Here the hills rolled slightly, the mountains were conspicuously absent, and the plains stretched off to the far horizon. She saw only the Linyaari people; no other large life forms at all. It was a pretty enough place, but lacked the gorgeous scenery and amazing biodiversity other dreams. Of course, she hadn’t seen the entire planet yet. It was unlikely the whole place was like this. Possibly there were many more interesting places on it.
An older white Linyaari male joined Acorna and Neeva.
” VLfei)haanye Neeva,” he said, inclining his head.
“Aagroni lirtye, what an honor it is to see you again, sir.”
“The honor is mine, Vi^e^kaanye.”
“Allow me to present my sisters daughter, Khornya. Khornya, Aagroni lirtye is one of the founders of narhiiVhiliinyar. His team located this world. He headed the terraformmg committee, determining what would be needed by our people to sustain life here, and he customized and implemented the programs and processes necessary to create a new habitat for us.” “An awesome responsibility, sir,” Acorna said. “I’m glad you realize that, young lady,” lirtye said. “I could not help but overhear how disappointed you were at the lack of certain topographical and biological amenities we enjoyed on the old home world.”
“Oh, dear. I am trying very hard to learn not to think so loudly, sir, but I can’t seem to find the volume control on my mind.” She smiled self-deprecatingly, hoping he would have a sense of humor.
It appeared that he didn’t. “I see no reason that you should be less than honest,” he said with a frown. “But you must understand how little time there was to prepare. Some of the features of the old home world were not only unnecessary, but were at times dangerous. A flat and fairly uniform planetary surface was most efficient for terraforming under the circumstances. This planet had such a surface. As for the other fauna, while we introduced all the essential species-single-celled life forms, invertebrates, and some of the smaller vertebrates like birds and reptiles-during the course of the terraforming process, we were still in the process of gathering breeding populations of the larger vertebrates to transplant when we were notified that the evacuation of our people was to take place immediately. The Khieevi invasion had overtaken Caabye “
“That was the third planet from our sun back on Vhiliinyar, Khornya,” Neeva interjected.
“We had no time to waste. Getting our people off the planet and on the way to safety took priority. We had to mobilize our entire fleet-those ships that were not already away from the planet, that is.”
Acorna did not need to invade his thoughts to realize that he was making a posthumous reprimand aimed at her parents because they had taken a spacecraft-and the director of weapons development, which was her father’s title and position -away from Vhiliinyar at such a critical time. Though how her parents could have predicted the moment was at hand so quickly when the speed of the final Khieevi invasion took everybody by surprise, Acorna couldn’t imagine. Nor could she imagine that her parents would have left the planet if they’d had even an inkling of the fate that awaited them. But she wasn’t about to point either of those observations out-if she could help it-to this man.
“In anticipation of the Khieevi invasion, we had furnished this new world with sufficient dwellings, equipment, and provisions to sustain us for the first year. We crowded our people into the colony ships in a mad rush to escape the invaders. We loaded whatever animals we could as well, but the populations were small, and have not flourished here, probably due to a lack of genetic diversity. We have teams searching other worlds now to find similar life forms to supplement and replace the native creatures we lost to the Khieevi.”
“I meant no criticism, sir,” Acorna replied softly. “You were responsible for saving our people and making this new world. No one, least of all me, could possibly find fault with that. I was only thinking of the “world I saw in my dreams.”
“Yes, I saw,” he said, and turned on his heel and walked away.