She held his hand at that park, helped him speak again after Russian militiamen on a trek of rock and cold had taken his voice, and died before he finished high school. His parents were gone. He had no siblings and a string of aunts. He was tall enough that mentor Reza Hosseini coined Tall Kamran after a week of watching him duck through an office doorway.

Halo B On Hasanova

Hasanova Colony Corporation put him in charge of Safety Design and gave him design leadership on Halo B, the deeper fan array planned for storehouses that had not been built that far down the lava-tube shaft the crew called Charybdis. Reza had been his boss. After more than a month as Halo B project manager, Reza continued to handle inspections Kamran wanted to sign himself. Operations vice president Haroun Sharif had him on eighty-hour weeks and did not like Reza's pick for the branch. His second was Babak Rashid, from Tabriz. Kamran also played on the company football side, where the others called him long-arms.

Iran's move into the Independent Core System Colonies brought an embargo from the United Americas, and Hasanova stock fell. Reza cancelled a geology study of where the water went. Kamran wanted proof that the shaft would not close and flood the colony. On a piling check, hydrogen sulfide flooded the Halo B worksite. Babak threw him an oxygen bottle, and Kamran sent Babak for help, then went downhill for Reza and worker Mitra. Reza tried to get Mitra out without a bottle. Their boat went into the whirlpool. Kamran rode a worksite bike out of the gas and was barred from the lower Maw afterward.

Meeting the Americans from the tow ship USCSS Gardenia had been Reza's duty. Kamran introduced himself as Dr. Kamran Afghanzadeh, in the English he used with Western clients, and had the McAllen crew sign new safety waivers Haroun wanted because he treated Americans as a lawsuit risk. Haroun called him refugee trash and asked whether he had read Kamran's security file. He warned them not to cross the cable bridge called the Long Walk on foot, because swells there could rise three stories. Frontend programmer Cheyenne "Shy" Hunt was on that first tour, along with captain Jerry Fowler, flight officer Mary Fowler, network tech Noah Brewer, climate tech Arthur Atwater, and mechanic Joanna Hardy.

The Island Lab

Haroun treated the contractors as spies and pushed Halo B pilings onto buried ruins Reza had mapped, against Kamran's drawings. A worker in the lower storehouses showed black veins. Tiran Shirazi, the chief technology officer, froze that man for a medical lift and asked whether Kamran was from Iran. He told her his parents were dead, he had no siblings or children, and his loyalty was to country and company. Haroun asked for an American on a militia run to a crashed hull on a nearby island, so the press would care if the landing was a trick. Kamran took Shy.

Security captain Akbari ran the hovercraft. The wreck on the rocks was the resin-coated Seegson hull UAEV Blackstar, but the team found a cave hatch with a Weyland mark instead of the ship's interior. The lab dated from a time when the world had no breathable air, before later Russian work. An adult Xenomorph took Kamran's right arm there and dragged him into the dark. Blue Marsalis cut the arm away at the elbow to stop pathogen in the wound from spreading. Colony security tased Shy, and she went back to the apartments covered in his blood.

The Storehouse Cryopod

Duncan's Midnighters came from the assault carrier USS Benning and treated the Gardenia crew as prisoners. The Colonial Marines packed more than three hundred colonists into the data storehouses, then opened those doors on a timer so adult Xenomorphs grown from Blackstar eggs would kill the locked people and hide the raid. Marines had frozen Kamran in a storehouse cryopod with the other colonists. He was missing the arm, bandaged at the elbow, and looked close to death when Haroun found the tube. Tiran Shirazi broke him out after the doors opened and told him that if he could not walk she would have to leave him.

They hid through the Spiral while adult Xenomorphs pulled security captain Akbari out of a networking closet. A larger speaking Xenomorph that used the name Marsalis drove the others off Kamran in a full storehouse, then Tiran spoke to it in English. Mary opened the Javaher concourse gates after Noah tried to leave them outside. Kamran wanted stolen security cores on the public EntaCOMM network so other Iranians would see the raid. Corporal Russell Becker and Arthur later climbed the Data Cannon with that bag.

Charybdis And Halo A

Jerry, Noah, Kamran, Mary, and Tiran tried to follow Marsalis down a broken drainage shaft toward Charybdis, jumping gaps between flood waves. Hydrogen sulfide hit as Jerry jumped. He went limp, slid out of Kamran's remaining hand, and fell into the shaft. A smaller Xenomorph had Noah, and the next wave left his body on jagged metal. Marsalis pulled Kamran and Mary through the hive toward the buried ruins under highland island Ghasreh Shab. Tiran died in the later dropship crash after Marines fired on the Spiral.

Warning lights ran up the unfinished wall. Kamran opened the Halo A sensor box with his administrative code and started a test of the upper venting array, the fans that blasted surface air down the hole and pushed poison gas into the sky. The vortex caught Duncan's dropship in the shaft. The hull wrecked against the Spiral wall and killed Arnold. Duncan and Sergeant Hubert Lee climbed out of the crash. Kamran had wanted that ship gone. He and Mary then went deeper with Marsalis, past resin and opened eggs, toward a pathogen lake that linked the atoll works to Ghasreh Shab.

The Pathogen Vault

Duncan and Lee chased them onto a catwalk over a vault of fluid that behaved like the black goo from the Prometheus films. In the lower tunnels an adult Xenomorph bit Kamran in the face, splitting his lip and mixing saliva with blood, before Marsalis threw that attacker off him. Lee died when acid blood stuck his body to Marsalis. Haroun died attacking Duncan after a Chestburster tore out of him. Duncan had pathogen in her by then, and she moved to finish Kamran.

Kamran tackled her off the catwalk into the vault fluid, coming in on the side where his arm was gone so she could not catch a hand that was not there. Hundreds of sacs burst across her body. Mary picked up Lee's rifle and shot the larval shapes that came out of the captain. Marsalis led Kamran and Mary across that lake and up a funicular to the pumice slope above Blackstar, then died on the hillside. The Seegson synth Rook, calling himself Father after Blue removed his safety limits, took her body aboard, launched the ship, and locked Kamran and Mary in an escape pod.

Exeter Colony

They woke at Exeter Colony, an Independent Core System Colonies world. American lawyers argued that Hasanova had been an illegal bioweapons camp outside protected space. The hearing made Kamran look unreliable. Mary's testimony was stronger, and the court treated both of them poorly. The ICSC Board of Ministers then voted for war on the United Americas. New attorney general Theresa Weisenberger handed that declaration to Ambassador Marko Woods while attacks on American weapons plants were being prepared.

Behind The Scenes

White wrote Kamran for Titan Books in the 23 February 2021 hardcover of Into Charybdis, the 560-page sequel to Alien: The Cold Forge. Iranian cultural readers Saba Keramati, Melory Mirashrafi, and Pezhvok Joshgani checked names, food, and speech. The novel also uses Pezhvok Joshgani as Hasanova's head of IT. Blackstone Publishing released an audiobook on the hardcover day. The 1986 film Aliens does not mention Kamran.

Conclusion

Kamran Afghanzadeh was Hasanova's safety lead on LV-991 in 2184. He lost Reza in the Halo B gas, lost his right arm in the island lab, wrecked Duncan's dropship with a Halo A test, and left the atoll with Mary after the captain died in the vault. He woke at Exeter Colony as the Independent Core System Colonies moved toward war with the United Americas.