Minos Station: Seventh Circle Station Over Dimitar

Name: Minos Station
Type: WY-9056 factory station with a space elevator
Operator: Weyland-Yutani
Station chief: Kai Rolstad
Computer: Kaspar
Location: Orbit of Dimitar (LV-895), Three World Empire territory
Cover story: Parts for the Three World Empire military and merchant fleets
Projects: Kuebiko control of XX121, Mother Colony and training facility on Dimitar
First appearance: Alien: Seventh Circle (2025)
Status: Crashed into Dimitar with a second Queen aboard

Minos Station was a Weyland-Yutani factory station in orbit of the ice planet Dimitar, designated LV-895, in Philippa Ballantine's 2025 novel Alien: Seventh Circle. It presented itself as a parts plant for the Three World Empire fleet, while its labs and a planet-side facility tested a fungus called Kuebiko as a way to control Xenomorphs. The Jackals raided the station to find the source of a mutagen order, and it was later driven into Dimitar with a second Queen aboard.

Station Components

Station And Elevator

Minos had an awkward, utilitarian shape, with the Weyland-Yutani emblem painted beneath its name. Its decks followed the standard plan of a WY-9056 factory station, which gave every level at least one airlock. The station had its own engines, which had brought it into orbit, but it was smaller than most mining and processing rigs because it only needed enough mass to act as a counterweight for its elevator. Stabilizers held it in a safe orbit, and smaller orbital thrusters below the two-story main engines fired only when it began to drift. The station AI, Kaspar, ran the doors, docks, and security.

The space elevator was the most expensive part of the station. A 100,000-kilometer loop of graphene ribbons and diamond nanothreads, made from a Weyland-Yutani composite many times stronger than steel, ran down to the surface. Paired crawlers carried cargo and passengers along the tether, and a network of defensive satellites stopped ships from landing on Dimitar directly. Dimitar was a slowly turning, pale green ice world whose air could not support human life, and its gravity was thirty-nine percent lower than Earth's. An executive elevator ran straight to the command center, and a transit tram linked the administration section to the commercial galleria.

Parts Factory Cover

Officially, Minos mined minerals on Dimitar, forged them into parts, and shipped them up the elevator to be packed for Weyland-Yutani construction and repair sites and for the military and merchant fleets of the Three World Empire. Station chief Kai Rolstad ran the station, and Kaspar held the Righteous Fury at the umbilical for 721 seconds on a claimed lock fault before letting the Jackals off. Posters warned staff that competitors wanted Company products and told them to report any approach. The galleria was drab and nearly empty, with a single noodle stand.

Workers at the noodle stand had spotless hands that did not match factory labor, and staff gossip mentioned a second shipload of cheap deckhands that week that the Company expected to lose. Papers signed by General Cunningham of the Colonial Marines let the Jackals stay for repairs and rest, although Rolstad wanted the ship gone. Rolstad described Minos as a rough factory with nothing like Gateway for entertainment. An order for the solvent H-AC278, used with a Facehugger mutagen, had come from the station, and that order brought the Jackals there.

Level Eleven Labs

The real research was on level 11, a firewalled deck with no visible synthetics. Mae Hendricks and the scarred Bishop unit Rook reached it by going outside the hull disguised as repair androids. A pad belonging to Dr. Weis mixed human DNA with the RNA of an alien fungus, and manifests showed human families sent down to the planet. The fungus was Kuebiko, taken from the world Hotoke on the Outer Rim. During the raid, the level 11 scientist Elise Vogel explained the program to Mae while the Jackals searched the labs.

Weyland-Yutani wanted XX121 that could be dropped on a world to clear it and then recalled so the Company could take the resources. Mechanical control had failed, and a year of injecting Kuebiko into adult Xenomorphs had failed because of their acid blood. The scientists instead infected human hosts first, so the fungus passed through the Facehugger cycle into the grown Xenomorph. The change could not be reversed after about a day. Some hosts grew new colonies, and others served as prey in demonstrations for clients. Sedated workers lay on gurneys, and sealed crates held adult Xenomorphs with blue-tinged joints.

Dimitar Facility

Below the elevator on Dimitar, the Company ran a training facility and the Mother Colony, which steered the satellite Kuebiko colonies through scent and electrical signals. Sentry guns lined the approach, and a valley below held the bones of people who had fled south. The hive was built of glowing hexagonal Company polymer instead of resin, with forty stacked chambers that held the whole Xenomorph lifecycle. A Queen hung in a polymer net with fresh eggs beneath her and controlled the infected humans as well as the drones. Infected workers glowed blue and attacked synthetics with rocks.

History

The Jackal Raid

The Jackals attacked Minos in three teams. Green Team took the command center to hand Kaspar to the Fury's AI, Blue Team went outside the hull to level 11 for proof, and Red Team under Zula Hendricks and Olivia Shipp rode a crawler to the planet. Kaspar beat the hack within seconds, turned the Green synthetics on their humans, and locked the Fury. Rolstad then opened the command center doors to blue-jointed adult Xenomorphs, which killed Green Team. On level 11, infected workers opened more crates and cycled an airlock, and most of Blue Team died in vacuum.

Red Team was trapped on Dimitar when the elevator shut down. Zula ordered the Fury's crew into cryo pods and sent Mae and Rook to the three generals in Rook's ship, the Blackstar. Under evacuation protocol the station cut power to emergency lighting, disabled synthetic access codes, and sealed sections while adult Xenomorphs moved through the vents. A drone took the shuttle pilot Alice Prim alive on the galleria, and the Blackstar escaped as the hangar doors closed. With no one left to stop them, the Xenomorphs overran the remaining staff, and the station went quiet.

Extraktor Return

Four weeks later, Mae returned aboard the Ariadne, the ship of the Jutou Combine synth hunters known as the Extraktors, after she sold them Minos as a bioweapon site. The station had power, the Fury remained locked to the umbilical, and the elevator was intact. Security staff on the command deck were dead, the dock field was blown, and the Solo Cup drifted in the bay. Mae woke Company Mr. Brown units against the Extraktors, and the scavenger Lenny Pope restored power to the elevator from the command center, where Rook had survived with shot legs after three station cycles.

Fall Of Minos

Mae found a second hive one level above the engines. Resin covered the catwalks around the reactors, and the station's employees hung from the walls above empty eggs, their chests opened by Chestbursters. Rolstad was among them. A second Queen was laying eggs near the warm power sources of the orbital thrusters, apparently triggered by the number of hosts aboard. The Extraktors under Captain Warrae followed Mae into the chamber, and their gunfire woke the hive. Mae ignited the main engines and aimed the station at the training facility on Dimitar, but Kaspar ran a safety protocol and shut the engines down.

Rook stayed in the command center to override Kaspar and hold the station on its crash course, and he sent Lenny to the elevator. The last six Red Team survivors came up on the crawler after Red Mae blew the hive entrance with C4, and the Jackals released the umbilical by hand. Minos tilted and dived into Dimitar, shedding burning shielding and pieces of its outer rings, with the Extraktors, the Ariadne, and the second Queen inside. Rook died with the station, although a copy of him remained in Lenny's eye implant. Zula carried disc drives of evidence from the station onto the Righteous Fury.

Behind The Scenes

Minos Station was created for Alien: Seventh Circle, written by Philippa Ballantine from a story developed with Clara Carija and published by Titan Books on 7 January 2025. The novel is the sequel to Alien: Inferno's Fall, which introduced Mae, the Jackals, and the Righteous Fury. The station shares its name with the judge of the damned in Dante's Inferno, the poem that also supplies the seventh circle of the title. The chapter in which the Jackals first board the station is titled Into The Labyrinth.

Seventh Circle described Dimitar, designated LV-895, as a pale green ice world with unbreathable air and gravity thirty-nine percent lower than Earth's, and Rolstad used that designation when he greeted Zula. The jungle world of Pala Station from Aliens: Infiltrator and Aliens: Fireteam Elite, set in 2202, shares the LV-895 number, with dense forest and breathable air. The novel never mentioned Pala, the Katanga refinery, or the events of that campaign, and the games never mentioned Dimitar, Minos Station, or the Jackals.

Conclusion

Minos Station was a Weyland-Yutani factory station over Dimitar that hid a Kuebiko program meant to make Xenomorphs controllable. Its space elevator linked the station to a planet-side training facility and the Mother Colony. The Jackals' raid failed with heavy losses, and the Xenomorphs overran the staff. Four weeks later Mae Hendricks returned with the Extraktors, and Rook held the station on a crash course while the last Jackals escaped. Minos fell into Dimitar with a second Queen inside, and Zula left with disc drives of evidence.