Which had been cleared to the bare dirt.
Belle was pretty horrified by that circumstance.
Granted, she had no familiarity with construction, but conservation had been drummed into every colonist from the time they began their education and the clearing looked like a desecration of all that they had been ‘programmed’ to consider precious.
Captain Connor Carnegie had no tolerance for views that differed from his own, however. When a handful managed to gather their courage to protest, he pointed out that it was done already and there was no point in complaining about it. And, beyond that, they were building a colony. They could not work around every blade of grass.
Or apparently, any of the mammoth trees that had been in that area either.
Thankfully, the senior colony administrator, second gen, stepped in before the soldiers could scrape up all of the debris from the trees they’d uprooted and burn them, and the trees were set aside to be processed for manufacturing into goods and products for the colonists.
Belle was still outdone about it.
They could have worked around a good bit of the natural vegetation and it would have beautified the colony. Now they were stuck with an ugly gouge and the structures were certainly not going to improve the view, for they were very basic and utilitarian.
Saving the trees from being totally wasted was certainly better than simply piling them up and burning them, but it wasstilla waste as far as Belle could see because it was unnecessary--certainly to removeallof them. Granted, they hadn’t brought many ‘things’ with them. As colonists they’d been expected and trained to subsist on a bare minimum for their comfort and well being for the sake of conserving critical resources for future citizens.
The trees were giants, though. They had no idea of how long it had taken them to grow so big, but it seemed likely to be a generation and they had enough plant fiber to provide all the needs of the colony for more than a single generation. Maybe more than two or three.
So it wasstillwasteful in that sense.
And also in the sense that, even considered as a resource, it went well beyond basic needs.
On the other hand, she didn’t want to fight--or debate the matter--with Connor Carnegie.
He was one of her designated genetic matches. As far as she’d been able to tell, though, he had no interest in her, had never even seemed aware of her at all--let alone as a vessel for his use upon his whim and she preferred to keep it that way.
Of course, he had other genetic matches--that he was apparently far more interested in.
She had mixed feelings about that.
He was by far the handsomest of her five ‘matches’.
But he was also the most unnerving of the group.
Maybe because he was the head authority aboard ship.
Possibly because he was military and very powerfully built on top of wielding most of the power on the colony vessel.
She didn’t know, but she was convinced she liked it better when he didn’t notice her at all.
And, really, she wasn’t especially thrilled about any of her matches.
Which was why she was in no huge rush to spawn young--well no rush at all.
In point of fact, she’d been leaning heavily toward ignoring and evading that particular requirement.
Not that she honestly thought that was possible.
They had absolutely had to be very careful about their population on the long voyage--too many people and it risked lives. Too few and they faced the risk of weakening their gene pool with inbreeding.
But every single colonist was part of the gene pool and expected to contribute.
It seemed almost inevitable that she had only to acknowledge that she’d spent most of her adult years ‘in hiding’ from her matches to discover herself suddenly on way too many radars.
Chapter Two
Belle did her best to pretend she was completely oblivious to any possible interest, tried to convince herself that it washerthat, for reasons unknown, had just suddenly become hyper aware of them. Not that they were focused on her.
