We initiated deorbital burn over the Marshall Islands and dropped back into the ionosphere, locked by the wing's navigator into one of the Eurospace reentry corridors. As we coasted across Central America we were an easy target for the attack satellites. The plan was to fool the tracking nets into thinking we were a corporate shuttle. Django had somehow acquired the recognition codes; his computer, snaked to the wing's navigator, had convinced it to pretend to be the property of Erno Raumfahrttechnik GMBH, the EU aerospace conglomerate.
It was all a matter of timing, really. It would not be too much longer before the people on Cognico's Orbital 7 untangled the spaghetti Django had made of their memory systems and realized that he had downloaded WILDLIFE and stolen a cargo wing. Then they would have to decide whether to zap us immediately or have their own private security ops waiting when we landed. The plan was to lose the wing before they could decide. Our problem was that very little of the plan had worked so far.
Django had gotten us on and off the orbital research station all right, and had managed to pry WILDLIFE from the jaws of the corporate beast. For that alone his reputation would live forever among the snakes who steal information for a living, even if he was not around to enjoy the fame. But he had lost our pilot, Yellowbaby--his partner, my sometime lover--and neither of us had any idea exactly what it was he had stolen. He seemed pretty calm for somebody who had just sunk fangs into the world's biggest computer company. He slouched in the commander's seat across from me, watching the readouts on the autopilot console. He was smiling and tapping a finger against his headset as if he were listening to one of his jazz disks. He was a dark, ugly man with an Adam's apple that looked like a nose and a nose that looked like an elbow. He had either been to the face cutters or he was in his mid-thirties. I trusted him not at all and liked him less.
Me, I felt as though I had swallowed a hardboiled egg, but then I'd been space sick for days. I was just along for the story, the juice. According to the newly formed International Law Exchange, all a spook journalist is allowed to do is aim the microcam goggles and ask questions. If I helped Django in any way, I would become an accessory and lose press immunity. Infoline would have to disown me. But press immunity wouldn't do me much good if someone decided to zap the wing. The First Amendment was a great shield, but it didn't protect against reentry friction. I wanted to return to earth with a ship around me; sensors showed that the outer skin was currently 1400o Celsius.
"Much longer?" A dumb question since I already knew the answer. But better than listening to the atmosphere scream as the wing bucked through turbulence. I could feel myself losing it: I wanted to scream back.
"Twenty minutes. However it plays." Django lifted his headset. "Either you'll be a plugging legend or air pollution." He stretched his arms over his head and arched his back away from the seat. I could smell his sweat and almost gagged. I just wasn't designed for more than three gravities a day. "Hey, lighten up, Eyes. You're a big girl now. Shouldn't you be taking notes or something?"
"The camera sees all." I tapped the left temple of the goggles and then forced a grin that hurt my face. "Besides, it's not bloody likely I'll forget this ride." I wasn't about to let Django play with me. He was too hypered on fast-forwards to be scared.
It had been poor Yellowbaby who had introduced me to Django. I had covered the Babe when he pulled the Peniplex job. He was a real all-nighter, handsome as surgical plastic can make a man and an artiste in bed. Handsome--but history. The last time I had seen him he was floating near the ceiling of a decompressed cargo bay, an eighty-kilo hunk of flash-frozen boy toy. I might have thrown up again if there had been anything left in my stomach.
"I copy, Basel Control." Yellowbaby's calm voice crackled across the forward flight deck. "We're doing Mach nine point nine at fifty-seven thousand meters. Looking good for touch at fourteen-twenty-two."
We had come out of reentry blackout. The approach program that Yellowbaby had written, complete with voice interaction module, was in contact with Basel/Mulhouse, our purported destination. As long as everything went according to plan, the program would get us where we wanted to go. If anything went wrong ... well, the Babe was supposed to have improvised if anything went wrong.
"Let's blow out of here." Django heaved himself out of the seat and swung down the ladder to the equipment bay. I followed. We pulled EV suits from the lockers and struggled into them. I could feel the deck tilting as the wing began a series of long, lazy S curves to slow our descent.
As Django unfastened his suit's weighty backpack he began to sing; his voice sounded like gears being stripped. "I'm flying high, but I've got a feeling I'm falling...." He quickly shucked the rest of the excess baggage: comm and life-support systems, various umbilicals. "...falling for nobody else but you."
"Would you shut the hell up?" I tossed the still camera from my suit onto the pile.
"What's the matter?" There was a chemical edge to his giggle. "Don't like Fats Waller?"
Yellowbaby's program was reassuring Basel even as we banked gracefully toward the Jura Mountains. "No problem, Basel Control," the dead man's voice drawled. "Malf on the main guidance computer. I've got backup. My L over D is nominal. You just keep the tourists off the runway and I'll see you in ten minutes."
I put the microcam in rest mode--no sense wasting memory dots shooting the inside of an EV suit--and picked up the pressure helmet. Django blew me a kiss. "Don't forget to duck," he said. He made a quacking sound and flapped his arms. I put the helmet on and closed the seals. It was a relief not to have to listen to him; we had disabled the comm units to keep the ops from tracking us. He handed me one of the slim airfoil packs we had smuggled onto and off of Orbital 7. I stuck my arms through the harness and fastened the front straps. I could still hear Yellowbaby's muffled voice talking to the Swiss controllers. "Negative, Basel Control, I don't need escort. Initiating terminal guidance procedures."
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