History[]
Halo Jones (born in 4931 AD), the eponymous heroine of The Ballad of Halo Jones, was a woman from the Hoop, a 50th century housing estate where she lived with Rodice, Brinna, Ludy and their cyber-canine Toby. Following the murder of her friend Brinna in 4949 AD she became a hostess on a starliner, the Clara Pandy. Toby came too, but Rodice had promised to get a job on another ship and meet Halo on the ice-planet Charlemagne, and Ludy had joined the 'Different Drummers', a musical cult.
Halo quickly made friends with her cabin-mate Toy Molto, and also encountered the mysterious Glyph. During the Clara Pandy's voyage she was mostly busy serving drinks to patronising posh people and being studiously ignored by hunky cyberneticist Mix Ninegold, but the trip was not without more unnerving incidents. Members of the Tarantulan Emancipation Army, enraged at Earth's "undeclared war" in the Tarantula Nebula, held Halo and the navigator hostage until Toby burst in and killed them. (Incidentally, the ship's captain would have been perfectly happy to manage without hostess number 035, but was terrified at the prospect of losing the dolphin navigator and having to explain himself to the Guild of Cetacean Steersmen.)
Three months later, Halo discovered a rat-king (five rats joined by their tails) in the ship's presidential cabin and was tasked with replacing one of its dying rats within an hour on pain of death. She would almost certainly have failed to do this if she hadn't been helped by the Glyph, whose assistance she immediately forgot.
Halo then discovered that Toby had murdered Brinna because he wanted to be inherited by Halo, with whom he was in love. When Toby realised that Halo would never love him back, he tried to kill her and Toy. The Glyph sacrificed their life to kill Toby.
When the Clara Pandy arrived on Charlemagne in 4950 AD Halo found out that Rodice had decided to stay on the Hoop. She left the ship in 4951 AD and drifted through a series of dead-end jobs until she met Toy again on the planet Pwuc. Toy was recruiting for the army and Halo was persuaded to sign up when she heard that it would give her the opportunity to travel more.
Halo was devastated when Toy was killed six weeks into their first tour of duty. She left the army, then re-enlisted when she realised that soldiering was all she knew how to do, and that there weren't any other jobs. (There are no pipefitters in outer space.)
The war ended while Halo was fighting on the high-gravity planet of Moab. Feeling at a loose end during peacetime, she entered a relationship with General Luiz Cannibal, the commander of Earth's forces. During his war crimes trial Halo realised that he had used the rat king she had aided on board the Clara Pandy to kill the population of the planet Charon with contagious diseases. Halo tampered with the valve on Cannibal's gravity suit, ensuring that the high gravity of the planet would kill him in ten minutes, and then ran away in a spaceship to which he had unwisely given her the keys.
Powers and abilities[]
Abilities
Speaking Cetacean; parachuting; locating the Markov point in an enemy's hard light screen and punching an electropic down through it into her living brain; blinding people with her thumbs.
Strength level
Peak human female.
Paraphernalia[]
Equipment
Parachute suit; karob slab; phrasebox; nulcept; absorbex pads; gravity suit.
Transportation
Magnetrax; Ringroadster; the Clara Pandy; sweepjeep; spaceship with 'free lunch' drive stolen from Luiz Cannibal.
Weapons
Various guns.
Notes[]
Halo has tried her hand at a number of jobs, including waitressing in a livefood bar, lumberjacking, babyfarming and iceberg smuggling.
Trivia[]
Halo had a cameo in the Nikolai Dante story (art by Simon Fraser, colours by Gary Caldwell) in the 2000 AD 40th Anniversary Special, which showed her chatting with Johnny Alpha at a party. She was wearing red, although the party was hosted by the Makarovs and red was the colour of their bitter rivals, the Romanovs.
Links[]
- Appearances of Halo Jones
- Character Gallery: Halo Jones
- Images that feature Halo Jones
- Fan-Art Gallery: Halo Jones
- Halo Jones quotations
Discover and Discuss[]
- Search News for: Halo Jones · Halo Jones