A Gate over New Dakota ---STEEMIT EXCLUSIVE SERIES--- PART ONE

An old west tale... in space.

A Gate over New Dakota

By 

Felipe Mena

     Gregori Putznevaeu was fidgety during his final moments. 

     He scanned the Data-Pad for the fifth time then peered back out the window. It wasn’t telling him shit, but his eyes were. There was something out beyond Clinton. It was just a flicker, a dim green pulse, but it was there.    

     The miners were still working, the white-blue light from the Ion drills flashing sporadically. They had about two more days on Zeta MH-447. Then it would be dried up and they’d have to move closer to Clinton, New Dakota’s sixth moon. 

     “What in the hell….” He tapped the implant on his left arm, Donna Lepanto’s always irritated face hovered above his palm. 

     She breathed in deep and let it out. “What is it now, Putznevaeu?”

     “Saw it again, boss…..sorry.”

     She looked to her right, at something or someone else, frowning. 

     “What, Greg…. What did you see again?” She turned back. She was shorter with him than usual today, nervous as all hell. Something was happening.

     “The Clinton pulse, ma’am,” he blurted it out, might as well. It just wasn’t goddamn normal.

     “Ain’t your fucking job to be looking out the window, Greg,” she shook her head, whatever was going on, her endless irritation with him was overriding it. “It’s your fucking job to be counting my Rods.”

     “Yes, ma’am,” he stuttered, why’d he always have to stutter. “No, ma’am, I mean yes ma’am, it’s just… it isn’t normal. That light ma’am, the one I keep seeing, the peculiar one….  I’m not from here, ma’am… I mean I wasn’t born in the Colonies—“

     “The Free-states, you fucking Fugie, the Free-States, we ain’t been no Colonies for a long fucking time.”

     “Yes, ma’am, sorry ma’am. What I mean is--- what I me—is that, that green light, ma’am, it looks like an Imperium Jump Drive. That’s what it looks like ma’am, you know, like, from a distance. 

     “Imperium ship through the Ring, Greg? They ain’t that fucking crazy. They ain’t allowed out on the Rim… shit there ain’t anything out here they’d even want if they were.”

     Then there was another flash, this one everyone saw. The ship buckled noiselessly only seconds later.

     Donna’s eyes went wide and she moved out of visual, leaving just an image of the port deck hovering over his palm. He caught and closed it then went back to the window. 

     The stars were gone, the familiar blue and white of an Imperium Corvette had taken their place. 

     What came next went by very, very, quickly.

     First Donna’s face came out of his palm again.

     “Greg----,” she was breathing heavily, like she had that one night a few weeks ago. “Greg---- you were right, fucking right--- Greg---”

     There was blood coming out of the corner of her mouth, her face pale. 

     Then he heard the thuds, three, four, five….

     She screamed. 

     “Greg--- get to the com---- call Ryukyu, tell ‘em they came throu—“

     Her face disintegrated right when he remembered the rifle under the rear cache. He’d never used one, never needed to, never learned to. Could it be so hard?

     Before he’d decided one way or the other the cabin door was kicked open and he came in, the man in the dark blue Imperium Uniform. 

     Greg lunged for the gun, went to his knees to reach under the cache for the butt of the rifle when the steel-toed black boots struck him in the stomach sending him toppling over, his breath exploding out of him.

     Through the haze of pain Greg saw his face, a peculiar set of eyes, one blue and one gray, a wide-brimmed black hat above them, just right for the planet below. 

     Then he saw the barrel.

     Then he was dead.

END PART ONE