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Chapter 1: Arrival
In cryo, you don't dream at all.
It doesn't feel like six years.
More like a fifth of tequila and an ass-kicking.
- — - — - — - — -
Kate regained consciousness slowly. The first sensation she was able to fully process was the worst case of dry-mouth she'd ever experienced. The rest of her senses were still sorting themselves out when her pod opened, the bed she was strapped to sliding out into the large cryo bay of the ISV Venture Star. She bobbed against the padded safety restraints as she looked around to get her bearings.
Several members of the ship's cryonics support crew were floating around the cryo bay, checking on other passengers as their own pods opened. One of the crew floated over to her, looking her over and gently grabbing her wrist to check the IV lines there.
"Are—" Kate croaked through her parched throat. She tried again, "Are we there yet?"
"Yeah, we're there, sunshine," the crewman said, smiling gently. "We're there." He gave her a soft pat on the shoulder before floating away to check on someone else.
It took Kate a moment to finish gathering her wits enough to begin unstrapping herself. Once she was free, she pushed off from the bed toward the row of lockers containing the passengers' smaller personal effects.
Another of the crew spoke up, projecting his voice for everyone to hear. "You've been in cryo for five years, nine months, and twenty-two days. You will be hungry, you will be weak." He had the tone of voice of someone reading from the same script for the umpteenth time, and she wondered how many of these trips he'd been on. He continued, "If you feel nausea, please use the sacks provided for your convenience..."
Kate wasn't feeling nauseous, but she realized he hadn't been exaggerating with his previous statement—it wasn't just the dry-mouth; she was starving and weak as if she hadn't eaten in weeks. To be fair, it had technically been far longer than that, but since she'd spent all that time in suspended animation, it still caught her a bit off guard.
She pushed the hunger aside and found the locker labeled "Simmons, T." A combined pang of several unpleasant emotions shot through her. Dammit, Toni, it was supposed to be you out here, she thought. Her eyes burned as if threatening to produce tears, but dehydrated as she was, none came.
She gathered herself again, and opened the locker. After grabbing the few items inside—a single set of clothes, her watch, bracelet, dog tags, and shoes—she closed it again, and pushed off toward the exit.
- — - — - — - — -
A few minutes later, after stopping at the changing rooms to shuck the scrubs passengers were required to wear in cryo and get properly dressed, she floated into the recovery module. Another crew member was handing out drink pouches containing a nutrition-rich substance with the consistency of a milkshake.
But the real attention grabber was the window. None of the other passenger-accessible areas of the ship had windows, for a variety of reasons, but the people who had designed and built the Venture Star and its sister ships had apparently decided that letting the passengers see their destination with their own eyes had enough benefits to offset the drawbacks of including one here. It was facing away from their destination at the moment, but it was also facing the ship's enormous mirror shield. As the ship reoriented for its upcoming circularization burn, the enormous blue sphere of the gas giant Polyphemus came into view, perfectly reflected in the mirror.
And hanging in space in front of Polyphemus, getting noticeably closer by the minute, was Kate's new home for the foreseeable future.