EOS by S E Holmes (Hugh Howey fanfic based on Half Way Home)

EOS by S E Holmes (Based on Half Way Home by Hugh Howey)

Chapter One - Wish I was 

Not viable. Abort. How, in her meagre seventeen years, Elektra had come to hate that phrase. Each letter accumulated understatement, signifying the winking out of new lives like spent stars. Centuries of death and fading hope. And for what? Insufficient reward for risks expended. An accountant's failed ratio.  

Recently, she'd accepted the inevitable. The void would swallow humanity whole. Built upon this foundation of cold reason, her exit strategy was simple: disable the safety field, leap from the side of the aerobode into the cloudless breach, plunge for an eternity of minutes, and meet unforgiving terra firma in a bloody tribute to Newton's Third Law. Elektra had even chosen the soundtrack to her demise, her favourite vintage tune supporting a break from the noise in her head. She was ready to fall. Wish I Was.  

Guilt over those who would witness her end had gnawed at Elektra. She imagined them crowding the girl-shaped outline of gore with queasy expressions, their faces gaunt and eyes hollowed by poor nutrition. Parents would cover their scrawny children's eyes; the elderly would shake their heads at this extravagant waste of a charmed life. Surface dwellers trapped in the teeming smog and filth had enough to contend with, but it could not be helped.  

Her suicide had been scheduled for that evening during another of the increasingly savage windstorms threatening to dislodge their floating home from its sky moorings in the troposphere. Mother Earth had seemingly grown tired of her parasitic children and begun to expel them from the den. The aerobode technicians would confuse a weather event with the sabotage alerts announcing a gap in the field. If anyone bothered to launch a sled, they'd be too late. Release from this pretty cage beckoned. Why wait? 

Viable. That's why.  

"Your father requires a word, Elektra."  

A lyrical metallic voice penetrated her cavernous bedroom. Silence was never complete in the aerobode and visitors often complained that breathy groans, echoed clangs and the ever-present whispering thrum were spooky, but Elektra found the ghostly symphony soothing. And preferable to vocalised surveillance. The AI network veined her compound in glowing blue, which comprised EON global headquarters and her family's main domestic base.  

"Just the one?" Viable! 

Sarcasm was lost on the ribbon of plasma wrapping her ceiling like a bow. Or a garrotte throttling her privacy. Bathrooms were the single spaces devoid of the data stream. Elektra sat at her dressing table and buttoned her shirt, elation and ill-omen warring in her belly.  

"He has a pleasant surprise for you." 

The mirror reflected her scowl. One word minus a lecture on her grades would have been a surprise. The arrival of her sister, Olympia, was neither pleasant nor unexpected. Her shuttle had docked half an hour ago. 

"I know. Inform father I'll be on time for dinner." 

Overhead, the blue strip dimmed to carry its message. She gained petty satisfaction from ruining father's "surprise."  

And further enjoyment from swanning to the dining room ten minutes late, although not sprinting to hasten news proved hard. Her sister tapped her fingers impatiently, father oblivious to the staccato beat and Elektra's tardiness, while their butler, Manfred, arranged cutlery.  

A hologram of the girls' dead mother flickered buoyantly from one end of a table long enough to span the drop. At the other end reclined zillionaire owner of EON: ruthless galactic marauder, helm-bearer of a crumbling empire, perpetual mourner of a lost wife, idol to one daughter, bain to the other, Diogenes Barrabas Wynston senior, the Third. With no patience for irony, he shirked his namesake's philosophical objection to wealth and went by Barrabas.