Homecoming

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Fortan's space mission ends ten years later (for him) and one hundred years later (for everyone else).

He expects changes when he returns to the good old U.S. of A. He doesn't expect to get arrested upon landing. He really doesn't expect all the charges for back family support, considering he had no child or wife or girlfriend when he left. He just left an enclosed environment that felt like prison. Will he go to actual prison for a crime he hasn't committed?

"Kristine Kathryn Rusch's 'Homecoming' looks at the idea of paternity suits and spaceflight relativity in a poignant, yet interesting manner."

—SF Site

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jul 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386895244

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.   

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Homecoming

Homecoming

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing

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Homecoming

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About the Author

Homecoming

I’d been down maybe four hours, long enough to go through the newest version of decon—a ray of light that poked every part of the body with gentle warmth—, not long enough to get a sense of this America 89 years in my future.

Technology was different—that seemed obvious; laws were different—noticed that just a few minutes ago; but people seemed to be the same, preoccupied with their own agendas, too busy to hear let alone answer questions.

Not that there was anyone to ask. I was sitting in what passed for a police precinct interview room, a windowless square with blank white walls so clean I could almost see myself, a table (also white) with tiny fingerprint shaped indentations. No one sat across from me. I got a sense they all huddled outside the room, watching the one-hundred-plus-year-old man who looked like he was thirty-five—or, depending on your point of view, the thirty-five-year-old man who was actually well over one hundred.

My stomach was tied in loops—this certainly wasn’t the homecoming I’d been expecting. Not that I’d been expecting a particularly good one. Hell, anything could have happened—an asteroid could’ve wiped out all life on Earth for all we knew—at least until we reached Earth Central (and managed to jury-rig our communications equipment so that we could unscramble their messages) somewhere around the Moon.

We’d been celebrating during our glide from the Moon to Earth, celebrating and trying to figure out how to land the damn ship, according to the parameters Earth Central had sent to us. Everything was different, which we had expected, but we hadn’t expected our equipment to be so antique (by Earth’s point of view) as to be nearly non-functional.

Someone slipped up and told us they thought we were dead. Seemed they never got our transmissions once we left the solar system. Or maybe they’d get them years from now, when it no longer mattered.

Comptin figured they’d upgraded their equipment, forgot all about us, and didn’t set anything to receive. Worthy thought that we just didn’t aim the communications equipment right after we’d left the solar system.

Me, I was beginning to figure the screw-up was just one of many that was plaguing us in our relationship with Earth.