Liliya: Rage Android Who Burned The Generals

Full name: Liliya
Species: Android
Affiliation: The Rage, then defected
Role: Android general
Known for: Evelyn-Tew theft · burning the Rage generals
Setting: Human Sphere and beyond, 2351-2692
First appearance: Predator: Incursion (2015)
Status: Dead, Queen's hall on Macbeth, December 2692
Injuries (novels): Rib fragment through the torso · torture on the Zeere Za · chest opened for a heart sample
Kills (novels): Kath Roberts · Beatrix Maloney and the other android generals (self-destruct)

Liliya was a Rage android in Tim Lebbon's Rage War novels Predator: Incursion, Alien: Invasion, and Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon. In September 2351 she stole Weyland-Yutani Xenomorph research from the destroyer USS Evelyn-Tew. In July 2692 she left the flagship Macbeth with that control technology in her blood. Hashori of the Widow Clan took her into the Human Sphere. In December she sent the self-destruct that burned the android generals, and she died in the Queen's hall on Macbeth.

Biography

The Evelyn-Tew

In September 2351 Liliya was on the decommissioned destroyer USS Evelyn-Tew near Alpha Centauri, posing as canteen staff. The ship carried LV-178 Xenomorph samples, including a Queen in a storage sphere, and the hull was headed into the star. On orders from Wordsworth, she disabled the failsafes, let the creatures out, copied the research onto a disc inside her body, and wiped the ship's copies. Engineer Kath Roberts and crewman Dearing reached the last officer pod with her. Dearing raised a pulse rifle, and Liliya pushed Roberts into the shot. The charge killed Roberts, and a piece of rib passed through Liliya without damaging the disc.

An adult Xenomorph then smashed Dearing's skull, and Liliya launched the escape pod. She blacked out and woke with the disc intact and white synthetic blood on her side. She overrode the pod's nearest-rock program and left scanner range on a Founders course. That copy was the research the Rage later used to run Xenomorph soldiers.

The Rage

Around 2400 the Founders left human space after persecution over longevity work and secret faster-than-light drives. They took the ships Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, and Hamlet was lost on the outbound run. The people who remained found a gel that lengthened human life, then the ancient habitat Midsummer, where slug-like creatures had left thousands of sleeping Xenomorphs and the remains of the dog-like Drukathi. Wordsworth wanted those sleepers left alone. Beatrix Maloney took the group the other way, and Liliya blamed Maloney for his death.

The Founders became the Rage and ran adult Xenomorphs as soldiers under android generals, using the Evelyn-Tew research, science taken from Midsummer, and the Faze, the Rage technology that rebuilt their ships. Each general could direct about two thousand hatched troops. A fatal wound often made those creatures melt or blow apart, so the artificial parts would not be captured. A Watcher, a fragment of the Faze, could track the same material across space. Liliya was one of the generals, and that material was in her blood from 2351 until she died.

Defection From Macbeth

On Macbeth in July 2692, Liliya found a hidden nano command inside a coded prayer from Maloney and refused to send the reply. She broke her bindings, damaged the eyes of the android general Napoleon, and injected inactive Rage nano into her own neck. Napoleon then shot elder Erika Simons through her gel tank. Liliya left the flagship to reach the Human Sphere ahead of the invasion and hand the control technology to humans.

The Zeere Za

Thirty-three days after she left Macbeth, a probe from the general Alexander destroyed her hyperdrive, and the ship that answered her peace broadcast was Yautja. Hashori took her aboard the Zeere Za in August and tortured her for days, harder after she saw the thin white blood, and she never questioned Liliya about the stolen research. When Alexander's Xenomorphs boarded, Hashori cut Liliya loose, carried her to a small craft, and left. Seven Rage ships destroyed the Zeere Za about an hour later. Hashori was taking her into the Human Sphere because the material in her blood was a way to fight the Rage.

Hell Station

Fifty-one days after the Zeere Za, Hashori and Liliya forced drophole Gamma 23, whose moon control base the general Parks had wrecked, and jumped seven light years. They reached Hell Station, once the Company mining post WayStation 14 in orbit around LV-301. Jiango Tann and Yvette Tann took Liliya in. Their son had died on an ArmoTech sample run, and Yvette had tried to expose Gerard Marshall. Liliya gave them the theft, what Midsummer held, and how a fatal wound could be pushed into a living general from light years away.

In November 2692 the station council wanted the Tanns to move Liliya and Hashori toward the Company, because Hashori's ship might be what Alexander was tracking. The council hired Satan's Saviour to take them toward the Company. Liliya refused to leave while Alexander was that close, because the stolen work in her blood was how he tracked her. In December he dropped about a million kilometres out and fired nuclear missiles at the ships around the station. Satan's Saviour undocked, wrecked one Rage assault ship, and used Liliya on the comms so the big hull would chase them instead of the station. Yautja ships then reduced Alexander's hull to a wreck. He survived in a rescue capsule, grafted adult Xenomorph parts onto himself, and stole a hunter ship. The Watcher continued to track Liliya.

On the run toward Addison Prime, the Tanns opened Liliya's chest and sampled her heart, because the nano there was the control she had carried since the Evelyn-Tew. At drophole Gamma 117, Alexander's stolen hunter ship hit them before that work was finished. Two Yautja ships trapped him, froze him, and took Liliya and the other survivors off the wrecked mercenary hull.

The Generals

Isa Palant met Liliya after that rescue. They put a signal into Liliya's heart through the nano in her blood, a command that would seize a general's self-destruct, and they tested it on the frozen Alexander. A nuclear flash about a hundred miles out killed him. At Macbeth, Liliya walked out of the lock alone so Beatrix Maloney would take her aboard. Maloney brought her to the Queen's hall to kill her. Liliya sent one command through the android network, a self-destruct, and Maloney's rebuilt heart heated. Liliya continued to send that command while the ship caught fire around her, and she died there. Most of Macbeth burned with the generals.

Personality And Traits

Liliya was patient, exact, and intelligent. She could hold a false post for a long time, follow a technical order, and keep a stolen record for centuries. She understood the control in her own blood well enough to explain it in plain terms, including how a fatal wound could be pushed into a living general from light years away.

She was strong-headed, and her loyalty was a choice. She stayed with Wordsworth and blamed Beatrix Maloney for his death. She refused Maloney when an order hid a second command. She could also be compassionate with a person in front of her. She spoke with Hashori about the mate Hashori had lost, and she told the humans who sheltered her what she carried and why it was dangerous.

She was ruthless when a task was at stake. Kath Roberts died because Liliya put the stolen research ahead of the engineer standing next to her. After she broke with the Rage, she turned that same hardness on Maloney and the other generals. She treated her own life as part of the cost, and she accepted death so their command would fail.

Behind The Scenes

Tim Lebbon introduced Liliya in Predator: Incursion, published by Titan Books on 20 October 2015. He brought her back in Alien: Invasion on 26 April 2016. Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon, published in September 2016, closes the trilogy with her death in the Queen's hall as Macbeth burns, and those three novels are her only appearances.

Conclusion

Liliya was the Rage android who took the Evelyn-Tew research in 2351 and carried the control technology until December 2692. She left Macbeth in July 2692 to bring that control to the Human Sphere, traveled with Hashori after the Zeere Za, and died in the Queen's hall when the generals burned.