MOX, short for Mobile Offensive ExoWarrior, was an experimental Berserker combat exosuit used by the Colonial Marines in Aliens: Tribes. It enclosed a human occupant in heavy powered armor equipped to penetrate and destroy Xenomorph hives. The sixteenth unit, nicknamed Shitkicker, fought aboard the medical station TodLab LXI under the supervision of a specialist Berserker squad. Intravenous sedatives restrained its operator between deployments, while successive stimulant doses drove its assaults. MOX 16 killed the station’s main Queen but became uncontrollable, killed its own squad leader and was lost during the operation’s collapse.
Development And Purpose
The development of MOX followed Ellen Ripley’s use of an industrial power loader against the Queen after the LV-426 disaster. Her improvised use of an exoskeleton suggested a purpose-built military system capable of confronting the creatures directly. In Tribes, military intelligence produced sixteen experimental ExoWarrior infantry units, with Shitkicker identified as the sixteenth. These Berserkers combined a living Marine with a heavily armed mechanical body.
The Berserker Squad supported the armored operator rather than sending him into an unknown nest alone. Reconnaissance and a protected bait carrier established the location of the breeding chamber before MOX was released. Tunnel Rat carried the homing equipment into the TodLab hive, while Leader, Point and Ears handled extraction, surveillance and the cleanup behind the assault. This division of duties gave MOX a defined objective inside a Xenomorph hive and placed the rest of the squad outside its intended line of fire.
Armor And Weapons
The MOX Exoskeleton weighed two tons in Tribes. Reinforced leg struts and powered joints supported an enclosed torso, a ribbed armored back and a helmet with three viewing slits. Its plating carried damage from previous engagements, including pitting from acid blood. Replacement plastic shielding protected the faceplate after an earlier battle had nearly cost Shitkicker his eyes. The armor allowed him to break through doors, walls and airlocks while resisting attacks from adult Xenomorphs.
The Right Arm carried the recently installed rapid-fire weapons. Self-pumping 45 mm grenade launchers surrounded the central pulse weapons, which fired 25 mm explosive-tipped caseless ammunition. The shells incorporated oxidizing chemicals intended to neutralize the creatures’ acid blood. Leader inspected the new assembly before deployment, contrasting its unmarked metal with the scarred armor around it. During the Queen assault, Shitkicker used grenades against her body and pulse fire to bring down the remains.
The Left Arm incorporated a flamethrower and an electroprod. The torch burned hive chambers and passageways, while the electrical weapon dislodged creatures that had climbed onto the armor. Its articulation also allowed Shitkicker to bend the arm backward over his helmet. That movement became lethal to Leader when he climbed onto MOX’s back in an attempt to stop the rampage. The same integrated weapons that protected the occupant left nearby infantry exposed when his target selection failed.
Controls And Medical Support
Between engagements, Shitkicker was suspended in restraints and life-support tubing while intravenous sedatives maintained a dreamless coma. Leader checked his breathing and rapid eye movement before leaving him with a hospital attendant. The squad regarded dreams as a warning that the sedation was insufficient, since an awakened or partially conscious operator could react unpredictably when the stimulants arrived. Leader described an earlier lapse in supervision that had ended with Shitkicker killing a nearby attendant during activation.
Activation began when the Sedative Valves closed and the suit’s pumps introduced successive doses of synthetic adrenaline. The grenade launchers spun up and the pulse weapons tested their charge as the occupant regained consciousness. A scanner dropped before his right eye, displaying the station’s floor plan, his objective and a route through the corridors. His head was strapped inside the helmet, restricting his ability to turn it independently and making the forward display important to his progress.
The Homing Beacon carried by Tunnel Rat provided the destination, with her flares marking the final route toward the Queen. Further stimulant doses sustained Shitkicker’s aggression during the advance, including another injection when he passed Rat’s abandoned cocoon. This system depended on medical control of a living operator. It did not make him an autonomous robot, and the squad had to withdraw from his path once the attack began.
Combat History
The TodLab Assault
During the TodLab LXI clearance, Tunnel Rat allowed the creatures to capture her and carry her into the nest. Her equipment broke her free of the resin cocoon, and the beacon signalled the assault team. Leader moved in to recover her while MOX 16 advanced along the displayed route. Shitkicker’s weight and weapons announced his approach through the station’s structure as the other Marines moved away from the breeding chamber.
The defenders attacked MOX 16 from the walls, ceiling and floor, with some creatures climbing onto the helmet and back. Shitkicker used the electroprod to throw them off and continued through grenade fire, pulse bursts and flame. At the royal chamber he struck the Queen in the throat, torso and abdomen with 45 mm grenades. He then brought her suspended remains down with pulse fire, burned the chamber and pursued creatures trying to carry infected hosts out of his reach.
Loss Of Control
After the main Queen’s destruction, Shitkicker continued breaking through the installation under repeated stimulant doses. The surviving Xenomorphs placed themselves in his path and used their blood to weaken the flooring. His two-ton weight then carried him through successive decks, bringing his uncontrolled advance toward Point and the injured Rat. Lieutenant ’Bort ordered Leader to intercept him before he killed the remaining members of the squad.
Leader’s weapons could not readily penetrate the Armor, so he climbed the leg struts and worked his way onto the suit’s back. Shitkicker reacted to the weight as another hostile attachment. He bent the flamethrower overhead, burned Leader and struck him with the electroprod. Point saw the sergeant’s body fall before MOX plunged through another acid-weakened deck. Shitkicker briefly turned his weapons toward Point as the floor failed beneath him.
The final stages of the operation carried MOX 16 into the station’s waste-disposal conduit, with acid and falling debris continuing to damage the suit. When ’Bort ejected Rat’s waste pod, Shitkicker was also swept out in the ejection. His monitor showed flames, garbage and shattered armor before the transmission failed. The account did not follow him to a recovery. TodLab’s implosion was subsequently triggered by a separate waste container carrying Dr. Cotlow and a surviving Queen embryo.
MOX In The Alien RPG
The Colonial Marines Operations Manual supplied another account of Project Berserker, with Hyperdyne developing the MOX Mark 1 after analysis of Sulaco flight-recorder data recovered at Fury 161. Conventional controls had made an armed power loader too clumsy, so civilian adviser Spencer Lyndon proposed hardwiring a human into the weapon. Early subjects died from sensory overload or killed themselves after activation. Violent military prisoners from Skyfire Down became the programme’s more viable volunteers.
The MOX Mark 1 had a vacuum-rated, acid-resistant shell with hazardous-environment protection. Its listed armament included a 25 mm Gatling gun, M240 incinerator unit, stun baton, U1 M40 grenade launcher, U4 repeating grenade launcher with QTC firebomb ammunition and a grasping claw. The book assigned it Armor Rating 10 and Air Supply 8, with bonuses to strength and ranged combat. These were the RPG model’s specifications, distinct from the weapon arrangement and ammunition described for Shitkicker in Tribes.
External equipment controlled the Intravenous Injectors, allowing a commander to administer X-Stims, Naproleve and sedatives. The manual described up to one Shift of operating power and experiments with enlarged drop pods for deployment. It also described a retrieval system under testing that would return an incapacitated unit to its landing zone and expel the dead occupant. None of these provisions established that Shitkicker possessed such a recovery system, and his final transmission in Tribes showed no successful return.
Relation To MAX Armor
The MAX Berserker from Aliens: Frenzy and the Aliens: Berserker novel followed a similar method of hive clearance. Both systems combined a human occupant, heavy armor, integrated weapons and medical control by a support team. In each operation, a bait carrier took a beacon into the nest before the armored attacker advanced on the Queen. The name MAX expanded to Mobile Assault Exo-Warrior, while MOX meant Mobile Offensive ExoWarrior.
Shitkicker’s MOX 16 was separate from MAX 09 and its operators. The latter armor served aboard Nemesis and later carried Brian Ellis and Lucas Briggs. Its novel described a roughly three-metre, almost ten-tonne assembly with its own weapon types and medical interface. Tribes gave MOX a two-ton mass and different arm-mounted ammunition. Those figures belonged to their respective suits and accounts, rather than interchangeable specifications for a single machine.
Behind The Scenes
Steve Bissette introduced MOX and Shitkicker in the prose of Aliens: Tribes, published by Dark Horse in 1992 with paintings by Dave Dorman. The illustrations showed the restrained unit before activation, its attack on the Queen and Leader’s attempt to stop it. Tribes preceded the MAX stories published as Aliens: Berserker in 1995, establishing the earlier depiction of a drug-controlled armored Marine supported by a specialist hive-clearance squad.
The Colonial Marines Operations Manual later adapted the Mobile Offensive Exowarrior designation into its Project Berserker material. Its Mark 1 description added a manufacturer, development programme, named weapons and game statistics. That later treatment expanded the equipment concept, while Shitkicker’s particular deployment and loss remained part of the TodLab narrative. The RPG’s development history did not identify its test subjects as MOX 16’s unnamed human occupant.
Conclusion
MOX gave the Berserker squad the protection and firepower to destroy a defended hive, but its effectiveness depended on controlling the person inside. Shitkicker killed the TodLab Queen and then became a danger to his own team. His final uncontrolled descent ended with a failed transmission during the waste-pod ejection, leaving the squad without its armored assault weapon as the station approached destruction.
Appearances
- Aliens: Tribes (1992), MOX 16.
- Alien: The Roleplaying Game - Colonial Marines Operations Manual (2021), MOX Mark 1.
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Vehicles | Alien Universe Weapons | Colonial Marine Lore | Alien Lore
