They moved into the interior, the banging of the animals outside subsiding to faint thuds that eventually stopped entirely. Around them, pods waited silently, holding the bodies of those who would never arrive on the new world they’d been promised.
Jackson ignored the pods, finding a spot against a wall to sit. She immediately began cleaning and inspecting her weapon again. Dann picked a spot not too far off and watched for a bit.
“What was your department?”
“I am in security,” she said, not looking up.
“That explains the weapon clearances I guess,” he said. She just nodded noncommittally. He wished suddenly for some of the conveniences they’d had to leave behind them from the world before; personal entertainment devices that fit in pockets or on your wrist had been dismissed from the journey as distractions they couldn’t afford to have. Eventually they’d be made available again, but that would likely be years away.
He found himself looking over the room, eyes drawn by a dim green light. He stared at it for several minutes, lost in his thoughts, until finally the image caught up with his mind. “Hey,” he said, startled.
Jackson looked up, surprised herself at his sudden outburst. “What?”
“Hey, that one’s green. Another of the survivors is here!” He got to his feet.
“So? We’re not after this one. We need someone to get us closer to figuring out this computer issue, give us some idea of what’s going on.”
“Shouldn’t we wake as many as we can along the way though? We can’t just leave them here!”
“Why not? They’ve lasted five hundred years, and whatever went wrong didn’t get them twenty years ago. They’ll keep.”
“What if they start waking up?” Dann was a bit affronted at what he saw as her casual disregard for her fellow crew.
“Why would they just start waking up for no reason?”
“I did!”
She frowned. “Rose must have awakened you.”
Dann frowned as well. “I didn’t ask. I was too busy feeling like I was dying.” He cursed himself for not having thought of it earlier. “Rose? What caused me to be awakened?”
“Your pod was awakened on the originally specified schedule, Dann.”
“I was? But … wait, why was I the only one? Was I the only one? Are there others out there?”
“There is one other revived maintenance crew in addition to yourself and Pvt. Jackson.”
“Only one?” Dann’s heart began to sink.
“No other surviving maintenance personnel were scheduled to wake up at this time.”
“Does this have something to do with where Rose went?”
“Ugh. We definitely need to rename one of them,” Jackson complained.