No Summer or Day
A short story
It was raining in the colony ship as children looked through water pooling on windows, down at Earth. Tabitha felt their Ripley-Douglas beam vibrate the superstructure as it flash-burned forests below. Even in orbital height, night-side inferno bathed their gleaming ship in amber.
The 6 and 7-year-olds were regaled with tales of natural cycles of fire that made it so seedlings just like them could sprout. Tabitha, 13, was the only one old enough to remember trees of Earth. To know broiling below was not a gift. It was a purge.
Doped-photon propulsion was hailed as a crowning achievement that would take humanity’s colony ships to the stars.
Instead, they refocused the engines into lances of fire downward, and stayed aloft against Earth’s gravity well - falling forever but never quite making it.
There was never any intention to leave the solar system. The ships were not made for a journey across space. They were weapons platforms disguised in hope. The more Earth burned, the harder it rained.
Children stared in awe. Tabitha stared in detachment. Her screams would not reach Earth. But neither would the screams reach Tabitha.