The Three World War was the late 22nd century campaign from Aliens vs. Predator: Three World War, when Colonial Marines and Hunter Yautja fought a Killer clan that used tusked adult Xenomorphs as troops. It was fought ten years after Machiko Noguchi left a hunting clan on Bunda. The fighting opened with a raid on Chigusa Corporation's bauxite mine on Caparis VII, out past Alpha Centauri, and it ended on that same world when the USS Tarawa and hunter ships landed the beachhead. A Queen taken on Ryushi broke the Killers' hold on the adult Xenomorphs. The Killer position was destroyed, and a second Killer base, where another army was being raised, was left for a later hunt.
Prelude
The Three World War grew out of an older split between Hunter clans and Killers. The Killers were Bad Blood Yautja who had dropped the honor code that told a hunter to face an opponent on equal terms, and they treated the kill as the only result that mattered. A clan that put adult Xenomorphs in the field beside its own hunters had given that code up. The Marines were pulled in when that use of the creatures reached a human mine.
The Hunter And Killer Split
In East Africa the Killers fought Jungle Hunters in numbers, in battle armor, with rifles the clans called burners, and under commanders. They lost that fight, and they were not wiped out. More than a century later the same clan was fielding tusked adult Xenomorphs as attack hounds instead of hunting them, and that was the use the Marines found on the Caparis VII recording.
Ryushi And Bunda
Machiko Noguchi had been marked by Broken Tusk on Ryushi, a colony set down in a hunting ground, and she spent a year with that clan. The year ended on Bunda in Aliens vs. Predator: War, where she broke with the hunters. The military held her for four months of interrogation after that fight and leaned on the people around her. Ten years later she was running a guide business on a hunting preserve, and she would not go to war against the clan she had hunted with until a mine recording matched the old accounts of Killers.
Course Of The War
The campaign ran from the mine on Caparis VII to a landing on that same world. Colonel Rast's Marines carried Machiko Noguchi from the preserve to Ryushi, took a Queen there with the Hunters, and then formed fleets with them. The Killers held the ground they had taken at the mine, and they met the landing with adult Xenomorphs and their own armor. Captain Hunter, the elder who led the Hunters, commanded that side opposite Rast, and Machiko Noguchi carried the orders between the Marines and the Hunters.
The Raid On Caparis VII
Some months before the fleets moved, Killers hit Chigusa Corporation's Bauxite Mine #42 on Caparis VII, out past Alpha Centauri. The workers were between shifts in the dust and took the ship overhead for claim-jumpers. They broke rifles out of an armory and tried to hold the buildings. A supervisor ordered them to open fire. Adult Xenomorphs did not stop for the gunfire. Rounds broke creatures open, acid sprayed the men in the open, and a hunter shot the supervisor down.
When the buildings were overrun, Killers stood over the dead while adult Xenomorphs moved among the bodies. One hunter set a camera on the wreckage and let it record his face until the picture broke into static. That recording survived the raid. Colonial Marines carried it to Machiko Noguchi. It was the first evidence they could put in front of her that a hunter clan was using tusked adult Xenomorphs as troops.
The Mackabee
The same briefing covered a ship called the Mackabee. The Mackabee massed eighty thousand metric tons, with ninety men aboard, and it reached orbit. After that, contact was lost. Talk of a rescue was held back until the Marines knew what they would be flying into. What they had in hand was a statement from a man named Thorpe. Two years earlier he had been reported killed in Eastern Africa, and thirteen days later he walked into Cadiz, California, with a report that hunters had taken him.
Thorpe's squad had gone in against hunters they could not see, because the hunters wore cloaks, and adult Xenomorphs pulled men off the ropes in the dark and killed them. For most of that time he was locked in a cell. The Marines set his statement next to the recording from Caparis VII. Between the lost ship, the cloaked hunters, and the mine footage, Machiko Noguchi stopped treating the Killers as a legend and left with the squad.
The Return To Ryushi
Three months before the landing, sensors found a mass of about forty thousand tons in the southern hemisphere of Ryushi, and the people on the bridge took it for the hunter ship. Corporal Garman and Ellis had no way to raise the Hunters by voice. They fired a few of the ship's nightbreaker flares in a dispersal pattern at dawn, a visual signal aimed at wherever the hunters were, because an unannounced approach would have drawn fire. Machiko Noguchi went in alone, in armor, so the Hunters would have a reason to talk. She fought them to prove she had standing with the clan, and blood from that fight hit her shoulder. Cloaked hunters were in the rocks around the Marines while the clan decided whether to talk or to kill the party.
Capturing The Ryushi Queen
The Hunters wanted a Queen alive, and the fight for her moved into a canyon on Ryushi. Ellis brought the squad in after a call for help. Ambrose and the smart guns opened fire as adult Xenomorphs came through the rocks, and the canyon turned into a gunfight before anyone had a clean shot at the Queen. Rowdy and the other Marines moved to shoot her, and Machiko Noguchi stopped them. The hunters had come for the Queen, and her eggs were how the clan stocked later hunts.
They got cables on her and held the Queen in a rocky cleft while adult Xenomorphs closed in around the ropes. Marines and hunters hauled on the same lines, and one of the creatures hit the group while the ropes were taut. Machiko Noguchi later decided that Queen might be a survivor of the Prosperity Wells outbreak she had been part of ten years before. The Hunters meant to take her off Ryushi alive. Her pheromones, not a gun line, were what they needed once the fleets reached Caparis VII.
The Truce Between Colonial Marines And Jungle Hunters
Seven weeks passed between the capture and the attack, and the Marines and the Hunters spent them as uneasy allies. A Marine warned Machiko Noguchi that this enemy was larger than the adult Xenomorph fights she had heard about, and that overconfidence would get someone killed before the pulse rifles were in play. Another man answered that Sereda had gone in against that enemy and come out the other side. That argument was when the squad learned Sereda was a synthetic. Captain Hunter stood with Machiko while she passed orders from one side to the other.
Both sides agreed the Killer ship was to be taken intact. The Hunters wanted it whole so they could follow it to the world where the Killer clan had set up again, and they treated the mission as eradication. The Marines wanted the ship itself. Machiko Noguchi was the only translator between them. While the landing craft were loaded she carried those two orders at once, an eradication hunt and a capture, and the troops who went down had to fight both.
The Fleets Converge On Caparis VII
Machiko Noguchi parted from Ellis as the ships formed up. The USS Tarawa went with the other Colonial Marine ships, alongside the hunter ships. Near the world, Garman lost his navigation fix. Comms, radar, and targeting fell away to white noise on both fleets at once. The jamming hit hunter ships and Marine ships the same way, so neither side had a working picture of the ground when the ships went in.
The Killers destroyed a hunter ship on the way in. A Marine general ordered the rail guns to miss on purpose, a hundredth of a degree south of a direct hit, and to put fire under the Killer ship's tail so it would run. He wanted that ship driven off, because a ship that fled could be followed home. Before the landing, fifty-five missiles fitted with guidance from Ellis were set to hang in orbit and home on their targets the moment the enemy turned the jamming on.
The Beachhead On Caparis VII
The landing came down on Caparis VII, the same world as the Chigusa mine, where the Killers were waiting on ground they knew. Ramps opened into a fight, and the Tarawa Marines and Hunters came out together against adult Xenomorphs and Killer armor. The ground was open dirt and shallow water, and the Killers had the range on troops coming off the ramps. Sereda pushed a line forward and called the Marines in behind him. Hunters came through the water under energy shields, with spears and wrist blades, against adult Xenomorphs that had gotten in among the squads.
Wounded were taken back aboard under that fire. Dropships made missile runs low over the fight, close enough that the crews were taking fire while the missiles were away. A hunter ship loaded with nuclear weapons then turned toward the Killer position, and the Marines were ordered to get the troops off. The blasts broke the Killer command, and the Marines used that break to push the ground they had been losing at the ramps.
End Of The War
Sereda got a set of Killer gauntlets off the field, then reached a chamber of eggs. There were hundreds of them, possibly thousands, stockpiled and waiting for hosts, and there was no queen in that room. His sensors read a mix of two synthetic pheromones the Killers used, a relaxant and a sedative, and each mix worked as an order the adult Xenomorphs would follow. The fleet could not make more of that gas on board. A real queen's own pheromones would override the synthetic mix and turn the adult Xenomorph army on the Killers, which was why the Queen taken on Ryushi had been brought to Caparis VII.
They brought that Queen onto the world so her pheromones would take the adult Xenomorphs out of Killer control. Ellis watched the fight from kilometers off while command held the orbital strike. The people in command wanted Killer ships and equipment more than they wanted the ground force pulled out, and that was why the strike was held. After the fighting, Machiko Noguchi reported to Colonel Rast that Sereda's find also meant the Killers had another base, and that they were raising another army there.
Aftermath
Machiko Noguchi was ready to leave with the Marines. Captain Hunter treated leaving as a denial of the glory the Hunters expected from the fight, and he cut the blooding mark Broken Tusk had put on her forehead with a heated blade. The cut was how the clan punished her for leaving with the Marines, and it was why they let her go alive. The Hunters treated the fight as a finished mission and did not mean to deal with humans as equals again.
The USS Tarawa carried her team home. The military held her responsible for hunter technology lost in the attack, so the return was not treated as a celebration. She was no longer marked as one of the clan, and the clan did not count her in the glory of the fight. The other Killer base, the one raising a second army, was left for a later hunt.
Conclusion
The Three World War was the late 22nd century campaign on Caparis VII in which Colonial Marines and Hunter Yautja broke a Killer clan that fielded tusked adult Xenomorphs. It ran from the loss of Chigusa's bauxite mine to a Queen taken on Ryushi and a beachhead landed by the USS Tarawa and hunter ships. The Killer position was destroyed. A second Killer base was left raising another army, and Captain Hunter cut the blooding mark from Machiko Noguchi's forehead before the Tarawa took the Marines home.
Sources
- Aliens vs. Predator: Three World War (Dark Horse Comics, 2010)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Wars | Colonial Marine Lore | Avp Lore | Alien Lore | Predator Lore
