Ellen Ripley continues to be stalked by the savage alien race, after her escape pod, ejected from Colonial Marine spaceship Sulaco, crash-lands on a prison planet, killing everyone else aboard. Unknown to Ripley, an alien egg is aboard the ship. The alien is born inside the prison, and sets out on a killing spree.

Fury 161 is a wretched planet - a penal colony and industrial complex manned by violent prisoners. When an escape pod from the USS Sulaco crash-lands there, Ellen Ripley appears to be the only passenger left alive.

Then inmates begin to die, all at the hands of another survivor. A creature which encounters Ripley, and spares her life! Desperate to know why, she seeks out an answer - and discovers terror unlike any she's ever known.

Science fiction master Alan Dean Foster returns to the Alien universe to reveal the ultimate destinies of Ellen Ripley and her eternal foe, the xenomorph known as the Alien.