Excerpt: Displacement

The ecological set up phase was the most involved of the terraforming stages. Having created a world that was habitable for life, the tricky process of actually introducing life to the planet could begin. Life, was well, very lifey. Try and create a balanced ecosystem with all the essential components and the fungus would declare itself king and declare war on the shrews which in turn would launch an attack on the mosses and the whole wretched mess would never end. Actually, no matter what you did that would happen. Life was always, irrevocably and deeply at war with its most ancient and brutal enemy, life. Life would never consider the battle won until its enemy, life, had been defeated. It was simply the way things were. It was the job of the terraforming team not so much to stop this age old battle but to try and referee it so that as much of life could survive the assault of life as possible.