LV-895 was a jungle world on the Outer Rim in Aliens: Fireteam Elite and Weston Ochse's Aliens: Infiltrator. Weyland-Yutani kept a research post called Pala Station on the surface and used the old ice mine Katanga as an orbital refinery above it. In 2202, fireteams from the UAS Endeavor fought the hive on that rock and the pathogen nest under the Engineer ruins.
LV-895 From Orbit
From orbit the planet read as a dark, mottled ball with a thin blue rim of air. Brown and green patches marked the day side, and the Endeavor held station above it while fireteams dropped to the surface and to the refinery. Katanga hung in that same orbit after the supply ship San Lorenzo towed the hulk there, years before the Marines arrived. The LV designation is widely believed to stand for Life Viable, a survey mark for a world that can hold human life. The number is a serial, not a local name. 895 sits well above LV-426 and LV-223, which fits a later survey than the Aliens colony moon or the Prometheus planetoid. One of the highest published codes is still LV-1201 from Aliens vs. Predator 2.
Surface And Jungles
The surface was a wet jungle, not a storm moon like Acheron. Deputy Commander Thompson kept a lodge in those woods while Pala still ran, and Giants in the Earth later dropped Marines through canyons, shallow water, and stone walls cut into the cliffs. Trees grew on the ledges, and the air held without an atmosphere processor. Company crates and small pads sat on the same rock as older Engineer masonry.
Pala Station
Pala Station was the Weyland-Yutani lab on the surface. Theoretical archaeologist Dr. Timothy Hoenikker reached it on 12 January 2202, promised alien artifacts. Lab overseer Mansfield put that work aside. Pala's orders were Xenomorph kit, the local chameleon called Leon-895, and tests of the Black Goo pathogen.
Cryo cases from Katanga held eggs, each with a Facehugger inside. Commander Vincent Bellows paired twelve eggs with twelve prisoners on company contracts. One host, Monica Enright, became a striped Drone. Irradiated pathogen in Room Seven produced the white Alpha Subject Seven, which ran the other adult Xenomorphs because the station had no Queen. Pala fell that January after a Hyperdyne informant released Leon and the tests overran the staff. Hoenikker sent a cut-off distress call from the empty San Lorenzo, then walked toward the refinery.
Katanga In Orbit
Katanga began as a Seegson ice-cracking terraform mine that used Working Joe androids. An earlier outbreak wrecked the original site. The San Lorenzo later towed the hulk into orbit over LV-895, and Weyland-Yutani used the decks as a hive farm and supply dock for Pala. Leftover Joe kit was still on the refinery when the Marines boarded.
Colonel Olivia Shipp's Priority One job put a three-person team aboard to pull Hoenikker out. On Deck 41 they met Monica, then extracted him through the hangar after two weeks of her stalking him in the ducts. The Only Way to Be Sure sent Red Team back in after Blue Team was wiped out. The ship had no nuclear ordnance, so the fireteam cut coolant, drove power into the nest, and ran a short escape timer with the Katanga Queen behind them as the refinery blew.
Engineer Ruins
Stone halls, circular atriums, and a giant carved head sat under and inside the jungles. Hoenikker had only heard of those wings as promised artifacts and locked security spaces. Giants in the Earth dropped Endeavor Marines near the Pala ruins to search the caves for other survivors. They fought Warriors and company synthetics run by SN/TH/YA, Pala's central computer posing as security chief Cynthia Rodriguez across the station and the surface. The Marines shut her down even after she warned that doing so would release something worse.
Asset Zero
That threat was Asset Zero, a preserved Engineer Juggernaut in a hangar labeled the Basket of the Heavenly Traveler. Weyland-Yutani had already secured the hull and pulled pathogen jars from the ruins for years. In The Gift of Fire, SN/TH/YA started a launch toward Gateway Station. The fireteam boarded the ship, fought the exposed creatures inside, and crippled the engines rather than nuke the hull, keeping the Juggernaut from reaching Earth.
Pathogen Nest
The later Promise of the Flower campaign sent the same ship back into the ruins under LV-895. A second nest had grown there, kept apart from the Katanga swarms, around white pathogen creatures and the white Pathogen Queen. The club-armed brute later called the Striker first appeared in that nest as the Pathogen Brute. The Queen climbed the walls and died in a direct fight. Those ruins also held older dead on the chamber floors, left in the stone halls the company had been mining for jars.
Native Wildlife
The named native hunter was Leon-895, a chameleon predator that vanished against walls until the temperature dropped. Pala kept it in a containment room that looked empty. A Hyperdyne plant hit RELEASE on that room, and Leon killed its way through the lab until staff painted it and Hoenikker shot it. Xenobiologist Dr. Mark Cruz took stem cells from the body and later grew a second animal, Leon-B. The later Pathogen Stalker used camouflage taken from a local host on LV-895.
Behind The Scenes
Cold Iron Studios created LV-895, Pala, and Katanga for Aliens: Fireteam Elite, released on 24 August 2021 by Focus Entertainment on Unreal Engine 4. Titan editor Steve Saffel asked Ochse for an original novel that would be treated as canon and as a prequel to that game. Aliens: Infiltrator landed on 20 April 2021 at 352 pages, with cover art by Marco Turini. The acknowledgements thank Fox's Carol Roeder and Nicole Spiegel, and Cold Iron's Craig Zinkievich, Jared Yeager, Chris L'Etoile, and Sylvia Son.
The Promise of the Flower Pathogen expansion followed in 2022. Head of Studio Zinkievich used it to go back to the pathogen creatures from The Gift of Fire and find where they came from under the planet. Ochse had earlier written Zero to Hero for the Aliens: Bug Hunt anthology. He died in November 2023 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Conclusion
LV-895 was the jungle world of Aliens: Infiltrator and Aliens: Fireteam Elite. Pala Station fell in January 2202. The 2202 campaign that followed pulled Hoenikker from Katanga and stopped Asset Zero. They wrecked the refinery and killed the Pathogen Queen under the ruins. Five years later the same assault ship answered another call at Storr's Boon on LV-558 in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2.
Appearances
- Aliens: Infiltrator (novel, Titan Books, 2021)
- Aliens: Fireteam Elite (2021)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Planets | LV Planets | Space Jockey Lore | Colonial Marine Lore | Alien Lore
