Waking up wasn’t quite right, at least, it wasn’t compared to any other time I’d ever woken up. No dreams lingered at the edges of my mind, no grogginess glommed against my thoughts to weigh them down. Instead, I went from non-existence to sudden awareness in an instant. All the disorientation of that first moment waking up in a strange place, but no recognition to mollify the confusion as the night before fills in the context of one's present. For a moment, I had no recollection of where I was, who I was. That moment dragged on, another moment, then one more. At which point does a collection of moments become more than a passing concern? Then my memories and senses came flooding back. Highly unpleasant.

I tried to open my eyes, hoping to take in my surroundings, the sudden influx of light brought a sharp pain to my underused eyes. I gasped, or at least I tried to, my lungs, still filled with the dregs of cryosleep fluid, were having none of that. I spluttered and gagged, struggling to breathe. I had the sudden privilege of being aware of pain again! In my eyes, my lungs, all down my diaphragm, with chilly air on my still damp skin bringing on a shiver.

‘Mild discomfort’ was how the pre-cryo briefing guide had described waking up. It was so far from ‘mild’ it was almost funny. I made a valiant effort to sit up, drain my lungs of fluid and catch my breath. Instead of managing that I ended up curled into the fetal position, whimpering to myself in soggy misery.

The cryosleep information packet identified the process of waking up as a source of ‘unpleasantness’ and frequent complaints from subjects, this was all marginally worse than I anticipated. "G-great start, Victoria," I spluttered to myself. "You're doing great."

The hiss of air, the low hum of a generator and the groans of other newly awakened personnel filled my ears. It was a begrudging comfort to know that I wasn't the only one going through this ordeal. A sort of communal commiserating, no words shared short of groans and sopping coughs, yet I found the burden shared less heavy regardless.

With some effort, I finally managed to cough up the remaining cryosleep fluid and fill my lungs with fresh, cold air.

But sitting up? That could wait. My limbs felt leaden, and the bright light hurt my eyes. I could tell from the brief glimpses I caught that my carefully maintained physique from officer school had been well and truly wasted. It was far more appealing to stay put and gather my thoughts.

This was a military cryo facility, a few kilometers south of Military Union Mars Command, nestled in the long shadow of Olympus Mons. The tallest mountain in the galaxy served as a source of geothermal energy, plentiful heavy metals from the Martian core and a convenient point from which to get those materials into space for further manufacturing. The low gravity and atmospheric resistance made it an ideal location for that. A solid third of all starship yards were located in martian orbit. Or at least they had been when I went under who knows how long ago. The cryo facility was used to provide crews for ships that had yet to be built, or, as I belatedly realized, had been built, since they were waking us up.

Superficially, it does seem counterintuitive to freeze one's crew, letting the best and brightest waste away in chilly facilities. However, there was at least a reasonable rationale as to why it wasn't as silly as it seemed.

The short answer was that aliens had attacked a human colony, and the technology necessary to defend humanity hadn't been developed yet. The number of ships and trained personnel needed to defend all of human space from our best approximation of the enemy was astronomical - thousands of ships would be required, but there simply weren't enough crew. The estimated number of crew required to run these hypothetical ships, plus provide for their maintenance and support, was between 3 and 5 million, a small fraction of the total human population, but still an insurmountable number given the limited resources available.

At the time of the attack, all human military and civilian starship personnel combined had only about 300,000 members. Moreover, these crew members were largely obsolete, given that the technology they had been trained on would be outdated by the time humanity was ready to stand its ground. Even if every fleet academy in the Sol system were to produce ten times the number of graduates they currently do over the next decade, it still wouldn't be enough to meet the required crew numbers. Simply put, there weren't enough people who understood the new technology or who could be trained quickly enough.

Thus, the idea was born to train officers and crew on the specifications of these new systems and freeze them for later use. A skeleton crew would be responsible for testing and maintaining new ships as they were produced. And when the time came that there was a critical mass of ships, enough to not just fight but win, a decade's worth of fresh, well-trained crew would join the fleet all at once.

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So was the rational anyway, but personally I felt more freezer burnt than fresh.

As I lay there curled in my cryopod, the lights gradually brightened, and the room warmed up. Through the pod window I could make out the facility I was in, pale red martian concrete and the dull luster of steel construction, Military facilities never did skimp on the decor. The universe seemed to have taken note of my recuperation and taken exception as a voice boomed from the adjacent cryopod room.

"Attention officers of the Union. Rise and shine!"

The room filled with a chorus of groans and muffled responses. I hesitated, still feeling stiff and groggy, but eventually pushed myself up and out of the pod with some effort. The prospect of a warm shower, fresh clothes, and a hot meal had become too tempting a prospect to resist.

My head throbbed, nausea and dizziness threatened to knock me over and evacuate my guts, that is if I had anything to throw up in the first place. All around in the communal shower space were my fellow officers, every bit as nauseous and deteriorated as I felt, a pack of thawed out zombies. One silver lining was that, even having slept for god knows how many years, we were all so exhausted and out of it that there was far less jostling and roughhousing than you might expect of a military shower. Still the warm water to wash the slowly drying cryo fluid out of my hair was appreciated, as were the crisp new uniforms, even with the heaters on it was never all that warm at night on Mars.

After our shower, we were shuffled off to the medical bay for our post-cryosleep checkup. They were extensive. A basic physical exam, neurological evaluation, Blood and urine samples. Pretty much everything short of a CT scan.

If this was a civilian undertaking perhaps there would have also been a psychological evaluation. Make sure we weren’t suffering from any of the more uncommon effects of cryo, such as anxiety, or depression. But this was the military, so we got an 8 page questionnaire, one I am sure would be filed straight into a trash bin as soon as I’d finished with it.

After being cleared by medical, shuffling through yet another line I was finally given an information packet, which was nice because I didn’t even know the current date up until that point.

“Hey Vic,” a fellow officer from my cohort snickered, gesturing to the date at the top of his own packet. “Happy birthday, right?”

I checked my own packet and chuckled. My birthday had only been a few days prior, meaning that according to the date, I was now, technically, 32 years old. It was a strange feeling to have aged while in cryosleep, as if time had moved on without me. Though logically, I knew that was how sleep worked. You go to sleep, time passes, you wake up. Yet the reality of being asleep for a full seven years was still disconcerting. Of course, we had all known what we signed up for, but the reality of it still took some adjusting. "Yeah," I chuckled, "happy birthday to all of us, I guess."

The packet contained no cultural info, being a decade out of touch would be weird. Still it didn’t take a genius to guess that overpopulation as distant refugees fled back to the Sol system, general existential terror and years of war economy had not made for a happy populace. Probably some really good memes but there would be time to look through those later.

More immediately was my post. I had expected–, no, earned, a posting at a fleet flagship, when it came to the simulated FTL navigation and in system nav suites I had been second to no one in my class.

But there was no flagship assignment, there wasn’t even a ship assignment!

Instead there were some instructions related to assignment to a R&D division. Not even an address for said division, just instruction on where I would be picked up.

I figured it could have gone three ways.

Option one: Command could have gone insane, the stress of leading humanity through an apocalypse would rest uneasy on any conscience, the premise of the top brass losing it was definitely sound.

Option two: There had been a lot of real simulator savants in the last few years that had beaten out my scores. I had pride, only a reasonable amount, perhaps there were simply better candidates for the positions. I doubted it.

Option three: This R&D division had a project that was more important than using one of your best TacNav officers in the field.

I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to wait and find out.