Petticreek Five by Ginger Booth

Author:Ginger Booth [Booth, Ginger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ginger Booth

6

Pono with its two colony moons lies just beyond the Aloha System Goldilocks Zone. Mahina receives bonus heat from the furnace-like gas giant, along with high radiation levels. The other settled moon is not a terraforming prospect, too cold for liquid water.

The settlers had oil, and vegetables! Crops being essentially slow – especially the newborn sunflower oil industry – this took a couple years to bootstrap. But kids and adults in Hutchins looked healthier. The jury was still out on whether anyone was getting smarter. Sass’s fosterlings Sean and Mason proved that teenagers remained idiots, but she figured that was hormonal.

At last the Settler Uplift Movement, as Landau now called it – SUM for short – amassed the ingredients to stage a big event in Schuyler. The largest settler community, Schuyler sported a whopping 20,000 citizens. Yes, this was also the town that recently lost hundreds, or thousands, to the monster air drop. But Sass hadn’t thought twice about the venue. Schuyler was the settlers’ nearest thing to a capital.

She attended the planning meetings, sucking down her two hours a week volunteer time budget. Unlike others in SUM, she didn’t work with fellow party members every week. Her work days drew her more to Schuyler, whose industry and cross-regolith trucking generated richer conflicts for a marshal to untangle.

Mid-day Glow was gorgeous as usual, a brilliant full Pono taking up half the sky in that direction, tiger-striped orange and white, sporting some lovely pink hurricanes lately. They’d chosen the market and entertainment district for their procession. Street vendors had been recruited and trained, their deep fryers at the ready to serve up their potent temptation: battered deep-fried vegetables and soy protein donuts, with tomato sauce for dipping.

She’d taught Drake how to cook them. He never really moved out after transferring from Denny’s couch the night they met. She had time to get mortally sick of fried vegetables with spaghetti sauce while he and the boys honed the recipes. But by now, they’d proven that anyone with a stomach would crave their fried onions with eggplant, carrots, and cabbage. Broccoli and cauliflower and sweet potatoes tasted great, too, but production lagged. They were harder to grow. At the time, she’d mostly enjoyed the novelty of a domestic life, coming home to a great supper and three guys happy to see her, instead of an empty apartment with chores looming. Drake ensured the chores got done.

Today proud banners flew from crowbars held high, this being Schuyler. Their earlier ramp-up demonstrations were held in farming villes, where marchers used rake handles and such. A tough crowd of longshoremen and their equally hard womenfolk stood ready to march.

Sass’s eyes narrowed. Yes, the usual signs were included, festooned with child-friendly smiling vegetables. ‘Veggies For Vision!’ ‘Grav for Strong Backs!’ ‘Veggie Fest!’ ‘SUM More!’ And so on. But the Schuyler toughs added their own sentiments. ‘Air Drop – Never Again!’ ‘No Taxes for Air Drops!’ ‘Down With MA!’ ‘Free Babies!’ Not that the crowd could read. The signs were for the news coverage, addressed to the urbs.

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