Tuesday's Short (on a Wednesday...) - The Years of Voyage

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This week’s short story takes us from a near-future Earth setting where loss can lead to hope to a colony facing the perils of plague. Welcome to They Years of Voyage.

Someone had to go to the old ship—not because the colony was sick, but because the colony was dying, and the reason why was locked inside the transport’s hulk. Someone had to go out to where the ship had crashed, out into the dark, and past the plaguers. I just wished that someone didn’t have to be me.

The Years of Voyage (Excerpt)


“…because those were the Years of Voyage. Our ancestors slept through most of them, and we never had to fly, but now we have to know what happened through those years, because that’s where the answer to this problem lies,” and Great-Grampa Briarly sat down again.
Usually Grampa Briarly’s speeches had us clapping and stamping our feet. Usually, they left us raring to get out and do whatever it was we had to do, and had been avoiding the truth of, but not this time. This time, we just all sat and stared at him, and he just stared right back, daring us—like he usually does.
We knew what we had to do. Gramps had just laid it out for us, but when he said we had to know what had happened through the Years of Voyage, he meant someone had to go and check out Thorny Rest. Thorny Rest. We all avoided it like the plague, and that was something else again. Thorny Rest and the plague. None of us wanted to think about it, but we all knew one of us had to.
Finally, when the silence had grown too long for comfort, Grampa Briarly pushed himself to his feet and nodded to me.
“You know what to do Rosa,” he said...

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The Years of Voyage is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: 
books2read.com/u/3JKV8X.


You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?
 




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