Marcel Apone: Al's Brother And Il Conde Captain
Marcel Apone was a United States Colonial Marine Corps captain and commanding officer of the Hardboiled 8th aboard the Il Conde in Aliens: Bishop by T. R. Napper. He does not appear in Aliens. After Fury 161 he took the Il Conde to the drifting USCSS Patna to recover the rebuilt Bishop android, then boarded the Chinese warship Xinjiang when that chase spilled onto a live hive.
Command And The Hardboiled
Marcel ran a reduced company he called the Hardboiled 8th. A full platoon, a dropship, and a lieutenant had been left on Torin Prime as a deterrent after he refused to stay on station. The Il Conde was about 400 meters long, the same Conestoga class as the Patna, with room enough that Marines bunked in pairs. Sergeant Max Hettrick, the company synthetic Haruki, and the Weyland-Yutani man Walter Schwartz stood with him on the hangar brief.
The packets already covered LV-426 and Fiorina 161. Marcel used The Art of War in that brief: know the enemy first, then the kit. Hettrick covered acid-release armor, Facehugger masks, and extra incinerators. The official line was that the Marines left no one behind, including Bishop, even if the hangar was quieter on that point than on the promise to wipe the Xenomorphs out. The packets named Dwayne Hicks and Bishop as the Marines who got out of Hadley's Hope, plus a couple of civilians.
At Helene 215 he was offered five rookies and took Private Karri Lee, an Australian with messy papers and a clean hand-to-hand record, because he saw a fighter in her. He carried a tactical shotgun in the field and kept a photograph of his mother and older brother on his work desk.
The Brother
The older brother was Gunnery Sergeant Alexander Apone, cut down with Bravo Team on LV-426. Marcel's public brief named the Patna as Michael Bishop's research ship and the last known location of Science Officer Lance Bishop. To the brass he pitched a petabyte of Xenomorph and Queen data, as valuable as a live sample. Every time he looked at the photograph, the private reason was still the death of his brother.
Boarding The Patna
Second squad rode an APC into the empty Patna hangar and ran into Weyland-Yutani commandos, not Xenomorphs. Private Ali and PFC Hartzfield died in the first volley. Gravity died, then Karri restored it from a sub-command center while Marcel sat the APC turret run with Corporal Ottelli. He sent Haruki and the wounded Corporal Sara Ransome back to the Il Conde on dropship pilot Tyrone Miller's clock.
He treated the bay as unsecured even after second platoon took the bridge. Smart-gunner Juan Cortazar went to gantry overwatch. The kneeling prisoners included Sergeant William Raby, once of Charlie Company, and Kostas Macrae. Raby treated the Il Conde as a rogue unit after Xenomorph data. Marcel hauled him up and took him toward Michael's suites. Karri walked back in covered in blood, missing most of her kit, and he took her along as the tech.
A later fight in the suites produced a fake Michael Bishop with white blood. Private Johnson died there. The real Michael had already left by skiff with two synthetics, cargo, the wrecked Bishop chassis, and Robert Morse. Michael then killed the Patna comms and dropped the reactor field. Haruki ejected the fusion core and died. Marcel took the telemetry Karri brought back and left the Patna a radiated hulk.
Xinjiang
On the hunt afterward, Schwartz sat in Marcel's office while they refined the search near Seventeen Phei Phei. Hettrick then brought a wide-band CARTWHEEL pickup: Science Officer Lance Bishop, last of Bravo 2, warning that Michael's Jutou story was a lie, that the hull was Chinese, and that a live adult Xenomorph and eggs were already aboard. Schwartz named the ship Xinjiang. Marcel kept Bishop's last request, that the hull be destroyed, off the table in that room.
Six of them rode a breaching lance built for twelve: Marcel, Schwartz, Davis, Ottelli, Misty Gonzales, and Shawn Polacsek. The first barrage was meant to kill the rail guns and the bridge. The second was meant to hit the barracks. Schwartz carried override codes for a Weyland-Yutani-built hull the Chinese had already layered with extra locks.
Marcel hit the hull with particle beams and rail guns, then boarded through the lance with a tactical shotgun and an underslung incendiary barrel. Captain Zhang came out of a ready room and cracked Marcel's visor. Marcel killed him with the shotgun.
Chinese troops tried to retake the bridge while Schwartz failed to close the blast doors. Polacsek took a hit in the armpit. Marcel's backup was to blow the rear of the lance and go EVA for a skiff pickup. When the adult Xenomorphs hit the Chinese in the corridor, he let the survivors onto the bridge instead of keeping the firefight going. The hive overran them anyway, and he threw explosives in a compartment already opened by acid, then woke in vacuum on the outer hull. There he wedged a knife in an inner jaw and kicked that adult Xenomorph into space for his brother. Weeks picked him up in a skiff on Ransome's order.
Aftermath
The Il Conde scuttled Xinjiang after the extract and let one Chinese escape pod run for Seventeen Phei Phei. In the vacuum he had already decided that if he was the only survivor he would leave the Corps himself. He still had a broken arm in a sling, which he treated as the cheap price of fighting an adult Xenomorph by hand. He promoted Ransome to sergeant, wrote Karri a reprimand for panic on the Patna, and put her in for a Purple Heart and a Silver Star for bringing Cortazar out. Morse stayed in the brig. Medic Xuan Nguyen sat with the survivors.
Marcel asked Bishop whether he wanted to stay, even though the android was not formally company, and Bishop stayed. The official win was the retrieval of that unit. Brass opinion of the rest of the job was mixed. The Il Conde turned back to Torin Prime for the rest of the company, then years out into the Far Reach. The desk photograph of his mother and brother was still there.
Confirmed Kills
Marcel shotgun-killed Captain Zhang on the Xinjiang bridge. He shotgun-killed at least one adult Xenomorph at close range during the boarding, then finished another on the hull with a knife and vacuum. Shared Marine fire on both ships took more that the novel does not assign to him by name. He did not kill Michael Bishop, whose body stayed in the hive while the mind left as a coded burst toward Torin Prime.
Conclusion
Marcel Apone was the Colonial Marine captain who commanded the Il Conde after his older brother died on LV-426. In Aliens: Bishop he boarded the Patna for the rebuilt android and the data in that mind, then boarded Xinjiang when the hive was already loose. He killed Zhang, put one adult Xenomorph into vacuum, and left the Chinese hull scuttled. He was alive with a broken arm, Bishop still with the company, when the Hardboiled turned for Torin Prime and the Far Reach.
Appearances
- Aliens: Bishop by T. R. Napper (Titan Books, 2023)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Colonial Marine Characters | Alien Lore | Colonial Marine Lore
