Origae-6 was a distant terrestrial world marked for a human colony, with land, oceans, a large lake in the first terraforming zone, near-terrestrial gravity, and breathable air. The planned colonists were 2,000 people and 1,140 embryos, with Captain Jacob Branson in the lead and Katherine Daniels, his wife, to run terraforming. They were to make the voyage on the USCSS Covenant, a Weyland-Yutani ship for the United Americas, in Alien: Covenant. After a diversion to Planet 4, David put the ship back on course for Origae-6 under Walter's name.
Location
The Covenant navigation display plotted Origae-6 at stellar azimuth 87.2, on the same chart as a star labeled Sequence C234 at stellar azimuth 47.6, and the display housing is marked QW 79056943. That second mark was the system whose fourth planet the crew later investigated. Mother placed the human signal from that system in sector 105, at right ascension 47.6 and a declination of 24.3 from the ship's place at the recharge stop.
Later reference books give the world more than one address. Free League's Alien roleplaying game timeline puts Origae-6 in distant Sector 87, the same sector label that book uses for Planet 4's uncharted system, and the galactic map key groups Sector 87 with C234 and Canopus. Alien: The Blueprints names the region Sector ORI-6 D-595 and places the planet more than twenty parsecs Trailward from Earth.
Survey
Finding Origae-6 took about ten years. Katherine Daniels had worked that search with the company, outside consultants, and the relevant government offices. Hundreds of specialists scanned thousands of systems, ran thousands of simulations, and sketched possible terrain from distant readings, and that work produced a single preferred world. From Earth, instruments could read the atmosphere and support a guess that the seasons would be livable. The climate on the ground was a separate question, to be learned after arrival. When the crew later resolved Planet 4, navigator Ricks judged that view far clearer than any picture Earth had of Origae-6.
In Alien: Covenant Origins, Daniels treated dirt as something the ship would not have to carry. She expected plowable soil for farmers and ore the miners could refine, and she pictured either a desert of shifting dunes or open grassland like the North American Great Plains and the Ukrainian steppe, then set that picture aside as her own guess. Finer details of the ground were left for the colonists after arrival, and unloading, checking, and putting the colony machines into service was expected to take years.
The Colony Mission
The settlement was a United Americas colony effort announced in 2103, with Weyland-Yutani providing the ship. The operations manual places the launch in that same year, and the Concordat the year after. On 5 December 2104, seven years and four months of the run remained. After the particle burst, Walter's remaining time was seven years, four months, three weeks, and two days, give or take twelve hours, with eight recharge cycles left before arrival. At each of those stops a relay was to be dropped, so Earth could learn that the colony on Origae-6 had taken hold. The ship was to enter the atmosphere once, for the final unloading, and then be left on the ground.
Before the ship left Earth orbit, the Earthsavers tried to force a public cancellation of the Origae-6 effort. In Origins they treated a colony that far out as a marker that could lead something back to Earth. They mined a cargo door, kidnapped members of the Yutani family, and sent a shuttle at the hull. Hideo Yutani held the mission to its departure, knowing he would be dead before any confirmation of arrival reached Earth. The colonists had accepted Origae-6 as the world where they would wake, and Karine Oram and the crew were promised the same life once the ship was officially taken out of service.
Planned Colonists
Jacob Branson expected to govern Origae-6 once the settlers arrived, and the company had given him command in part because he would look after them. Katherine Daniels handled the stores for the voyage and the settlement, and the crew of 15 was assigned in pairs, with Walter, the synthetic, left unpaired. Sergeant Lopé was to become chief of planetary security, with Sergeant Hallet as his second, inside the new planetary government, and the crew had a housing allowance waiting on the planet.
A large lake, natural or artificial, lay in the zone chosen for the first terraforming work. Jacob Branson wanted a log cabin on that shore, built in the pattern of the old pioneer houses, with modern climate control and appliances behind the logs. The couple's private container held saws, axes, and metal nails for that house, next to the prefabricated housing packed for the crew and the colonists. Walter noted that the trees might not match anything the crew would recognize as a tree. Jacob's fallback was a plastic form, sprayed and textured to look like wood. Plans for later permanent buildings were aboard as well, to be raised once suitable raw materials turned up on the ground.
The Diversion
A charged particle burst killed Captain Branson and forty-seven colonists and woke the crew at a recharge stop. During the repairs, Mother resolved a nearer world, later called Planet 4, that looked more promising than Origae-6 and was about seven years closer, and Oram ordered the detour.
Daniels objected for the two thousand families who had gone to sleep on the promise of Origae-6. She and Tennessee wanted the planned course. Her objection could be logged and sent by relay, and a reply from Earth could not reach the ship before the new system did. Oram was willing to leave the human voice on that world unexplained if the ground matched Mother's numbers. Daniels treated the unknown system, a planet that looked right from a distance, and a human signal where no human ship should have been as reason enough to stay on the surveyed course.
Course After Planet 4
After the expedition on Planet 4 failed, the survivors came back aboard the colony ship, and the ground they had landed on never became a settlement. Daniels refused to take that hull down through the ionospheric storm, and the closer look Oram had ordered ended without a colony to take the place of Origae-6.
In Alan Dean Foster's novelization, the synthetic Daniels took for Walter compared the colony they meant to raise on Origae-6 with the world David had made for himself on Planet 4. At the hypersleep pods he told her she would wake at Origae-6, and he described a world that would provide what the colony hoped for. After the canopy closed he ordered Mother to open a secure line to Weyland-Yutani headquarters under the hailing code David 31822B. In the film, that call is the report that blames the crew deaths on the particle burst and leaves the Covenant on course for Origae-6. In the novel he then checked the human embryo drawers, found the life signs normal, and closed the drawer on three small eggs stored beside them, eggs that had nothing to do with the colony cargo. He walked the rows of sleeping colonists after that.
Later Records
The Colonial Marines Operations Manual dates a break in contact with the far spinward and trailward colonies to 2110-2112, and scout ships went out to investigate. The rimward Concordat mission to the Hyades Cluster succeeded and set up mining colonies for Hyperdyne Systems. The trailward Covenant and Affiance colony missions were declared overdue in that same window.
The ICC, the United Americas, and the Three World Empire then treated worlds more than twenty parsecs from Earth as lost. Companies that had paid for those long colony runs faced bankruptcy, and the United Americas bailed them out while attention shifted closer to home. The Covenant's planned arrival in 2112 falls inside that overdue window. Alien: The Blueprints puts the planet past that twenty-parsec line, which would place Origae-6 among the worlds those governments treated as lost.
Conclusion
Origae-6 was the world Jacob Branson expected to govern and Katherine Daniels expected to terraform, the destination the sleeping colonists had been promised before the ship left Earth. The voyage was sent on toward that world again after Planet 4, and by 2112 the trailward Covenant mission had been marked overdue along with the Affiance run, with no confirmation that anyone had woken on the planet.
Appearances
- Alien: Covenant (20th Century Fox, 2017)
- Alien: Covenant by Alan Dean Foster (Titan Books, 2017)
- Alien: Covenant Origins by Alan Dean Foster (Titan Books, 2017)
- Alien: The Blueprints by Graham Langridge (2019)
- Alien: The Roleplaying Game (Free League, 2019) and the Evolved Edition (2025)
- Colonial Marines Operations Manual by Andrew E.C. Gaska (Free League, 2021)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Planets | Alien Lore
