Literature / The Rage War

The Rage War is a trilogy of novels set in the Aliens vs. Predator universe, written by Tim Lebbon. They follow on from the Alien: Out of the Shadows trilogy, advancing the timeline even further.

The novels are:

• Predator: Incursion
• Alien: Invasion
• Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon

The later Short Stories "Devil Dogs" from Predator: If It Bleeds and "Spite" Aliens: Bug Hunt both feature Akoko "Snow Dog" Halley before the events of the trilogy.

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This Trilogy provides examples of the following tropes:

General Tropes

• Area of Effect: The com-rifles seem to excel at these. Nanoshot is programmable to fire in wide spreads and explode, creating big areas of damage, useful against cloaked Predators when you aren't sure exactly where they are, or hordes of Xenomorphs. Microdot munitions are noted to be more dangerous in close quarters because they have even bigger areas that nano, and using plasma requires warning any other marines who might be in the vicinity. Only laser is not specifically noted to be useful across an area, but if the descriptions of "sprays" of lasers is accurate, even that can spread damage around.
• The Atoner: Liliya works against the Rage because she secured the first research data that led to them eventually weaponizing Xenomorphs, as well as feeling she could have done more to keep Beatrix Maloney from killing Wordsworth and taking over the Founders. Her primary motivation is to make up for all the harm she's caused, directly and indirectly, working with the Founders/Rage.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Averted for the Xenomorphs, despite most other Alien media showing they're perfectly fine in vacuum, sometimes for prolonged periods. The Aliens either won't pursue people into unpressurized environments, or die in short order if they do. The Rage outfits them with breathing apparatus attached to the back spines when expecting them to operate in vacuum.
• Battle Couple: Downplayed, Lieutenant Johnny Mains and a private on his Excursionist squad, Lieder, are Friends with Benefits, and fight together because they're on the same squad. Becomes more prominent as the novels progress and it becomes clear Mains and Lieder really do love each other, they're just really bad at admitting it.
• Bioweapon Beast: The Rage uses Xenomorphs as shock troopers, having learned how to control them. Android generals control the Xenomorphs, and the generals are utterly loyal to the Rage in general and Beatrix Maloney personally.
• Card-Carrying Villain: "The Rage," who seem to have picked the name because they want everyone to know exactly how they feel about the rest of humanity.
• Continuity Nod: Akoko Halley's encounters from "Devil Dogs" and "Spite" are referenced.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: All the leaders of the Rage, but especially their overall leader, Beatrix Maloney. They're all around three centuries old, kept alive only by an alien "gel" they found during their explorations beyond the human sphere. They're contained in tanks of the stuff that constantly tries to repair their failing bodies, and these tanks are supported by robotic mechanisms of a personalized design to allow them to move around.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: The Xenomorphs controlled by the Rage self-destruct automatically when they take lethal damage, the better to spread their destructive acid blood around, and to prevent anyone from figuring out how the Rage are controlling them. The android generals controlling the Xenomorphs have nuclear self-destruct options, to keep them from leaving behind any useful remains and deal as much damage to the opposing force as possible.
• Deflector Shields: Rage ships have some kind of defense screen that makes damaging them very difficult. Predator ships can batter through this a bit more reliably.
• Developing Doomed Characters: In the chapters entitled "Victims," you'll be introduced to characters in the Rage's path, and spend some time learning about them. Don't expect any of them to make it out of the chapter alive.
• Genre Shift: Most Alien media is sci-fi horror with minor Cosmic Horror elements, and occasional action. This Trilogy is full Space Opera with horror elements.
• Homage: The series borrows a lot from Mass Effect. The drop holes function effectively like mass relays, allowing rapid transit between distant points and forming transit hubs to reach destinations within a few light years of each drop hole/mass relay relatively quickly with the ship's own FTL engines. The nanoshot munitions of the com-rifles are similar in concept to the mass effect weapons, and while com-rifles often run out of ammo, they are also mentioned occasionally overheating, require a decrease or cessation of fire. The Faze might be similar to the Keepers who maintain the Citadel, inscrutable, unable to be communicated with, and doing whatever it thinks will improve its surroundings. Late in the series, it's feared the Drukathi are manipulating the whole conflict for their own ends from beyond the galaxy, specifically by allowing the Rage to utilize their technology, ensuring the Rage will grow in a direction dictated by the Drukathi, in much the same way that using the mass relays and Citadel encourages galactic civilization to grow in a manner dictated by the Reapers. The ending, where the drop holes are shut down, bears similarity to sone endings of Mass Effect 3, where the mass relays are destroyed, leaving the future extremely uncertain.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Regular "warp" travel using a ship's engines isn't too bad, though cryosleep is still advised. Traveling through a drop hole requires a human go into stasis, lest their minds break. This even applies to real-time FTL communication; messages that take time but are still faster-than-light are fine, but the Company's new subspace communication that permits two-way conversations has some odd and disquieting effects. Seeing people older or younger than they are, or both at the same time, seeing ghost images of them doing different things, and so on.
• Interservice Rivalry: Between "Spacebourne" Marines, who tend to travel in ships and visit different planets, and "Terrestrials," marines assigned to planetside bases. Excursionists are another subset of marines, operating in small groups on long-term assignments on the borders of human space, but how they feel about the other two branches, or the Spacebourne and Terrestrials feel about them, is not addressed, beyond Halley objecting to her assignment of rescuing Isa Palant because it's more along the lines of what Excursionists are supposed to do.
• It's Raining Men: Not men. Rage ships airdrop Xenomorphs like bombs. Later in the books, they even shoot them out into space to board enemy craft.
• Low Culture, High Tech: The novels double down on this interpretation of the Yautja. Not only is their tribal, hunt-based culture exaggerated to the point it's claimed they almost never interact with each other beyond mating, several mentions are made of them stealing and adapting technology they come across (and doing the same with language), implying they have little or science and innovation of their own. However, this is speculation from the human characters studying them, and it's just as often pointed out that the humans who know the most about the Yautja still know basically nothing.
• Mechanical Abomination: "The Faze," a thing the Rage found on a remote constructed habitat. It's so mysterious Rage scientists debate on if it's a mechanism, a creature, both, or neither. It works tirelessly building, refining, and enhancing anything it inhabits, and since these enhancements are useful to the Rage, they don't ask too many questions about its possible motives.
• Never Trust a Title: Despite the first novel being billed as a "Predator" novel and the second as an "Alien" novel, all three books feature both species, and so all are "Alien vs. Predator" novels. Despite that, the first novel deals with what looks like an incursion by Predators into human space, the second focuses on an invasion spearheaded by Xenomorph shock troopers, and the third shows the Rage preparing for Armageddon against human civilization.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: "The Thirteen," the leaders of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, like to present as an Omniscient Council of Vagueness, but as we see their meetings, they're really this.
• Portal Network: The "drop holes" that provide faster FTL travel than a ship's engines alone, but only work from one drop hole to another and only one way. Establishing new drop holes is critical to humanity's continued expansion.
• Powered Armor: The combat suits worn by Colonial Marines, containing sensors and heads-up displays, limited environmental and armor protection, resistant to Xenomorph blood, enhancing strength, and linking up with a Marine's com-rifle.
• Precursors: The dog-like aliens seen mummified in the derelict and city from Out of the Shadows are seen again here, in a habitat far beyond the human sphere the Rage found and named Midsummer. The Yautja know of them, call them the Drukathi, and even though the Drukathi seem to have left the galaxy ages ago, the Yautja still fear them.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Upped even from the Alien franchise norm. Liliya is actually stated to have human components that can atrophy or petrify if not maintained, but can be repaired by a donation of actual human tissue. She refers to her circulating fluid as blood, and has nerves, organs, and skin.
• Schrödinger's Canon: Because of their place immediately after the "first revision" of the Alien expanded universe, the novels are not fully consistent with the timeline and technology presented in the "second revision" brought about with Alien: The Roleplaying Game.
• Shout-Out: Staying awake during drop hole transit results in supposedly instantaneous travel taking eternities subjectively. In other words, "It's longer than you think."
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare: The three ships the Founders originally left with, the Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth.
• Subspace Ansible: Weyland-Yutani has developed the technology to have two-way FTL communication. They keep it to themselves and only use it when necessary.
• Swiss-Army Gun: The com-rifle used by the Colonial Marines can fire lasers, plasma, nano ordnance, or microdot munitions, all programmable by the combat suit's computer.
• Theme Naming: The Rage's android generals are all named after famous historical generals, such as Alexander, Patton, Rommel, and Montgomery. Some of the later generals fall into Famous, Famous, Fictional.

Predator: Incursion

• Cold-Blooded Torture: When Liliya is found by a Predator ship, they believe she is part of the Rage and responsible for numerous Yautja deaths. So they take their anger out on her in this fashion, such as by whipping her with a spiked chain, the spikes tipped with insect eggs, so that when the spikes pierce her flesh the insects are hatched into her body and begin eating.
• Manchurian Agent: The Rage uses a coded signal to program biotech nanobots in the recipients to trigger them to ease the Rage's return to the human sphere. Explosively.
• Robotic Reveal: Liliya is revealed to be an android late in the prologue, when she is injured and bleeds white, as androids in the Alien 'Verse do.
• Subliminal Seduction: The code that sends the information to begin the biotech nano takeover of sleeper agents is a subliminal message embedded in a short transmission.

Alien: Invasion

• Heroic Sacrifice: Mains and Lieder hotwire nukes aboard the Othello to destroy it, blowing themselves to atoms in the process.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The "units" subtype. Apparently, the human sphere has eight quadrants. That's twice as many as the word "quadrant" permits. And That's Terrible.

Alien Vs. Predator: Armageddon

• Bittersweet Ending: The conclusion novel ends the series on one of these. The Rage have been destroyed by causing all their android generals to engage their nuclear self-destruct, taking out most Rage ships and much of their armies. But Gerard Marshal misinterprets the massive nuclear detonations in the Sol system as the Rage bombarding bases, installations, and populations, so initiates the command to shut down all of humanity's drop holes. Without those, it takes years or decades for even warp-capable ships to travel through the human sphere, meaning humanity's days as a consolidated interstellar power are over for the foreseeable future. But humanity may have made some strides in making lasting peace with the Yautja, and Isa Palant, at least, may be permitted to study them and their culture up close, and perhaps even visit their homeworld. But for as much of the Rage armies that have been destroyed, there are still Xenomorphs scattered throughout the sphere, and without the Rage generals they'll revert back to their regular instincts, forming hives.
• Razor Floss: Recycled In Space. Charon station is protected by nanofilament netting, which can be drawn close to the station when inactive or deployed to cover a large area around it, intercepting and destroying any ships or ordnance hurled at the station. Effectively, it's a poor man's Deflector Shield, and is even called out in percents of remaining integrity, just like shields in Star Trek.

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