Predator: Incursion: Novel Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: October 20, 2015
Author: Tim Lebbon
Publisher: Titan Books
Format: Mass market paperback
Pages: 336
ISBN: 978-1-78329-624-8
Series: The Rage War, Book 1
Setting: Human Sphere, 2692

Predator: Incursion is a 2015 novel by Tim Lebbon, published by Titan Books on 20 October 2015 as the first book of the Rage War trilogy. It followed lieutenant Johnny Mains of the Colonial Marines, Weyland-Yutani researcher Isa Palant, and the Rage android Liliya as Yautja ships crossed into the Human Sphere in 2692. The Marines treated that crossing as an invasion. The hunters were running from adult Xenomorph armies the Rage had turned into soldiers.

Plot Summary

A Xenomorph and a Yautja fight during the Rage War

The novel splits across three threads in 2692. Mains and the VoidLarks, the 5th Excursionists, watched a Yautja habitat beyond the Outer Rim after a hunt at Southgate Station 12. Palant studied Yautja bodies at Love Grove Base on LV-1529 while historian Angela Svenlap received Founders signals. Liliya broke with the Rage on the flagship Macbeth and tried to carry their control tech into human space.

The Evelyn-Tew

In September 2351, Liliya was already aboard the decommissioned destroyer USS Evelyn-Tew near Alpha Centauri, under cover as canteen staff. The ship held LV-178 Xenomorph samples, including a Queen in a storage sphere. On orders from Wordsworth, she disabled the failsafes, let the creatures out, and copied the research onto an internal disc, then wiped the ship's copies. The hull was already on a suicide run into the star.

Engineer Kath Roberts and crewman Dearing reached the last officer pod with her. Dearing raised a pulse rifle. Liliya shoved Roberts into the line of fire, and the shot killed Roberts and opened Liliya's gut with a bone fragment. An adult Xenomorph smashed Dearing's skull. Liliya launched, blacked out, then woke with the disc intact and white synthetic blood on her side. She overrode the nearest-rock program and left scanner range on a Founders loop.

Southgate Station

In March 2692, two Yautja spent about two days hunting Southgate Station 12, an Outer Rim research post of more than a hundred people. Private Lizzie Reynolds lost her head while covering a man and two children, and private Brian Willis died leading a hunter away from civilians before the remaining VoidLarks killed both Yautja. Lieutenant Mains took the station from commander Niveau, ordered the survivors into hibernation, and sent the corpses inward for the Company. He would not escort the evacuees. His unit still had a classified watch on a miles-long Yautja habitat.

Love Grove

In May 2692, Isa Palant came back from a rover run with indie Rogers to find those two Southgate corpses in her lab at Love Grove Base. One stood about nine feet. Decay had already started. Gerard Marshall, seventh chair of the Thirteen and director of ArmoTech, called from Charon Station and put weapons and martial capability first. He sent Company linguist Milt McIlveen. Palant's own work had been Yautja blood, regeneration, and language, funded because the Company wanted a fight edge. She wanted contact.

Historian Angela Svenlap had spent years on old hunts, including case 339 at Stalingrad in January 1943. A blurred photograph showed a figure too tall for the doorway, with a wide chest, a jutting jaw, and a spear in a lowered hand. She put that hunter at twenty-eight confirmed kills and more than a hundred possibles. For about two years she had also been taking Founders signals. A new nineteen-second message under the name Beatrix Maloney used the old Founders prayer about building, creating, and letting light blossom. Svenlap began wiring bombs from leftover processor explosives.

Watch On UMF 12

The VoidLarks' habitat, later tagged UMF 12, ran about six miles long, with bone-like skin, docking towers up to three miles, and a slow spin. It sat beyond the Outer Rim around a star, the third Yautja habitat humans had seen. General Wendy Hetfield at Tyszka's Star reported a ninety-day spike in contacts, the 11th Excursionists missing in the Holgate system, and Yautja ships already inside the Sphere. Any launch toward human space was to be treated as hostile.

In July 2692, four ships left the habitat. One closed on the Arrow-class Ochse. Mains decloaked, warned Tyszka, and opened with lasers. The VoidLarks destroyed several of those ships, tagged Bastard One through Seven, and let a crippled seventh go. Cook and comms man McVicar died in the cabin when Yautja fire tore through the hull.

Swartwood And Charon

The same month, a plasma device wrecked Swartwood Station 3 over Weaver's World. About 1,930 people died, including some six hundred children. Eight-year-old Lucy-Anne was on the glass walkway when the Mark accommodation arm blew and the walkway lost pressure. Her mother had been sleepless, bringing parts home, and sending her across that span alone. General Paul Bassett, who ran the Corps, lost his son Harry in the blast. He rejected the idea that Yautja had planted the bomb. The device needed inside knowledge of the station.

Marshall watched the Sphere light up with red contacts from Charon, a Marine headquarters out near Pluto's distance from the sun. He treated war as profitable work for ArmoTech. A later bomber reached Charon's munitions cell with a homemade charge and was shot when he drew a gun. Youngest Thirteen member James Barclay already had Section Seven chasing a sabotage net that had hit frigates, staging posts, and training worlds.

Macbeth And The Founders

Liliya recorded how the Founders had left Earth around 2400 on Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, about a thousand people on each hull, after persecution over longevity work and secret faster-than-light drives. Hamlet vanished in flight. The survivors found a gel that stretched life for a time, then the ancient habitat Midsummer, built by slug-like creatures and holding thousands of sleeping Xenomorphs. A dog-like fossil there later tied the place to the Drukathi. Wordsworth wanted to leave the sleepers alone. Beatrix Maloney took the group the other way. Liliya treated Wordsworth's death as Maloney's kill. The Founders became the Rage.

In July 2692, Liliya refused to send Maloney's coded return message after she found a hidden nano command inside the prayer layer. She broke her bindings, put down two shipborn escorts, and reached a lab where elder Erika Simons stood with the general Napoleon. Liliya killed a shipborn woman with a stun baton, wrecked Napoleon's eyes, and injected inactive Rage nano-creation into her own neck while Napoleon, still looping, shot Simons through her gel tank. She meant to reach the Sphere faster than the Rage and hand the control tech to humanity.

Love Grove Bombed

After about fifty days of autopsy work, Palant and Rogers found Svenlap by the fuel tanks in the subterranean garage, with no identity bracelet. Rogers found a device. Svenlap ran into the storm talking about illuminating a path, then the garage became a fire pit. Debris cut Rogers's head off. Svenlap, already burned, put a laser under her chin. Life support, control, and the main comms went with the north wing. The landing-pad ship Pegasus stopped answering.

About a hundred people had been on the base. Palant later counted fifteen survivors for the rescue ship, including two orphaned children. One indie killed himself with a laser pistol in front of the group. Sergeant Sharp moved them under Processor One, then about two miles south to a construction hangar when processor radiation rose. Marshall had already lost contact with McIlveen. He pulled Major Akoko Halley and a six-person DevilDogs crew off an Addison Prime job, put them on Bassett's Bolt-class Pixie, and sent them three dropholes to LV-1529 for Palant's research.

Crash On The Habitat

Radiation from the Ochse fight was already fatal for corporal Sara Cotronis when she stayed in the engine room. Pilot Lieder put the damaged ship on the habitat's outer surface. The crew ran for an entry as the reactor went critical and the Ochse detonated. Inside they met thin air, about fifteen percent oxygen, and Yautja coming down the tunnels. They dropped several hunters on that first day, including one whose trophies held a Xenomorph skull, then hid. Snowdon treated them as the first humans inside a habitat, and the early attacks as uncoordinated loners.

Hashori And The Zeere Za

Thirty-three days out from Macbeth, a probe from the general Alexander killed Liliya's hyperdrive. She safed her weapons and broadcast her name, a peace claim, and a promise of the enemy's war tech. The answering ship was Yautja. Hashori of the Widow Clan, already wounded in the left shoulder, kicked her down, blamed her drive technology for attacks on Yautja habitats, and destroyed the small assault craft.

On the Zeere Za, Hashori held Liliya for days without asking about the data. The torture chain used smooth oval links that hid spikes, each carrying a small yellow egg that hatched once it broke the skin, a spiked whip built for pain rather than a clean kill. White thin blood made Hashori work harder. She also used a sensor rod, a silver ball that ignored the ship's gravity, and a thin barbed creature with a mouth of tiny teeth. Two other Yautja looked in once. Hashori did not hand the prisoner over.

When Alexander's Xenomorphs boarded, Hashori freed Liliya, carried her, and fought in the corridors with a smoking shoulder blaster and a pike already deformed by Xenomorph blood. She lost mask and armor to the acid, argued with two hunters who wanted the android left behind, then pulled Liliya into a small craft under a cloak she had built herself. Seven Rage ships wrecked the Zeere Za about an hour later. Hashori was taking Liliya into the Human Sphere, where survivors were regrouping, because the thing in the android's veins was a way to fight the Rage.

Four Weeks Inside

The VoidLarks lasted about four weeks in the habitat. On day eleven they found ten to twelve Yautja already dead, and badly. On day thirteen they entered an empty house whose trophy wall held talons, wings, and eight or ten human skulls. On day sixteen three live hunters came without cloaks, drawn by Cotronis's screams. She took the defender and four plasma grenades, told Mains there would be a next life, and detonated the stand. Lieder took shrapnel through the upper right chest, a punctured lung, and two broken ribs, then walked again by day twenty-two.

Later they found a Yautja ship they could not fly and a non-Yautja wreck at a tower window. Residual radiation pointed to exploding ships. Then dozens of non-Yautja contacts filled the scanners. Adult Xenomorphs were already on the habitat.

Wendigo And Shamana

A Yautja ship reached the Love Grove hangar weeks after the bombing, too soon for a Company freighter. Connors died outside. A hunter lifted Sharp on a trident and shook him. McMahon held the door. For twelve days two hunters circled. Palant and McIlveen tapped their frequency and reached about sixty percent translation. They nicknamed the screamer Wendigo and the larger one Shamana, after a sportsman, and called Wendigo she without being sure of the sex. Wendigo talked of fire lizards, clan, loss, and a need for blood. Shamana told them to be calm, leave him alone, and wait. Palant read them as prey chased onto LV-1529, not as a trophy party.

Wendigo came in cloaked, lifted a dead indie, blew a corner, and cut a head off. Palant sent Shamana the words "I know." He left the hangar instead of joining the fight. McMahon blasted Wendigo's hand away from a wrist control, then put three bursts through the helmet. Shamana came back, slashed McMahon shoulder to hip, and carried her into the storm.

Three days later the Pixie dropped through rain. Halley's DevilDogs put a nano-burst into Shamana. Palant ran between the Marines and the hunter with the datapad, telling him not to move and that she knew why he had come. Partial translation gave fire dragons, a retreat he would not accept as weakness, a companion who was only young, and many who had already regrouped. He laughed at surrender, then set off the wrist bomb. A tusk buried itself in Palant's calf. Fifteen survivors went up with Halley.

Patton

In the habitat tunnels a Xenomorph inner jaw killed specialist Snowdon through her suit mask. Faulkner lost his right arm to acid in a nest, then died of the wounds a day after their warning transmission. On the surface, vacuum froze Xenomorph blood and Mains used a shotgun. They boarded a grown Rage ship on three docking arms. Skulls in the nest were stamped PATTON. Scores of Xenomorphs and Yautja lay dead in the boarding space, the hunters' left arms torn off so the wrist bombs would not fire.

On the bridge, the android general Patton was pinned to the wall by a Yautja spear, legs gone, one arm crushed, tongue pulled out, jaw broken. The hunter who had done it lay dead at his feet. The panels used old English. Mains and Lieder could not fly the ship. Lieder treated the locks as genetic. They sent an open-frequency warning to every Colonial Marine unit, with the VoidLarks already down from eight to three.

The Ceasefire

On LV-1529, Halley heard Bassett and Marshall describe Sphere-wide sabotage, the 17th Spaceborne orbital in the Jackson system wiped out with about 19,000 dead, more than a hundred Yautja-attack reports, and seven Outer Rim dropholes taken. Palant told them the saboteurs were not Yautja, and that the hunters were fleeing fire lizards. Without Thirteen approval, Halley sent Palant and McIlveen's Yautja-language message, a call for an honorable truce against the fire dragons. The signal was heard more than three billion times. Bassett first ordered a hunt for Halley's group as deserters. Two hours later, Yautja attackers signaled a ceasefire. Marshall then told Bassett to welcome them as heroes.

The meeting sat on the independent ship Tracey-Jane at Drophole Gamma-116 in September 2692. Four helmetless warriors stood behind Kalakta, an Elder of the 677th clan, who asked for Palant and McIlveen rather than for generals. His blades were older than theirs. He wore no blasters. A trophy bandolier crossed his right shoulder, at least one piece a human jawbone, and a cleaned human skull sat on his left. He spoke of a birth across ten thousand suns, an Earth hunt in a city of heat against a dark-skinned man he called a worthy opponent, and a greater darkness that had already hit Yautja habitats.

Kalakta threw up a combat hologram of a wind-scoured settlement as a dark ship dropped about a hundred compact objects that hatched and charged. Palant named those fire lizards Xenomorphs, and he nodded. Marshall, in her ear, told her to claim Earth knew the Yautja homeworld and would nuke it. She pulled the earpiece and typed respect instead. Kalakta drew her forehead to his and sealed the ceasefire. Yautja and humans would fight together. Marshall was furious. Barclay cut in, thanked her, and ordered an expanded translation program so Halley could plan a defense.

Nurseries

On the decaying habitat, Faulkner was already dead in a side room. UMF 12 and Patton's docked ship were falling toward the local sun. Patton's one good eye still moved. Mains and Lieder worked the scanners and found a sub-space grid ahead of human tech, with at least twelve red traces. Seven or more were old Fiennes sleeper ships inbound to drophole locations at speeds those hulls should not have had, including the Susco-Foley, which had left about five hundred years earlier with some seven thousand people in cryo, and the earlier Aaron-Percival. Mains called them nurseries. They started another warning. Patton made a sound that was not speech, then laughed, as claws scratched up from below the flight deck.

The Yautja

William Bao concept art of a Yautja in a vacuum suit, used here for Hashori

The novel gives few Yautja names. Hashori is the only hunter who speaks as a person for long stretches. She stood nine feet, had no obvious breasts, and kept a battle spear close. After the Zeere Za she sat without helmet or armor on the small cloak-built ship and treated Liliya as cargo for the run into the Sphere. The two hunters with her on the larger hull, one taller with a ruined face and one smaller and yellow-speckled, stayed behind when Alexander boarded. Their ship was gone about an hour later.

Wendigo and Shamana were human nicknames, not clan names. They killed Sharp, Connors, McMahon, and several other indies at Love Grove, then both died there, Wendigo to McMahon's bursts and Shamana to his own wrist bomb. Palant never learned their real names. The pair at Southgate also went unnamed. Mains cut one wrist with a third laser blast, and Snowdon stripped their weapons, before the corpses became Palant's specimens.

Kalakta arrived only at the end, already speaking for Yautja civilization and asking for time to prepare. One wrong move would start the fight again. UMF 12 itself was the larger Yautja fact in the book, a living habitat rather than a scout ship, already falling into its sun after Rage boarding and the Ochse blast. Survivors from that place had already fled into human space.

The Rage

The Rage were Founders who had left Earth, found Midsummer, and turned Xenomorphs into soldiers under android generals. Each general could run about two thousand troops through Midsummer-derived nano. Napoleon fought on Macbeth. Alexander hunted Liliya with a faster ship and about two thousand Xenomorphs, then destroyed the Zeere Za with seven vessels. Patton stamped his name on the carapaces that boarded UMF 12. Dead Rage Xenomorphs often burst or melted. The control sat in Liliya's veins after she stole it back, still unused at the end of this book.

A second Founders layer rode under the public prayer about light in the dark. Descendants left behind about two centuries earlier heard that frequency and built bombs. Svenlap wrecked Love Grove. Swartwood and the Jackson orbital went the same way. No saboteur was taken alive. Maloney and the remaining elders were still outbound on Macbeth and Othello when the novel closed.

Confirmed Kills

Both Southgate Yautja died to the VoidLarks. Wendigo died to McMahon. Shamana killed himself after the DevilDogs dropped him. Hashori killed at least one adult Xenomorph on the Zeere Za, then lost that ship to Alexander's squadron. Cotronis, Faulkner, Snowdon, Lieder, and Mains killed Yautja on UMF 12. An unnamed hunter pinned and wrecked Patton before dying at his feet. Patton was still moving when the book ended.

The Southgate hunters took Reynolds and Willis. The Ochse fight killed McVicar. Cotronis died in her own blast. Xenomorphs killed Snowdon. Faulkner died of the nest wounds. On LV-1529, Svenlap's bombs killed Rogers and most of the base, then Svenlap killed herself. Wendigo and Shamana killed Connors, Sharp, McMahon, and other indies. Liliya's shove put Roberts in Dearing's shot. An adult Xenomorph killed Dearing. Napoleon killed Erika Simons. Lucy-Anne, her mother, Harry Bassett, and the rest of Swartwood died in the station blast.

Key Characters

Johnny Mains - Lieutenant, VoidLarks CO. Alive on Patton's ship with Lieder at the end.
Lieder - VoidLark pilot and Mains's lover. Chest wound, then walked again. Alive.
Sara Cotronis - Corporal, second in command. Radiation-sick. Died in a last stand on UMF 12.
Snowdon - Yautja-tech specialist. Killed by a Xenomorph inner jaw.
Faulkner - Weapons and science. Died after losing an arm in the nest.
McVicar - Cook and comms. Died in the Ochse fight.
Brian Willis and Lizzie Reynolds - Privates. Killed at Southgate.
Isa Palant - ArmoTech Yautja researcher. Sealed the ceasefire with Kalakta. Lived.
Milt McIlveen - Company linguist. Worked the datapad at the meeting. Lived.
Angela Svenlap - Yautja historian and Founders sleeper. Bombed Love Grove, then killed herself.
Akoko Halley - Major, 39th Spaceborne DevilDogs. Sent the truce signal. Lived.
Gerard Marshall - Seventh of the Thirteen, ArmoTech. Wanted a threat, not a pact. Lived.
James Barclay - Youngest of the Thirteen. Backed Palant after the meeting.
Paul Bassett - Colonial Marine commander. Lost his son at Swartwood. Lived.
Liliya - Rage android, more than three hundred years old. Fled with Hashori, nano still in her veins.
Hashori - Widow Clan hunter. Tortured Liliya, then took her toward the Sphere. Lived.
Kalakta - 677th Elder clan. Sealed the ceasefire. Lived.
Wendigo and Shamana - Human nicknames for the Love Grove pair. Both dead.
Beatrix Maloney - Rage leader on Macbeth. Alive, still inbound.
Patton - Android general, speared to his own bridge. Not confirmed destroyed.
Alexander - Rage general hunting Liliya. Not seen in person.

Place In The Rage War

Titan's first official Alien novel wave was the 2014 trio, Lebbon's Out of the Shadows, James A. Moore's Sea of Sorrows, and Christopher Golden's River of Pain. Incursion opened a new far-future line in October 2015, then Alien: Invasion and Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon finished the Rage War in 2016. Titan asked him for the trilogy. The only hard Fox brief was a military story set later, with an outside force using weaponized Xenomorphs. He made that force human.

The book is labeled Predator, but the hunters share the page with Marines, Company staff, and the Rage. Later volumes put Yautja and humans on the same side for longer. It was the first original Alien vs. Predator novel since S.D. Perry's Aliens vs. Predator: War in 1999, if the 2004 film novelization is set aside. Lebbon had already written Out of the Shadows, so this also made him the first writer since John Shirley to publish more than one Alien or Predator novel in that stretch.

Continuity

The Evelyn-Tew samples came from LV-178, the world Lebbon had already used in Out of the Shadows. The Rage War only had to nod at the Xenomorphs Weyland-Yutani took at the end of Sea of Sorrows. The trilogy was otherwise a new cast and a new century. The printed prologue sits in 2351, before Alien: Resurrection in 2380 and before Sea of Sorrows in the 2490s. Lebbon called that date clash a mistake left in the edit. Earlier drafts had put the theft in 2428, and the first version had Liliya taking the research from the Auriga and causing the escape there.

The dog-like Midsummer fossil is not named Drukathi in this text. That name comes later in the trilogy. This book also leaves Alexander inbound, Macbeth and Othello still returning, the Fiennes sleeper ships on the scanners, Mains and Lieder trapped, and the ceasefire only a pause to prepare. Palant's translation work was still about sixty percent and weak across dialects.

Editions

Titan Books released the first edition on 20 October 2015 as a mass-market paperback in the United States. An ebook listing had sat on 25 September 2015. Titan's catalog gives 336 pages. The cover uses a still of Wolf from Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, in sewer steam with blades out, rather than a painted scene from 2692. In 2018, Luzifer published a German edition under the title Predator: Armada. The story continues in Alien: Invasion.

Behind The Scenes

Lebbon's November 2015 AvP Galaxy interview traced the Founders-into-Rage turn to a rejected editor idea, a new alien species with Xenomorph soldiers. He wrote a fifteen-page trilogy proposal around humans who had finally weaponized the creatures, and not Weyland-Yutani. Fox and Titan told him the canon he had to keep was the films, the ongoing comics, and the 2014 Alien trio. He had not read Steve Perry's Yautja books and took the name because he liked the sound.

The acknowledgments thank the Titan staff, Fox's Josh Izzo and Nicole Spiegel, and the people who lent their names, with an apology for the ones he killed. Neill Blomkamp's announced Alien sequel forced edits while the manuscript was still open. Lebbon would not say what changed.

Conclusion

Predator: Incursion is Tim Lebbon's 2015 Titan novel that opens the Rage War. It covers the 2692 crossing into the Human Sphere, the wreck of Love Grove Base, and the VoidLarks' fight on the habitat UMF 12. Palant sealed a ceasefire with Kalakta. Liliya fled toward human space with Hashori. Mains and Lieder were still on Patton's ship when the book closed. It sits on many Predator book lists as the far-future start of that trilogy, before Invasion and Armageddon widen the war.