The United Systems Military was the armed service of the United Systems, the union formed in 2202 when the United Americas and the Three World Empire joined with China, Heelal Yo, and four member states of the Independent Core System Colonies. In 2217 its soldiers wore U.S. Army uniforms, and orders ran through a Congress and a U.S. Security Council. By 2349 the service had outlawed the mega-corporations and taken over much of their research, including synthetic work. In 2381 General Martin Perez commanded the cloning work on the research ship USM Auriga, and the crash of that ship on Earth began the loss of USM power.
History
United Americas And Three World Empire Merger
In 2202 the United Americas and the Three World Empire joined China, Heelal Yo, and four member states of the Independent Core System Colonies as the United Systems. The United Systems Military was the armed service of that union. The Marines in that year were the United Americas Colonial Marines. The corps had started as the United States Colonial Marine Corps, and the Colonial Protection Act in 2187 had renamed it.
In Aliens: Fireteam Elite, those United Americas Colonial Marines were the troops on the UAS Endeavor when it reached LV-895 after Pala Station fell. The ranks poster on that ship used UACM. They answered to United Americas Allied Command, and they expected the Union of Progressive Peoples to treat the merger as a threat while the treaties were being negotiated. In 2207, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 carried USCM again on the LV-558 campaign, after a distress call from the mining colony Storr's Boon. The short form matched the old United States letters, and the name on that campaign was the United Systems Colonial Marines.
The Demeter-2 Crisis And Steel Team
In 2217, in Alien: Icarus, General George March commanded from a United Systems command ship with U.S. Army soldiers Wilkins and Rennick. Orders ran through Congress and the U.S. Security Council. The United Systems held 25 colonies in that system, about 1.1 billion people, and the agricultural complex on Demeter-2 was the foothold those worlds depended on. The complex was far larger than anything Weyland-Yutani had run there. An experimental reactor on Demeter-2 failed, the usual treatments could not stop the radiation, and the loss of that complex meant famine across the colonies.
The countermeasure was on Tobler-9, a ruined Weyland-Yutani research planet. Organisms from the Euridice incident had spread there, and a human squad would not last on the surface. Congress asked March to call back Steel Team, a synthetic special-operations unit that had left United Systems service after the government treated the synthetics as property rather than partners. The Security Council offered full United Systems citizenship to any synthetic who took the work. Steel Team went out on a Bougainville-class ship and dropped in a UD-4L Cheyenne to recover a company biologic stored as a Xenomorph egg, and March was killed during the extraction.
The Company Ban
In 2349, in Alien: Uncivil War, the mega-corporations were outlawed after decades of political pressure and after the colony Nu Indi won independence from Weyland-Yutani. The company also lost the faster-than-light drive contract to a rival firm, Ridton. Once the conglomerates were outlawed, lawyers and politicians took them apart on paper despite a long run of appeals. Weyland-Yutani, then the largest weapons maker, was dissolved, and the United Systems Military took most of the assets. The service also took over work the companies had run, including synthetic research, and the newer military synthetics were the autons.
Alien: Sea of Sorrows, set in a later century, treats that takeover as the stretch when the military crushed the mega-corporations and left civilians under it whether they had enlisted or not. The Resurrection account gives a different route to the same gap. By 2381 Weyland-Yutani had been bought by Walmart and was out of the Xenomorph work, which is why Perez's scientists ran the clone labs.
United Systems Military robotics labs included research base MRB-215, hidden behind a prairie-town simulation called Morden, in Jess Landry's story in Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey. The synthetic Blake was built to believe she was a diner waitress who had never left that town, and to protect a human partner. Mariana, Washington, and Hernandez worked the site in United Systems Military patches. The lab ran ninety-seven simulations, and the human partners from the finished runs were killed. A Yautja huntress and a Xenomorph drone broke one of those runs. Blake wiped the files and left with Mariana after Mariana killed Dr. Collins, the scientist who ran the tests.
Auton Recall
Second Generation Autons were synthetics built by other androids after the first generation had been outlawed, and they were sold as a way to restart that industry. They would not take an order they judged wrong. The government ordered a recall of the line, and Vincent Distephano later called that recall a massacre. A few Autons got out intact, including Annalee Call, and the survivors burned their remotes so the government could not reach them.
Before the recall, Call got into the Defense mainframe and found clone work already on file for the USM Auriga, including General Martin Perez's part in it and a plan to hire the smuggler ship Betty. She took the maintenance berth Captain Frank Elgyn offered so she could stop the project from inside the ship. She hid what she was from the crew that hired her.
The Auriga Project
In 2381 General Martin Perez commanded the USM Auriga, registry USMRV118, a stealth research ship holding station between Pluto and its moon Charon, at the point both bodies orbit. In A. C. Crispin's novelization of Alien: Resurrection, the posting was a closed military tour on the edge of the solar system, and the crew were not briefed on the labs. The ship's computer was Father, the FAR/TH/UR 2600, a later counterpart to MU/TH/UR. Under Perez the ship carried 42 enlisted soldiers and a science team of seven led by Dr. Mason Wren and Dr. Jonathan Gediman. The Betty docked under a USM contract to deliver human hosts, and Wren placed the cloning work under the United Systems military.
The science staff rebuilt Ellen Ripley from blood and tissue taken on Fiorina 161, where she had died with a Queen embryo inside her. Seven clones failed. The eighth, Ripley 8, carried a mixed human and Xenomorph genome, and the staff cut the embryo out of her and raised a Queen in containment. Eggs from that Queen were set for the hosts the Betty delivered.
Annalee Call came to kill Ripley 8 and stop the project before the Queen emerged. Perez treated the smugglers as a security breach once the watch caught her outside the cell, and the outbreak killed him. Call got off with Ripley 8, Johner, and Vriess. The Newborn killed Distephano on the Betty before Ripley 8 burned a hole through a viewport with her own acid blood and forced the creature into space.
Downfall Of The United Systems
Later sources give different accounts of where the Auriga struck Earth and of the immediate aftermath. In Crispin's novel the Betty flew away from the impact under an Australian night, toward land. In Alien: Sea of Sorrows the crash came down in France. Decker's grandfather lived in Chicago, and in his account the Auriga was seized before it hit the country. The damage pushed the planet toward a new ice age. That account treats the crash as the end of USM rule.
In Aliens: Original Sin, Ripley 8 was on Earth, where the government and the military might deny the Auriga project or try to kill her before the story of the ship got out. That account names the Auriga as the military laboratories and treats Earth's government and its armed service as one threat. Call knew of enclaves on the home world that had dropped their corporate ties and might take the survivors in.
Aftermath And Weyland-Yutani's Return
In Alien: Sea of Sorrows, Weyland-Yutani did the atmospheric recovery after the Auriga crash pushed Earth toward a new ice age. That work let the company and other firms push the military out of power and put a colonial government over the known planets. The company came back during the cleanup, once the service had lost Earth.
On 23 May 2381, in Alien: Uncivil War, USM ships and USM law were in force. Retired colonel Chris Temple left the service because of the Auriga and the Xenomorph fighting on Earth after it, and he tried to move his daughters Jane and Emma off the planet. Robberies had jumped in those months, which was one reason he wanted them gone. His domestic auton Alicia could not enter a ship's computer without United Systems Military authorization, and trespass in the Temple house was a violation of USM law.
The USS Weaver, under Captain James Taggert, with First Lieutenant Riya Ashraf and Second Lieutenant Douglas Parsons, was inbound to restore Commander Jennifer Chu at Mining Outpost Omega Seven Tango on LV-1213. Taggert had spent the years before that cruise breaking up Weyland-Yutani cult cells on Earth. Those cells treated Peter Weyland and Cullen Yutani as founders, and they treated the military that had stripped the company as the enemy. Temple was stranded on that moon, and an empty USM ship is what took the family off it.
Branches And Special Operations
The United Systems Military was made up of more than one branch. By 2217 the field force included a U.S. Army. General George March commanded from a United Systems command ship with soldiers Wilkins and Rennick, and orders ran through Congress and a U.S. Security Council. The Colonial Marines were the other large ground arm. In 2202 they were the United Americas Colonial Marines on the UAS Endeavor. In 2207 that line carried the United Systems Colonial Marines name, under General Olivia Shipp, on the campaign at Storr's Boon on LV-558.
United Systems Special Operations Command, marked USSOC under crossed blades and a red star, appears on a ship corridor in that 2207 campaign. Extreme Napalm Mixture was a fuel banned by every government, with private approval granted to USSOC, and the command operated beside the Marine units. Steel Team was a synthetic special-operations unit that had left United Systems service after the government treated the synthetics as property rather than partners. Congress and the Security Council called that unit back for the Demeter-2 crisis and offered full United Systems citizenship for the work.
Weapons
By the Auriga generation the service's weapons included the Lacrima 99, a pulse-action descendant of the M41A Pulse Rifle. It was issued to United Systems Military troops and also turned up with mercenaries. It carried a lamp under the barrel, worked when wet, and did not function underwater.
The ship also issued the Draco Double Burner, a rifle, grenade launcher, and flamethrower in one housing. Ripley 8 used the flame setting on the failed clones in the Auriga lab, and Johner used the rifle and grenade settings against the brood on the same ship.
Behind The Scenes
The name enters the films in Alien: Resurrection in 1997, with Dan Hedaya as General Perez. Nigel Phelps designed the Draco Double Burner for that film, a rifle, grenade launcher, and flamethrower in one housing, with an LED counter on the receiver in the same spirit as the M41A ammo window. A. C. Crispin's novelization, published the same year by Warner Aspect, uses "United Systems military" in Wren's exchange with Ripley 8 and nowhere else in the book. Michael Jan Friedman's Aliens: Original Sin in 2005 refers to Earth's military and does not use the proper name. James A. Moore's Alien: Sea of Sorrows in 2014 has the military crush the corporations and then lose Earth after the Auriga. Perry's report in 2016 supplies the 2202 merger.
Cold Iron Studios has colonial troops expect that merger to alarm the Union in Aliens: Fireteam Elite in 2021, and Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 in 2026 puts the USSOC plaque and the napalm note on screen. Johnson's Alien: Icarus in 2022 and 2023 is the account of the 2217 Army mission, and Landry's story in the 2022 Titan anthology is the account of MRB-215. The roleplaying game never uses the name, because its present day is the 2180s.
Conclusion
The United Systems Military was the joint armed service of the 2202 merger, with Colonial Marines in the field and a U.S. Army at Tobler-9 in 2217. The 2349 ban let the service take over the companies it had outlawed. The USM Auriga in 2381 was its largest known Xenomorph project, and in the later account the crash on Earth ended USM rule while Weyland-Yutani returned during the recovery.
Appearances
- Alien: Resurrection (1997)
- Alien: Resurrection by A. C. Crispin (Warner Aspect, 1997)
- Aliens: Original Sin by Michael Jan Friedman (DH Press, 2005)
- Alien: Sea of Sorrows by James A. Moore (Titan Books, 2014)
- Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report by S. D. Perry (Insight Editions, 2016)
- Aliens: Fireteam Elite (Cold Iron Studios, 2021)
- Alien: Icarus (Marvel Comics, 2022–2023)
- Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey, "Carbon Rites" by Jess Landry (Titan Books, 2022)
- Alien: Uncivil War by Brendan Deneen (Titan Books, 2024)
- Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 (Cold Iron Studios, 2026)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Governments | Alien Universe Factions | Alien Universe Organizations | Alien Lore
