Peace on New Earth

By Miriam Newman

On the planet Megasta, colonists live in an uneasy peace with native tribes until the advent of Terran fever threatens their tenuous coexistence. Can the efforts of a medical technician from Old Earth and her love for a Megasti man avert bloodshed between their people?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miriam Newman
• Release date: Nov 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301771806

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Peace on New Earth by Miriam Newman

Published by Miriam Newman

Copyright 2012 Miriam Newman

Cover design by Graphicz X Designs

Formatting by www.formatting4U.com

Originally Released November 2009 by DCL Publications, LLC

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No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

Jadelle loved things that were old. She was a contradiction: a twenty-fifth century woman who put in ten hours daily at cutting-edge med-techno work, then came back to her zone abode and baked. Nobody baked any more. But Jadelle saved her credits for white flour instead of the green algae stuff and produced things that were old. Cakes. Pies. Cookies.

Among fiche copies of pages from rare, brittle books in the Biblio, she had found actual recipes for cookies. It had taken a bit of work to translate their measures into New Metric. Though her ‘puter could have done it, she took a perverse, very personal pleasure in doing the calculations by hand. Configuring baking temperatures was tedious, but her logical mind converted Fahrenheit easily enough. Gas marks from Brit recipes were harder. Even though she had no idea what a gas mark was, by trial and error she got those, too. She found it amusing that the same people who scoffed at her fascination with the archaic devoured the delectably browned cookies coaxed from her power oven.

Jadelle believed the ancient wisdom that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach and was readying herself to ply male co-workers at the lab when she returned there. She did it as frequently as her credit status allowed, but it was rapidly becoming merely an act of generosity on her part. Her intellectual brilliance intimidated men, and her spare figure and off-color hair didn’t entice them. No doubt they thought she read technical manuals before bed time. Well, Jadelle thought defiantly, sometimes she did.

She probably would tonight…more than one, after she had enjoyed what might be her last baking spree. Though the knowledge was being kept from the general population, she had confirmation of rumors that Terran fever had begun among the Megastes. The native inhabitants of the twelfth planet had never been docile and every human knew it would take only a little to push them over the edge into bloody retribution.

Sighing, Jadelle rubbed precious butter brought from off- world into rare white flour from the same place. Supply ships could not provide for them indefinitely. Unless they found a way to co-exist with the natives and start farming operations, their time on New Earth might be limited. There was a small pen of pampered chickens in the outer courtyard of the main dome, though, so she was able to beat an egg with a nice rich-looking yellow-orange yolk into her batter.

They might as well all die with their stomachs full.

* * * *

Sheet lightning above the domes illuminated figures of three men striding boldly across the plain. Their soft boots left