Toru McClintock-Riley: Knot Miner Who Sealed Svarog
Toru McClintock-Riley was a fifty-year-old shaft miner who ran the family company called the Knot in Philippa Ballantine's Alien: Inferno's Fall. In 2186 the Knot was indentured to the Jùtóu Combine on the Union of Progressive Peoples Eitr world Shānmén. After an Engineer bomber dumped Black Goo on New Luhansk, she sealed Svarog Mine, took the last of her people through a buried temple, and died on the climb to orbit so her daughter and the child with them could live. The Jackals from the warship Righteous Fury lifted those survivors after she was gone.
Biography
The Knot On Shānmén
Unlike most of the Knot, Toru had been born on Earth, in New Zealand. Each member of the company wore a vial of that soil on a chain. When they were not on a Combine contract they were based at the family station Pylos. Her father died in a shaft accident at the mine on Bowen's Landing when she was a child. She ran for the shaft, and her older sister held her back. Lena Waipapa-Riley, her youngest daughter, was expected to take over the Knot. Lena's wife Sophie lived off-world, and a baby-credit share for the two of them had been approved. Toru's oldest son Oliver was dead before the Shānmén contract. His widow, Bianca Ting-Riley, had been a UPP sharpshooter for fifteen years and handled security. Toru's nephew Nathan Bennetts-Riley was twenty.
The rest of the on-site Knot were comms specialist Jin Hua Deng, with her adopted children Bai Yun, seven, and Da Shi, three, minerals specialist Pinar Osman-Riley in a sealed shell because open air would kill her, and Carter, a refurbished Combine companion synthetic who also ran the mine's synth net. Bai Yun called Toru Nana. They had been at equatorial Svarog only a couple of weeks, working two deep shafts above rainforest behind a fence built to keep workers in. Toru was short, ran twelve-hour shifts, and put off a hip operation.
Shaft Two And The Door
A klaxon pulled the camp to Shaft Two after an underground blast that killed five miners. Mine manager Petro Kozak was not on the deck. Survivors talked about teeth and things in the walls. Toru treated that talk as carbon monoxide, because the Combine had not bought portable sensors and the fixed ones failed in groundwater. Recalled Weyland-Yutani David units and Working Joes pulled the injured out, then Kozak sent the Knot off the rescue so production could resume.
In Shaft One a jammed shotcrete robot and a seismic slip dropped Toru and Carter through granite into a smoothed oval tunnel. About twenty meters west they found a two-leaf iris door with no hinges and writing in at least three scripts, then silver liquid climbed the carvings and lit them. Carter had no human record of the design. Combine policy required them to tell the site archaeologists at once. The Knot voted 4-3 to sound out the Brotherhood black market instead of a Combine uplink or Kozak, and Nathan took that find to New Luhansk.
Sealing Svarog
A silent horseshoe Engineer Juggernaut hung over New Luhansk and dumped the pathogen. People vomited black fluid, and pale adult Xenomorphs tore out of their backs, eyeless, with spear tails and acid blood, and with no Facehugger stage in the Xenomorph life cycle. Kozak ordered the camp sealed while Nathan was outside the wire. About a dozen pale figures tore the late guards apart, and Nathan died on the wrong side of the gate with about two dozen other people. Toru stopped Lena from going after Kozak, then blew the decline as the fence failed. Combine attack papers written after the Hasanova black site required them to lock the cage, collapse the shaft head, and wait in a hardened ventilation tower for about two weeks of air.
Working Joes held the rear while she and Carter reached the cage, and the creatures destroyed those units. Lena triggered the smaller shaft-head charges after the cage dropped, and about thirty miners and security reached the core, including teacher Miss Vesley and three children. Pinar went up a meter-wide emergency shaft in her 5,000-psi shell, aligned the long-range dish, and got a satellite mayday out. A rust-red winged form lifted her and dropped her. The shell held the claw strikes and failed on the fall, and Toru collapsed that shaft. On the third day, mutated kopats, native animals about the size of small dogs that took a host-shaped change, broke the A1 ceiling with inner jaws and acid blood. Toru cut several with a stripped rock drill, then Carter blew the tunnel. Bianca armored a P-5000 loader.
The First Dropship
Colonel Zula Hendricks identified herself to Toru after the Fury heard the fading distress. Kozak tried to take the channel. Two Hornet missiles wrecked the hovering bomber, and the hull fell on New Luhansk. Kozak took about twenty security and Combine staff up the air shaft first. Lieutenant Roza Ganser came in on the UD-24 Austrian Egg-Terminator, rust-red wildlife overran the broken gate, and that dropship went down with her platoon. Creatures then came down the cracked ventilation tower. Toru sent Carter back to the core with Jin Hua, Lena, and Bai Yun, chose a granite cut toward the old tailings drain, and blew the tunnel after Bianca stayed in the loader and was killed at the breach.
The Temple
Carter opened the iris door. Combine archaeologists Uros Antonijević and Shaun Hewitt wanted the find logged as their work. The Knot sealed the door and blew the shaft behind them. Branching chambers about fifty meters across held murals of black sinuous forms, a giant head that scanned as bone, and a statue of a penitent Xenomorph-like figure carved from a solid block of Eitr. Larger rust-red crawlers then hit the group. One took Jacinta Mainstone. Security officer Aoki Sayō was dragged off after her plasma failed. Acid blood tore out Melrose Meryx's jaw. Benjamin Jones and his son were ripped apart. A rust-red eyeless adult Xenomorph took Jin Hua and Da Shi together. Carter stopped Toru from following.
The people left in that stretch were Toru, Lena, Bai Yun, Carter, Antonijević, and Hewitt. Hewitt opened a black jar and lifted pale-green ampoules of black liquid. Toru forbade samples, then took two ampoules herself when he would not stop. A grey-suited Engineer rose from a silent pod and tore Hewitt apart. Toru threw an ampoule into its face, and the black liquid made it reel. A second being came out of another pod and grappled the first. Toru blew a wall charge, and the remaining five went through into a water-cut void toward the tailings. Behind them the builders woke as black giant Xenomorph forms with new tails and secondary mouths.
The Tailings
Lieutenant Ray Ackerman put the UD-24s Egg Beater and Queen B on a scoured tailings valley, with pulse rifles, flame, and rotary cannons on the APCs. Avian rust-red Xenomorphs from Shānmén's large birds hit first, about three meters tall, with extra armor over black and a thick vertical head fin. Mae lost a forearm to an inner jaw and marked the black gaps in the red plating for the line. A rust-red amphibious form about twelve meters long then came out of water too shallow to hide it. Lena cut her own personal data transmitter to blink an SOS, which let Toru find her and Bai Yun in a builder mortuary. Toru reset Carter's failsafe to protect Lena and the child first, then turned to delay two unfolding builder-Xenomorphs in the stream. Pathogen-altered eagles with about ten-meter wingspans dropped on those builders and wrecked both APCs. A one-armed Mae pulled Toru behind a shield.
Death On The Dropship
A later dropship cleared jungle and took Toru, Lena, Bai Yun, Carter, Antonijević, Mae, and the remaining Ackerman Jackals. On the climb, Antonijević smeared black pathogen from a sleeve that had touched the builders, convulsed, and changed in minutes into a pale clawed thing. The Jackals held fire because a hull breach would stop them leaving the atmosphere. Toru opened the cargo-bay door, charged the mutation when the rush of air did not drag it out, and wrapped her arms around it while it clawed her. Locked together, they tumbled into Shānmén's cloud. The mines did not take her. Lena, Bai Yun, and Carter crossed to Pylos in cryosleep.
Behind The Scenes
Philippa Ballantine wrote Toru McClintock-Riley for Alien: Inferno's Fall, from a story with Clara Carija, published by Titan Books in a 464-page paperback on 26 July 2022 in the United Kingdom and 9 August 2022 in the United States. Cover art was by Alex Ronald. Blackstone Publishing released the audiobook on 26 July 2022, read by Julienne Irons. In a 2022 note on her site, Ballantine described the pair as the first New Zealand and Australian writers, and the first women, to write an Alien novel for Titan. Carija drew on the Dark Horse Zula comics, Prometheus, and the Divine Comedy for the book's circle titles. The 1986 film Aliens does not mention Toru, the Knot, or Shānmén. Ballantine and Carija then carried Zula, Mae, and the Jackals into Alien: Seventh Circle in 2025.
Conclusion
Toru McClintock-Riley was the Knot's lead miner on Shānmén in 2186. She sealed Svarog after the New Luhansk strike, took Lena and Bai Yun through the temple under Shaft One, and reset Carter to get them out. She died in the cloud over the planet after she took mutated Antonijević out of the dropship bay, and Lena, Bai Yun, and Carter reached Pylos without her.
Appearances
- Alien: Inferno's Fall (novel, Titan Books, 2022)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Alien Lore
