A week had passed since their assault on Sappo's quarters. Now Pegasus was closing in on asteroid FA 6789-X. It was better known as the Dump, and from what McCade could see via his long-range optics, the name fit. FA 6789-X had once served as an Imperial supply dump, a staging area for some long-forgotten mission, an airless lump of rock to be used and then abandoned.
A long list of temporary residents had come and gone since then, including a succession of miners, an eccentric loner or two, and most recently Mustapha Pong. Or so Morris Sappo claimed.
And McCade was inclined to believe him. For one thing Sappo was scared, and for another he was sitting in the ship's lounge where Neem could reach out and touch him, something the human would do anything to avoid.
Sappo had some rather deep-seated religious beliefs stemming from his childhood on Regor II. There his parents had attempted to beat an understanding of good and evil into his scrawny little body, and even though they'd failed, they had managed to warp his mind. So even though Sappo knew that Neem wasn't the devil, the Il Ronnian's demonic appearance still turned him into a babbling idiot. And babbling idiots can be extremely cooperative.
Thanks to a cooperative Sappo, they'd been able to lift from Tin Town without interference, and without payment for the considerable damage they'd caused. So when Sappo said that Pong made regular use of the Dump, McCade believed him.
The only problem was that McCade couldn't tell if the pirate was in residence or not. McCade spoke without taking his eyes off the screen. "Reba, cycle through the sensors one more time."
"Okay," she replied. "But it won't do much good. There's so much junk on the ground that you could hide the Imperial fleet down there."
Reba was right, of course. The original supply dump had centered around a cluster of domes. When the navy pulled out, all sorts of junk was left behind. Broken-down crawlers, gantries, and other less identifiable chunks of equipment lay all over the place. As the years passed, other tenants had added their debris to the pile so that a jungle of wrecked ships, scrap metal, and other junk filled a good-sized crater.
As a result there was enough metal on Dump to put all of McCade's metal detectors onto eternal alert. On top of that were radiation leaks from junked drives, a lot of vague static, and residual heat emanating from God knows what. It could mean nothing or everything. There was no way to tell.
Reba looked up from her sensors. "Sorry, Sam. There's too much input. If Pong's there, I can't pick his ship out of the background clutter."
McCade nodded and stuck an unlit cigar between his teeth. He could land and risk falling into a trap or stay a safe distance away and wait for something to happen. A day? A week? A month? It made little difference because he couldn't afford to use any time at all. Unless he found the Vial of Tears, and found it damn soon, entire planets would begin to burn.
"Strap in, everybody. We're going down."
It was a simple approach. FA 6789-X had a nice predictable orbit with just the right amount of spin to generate light gravity.
The problem was where to land. The crater was so full of junk that there wasn't much open space left. That seemed to suggest a landing outside the crater's perimeter, but if he did that, Pegasus would stick out like a Zord at a Finthian tree dance. And if Pong returned, he'd see the little ship and destroy it. That left the crater, junk or no junk. It might be a tight fit, but once down Pegasus would fade into the background. In fact, they could lay an ambush for Pong if that seemed advisable.
As the asteroid grew larger in his viewscreens, McCade swung Pegasus to the right and used his repellors to skim across the crater. "Keep a sharp lookout, Reba. Let me know if you see anything funny."
But Reba was silent as they passed over the forest of junk. Light dusted the tops of things and sparkled off the billions of dust motes that were stirred up by the ship's repellors. But outside of the ship itself nothing moved or gave McCade reason to run.
McCade put Pegasus down in the shadow of a huge ore processor. It was a tight fit between that and a pile of metal scaffolding, but he made it. He used the ship's sensors to take one last look around. Nothing. If Pong were present, surely he'd have reacted by now.
McCade released his harness, stuck the cigar in a pocket, and followed Reba out of the control room.
Neem, Sappo, and Ceex were already in the lounge when they arrived, so the tiny space was full to overflowing. Now that they were down McCade was anxious to look around.
"All right. With the exception of Ceex, I want everyone suited up. Yes, Sappo, that means you. If anything unpleasant happens to us while we're out there, it's gonna happen to you too."
"Ceex, I want you to stay aboard Pegasus and man the weapons systems. If anything moves, blast it."
"Maybe he should "Il Ronnian" the weapons systems instead," Neem suggested with a smile.
"Give me a break, Neem. That okay with you, Ceex?"
The cyborg nodded. Half his face was a mass of melted plastic that dripped downward like wax from a candle. The other half wore a twisted smile.
They'd done the best they could for him, but the truth was that his injuries required the attentions of a fully equipped cyberlab, and an Il Ronnian cyberlab at that. But Ceex had insisted that he be allowed to come along, and this way he'd be useful without slowing them down.
"All right then," McCade said. "Let's suit up and take a look around. I want everyone to carry an extra oxygen supply and a blast rifle. There's no telling what we might run into out there and we may want to stay awhile."
Forty-five minutes later McCade scrambled down to the ground and took a look around. Huge pieces of equipment formed a metal maze on every side. There were thousands of hiding places and everyone of them could harbor an ambush. But why bother? McCade thought to himself. If Pong's here, we would have seen him by now.
They had chosen the original domes as their destination. According to Sappo, that's where Pong stored some of his loot between raids, and if they decided to lay an ambush for him, that would be the place to do it.
McCade and Reba took the point with Sappo following along behind and Neem bringing up the rear. Constrained as he was by McCade's leg shackles, Sappo couldn't move very fast but that was fine. The rest of them were loaded down with extra oxygen and weapons so they weren't moving very fast either. But the light gravity helped as did a certain amount of fear.
It was spooky in and among the junk. Their movements carried them from heavy shadow to bright sunlight and back again. It took very little imagination to turn twisted pieces of metal into homicidal aliens.
Once, McCade thought that he saw a weapons turret on a junked shuttle turn to track them, but when he stopped to look again, he saw that it was just the way the light had moved across its surface.
And twice he thought he saw movement, first between two hydroponics tanks, and then through the canopy of an old crane.
On both occasions he used his radio to ask Ceex for confirmation, but the cyborg hadn't seen anything and swore that all of his sensors were clear.
Over the years a number of natural paths had evolved in and between the larger pieces of junk. These were well marked by crawler tracks, but it was impossible to tell how recently they'd been used. Without the effects of weather to wash them away, many were probably twenty or thirty years old.
Finally the domes loomed up ahead. One had been crushed by a badly piloted ore barge years before, one had been stripped for use somewhere else, and three appeared to be in reasonably good shape.
McCade and Reba approached the first of these while Neem and Sappo hung back. Its surface was checkered with solar cells, beat exchangers, and other less-obvious equipment. Crude patches were visible here and there where someone had modified the dome for a particular use and someone else had come along to restore it.
They circled the dome by carefully working their way along the wall until they reached the main door. It was wide open. Stepping inside McCade saw endless rows of empty shelves. There was something about them, something about the used pallets scattered here and there, and the multitude of tracks that ran every which way that suggested recent use. Had Pong emptied the warehouse? And if so, why?
"Sam! Reba! You'd better get out here!" The voice belonged to Neem.
They came at a fast trot and the moment he got outside McCade saw the problem. It was rather hard to miss. Though not huge, a light cruiser is a large ship and this one was hovering about a hundred feet over the crater. It was roughly triangular in shape and was covered with weapons turrets, torpedo launchers, and a host of other installations. Though too large to land on most planets, the absence of an atmosphere and the asteroid's lighter gravity permitted the ship to come in close.
"The damn thing was hiding in the junk on the far side of the crater," Neem said grimly. "One moment it wasn't there and the next moment it was."
McCade chinned his mike. "Don't try it, Ceex, you don't have a . . ." but he could have saved his breath.
Ceex opened up with everything he had, but it was like a zit bug taking on an Envo Beast. Pegasus was heavily armed for a ship her size, but the larger ship's defensive screen shrugged off her puny attack as if it hadn't even happened and then responded in kind.
Huge energy projectors burped blue light and Pegasus exploded into a million pieces. They seemed to fall forever due to the asteroid's light gravity and hit with exaggerated force.
McCade simply stood there completely helpless while his ship and a trusted comrade died in front of his eyes.
There was a burst of static in McCade's helmet followed by a voice he'd never heard before. "Welcome to the Dump. I'm Mustapha Pong, and unless you do exactly what I say, you will die."