E.S. Raye

For the past few years, I have been working on what will be my debut novel, a space-western titled Gas Giant Gambit: A Tale From Beyond the Cygnus Rift. The idea was to craft a classic “Old West” story and drop it into a suitably “sci-fi” world. I am confident that the end result is exactly that, and so this week, I thought I might introduce you all to the main setting of my story: Las Ráfagas Rubidium-87 Mining Outpost and Depot.

As a fan of such great spaghetti westerns like A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and of course, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, I knew I needed a small, out-of-the-way location for my story to take place in. I wanted someplace where you might expect a nameless anti-hero to breeze into, only to clean up before breezing out. And since I wanted a mostly old-west-type story, that left limited options.

So, I settled on a mining town, one found floating in the clouds of a gas giant planet, a la Star Wars’ Cloud City on Bespin. But Las Ráfagas is no bustling hub of industry – instead, it’s a town long past its prime, falling into disuse and obsolescence as few technologies and fuel sources are developed.

“Las Ráfagas,” meaning “the wind gusts” in Spanish, is far from what we might consider “civilization,” like so many frontier towns in mid-to-late 1800s America. And as such, is far from the prying eyes of any governmental authority. This makes it the perfect place for runaway robs (robot slaves), bounty hunters, and greedy tycoons alike to make their home.

For decades before the story begins, Las Ráfagas supplied the rare isotope Rubidium-87 to all the fueling stations along the latter half of the Cygnus Trail, the route taken by pioneers traveling from Earth’s Old Colonies to the Cygnus X frontier. But with the rise of the pulse-rail train system, vessels using Rubidium-87 are slowly falling out of favor, at least for long trips like the one to the frontier. Much like the way trains replaced horses and coaches traveling from the East Coast to California.

But the station’s greedy and powerful administrator, Laszlo Leconte, has other plans. When the protagonist Gun, a name the “beamslinger” is only borrowing, arrives at Las Ráfagas, Laszlo is well into his plan to force the station’s inhabitants and those ranching in the clouds near the station to sell their stake to him at a fraction of what they are worth, even with the down dying. And he’s not above using intimidation and sabotage to get what he wants.

Though the townspeople don’t know the details of Laszlo’s plan, they do know he’s up to something nefarious, and ask for Gus’s help when she arrives.

But Gus is not interested. She advises them to take what bits of precious they can’t bear to part with, accept Laszlo’s deal, and get out of dodge.

But the resolve of the people she meets there, and the soul of the runaway rob she’s there to collect the bounty on, slowly turn her heart. Ultimately, there in the clouds and the streets of Las Ráfagas, Gus learns what it means to stand up for something you truly care for.