Read Online Influx by Kynan Waterford - Free Book Online Page B

the airlock floor.
    Then he opened his arms.
    The thin yet tough fabric of his storm suit caught more of the wind screaming around the influx vent and suddenly he was accelarating away from the Kronish . As it fell into darkness behind him, Garen used the webbing on his storm suit to angle his trajectory toward the edge of the influx vent so he could reach the intake pipe Onzo had prepared for him.
    He could feel the pressure building as he moved into the giant cavity and imagined the thousands of heavangels that had experienced this sensation before him.
    “ Only they had no chance of survival ,” he thought, imagining Kari saying the words.
    Pushing the thought away, Garen did a quick mental calculation and realised he would need to hold his position for one more revolution before he was close enough to snag his target. He held his position precariously, fighting against the turbulence with subtle changes in the way he oriented his storm suit, all the while keeping a firm eye on his destination.
    Then it was suddenly in front of him.
    In a blur, Garen released the webbing on one side of his body and grasped the edge of the intake pipe with one hand. The manoeuvre caused his body to pivot violently and slam into the inside wall of the intake pipe, but Garen didn’t even acknowledge the pain. The force would have been enough to break the bones of an ordinary man, but Garen simply held his grip firm and looked for the panel he would need to open if he wanted to get inside the Golgotha’s hull.
    He found it a little deeper in the pipe and immediately began to lower himself toward it. The intake pipe wasn’t made to be scaled in this way, so his progress was slow, but when he eventually got close enough to dislodge the panel, he made sure it didn’t get sucked into the maelstrom rushing past him. He couldn’t risk it causing damage further down the pipe and alerting anyone to his presence.
    He quickly crawled inside the claustrophobic space beyond and then secured the panel back into place. He paused for a moment to ensure the stolen technology was still in the pocket at his waist, then he began the painstaking process of squeezing his way through the wall space he’d entered.
    It took almost ten minutes to reach one of the inner corridors, but only seconds to remove another panel and quietly drop inside.
    “ First obstacle down ,” Garen thought to himself. “ Now to find what I came for. ”
    As he stealthily made his way through the Golgotha’s sub-levels, Garen came across a few maintenance technicians, but none of them saw him. Along with helping him manoeuvre through Jupiter’s atmosphere, his storm suit was virtually invisible to all forms of surveillance, including human sight. All he had to do was be careful not to make any sound, or accidentally touch anyone as he passed.
    The far more dangerous threat were the Coalition employees he’d come here to find.
    “ Scroobers, ” Garen thought to himself.
    Scroobers were one of the Coalition’s latest innovations in round-the-clock surveillance.
    Rather than paying trained personnel to stare at video screens and relying on their easily distracted brains to interpret the visual input, the Coalition had decided to increase productivity by taking the process to its ultimate technological conclusion – hooking their employees’ visual cortex directly into the signals being generated throughout the Golgotha via its many, many security cameras.
    Having your brain hard-wired like this wasn’t the most pleasant of prospects and so it only attracted those who’d accumulated a large amount of Coalition debt and needed a way to pay it down sooner than most jobs allowed. These unfortunate employees were nicknamed scroobers because the overwhelming input occasionally scrambled their brains and left their grey matter as useful as the contents of their nose.
    On the other hand, from the Coalition’s perspective the process allowed fewer employees to handle a lot more