"Top?"

SSG George Liu's low pitched voice couldn't begin to touch the stupor he'd found his First Sergeant fallen into. Which, when he thought about, seemed like an amazing feat. Hell, that had to be one of the most uncomfortable ways imaginable to fall asleep, cramped up on that folding metal chair she'd dragged in from somewhere, slumped over a stasis bed with only her folded arms for a pillow.

"Hey, Top," He pressed his fingers gingerly against her shoulders a couple times. "First Sergeant! The Commander's waiting - "

First Sergeant Abigail Larson sat straight up like a shot in that hard metal chair with a surprised snort, and regretted it the instant she did. Cramped muscles screamed in protest, and her head ached mightily, throbbing dully behind her pale blue eyes like a thousand muffled hammers banging away in her skull. The doctors had warned that every person's experience waking from stasis was as different as the individual. Where some might wake violently nauseous, shaky, and near-crippling muscle weakness for days, still others rose from cryosleep as if waking from a refreshing (if extremely long) nap, all bright-eyed and perky.

Abby knew she hated those bright-eyed perky fuckers with all her heart and soul.

Most people could expect to feel some mild nausea and disorientation, fatigue and yes, sinus headache symptoms, for a few days after emerging from cryosleep, but it wasn't the headache she'd been fighting since she woke yesterday that sent her to this bay pod, and to this particular stasis bed.

She blinked and managed a wan smile for the squad leader, using the wrist of her ACU blouse to wipe away the thin line of drool she could feel had begun to work its way down her chin. Some people resembled nothing so much as earth-bound angels as they slumbered, rising from their heavenly rest with a slow, dignified grace.

Abby wasn't one of them.

"Thanks Liu," she murmured, rubbing at her eyeballs with her fingertips for a moment before standing to her feet, arms stretched overhead.

Liu nodded in response, his face stony though a single thin line of concern creased the corner of his mouth. "Commander said he wanted to talk to you a minute before briefing the whole Third Shift, but he didn't say why. He seemed antsy, nervous - it was... strange. "

Abby shrugged nonchalantly, though she honestly felt anything but. She picked up the tablet that rested beside her, atop the stasis bed where she'd fallen asleep, before reaching to her ear to tap the ear piece back on. "Don't think too hard on it. You know how CPT Stanford holds things close - don't sweat anything. You'll hear it all in the briefing."

Captain Lee Stanford wasn't a bad man. He was actually a very good man, caught in as shitty a situation as Abby could have dredged up in her worst nightmares. He'd done the best he could with what he had - she knew that. But that didn't mean she was looking forward to the shitstorm she expected, when he left her to make that announcement.

Abby folded the metal chair with one hand, leaning it up against the wall before her gaze returned to the stasis bed. She took a deep, steadying breath, deliberately shoving the lingering headache aside when her eyes fell on the face "sleeping" beneath the deceptively clear, thick glass. He looked so small lying there on a cryobed meant for an adult maybe twice his size.

But he's alive. Abby kissed her fingertips, laying them against the glass above her son's forehead. So still, so small, but he was alive - the displays all said so, and so did the med tech she'd stopped on his way through. That had to be enough.

Sweet dreams Michael. Love you baby. Mom will be back later. I won't leave you all alone...

Michael couldn't hear her. Abby knew that. But that maternal instinct simply wouldn't let her rest, that fiercely protective imperative that made her gut twist up with a snarling anxiety - not with the nerve-wracking news she'd woken to yesterday.

Abby tapped her tablet as she fell in beside SSG Liu, checked the time - half an hour until the Third Shift briefing when the whole of the just-woken crew was scheduled to meet and be briefed on the general business of the Copernicus for their annual assignment.

Heh. General business...

CPT Stanford would be waiting in the Auditorium, she knew. No point in keeping the man waiting. She knew damn well if there was anyone aboard the ship right now, craving a little slice of cryo-induced oblivion at the moment, it was him.

**********

The First Sergeant descended the curving steps that lined one side of the Auditorium, past row upon row of comfortable looking, well-padded fold-down chairs in a descending wedge. The entirety of the space resembled nothing so much as an enormous college lecture hall, though the ceiling high above formed a dome that curved into the wall behind the wide stage at the bottom of the wedge. For the moment, the illusion of a deciduous forest on a summer day occupied the walls and the great dome above. Deep green leaves fluttered on the branches of maples and oaks and ash, playing in the light breeze that also gently blew wisps of white clouds over a blazingly blue sky.

A few other folks had also arrived early for the briefing, for their own reasons she supposed , and Abby paid most of them little attention for the moment. She certainly cut a figure in her military uniform, her ACUs, combat boots barely leaving a sound in her wake as she strode the distance. Blonde hair pulled back smoothly behind her head and twisted into a tight, neat bun at the nape of her neck, Abby's sharp blue-eyed gaze swept the room for the MP commander.

Nodding a quick acknowledgement, Abby picked up her pace when she saw Stanford's hand beckoning her toward the stage.

A shrill beeping jerked Connor awake, he blinked rapidly up at the pale ceiling above him, momentarily confused about where he was. He groaned and pulled a pillow over his head, wondering if he could ignore the beeping and go back to sleep.

Sleep. He was surprised that after being asleep for three years he’d still need more of it.

After a minute the beeping got to be too annoying to ignore and he knew that he had to get up. He reached over to the side of his bed and blindly slapped around at the table until he grabbed his digital watch. He pulled the pillow off so he could look at it and turn it off.

Letting his hand fall on his bare chest he turned to look at the wall by his bed. The large circular ‘window’ was off leaving just a blank screen. He still wasn’t sure if he wanted to use it or not to fake an Earth environment. The blackness of the screen perfectly matched the endless void of space.

His eyes drifted away from the window to the pictures tapped up by the wall. Gazing at the smiling faces of ghosts made his chest ache and his throat tighten. Maybe putting them on the wall had been a bad idea, every time he glanced at them all he thought about was them and Earth and what it was like now three years later.

Did they know about the ship? Did they know that Connor had been on it?

Did they hate him for it?

Shaking his head he pushed up from his bed, swinging his legs over the edge and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. For a couple of minutes he sat like that, trying to wake up and push aside the dark emotions. He had work to do. Or he would after the briefing was over.

He got dressed in a pair of jeans that were well worn and permanently stained in a couple of places from grease and oil and a pair of work boots. Last he pulled on a black t-shirt with a set of crossed wrenches at the center of his chest and above them were the words ‘I’m Here Because’ and below was ‘You Broke Something’. The white ink was a bit faded from being worn and washed countless times but it was still perfectly legible.

Grabbing his toiletry bag he pushed the messy long blue dyed hair on top of his head into some semblance of order, he left his room to head for the communal bathrooms.

He to at least try to look professional and presentable.

==

Connor felt like his brain short circuited a bit when he entered the auditorium. One the one hand the seating reminded him of college but on the other hand they looked like they were in a fairy forest.

He looked down at his coffee thermus, his groggy brain wondering if the combination of bad instant coffee mix and half a bottle of sweet creamer and sugar was making him crazy. It’s all a screen, remember? He rolled his eyes both at himself and at the fact that someone decided to make the lecture hall look like it was in an enchanted wood.

Sipping at the diabetes laced concoction that was his morning coffee he walked down the steps to find a seat toward the middle of the auditorium. There weren’t that many people there yet so it was easy to flop his ass down in one and kick his feet up onto the one in front of him.

He idly glanced around at the people present to see if he recognized anyone. A woman walking toward the front caught his attention and he grinned when he recognized Abby. The few weeks before the ships launch he had gotten pretty close to her and her son Michael.

His grin fell as it occurred to him that Michael was likely still in stasis. Inwardly he grimaced, sad that he wouldn’t be able to hang out with his little buddy. If he felt this bad he couldn’t imagine how Abby was feeling and he had to resist the urge to get up and give the woman a great big hug.

But she was working and he didn’t feel like having her knocking him on his ass. Again.

She wasn’t looking at him so he restrained himself from waving and turned his gaze up to the ceiling above them. He frowned up at swaying branches, the bright sunlight streaming through green leaves and a bright blue sky that seemed to stretch endlessly.

He wished it was real.

Owen Reece groaned, rolling over and rubbing his head, instantly regretting the movement as his stomach flip-flopped and he barely made it in time to vomit up thin fluid. He opened his eyes slowly, blinking at the light. Waking up from the stasis felt like the worst hangover he had ever had. Vaguely recalling the lecture that had been given to him before he fell asleep he forced himself to sit up, fighting the urge to dry heave.

Three years, he recalled suddenly, reaching up to his face, expecting to have a beard to make Rip Van Winkle jealous. To his surprise it was the same, about two inches off his chin. It was true then, the aging process halted in cryostasis, along with hair growth. He grunted as he sat up, swinging his legs over the edge. His legs were still strong, the muscle had not atrophied and he was grateful.

One of the medical techs stopped by to check on him. He was tapping away at his notebook and handed him a cup of water which he drank greedily to wash the taste of bile out of his mouth. Reece handed it back and took a deep breath, stretching and feeling the tendons pop.

“Can I get you anything, how do you feel?” the medic asked, preparing to make notes.

“I feel like I spent a weekend at Mardi Gras without the beads to show for it,” Reece muttered. “And I have to piss like a racehorse, where’s the head?”

The medic gestured to a white door at the end of the hall and the big West Virginian stood up, gathering the clothes that had been brought out for him. He was given his room number and he shuffled off to the latrine, yawning and rubbing his aching head.

An hour later he had showered and dressed, combing his shoulder length hair and tying it back neatly. It was nearly time for the orientation and he had better look half way presentable. He studied his reflection, checking the grey in his beard and shaking his head in amazement. It was three years and he looked the same as when he fell asleep. He dressed in jeans and a button down work shirt, Redwing work boots and tucked some toothpicks in the front pocket. Damn, he wanted a cigarette bad but that was another piece of civilization left behind.

Reece made his way to the auditorium, nodding at a few familiar faces but when he entered the room he paused, looking up. The entire room was filled with trees, sun dappled light and softly drifting leaves, it was unexpected and for a moment he felt disjointed, as if transported miles and years back in time. The green forests near his Appalachian home town, the smell of bracken and creek water and the taste of wild blackberries. Reece blinked and it was gone, replaced with the computer generated woods.

It was nice, better than cold blank walls that he had expected. He found a seat among other pilots and mining pod crew members, speaking quietly and shaking hands with them. Finally he leaned back and looked around the room, spotting some skinny kid with blue hair which caused him to chuckle and shake his head. He paused when he caught sight of First Sergeant Larson and his greyish eyes moved over her. She cut a fine figure even in the fatigues and he smiled to himself, rolling the toothpick in his mouth before turning his attention toward the front.

Reece fidgeted with the notebook, playing solitaire on it as he waited for the others to file in and for this shindig to get started. He was itching to see his mining pod and check her out, he would be the pilot of the small space craft for this shift and hoped the previous crew had taken good care of her. The idea he was in space and that he would soon be leaving the relative safety of the large craft into the void thrilled him. It would be a hell of a thing, setting up shop and mining those asteroids. No matter how many practice runs they had done back on Earth, nothing would beat the live performance.

His thoughts turned to home and he tried to force it away. There was nothing left for him, for any of them, back there on that blue planet. Reece glanced around once again at the growing crowd and wondered how many of them had family sleeping in the cryobeds. He had no one, none but his crew who he had trained with and the other miners and pilots. It simplified things, he reasoned but was unable to completely ignore the empty feeling in his stomach.

Antoine yawned with mighty effort, straining to stretch his mouth as wide as it could go, to truly enjoy the simple pleasure of yawning. He felt he captured it fairly well, and so yawned a second time, and a third as his body seemed to feel it was appropriate. One of his fellow shift-mates frowned at his display as she walked past his terminal, seemingly unimpressed by the wink he tossed her way in response. She stomped her way down the hall, painting a nice picture for the medtech to dutifully appreciate, but one he wouldn't be adding his own touches to anytime soon.

A pity. Though maybe for the best for now, and for a short while to come. But that was just the same misfortune life loved to throw in the way. It would pass, just like the change had, and everything before. And when it did? Well, there would be more than one nice picture painted with his mark found within the brushstrokes.

Turning his attention back to the display before him, Antoine ran the checklist one final time. Everyone slated for the current shift was awake, everyone else's cryo beds remained in perfect condition. A couple problems had arisen during the waking process, a few more stemming from hasty corrections or problems everyone would know of soon, but nothing major. The bugs had all been flushed out, none of the sleepers were in danger, and everyone awake had already been checked out and briefed on the discomforts cryo-sleep would have for the next few days. All in all, a job well done by Antoine and his peers.

He yawned once more for good measure, arms reaching almost to the rounded ceiling as he stretched. The hall bearing this terminal was filled with those still sleeping , the last sector he had needed to check, and now it was finally time for a well-deserved vacation... After the auditorium meeting.

"Wonder if they'd notice if I didn't show..." He mused the thought aloud as dexterous fingers logged out of the terminal before him. Eyes blinked down at the last moment before the screen went dark, narrowing as they caught the time, a slight sigh escaping the man's lips. "...Eight hours already? Where does the time go?"

Walking away, Antoine pulled a small plastic box from the pouch slung across his shoulder, partnering it with a plastic bottle of clear water. The box was barely larger than a bottle cap, opened to reveal a quartet of pills the man promptly popped into a waiting mouth. A swig of water washed it down, followed by a second as he recognized the truly refreshing qualities that water held. Amazing how a liquid that held so little could somehow taste so good, it warranted a third swig, for sure.

"Speaking of 'where did something go'... MOWZER!" The words echoed up and down the empty hall as Antoine meandered towards the auditorium. His Bengal was nowhere to be seen, having wandered off sometime before, though he was hardly worried for the cat. Mowzer was his own cat, perfectly capable of taking care of himself. It was something of a blessed miracle when Antoine discovered his pet had been placed in one of the few beds tailored for animals. That fact was more than enough to let his pet wander about without concern.

"Mowzer! Mowzah Moouuuuwzer Mousayer!" He shouted through the halls because he could, taking another swig of water for good measure, and feeling he would probably make it to the auditorium with time to spare.

~-~-~-~-~

Mowzer had been content to lie down on one of the strange things his Human had slept in for a while, watching his Human stare at a blinking thing and occasionally scritching him behind the ear where he liked it. He amused himself by watching the little symbols on the blinking thing- especially the ones that kept changing yet repeating. First the close one would change, then the middle one, then the close one would repeat, then the middle would change again. Finally, the far one would change, and the close and middle ones would repeat. It was really quite fascinating, enough that Mowzer had tried to catch the symbols and keep them for himself.

His human had stopped him though, a grave offense that Mowzer repaid by turning his back to his human for some time, looking back only when he realized how much he missed the repeating symbols.

After a while though, even they got boring. His human would still give his scritches and say soothing sounds from time to time, but it took far too long before he did it again. Obviously his human was more interested in the blinking thing right now, so much so that he wouldn't share. That meant that Mowzer would just have to find his own fun thing, one that he wouldn't share with his human.

So there.

He took off on his own then, wandering through the giant tubes that weaved their way through his home. She rubbed his cheek and chin on each corner and jutting object he found, marking this newest of paths so he would always know where it was. He came across some other humans as well, most walking quickly, some exceptional members stopping to coo or pet Mowzer- which he repaid with rubs against their hand and leg.

One very, very bad human tried to pick him up. A grave offense indeed, but Mowzer scolded him harshly and pushed himself free, gallantly choosing not to claw the human's arms to pieces and instead trotting off to slip into one of the various small-tunnels that wove through the large ones.

He traversed those for some time, leaving only when his nose caught the scent of food. The humans who held the food were good humans, responding well to Mowzer's demanding purr and offering him a few samples of what they had. It was a ritual he repeated across what turned out to be a rather large area of the house, and finally he was left deliciously full, and well-scritched as a bonus.

Time very well spent he thought, and so it seemed it was time to find his Human once more. Likely his human had gone and gotten lost somewhere, as he usually did when Mowzer left. But it wouldn't be a problem. This house was large, but his Human was always easy to find.

So he trotted off once more, stalking through corridors and crawlspaces and he searched to tell his Human of all the fun HE had, and didn't share.

“Well, bloody hell.” Dr. Gavin Brock muttered as he sat up in his open stasis bed, and awaited the impending wave of violent nausea he was sure was to follow. Several minutes passed, and the only thing that beleaguered the Doc’s senses was the building urge to go relieve his bladder.

His deep blue eyes moved back and forth in the cryo room, noticing the violent retching and loud groans of discomfort from some of Third Shift’s newly awakened. A sideways smile cracked Gavin’s face. He knew that the effects of cryogenic suspension manifested differently with each individual person, and that the vast majority awoke with unpleasant circumstances. But still, as with everything in the natural world, there were always exceptions.

“HA!” Gavin exclaimed victoriously. He was the exception to the rule, apparently.

With a self-satisfied spring in his movements that belied his long chemically induced slumber, Gavin spun his feet out of the bed, wriggled his naked toes, and stood with a grunt to accompany muscles long unaccustomed to bearing his weight. The grunt morphed into a groan as Gavin stretched his arms upward, and arched his back. He was rewarded with several dull pops as his spine cracked with delicious relief.

Taking in a deep breath of the Copernicus’ recycled air, Gavin affixed a pleasant expression onto his face, and took his first step in ten years. As his right foot met the smooth surface of the decking, the smile immediately morphed into a frown, his eyes widened in horrified surprise, and his be-freckled skin turned a distinct shade of green.

“Ah…there it is,” Dr. Gavin Brock was able to say before he bent forward to relieve himself of the contents of his stomach.

♠ ♣ ♦ ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Following his humbling brush with the reality of his biological normalcy, Gavin entered the Auditorium a new man. Freshly showered, his goatee and mustache trimmed, and supporting a large mug of what Gavin believed to be mining-drill lubricant—otherwise known as black coffee—the new day seemed to be looking up.

Wearing his ancient CalTech hooded sweatshirt, Levi jeans, and a beloved pair of low-top, black, Converse All-Stars, Gavin began to descend the pleasantly academic steps of the Auditorium. His gaze alighted upon the large display of lush trees that dominated the main screen of the room. The sight elicited a brief pause of reflection, but only the barest of ones. That was the past, nothing more than a picture upon the desk of the lineage of humanity. The trees from an old neighborhood were nice to look at, but nothing to dwell upon.

As Gavin continued his descent down the steps, he caught sight of Abby speaking with Captain Stanford near the stage. His first thought was to marvel at how the woman could meld the visage of an attractive blond with that of a capable soldier. It was a notion that had stuck with him since the first chance meeting he had had with the Sergeant back at the Mountain, and Gavin supposed he would ponder the pleasant question for the next five years of his shift.

He thought to wave a greeting to Abby, but he refrained. She seemed caught up enough in her official capacity speaking to the captain, and Gavin didn’t want to distract her. Instead, Gavin shifted his attention to another figure he had recognized. Shuffling along a row of seats, Gavin plopped himself down beside a rough looking man in a buttoned work shirt and Redwing boots. He clapped a friendly hand upon the man’s shoulder.

“Owen Reece, as I live and breath,” Gavin said in his jovial, island-spiced British accent, “how are you, you salty bastard?”

He leaned a little closer to the mining pilot, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “How’s the back treating you, eh?”

She wished more than anything that she’d woken as so many had with a sour stomach and blinding headaches because it would have been a distraction from the soul deep ache she felt as she stood in her small room tried to make herself leave it. It should have been easy enough, there was a door, not so different from those she was used to, and there was a hall. She’d navigated halls before. But she just couldn’t. She stood before it, her hand halfway to the handle and she found she couldn’t make herself open it.

The end had come and she should have died, but she hadn’t. She’d been swept up with all her charges, just one more stray, one more errant bit of Earth that was significant simply because it was in the right spot at the right time. And now this bit of earth wasn’t moving like it should. She pulled her sweaty palm back and wiped it on her jeans and then ran it through her tumble of short black curls and tried to talk some sense into herself. Yes, the trip back from the stasis-bed had been horrible, the narrow halls had closed in on her and she’d found the air to be too thin, too flavorless and the quiet but for the mechanical hum of things unsettling. It was unnatural and it pressed at her. Oh she’d held it together for the trip to her room, her quiet was not unusual and the medical team member who led her to her quarters hadn’t pressed or said anything about the way her eyes were wide and all but rolling around. He hadn’t stayed to see her lean against the wall and slide to the floor, shuddering.

She’d pulled herself together eventually and when she had she’d taken stock of just how lucky she was and not for the first time. Was that her theme? Stupid luck? A massive pile-up on a snowy road and she’d just happened to survive. A whole planet gone, consumed by the Change and she’d just happened to survive. She lifted her hand and tried for the door again. She had survived and she needed to make that count. She needed to make her continued existence have a point and she couldn’t do that in this little box. Somewhere in this ship were her charges. The fury, scaly, feathered and clawed lives that she understood in ways she never got her fellow humans. Her proximity to them had been what saved her and her usefulness to them would give her a purpose.

Taking a deep breath of the stale air, so devoid of life, she found her hand moving and watched with relief and alarm as she opened the door. It moved with a hiss, sliding into the wall and revealing a sterile hall and the unnatural quiet that disturbed her so. She missed the creak of her cabin door, and the solid sound of it closing behind her. It wasn’t her door, it never would be but it was open and though the walls threatened to close in on her she stepped through and began to make her way to the meeting. She walked down the center of the hall, giving herself as much room as possible and watching the floor so that she didn’t see the ceiling so low above her head.

It was an excruciating but blessedly short trip and she felt a little looser, fractionally more at ease as she arrived at the meeting room. The door wasn’t the trouble her own had been, that seemed to be a hurdle that she’d cleared for the time being, but what the now open door revealed was such a mixture of heaven and hell for her that she couldn’t make herself go in. She stood frozen as the illusion of the forest moved like a living thing across the walls and dome of the hall. Part of her cried out for it, how many times had she stood in such a place and felt calm fill her so deep that she was a part of that whole. But the other part screamed at her to run. This was a lie, the whole of it was a lie. Her world was gone, those trees were just a lie, they did not exist, they never would, not in any real sense.

The door closed, hissing shut and she stood there still on the other side of it and wrestled with herself. She was being a fool, she knew it. Every single being on this ship had sustained such significant losses that to catalog it was impossible. Her suffering was not unique. She was not alone in her pain but if she stood there in the hall and fell apart she would be useless, dead weight. She couldn’t do that. Her grandparents, practical hard-working people had raised her better. She would move forward, starting with that damn door.

She licked her lips, pressed them tight and raised her hand to open the door again. When she did she didn’t look up, she just moved, stepping into the lie and watching the floor as she made herself navigate the aisle to find an end seat near the front. She woodenly nodded at any people she passed, making her lips curve into a smile that did not reach her eyes. These were her fellow survivors, refugees among the stars. No doubt some of the people here were deliberately chosen for their skills and abilities and no doubt some of them were swept up like she was, accidental survivors who would have to find ways to make themselves useful. Like she would.

With that sobering thought she lifted her eyes and made herself look at the walls and the ceiling and the painful reminder of all that was lost. She made herself take it in and opened herself up for the pain. It was going to hurt, but she would be useless if such things made her freeze up. She stared up and let in the ache, lifting one knuckle to catch a tear that worked its way out of her dark eyes. One tear, that wasn’t too indulgent was it? Not for a whole world.

In her sleep, Ester Baum heard her younger sister's voice telling her to wake up. She sighed and turned over, her long hair covering her face and murmured, "It's your turn to feed the lambs."

She felt a hand on her shoulder gently shake her and she finally opened her dark eyes, blinking in the artificial light. It took her a moment to remember where she was, this was not her small cottage at the Mountain, nor the bunk bed back at the farm house at home on the kibbutz. She was in space and it was her turn to wake up. Ester reached up and rubbed her eyes, looking over to who had shaken her awake. To her surprise, it was her younger sister, Naomi. She was smiling at Ester, her dark hair cut to a chin length bob and she had a blue handkerchief tied over it to keep her bangs out of her eyes. The horticultralist sat up slowly, feeling her head spin and her stomach match it's pace. Naomi held out a glass of water and some large pills which Ester dutifully took, choking them down with several gulps of water.

"Ac'hot, what year is it now?" she rubbed her eyes again, looking over at her younger sister.

Both of them had the same large liquid dark brown eyes and full lips but Naomi's face was rounder and her hair was straighter than her older sister's. The younger sibling was a few inches shorter and had a more slender, lithe build than her statuesque sister but there was no mistaking their close relation. Naomi took the empty glass and gave her a slight smile.

"It's 2034, you over slept."

Ester blinked in confusion. She was supposed to wake up in 2033, with the rest of her family. Had they moved the schedule around? "Where is Ima and Aba?"

"Sleeping, as is David," Naomi put her hand on the bump over her stomach that was hidden under the loose blouse. "Chouko had a baby last year, that is why you were kept asleep. She continued her work in the Garden."

Her eyes drifted down to where her sister's hand was and widened, "Are you...you're pregnant? That's why you're awake still?"

Ester leaned back, pondering the occurences quietly. The schedule had been thrown off by the unexpected arrivals but at least she had her sister with her. Silently she reached out her hand put it over hers, feeling the taught swell of her belly. A warm smile came to her lips and she sat back up, feeling not as nauseous.

"How far along?"

"Five months, we probably should have used protection but...I'm happy," Naomi shrugged and grinned. "I just wish David was here with me. He'll miss the birth of his daughter."

Ester pulled herself off the bed and embraced her younger sister, "A little girl, congratulations. I'm sorry David will miss it, but at least you have me around."

She nodded, reaching up to adjust the handkerchief, "I'm still doing my job, and I also volunteer at the nursery to help care for the little ones that can't go into cryosleep yet. But let's get you cleaned up and dressed. There's a briefing soon. I'll go since I'll be awake for this shift."

They walked together down the long corridor to the auditorium, Naomi smiling and waving at people, glowing in her pregnancy. Her slender body seemed pulled forward by the obvious bump. Ester was a step behind her, dressed in loose thin slacks and a tank top with a matching pale green cardigan over it. Her long brown hair hid her features as she passed people without looking at them, focused on the floor. She just wanted to get to the Garden and check up on the projects that Chouko and Kenshin had been working on. To see how all the work they did on Earth was now fairing in space.

Inside the large room, Ester stared at the holographic forest but Naomi hardly noticed it, she had grown used to the computer generated images that were supposed to make the austere ship feel more comfortable. The trees were North American deciduous, Quercus, likely white oak and sugar maples with the predictable white ash neighboring trees. These were typical of the north eastern United States and she wondered who had taken the pictures and if they had returned in different seasons to capture the moments in the same location. She was broken out of her thoughts by a tug on the sleeve of her cardigan, her sister guiding her to a seat.

Ester preferred to sit up at the back, away from the crowds and Naomi kept away from the rather boisterous mining crews even though she looked at them wistfully, perhaps wishing David was among their number. In her seat at the back on the aisle, Ester could watch people coming and going, away from the main group. She saw a dark haired woman enter and could read the fear in her face, it was clear she was uncomfortable and the horticulturalist sympathized. She wanted to wave her over, to have her sit in the quiet area with them but she felt too shy to raise her hand. When she saw her go down to the front she sighed and turned back to watch the images of the trees. It was nice, like a giant screensaver, but she missed the smell and sounds of a forest.

Naomi nudged her, "It shouldn't take long, our briefing went fairly quickly. It's just mandatory general information."

Ester smiled slightly, amused at her sister's casual boredom with the whole thing. She had spent a year awake and working on the space craft, it was old hat to her but to Ester she was fascinated and a little nervous about the entire matter. More people entered, slowly filling the seats, most were dressed in civilian clothing but there were clusters of military uniforms. American soldiers, sailors and Marines but she was comfortable around them, she had spent her two years in the IDF like every other Israeli and guns and uniforms were just part of the scenery in her homeland.

Mike grunted as he finished the last of his pushups, and rolled onto his back for a breather. A quick set of 100 always helped to get his blood flowing, and he tried to do at least three sets a day. He’d always been a fitness nut, a personality quirk that meshed well with his Recon lifestyle.

Climbing to his feet with a soft hiss from his robotic leg, the Marine took stock of his cramped quarters. All of his worldly belongings had been crammed into the tiny room, the desk cluttered with papers and various objects ranging from challenge coins to photographs. One picture in particular caught his attention and he picked it up, smiling.

The snapshot was old, taken with a Polaroid camera, and showed his parents back when they’d first met in southern Liberia. His mother was the focus of the shot, clad in scrubs and giving an injection to a sick child. Her raven-black hair was tied back in a ponytail and she smiled as she worked, no doubt comforting the little boy with kind words spoken in the soft voice he missed so much. His father stood nearby, ever vigilant, his heavily-scarred face twisted in the mocking grin that somehow looked as natural there as the AK-47 he cradled in his tattoo-sleeved arms. They’d told him the story countless times as he growing up; how his Lebanese mom had left her home and traveled to the war-stricken country as a freelance nurse, then found an unlikely romance with the smartass American mercenary hired to protect her medical group. Standing beside his dad was the man Mike knew as Uncle Jouma, a Sudanese soldier of fortune who had acted as the group’s interpreter and local expert. His iconic red beret firmly in place on his shaven head, his rifle slung over his shoulder, the man was frozen in the act of kicking a soccer ball back to a group of local youths, a toothy grin plastered on his face.

Smiling at the memories, Mike pulled on the black digital-camo blouse that designated him as a member of one of the ship’s SRT teams, checked to make sure the gold Sergeant’s chevrons on his collar were in place, then tucked the photo into his left breast pocket. He checked his watch; fifteen minutes until the briefing started. Balls, he thought to himself, not pleased with the prospect of spending half of the morning listening to the Captain droning on about the last shift’s activities. With a sigh, the Marine shoved his cover on his head and left his quarters, a spring in his step as he strolled down the hallway towards the auditorium.

About twenty feet ahead of him, Mike caught sight of another black-clad figure, immediately recognizing the short, barrel-chested form of Corporal Lopez, a member of Davis’s team and fellow Recon Marine. Taking a breath, the Sergeant gave a sharp bellow.

“YUT!”

“KILL!” The obligatory response echoed in the hallway as Lopez stopped, waiting on his team leader to catch up to him. He looked miserable, his eyes rimmed with dark circles, and Mike didn’t bother to stifle his laughter. He’d lucked into being one of the few crew members who was able to come out of stasis with no negative symptoms at all, and it was clear that his fellow Marine hadn’t had the same good fortune.

“How ya feelin’, devil-nuts?”

“Like I wanna suck-start my rifle as soon as it’s issued to me, Sergeant,” Lopez responded, shaking his head as his team leader clapped him on the shoulder. “How your ass is bouncin’ around like that is beyond me. You sneak some yeyo on board? Fuckin’ share, man.”

“Marine, I wake up every morning pissing pure motivation,” Mike responded with a grin. “Come on, buck up. We’re Space Marines now, Chuckles. Does that shit not get your dick hard?”

The stocky Mexican shook his head again. “The way I’m feelin’, it’d take all the Viagra on this tub to get a twitch outta me. I see they unfucked your leg. I kinda miss your cholo-walk.”

Mike laughed. When he’d gone into cryo-sleep, he’d had to remove his prosthesis and leave it in the care of the medical techs. Something about advanced robotics not responding well to being stuck in a freezer for three years. In the interim period, the power cell had been removed and then promptly lost, so he’d had to swing the thing around like a peg until they’d found a new one.

“Am I not gangsta enough for you to take orders from?”

“Nah. Just felt like I was back on the block, is all.”

“Yeah, your barrio ass would.”

“Pinche gringo.”

“Ibn himaar.”

The two bantered easily back and forth, trading insults in their respective mother-tongues, until they reached the entrance to the Auditorium. As the door slid open, Mike gave a low whistle. He gazed in wonder at the digital forest that surrounded them, smiling like a child. The marvels of technology never failed to amaze him, and this simple act of turning a boring auditorium into forest paradise seemed to reaffirm what he’d known all along; humanity may be down, but they certainly weren’t out. They would adapt like they always had, and crawl out of this new primordial ooze to evolve into something grand.

“Shit, Sergeant. Your lyin’ ass told me this was a briefing. What the hell are we doing in a jungle?” Lopez muttered, removing his cover as they crossed the threshold.

“My bad, Devil. Next time I’ll give you a gear list, let you feel like a field Marine again.”

Surveying the scene, Davis picked out Abby’s ACUs easily. A few rows ahead of her were the black-uniformed figures of Decker, Sullivan, and Sczruba, the three Army Rangers who comprised the rest of his team. Lopez spotted them at the same time, and the two headed their way.

Grinning, Mike took a breath and boomed in his best parade-ground voice.

“OOHRAH, First Sergeant!”

Heads turned his way in irritation, but the irrepressible Marine laughed away their frustration as he took his seat, greeting the soldiers under his command as enthusiastically as he had Lopez.

“Good morning, killers. I’m glad to see the miseries of cryo-recovery haven’t been able to keep you three down.”

The men chorused a tired greeting, all of them looking resentful of their team leader’s evident amusement at their discomfort, and Mike chuckled as he settled into a chair to await the beginning of the meet.

It was going to be a good day.

The first sensation was a hand on his shoulder, shaking him. The second was the sound of screaming in his ears. His eyes popping open wide in terror as he sucked air, Hob began to realize the screams were coming out of his own throat and that the pounding bass line beneath it all was his heart. The neuro-tech sat bolt upright, almost catching his head on the lid of the stasis bed. Every muscle was rigid in fear, the fight or flight response amped to its height but caught perfectly balanced between the two. His breath started to come in shuddering gasps as the terror left his mind, and somewhere to his left he could hear Charlie whimpering as the night fears left him and to his right he heard Yuriko vomiting. Hearing a sixty year old man whimper like a baby set Hob's teeth on edge. Medic techs shifted around the three beds, checking each of the technicians' vitals. It was another of those unexplained side-effects of the implants, he recalled as he tried not to hyperventilate. Others slept, if that was the word, without dreaming. Neuro-activity was reduced near enough to zero as to not matter for normal people when they were hibernating, but the neuro-interface technicians inexplicably would still have dreams.

Or more accurately, nightmares.

There was simply something in the implant process that no one had even considered when preparing the Copernicus: how would cryo-stasis affect those with the networking implants? The answer was obvious enough once they were in flight, and that answer was "Badly."

Someone was in front of his face, asking something about feeling... nausea... memories... his name...

"Knock it off," he muttered, swinging his feet around to sit up. The semi-private chamber for the three techs of the Starboard Watch swung around him as vertigo set in; elsewhere in the ship, Hob knew that Singh, Annette, and Tyson of the Port Watch were going through the same thing; they had to start to co-ordinate and relieve the Second Shift techs as quickly as possible. So no time could be allowed for lolly-gagging. Sure enough, Yuriko appeared at his side. They exchanged a look and nodded before moving slowly to assist the lame Charlie to his feet and find his cane. The team no longer really needed words to communicate with each other; once you shared enough brain space with each other, you had a pretty good idea what the other was thinking. It was when you didn't know what was on their minds that meant trouble...

The trio made their way to their own briefing, meeting the second team on the way. Again, mutual nods of recognition and no speaking. Instead, they limped, staggered, and leaned upon each other as they entered the small conference room. They wouldn't be attending the standard orientation along with the rest of Third Shift, or rather they would but just not in person. One of the ship's officers was there in the room already, tablet in hand. The name on her military issue overalls read, "Harris." She didn't look happy. When each took a seat around the conference table and looked towards the officer as one, it made the ginger haired woman's flesh crawl. She and her peers had drawn lots for the 'privilege' of addressing the neuro-techs, and she had 'won.'

"Thank you for arriving so promptly," Harris began, releasing a deep breath as she spoke. It was clear she wanted this over with, quickly. "There have been a few changes that Second Shift had to implement, things that we didn't expect and that they had to make allowances for." She paused, waiting for Hob or any of the other to say anything. Nothing. Another deep breath. "I know the standard you were trained for was a Two-In-One Watch. Seven hours on, five hours off, five hours on, seven hours off. We thought this would better allow for sleeping schedules. But after psychiatric evaluation of First and Second Shift... We are moving your teams to a more traditional Dogged Watch. Four hour watches with the last one a two hour watch for each team, the dog watch."

NOW there was sound from them, a chorus of groans of which the loudest was Hob's. "You're killing us," he gripped bitterly. "Four hours of sleep between watches?! Give us a fucking break, we're not military!" He rubbed at his face, feeling the scruff of his face against his hands as other voices rose in angry protest.

"I know! I know! It's not what you're used to and it's not what you trained for. But Psyche says-"

"Psyche can kiss my implanted arse," muttered Singh in his Hindi accent.

"Psyche says they don't want any of you in there longer than four hours at a time," Harris continued. "And we don't have the staff to spare. The requirements were for twenty-five of you. We've only got eighteen. Six per shift, that's it." Time for the next bomb. "And we're down two."

Silence filled the room. "Who?" Hob found his lips moving automatically, the question coming out of his mouth before he even realized it.

"Jean-Paul on Second Shift," the middle aged officer informed them sadly. Shaking her head, she set the clipboard aside. "Multiple-personalities. There were so many Ghosts running around, it was next to impossible to get to work. Amber from the First Watch Port had to be revived to fill in for him and clear out the echoes. Only she's not compatible with the rest of Jean-Paul's team. We almost lost life-support in Section Three before we pulled her, and pulling her without warning caused Sung Pak to go into a fugue. Total lock up. Psyche is trying to find a way to reboot him. The rest of the Second Shift's watches had to alternate double shifts. We're combing the databases to see if there's anyone we missed, anyone who meets the qualifications that we can recruit to replace them but-"

Hob already knew where this was going. He may not have been the brightest of the neuro-techs, but the artist was pretty quick on the uptake. "All the candidates so far are kids, aren't they?" The silence that followed confirmed it. The neuro-techs were an odd lot, with tons of unbridled imagination across a wide spectrum of fields and the only thing that could match it would be the curiosity of a child. None of the team would stand for that, not a single one would subject a child to the mental trauma being synched with both the computer and the others entailed. Unless someone popped up out of nowhere...

"Well... that tears it," hob sighed. He stood up, and more for Harris's benefit than anything else he turned to face the two teams. "Right, so... Show time. From one coffin to another, folks. Let's get suited up." That was more of a joke than anything. None of them had any clothing of their own save what they had originally been recruited in; after that, their closets were filled with nothing but the same rust colored jumpsuits that bore no insignia, only an olive green patch with their name. Who needed patches and decorations on their uniforms when they had silver disks shining upon their temples, after all?

Annette nodded as the rest rose up with him. "One hour to synch us all up? Your team want the honor of taking first watch?"

As one, Hob and his team nodded. "I assume it's the same, Harris?" he addressed the briefing officer. "One of the Second comes out, one of us goes in? That hasn't changed?"

"Yes. No other changes. But I do need to speak with you before you go, Hob. Privately."

Hob closed his eyes and sighed. He had no idea what the officer was going to say, but he was fairly sure it was going to be bad news. It was as a bad as a teacher telling a student to stay after class. With sympathetic glances, the rest of the techs departed to leave him alone with Harris. Shaking his head, Hob glanced up at her darkly. "What now?"

Harris pursed her lips, considering how to best phrase her concerns. Finally she shrugged. "You left a few Ghosts in the system."

"Aaaaand?"

"Do the phrases 'Nice rack', 'I'd jump that suit', or 'Bang Away, Lulu' ring a bell, Mr. Bach?" Harris picked up the table again and stared hard at it. "Which according to our database, the latter of which does have naval origins, which speaks well of your historical knowledge if not your ability to censor yourself." That hard look came up to meet his eyes firmly. "Ghosts born of baser instincts are harder to clear out, Hob, and you're not helping anyone when you let those thoughts out freely."

The chewing out lasted for several more moments before a disgruntled and chastened Hob left the office to find the rest of the Starboard Watch waiting for him. Yuriko raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Bang Away Lulu, again?" Charlie chuckled.

Hob could only shrug despondently. "It's not easy trying to write a love poetry, you know. Too many thoughts get tied up in it, hard to separate it all out. One thing leads to another and... you know. Could have been worse."

"Worse?" Charlie choked in laughter.

"Sure," Hob smiled sadly, "Could have been 'Aboard the Good Ship Venus."

Delilah Espinosa de Jesús Dominguez del Beltran, more colloquially known as Deli Beltran, or even just Deli -- who had time for more than two syllables? -- was the poster child for bright-eyed perky fuckers.

Granted, all this had been true nearly from the day of her birth, even considering she and her two brothers had been born almost two months premature, each of them severely underweight. But she had story after story after story from her mother about her creepy little newborn baby smile had been absolutely endearing, even to other parents in NICU.

But that had been twenty-one years ago (or twenty-four? She wasn't sure, and didn't care to ask. Stasis aging or no, she was pretty sure she wouldn't like the answer either way). Before Diego started talking, and before Dacio had stopped. Before little Fredo had come along, before running away to join the circus with her mother, and being dragged back to a relative reality with her father. Before -- though not long before -- discovering her love for explosives and anything capable of making fire.

Before the New Kind. Before the Mountain. Before the Change. Before the Copernicus.

And before waking with little more than a half headache that a full pot of coffee had already put behind her. It had been going into stasis that had nearly undone her. But they had drugs for that, and Deli could almost pretend she hadn't been screaming at them to leave her before they dosed her six ways to Sunday.

But time went on, even while you slept and dreamt of dying, if not in the nightmarish sense. That was fine. What what weird was the tech who'd showed her to her room (where she was already hanging movie posters and magazine cutouts), had told her it had been just three years, not the semi-promised fifteen. Fredo and Diego were still sleeping in their pods, alive and well to hear the techs explain it. But she wouldn't be joining them again for another year. There'd been an accident, they'd said, back on earth.

And now she was in fucking outer space, or whatever the science geeks called it.

"First things first," came the briefing to the briefing. "You've been reassigned."

Deli had looked back to the row of now-empty pods and grinned. "I'd noticed. What am I doing?"

"Demo for a asteroid mining pod. Three-man team. You'll be joined by Owen Reece and one 'Big Bill' Cothran. Or you'll be joining them."

Deli yawned, but she was far from bored. Or far enough. "Okay. Are they cute?"

The tech gave her a wry look, clearly unimpressed. "A little out of your age range, I'd think."

Her grin widened. "I don't typically do all that well with people telling me I can't do something."

"Then you're going to have a hard time here."

Deli exhaled, blowing a cluster of brown curls out of her eyes. "Yeah, so I've heard."

Three clothing changes and a forty-minute shower later, she was on her way down to the conference room. She got distracted by a floor to ceiling window to the rest of her new world en route.

Yeah. She could make a pretty big mess out there.

"... No, really Lee, I got this. There's no sense in hanging you out there, and then disappearing into cryo. I'll be the face fielding questions on both sides for the foreseeable future. Best to just rip the bandage off now." No matter the pulsating misery in her skull that the maximum allowable dose of aspirin couldn’t begin to touch, the First Sergeant’s encouraging smile was wide and genuine –

- and barely earned the ghostly glimmer of a smile in Stanford’s handsome mahogany-skinned face. Still, the military police commander nodded, reluctantly she knew. Lee Stanford looked haggard, worry-worn seemingly overnight. Of course last she had seen him was yesterday for her, but three years ago for Stanford. Three long years that had seen the once distinguished silver streaks at his temples travel deep into his wiry black hair. He looked tired, like he hadn't slept in days... Weeks. Months even.

He really was a good man. There was no lack of faith in his First Sergeant's ability - far from it. He just hated to leave this in Abby's lap, the razor sharp mind of the former high school math teacher racing through all the permutations, possibilities, probabilities, variables, unknown quantities...

That perennial Devil Dog greeting, shouted at an already sadistic volume and amplified by the Auditorium’s natural acoustics, rang through Abby’s skull with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to blown glass.

One of Abby's slightly bloodshot blue eyes squeezed shut as she grimaced almost imperceptibly, and she turned toward the unmistakably exuberant Sergeant Davis with a small groan of pain. Her eyes widened, eyebrows lifted above a too-wide, too-toothy grin that acknowledged that perky bastard's jubilant greeting with a silent, sardonic and genuinely heartfelt 'fuck you very much' blazing in her electric blue gaze.

“Corporal LOPEZ! Darle un puñetazo en la cabeza, yeah?” Abby nodded tacit encouragement and laughed, genuinely laughed and though it hurt like hell, she felt all the lighter for it. Leave it to the indomitable jarhead with her son’s name to bring the first real laughter she’d had since she woke from cryosleep. Even CPT Stanford’s ghost of a smile became slightly less ephemeral – if only for a moment.

But that moment could not last long, and Stanford took his First Sergeant’s elbow, leaning to whisper in her ear. Abby simply nodded.

“Yes sir. Understood. I will not forget,” she answered him, her voice low but with a hard edge Stanford knew well meant perfect agreement. They were a good team. He didn’t want to leave his right hand here like this but short of mutiny there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it now. Abby read all that to the last in Lee’s face, but there was no sense in prolonging this farewell.

“You’d best head out before the old man gets here,” she whispered before snapping to attention, lifting her arm smartly to salute her commander. Stanford nodded, returning her salute though he took Abby’s hand in his own when she dropped hers, wrapping hers in a firm shake. He looked very much like he wanted to say… Something. Anything more, but finally gave up the effort with a sigh.

“Good night, Abby.”

“Good night, Lee. See you when we get home.”

That earned far more than a ghost of a smile, and the MP commander turned to swiftly ascend the stairs his First Sergeant had descended minutes before. Abby watched him go until he left the Auditorium, and she could finally allow her gaze to roam the newer arrivals, relieved and buoyed all at once to see some of those familiar faces.

It'd be damn near impossible to miss the azure hair of Connor - hell she'd have to be blind. But the sight of the young mechanic who'd indulgently made a "tool monkey" of Michael where he could made her grin, and she lifted her hand with a quick wave - and read his shirt. She laughed again, hoping to catch his eye while plucking at the corners of her own ACU blouse. 'Nice shirt,' she mouthed silently with a grin and a wink.

Hell, it was even good to see that roguish roughneck Reece - and better still with Gavin leaning over to talk with him, wearing that perrenial Caltech sweatshirt she knew so well. She didn't try to catch their attention - there'd be time enough later to catch up. The Auditorium was filling, the hologram forest slowly filling with its denizens, and the briefing would be starting moments soon enough anyway.

Abby paced the small landing just below the raised platform, toward the stairs that would take her to the stage, her eye catching a dark-haired form from the corner of her eye. Wide, wet eyes threatened more tear than one as she looked about them at the lovingly rendered forest all around. The poignant misery on her pretty face was impossible to miss, and Abby did not simply walk by as if she saw not a thing. She reached to lay a strong, warm hand on the woman's slender shoulder, squeezing gentle reassurance that she was not alone - not in the least. Her hand did not linger, though she left the young woman with an encouraging smile before she moved once more to the stage steps.

Bill came awake feeling as though he’d just gone a few rounds with a gallon of middling-quality Texas ‘shine, responding to the half-heard questions of the cryo-tech with a low groan. He sat up slowly, big hands gripping the sides of the glass coffin as he levered his bulk into an upright position. His bare feet were pressed firmly against the bottom of the tube, his shoulders nearly touching either side, and he’d ended up sleeping (if it could be called that) with his head at an angle, to keep the crown of his skull from pressing against the top of the cylindrical bed. The pad that had been intended as a pillow had ended up in his neck, and images of a trash compactor briefly flashed through the drill-hand’s mind as the muttering to his right reached a pregnant pause.

Focussing red-rimmed eyes on the young technician and trying to ignore the parade stomping through the back of his cranium, Bill stared blankly at the clip-board wielding doctor for several seconds before mustering all of his powers of speech into an eloquent grunt.

“Huh?”

“I asked how you felt, Mr. Cothran.”

“Like a grizzly bear in a shoebox,” Bill growled, shoving the provided step-stool away and sliding off the edge of the cryo-bed onto unsteady feet.

“Pardon?” the technician responded with a raised eyebrow.

“Like a bear...in a shoebox,” Bill repeated slowly. “Cramped. Grumpy. Hungry.”

The younger man laughed and began asking a series of questions, reading them verbatim from the clipboard in his hands. As the roughneck stretched his screaming muscles, he made a token effort to answer the the questions before finally waving them away.

“Just...Check the right answers. I’m fine.” Bill paused, then put one large mit on the man’s shoulder. “Coffee. I need...All of it. Where is the coffee?”

Bill followed the bewildered tech’s pointing finger, ignoring his protests and leaving him to finish the post-cryo survey on his own. An indeterminate amount of time later, with a pot and a half of hot coffee sloshing about in his belly and a massive thermos of the same gripped tightly in his right hand, Bill found himself clumping heavily through the halls of the Copernicus, dressed in the provided miner’s uniform.

The ship, though somewhat cramped for a man of Bill’s stature, seemed clean and functional. Having been a miner in his later career, the drill-hand was used to enclosed spaces, and wasn’t as bothered by the windowless and tunnellike corridors. They were just one more mine to him, one that was far less likely to cave in. Though there was always the danger of explosive decompression...
Bill shook his head vigorously to banish the thought, immediately regretting the action as his neck muscles protested and the band that seemed to have taken up residence somewhere in his skull resumed playing with grating enthusiasm. As he approached the door to the auditorium he paused, briefly juggling the thermos of coffee in his right hand with the paper plate in his left, trying to keep from dropping one of the half-dozen donuts he’d snatched to assuage the gnawing emptiness in his gut. After a brief battle with physics he growled, and settled for punching the “open” button by the door with the thick pinky of his right hand.

The holographic trees filling the open space of the auditorium gave the driller several seconds pause as his tired mind briefly recoiled, confused by the sight of so much silent plantlife seemingly crammed into one room. He shook his head again, more slowly this time, grumbling under his breath about “nerds and their fuckin’ toys” before spotting his buddy Reece towards the front of the room. With ponderous steps he made his way down the stairs and into the meeting room, passing the small knots of people who’d managed to get there first. He briefly appraised the Military Police 1st Sergeant, looking resplendent as always in her ACUs, then eyed the dark-skinned Marine a few rows ahead of her with distaste. He’d had occasion to meet both, following an altercation between himself and Reece and a few local hoodlums outside The Mountain a few days before launch. The soldier had been professional and polite, just the way Bill imagined someone in her position should be.

The black-uniformed Marine, however, had grated his nerves with his sarcastic demeanor. Of course the mouthy punk’s smilin’, Bill thought bitterly as Mike laughed at something one of his fellow SRT members had said in the course of their conversation. Stomping over to Reece, he put the smart-aleck Marine out of his mind and lowered himself gingerly into one of the provided chairs, balancing his plate of donuts on one knee before cramming half of one into his mouth.

“Well, we sure as shit ain’t in Kansas, eh kid?” he mumbled around a mouthful of chocolate eclair, brushing crumbs from his bushy mustache and short beard with the back of his hand.

Connor returned Abby's grin and gave the woman a salute while throwing in a wink. He was glad it got a laugh out of someone, anyone that glanced at it so far had either rolled their eyes or looked away in disinterest. He put his feet down when someone sat down in the chair they had been perched on and he forced himself to sit up. He went back to looking around once Abby's focus shifted back to her work. Jesus Christ! His eyes widened when he saw a giant of a man walk down the steps of the auditorium, a plate full of donuts in one hand.

Where did he get donuts? There were actual donuts somewhere on board? Connor could go for a couple of donuts but the briefing was about to start soon and there was no way he could track some down and get back in time. He considered asking the guy for one but decided against it. The man looked like he'd probably rip his arm off and then beat him to death with it if he approached him the wrong way. Connor liked his arms in their appropriate places and he also liked breathing.

Someone sat down right next to him and he shifted awkwardly in his seat, inching himself a little more in the opposite direction. The man gave him a slight nod, paused to glance at his shirt then turned to look forward again, rolling his eyes. Yeesh, did everyone wake up on the wrong side of the cryo-stasis bed? Actually they did. Connor had been lucky enough to come out of the stasis with little more than a small headache and a queasy stomach which he'd been able to sleep off. It looked like everyone else was fighting a stomach bug and he felt sympathy for them; it certainly explained why everyone looked like something crawled up their exhaust pipe and die.

Well except the guy that had yelled 'oorah' down at the front, he looked like he had injected pure caffeine and sunshine into his nut sack before coming to the auditorium.

"So," Connor snapped out of his thoughts and looked over at the man next to him when he spoke conversationally. "What's your job on the ship?"

Connor knew he wouldn't believe him but he shrugged and answered honestly, "I'm a mechanical engineer. My job is to maintain and repair some of the mining ships."

The older man looked at his hair then glanced at his tattoo's. "No seriously what do you do?" He asked blandly.

Now Connor felt like rolling his eyes. He knew that it was hard to believe he had an IQ higher than the prices at fast food places with the way he looked so he couldn't blame people for being doubtful. Though not many were so upfront about their doubt like the man next to him. Usually he got a surprised "really?" or a startled laugh. He didn't really care what people thought of his looks, the proof of how well he did his job was in his work.

"That's what I do." He said with another shrug. "I'm smarter than I look." He added with a slight smirk.

"Yeah okay." He grunted as he waved at someone in a row further down then stood up and left to go sit with them.

Brushing off the encounter Connor eyed the tall guy (he wasn't exactly hard to miss even sitting down) with the donuts, his growling stomach making him either a littler braver or a littler stupider because he was seriously considering getting up and asking for one. He didn't know how long the briefing would last and it technically had been three years since the last time he had the deep fried sugary goodness of a donut. Question now is, is a donut worth the possibility of being mauled?

Hob laid down in the interface capsule, the leads attached to the disks upon his temples by the engineers before they sealed him up again. He hated the damned interface tubes. There were like MRI machines with a hatch at the bottom. The leads weren't the worst, though, and claustrophobia was a short lived problem once a neurotech was integrated into the computer system; the body might be confined but the conscious mind had a vast playground to run around him. No, it was the rest of wires, leads, jumps, sensors, and (shudder) catheter that made his flesh creep, especially the latter. He had tried to argue that with shortened shifts the latter was no longer required as he could certainly hold his bladder for four hours!

No go. No one wanted to risk having to mop urine out of the expensive interface machinery. Medical had agreed with Hob but Engineering had won out, so what went for eight hour watches would still apply for four hour ones, including the catheters. So stripped naked and dripping with tubes and wires, Hob was given one last check before being closed up. Don't think about, don't think about, don't think about it, just relax! One of the medicos gave the signal, and the sliding bed moved Hob's prone body up into the tube. One click, two clicks, three clicks... It was done. Hob was now effectively sealed from the outside in a protective cocoon that contained its own life support system. Somewhere in Sections Two and Five, Yuriko and Charlie were undergoing the same. The Port Watch would be together for the first link up, though, since they would only be in for an hour before being pulled.

"Come on, come one," Hob muttered as he anxiously waited. "Someone throw the god damned switch already."

Oh, the fear! Countless nightmares about being locked forever in one of the interface capsules, not being uploaded and not knowing if anyone else was out there. Being left eternally trapped with no one to talk to, unable to move-

There was a flash and a buzz.

Hob stood in an orchard, the leaves purple and the fruits looking like... like... Well, there really wasn't an analogy that would fit them because they themselves were analogies. He was dressed in a plaid three piece suit, a black velvet fez atop his head. Looking around, he took in the sights to figure out where in the system he was. Hob's brain jumped through irrational conclusions that were somehow none the less correct as he muttered, "System archives. Maintenance." In the back of his mind, automated subroutines ran without him have to even concentrate on them. His breathing linked with the ventilation system, his digestive system with the refuse and recycle conduits, his circulatory system synching to the power distribution system. There was only a short pause while he checked on all of those before allowing his consciousness to focus on system checks.

"Val?" He called throughout the system. "Yo, Val! Third Shift, Starboard Watch reporting or... whatever! Val?! Oh come on, I am not playing fucking hide and seek throughout the entire network for you!"

A motion to his 'right' caused him to glance over just in time to see the teenager slip out from one of the trees. She was green and naked save for a wreath of flowers. The tips of her ears had become pointed. Moving with a curious grace through the blue grass, she approached Hob cautiously.

Hob sighed in annoyance. "Val, I'm not gonna bite. Look, I'm sorry about my Ghosts. Honestly! You are... a very attractive young woman, and I... couldn't help noticing. For what it's worth, I'm sorry." She only looked at him reproachfully, causing another frustrated sigh to escape. "Fine. Whatever. I know you guys have had it rough, Harris told us about the others. I'm in, though. Go ahead and bail so the rest of my team can start coming in alright?"

Val merely nodded and then began to fade from sight. Somewhere in Section One, a warning siren would be going off and medics would start bringing the girl out of her capsule. Checking her stats, Hob winced. She had been pulling a double on the old shift, sixteen hours. There was no envying her either the psychiatric debriefing or the nightmares she would have in cryo. No doubt she had left Ghosts of her own that they would have to find and purge shortly, too, only none of that could start until Yuriko and Charlie were hooked up as well. As Hob waited for the Second Shift to leave and his partners to come online, he began to peruse the most recently accessed files. There would a slight lag for end users, but it would be barely noticeable. True to classic science-fiction tropes, there was a time dilation issue between the outside reality and virtual reality.

At first, nothing seemed overly out of place. Usual stuff, at first actually. It wasn't until he began noticing smaller changes that kept leading to bigger changes that Hob began to suspect that something was off. Personnel changes, scheduling edits, power fluctuations... It was like unwinding a ball of yarn, and thanks to his mind's agility that was exactly what it became to his perceptions! A ball of multi-colored yarn to be unraveled until its core was found. His curiosity got the best of him. The scene changed until he was following a line of string through the Minotaur's Labyrinth to discover its center, obscuring him to everything else save the automated systems that didn't require his conscious thought. Hob barely noticed Yuriko appearing in her grey sweat suit or Charlie arriving looking less like the sixty year old man and more like John Henry. The two of them merely looked at one another before Yuriko tapped Hob on his virtual shoulder. "What's up?"

Looking at her, Hob frowned. "I'm not sure. Here, take a look at this." Together they all began to examine the string in minute detail, sucking it dry of any information it might yield before looking up at one another again. When they looked up again, it was at each other as if making a silent decision. Out of nowhere, the Port Watch appeared and Singh noticed something was up as well. Soon all six of them were moving along the yarn, following it from orchard to ball of yarn to Maze and back again.

"Yuriko?" Hob muttered, "Who's arrived for the briefing already?"

She gave him clipboard manifested by her will, containing all the relevant data. "That we can see, anyway. The security cameras do not cover the whole of the Auditorium, and the holographic trees get in the way. I can filter them out for you, if you want."

"No, no," he mumbled, "Too much effort."

A wave of his hand and a massive monitoring screen appeared showing the Auditorium from the back of the house. He zoomed the camera in on Abby's face as he pursed his lips. Hob could only shake his head in amazement at the woman as he flicked a message to her command tablet: Neuro-Interface Technician Exchange Complete. Third Shift, Starboard Watch, Robert Bach Reporting. Hob sent a portion of his consciousness to deal with a sudden power surge before adding a bit more. Damn, lady. Talk about balls. I mean big ones. Big, brass ones cast in sand. Seriously, like, go toe-to-toe with that walking mountain with the donuts in the front there! Balls that could wreck whole buildings with one swing of the scrotum!

He then sighed. He could see where this was all going and what could easily come of it if people lost their heads. He sent one more message after a quick consultation with his teammates, a message that made him grit his teeth. Lockdown procedures on standby. Just give the command code if you need us.

Feeling the hand on his shoulder, Reece looked up and grinned, "Doc Brock, good to see you."

He shook his hand and shrugged, "My back feels pretty good for having laid on it for three years. Whatever voodoo you did to it back on the Mountain seems to have held up."

Dr. Gavin Brock had performed a regenerative procedure on Owen Reece's back, to repair the crushed vertebrae and remove the titanium pins that held his spine together. The injury had been sustained in Korea, flying in low on a rescue mission in a hot LZ. His helicopter had been shot down when trying to extract wounded soldiers. Reece had nearly been paralyzed and he lost two of his crew members, not to mention the soldiers injured trying to protect the crash site. The army doctors had patched him up as best they could but they did not have access or funds for the kind of medicine that Doctor Gavin Brock was practicing. Now that the constant pain was pretty much gone and he could move much better, he felt years younger.

Not wanting to dwell on that he continued, “A little stiff but so is everything else. You're welcome to take a seat with us, Doc. You don't look so bad, being a popsicle for three years must agree with you.”

Reece cracked his knuckles and glanced up, spotting Big Bill stomping down the aisle and he grinned at the plate of donuts. His old partner in crime did not look too much worse for wear, not any different than an early morning after a night of whiskey and poker. The big Texan looked sour as ever with the thermos of coffee gripped like a mug in his hand.

“Nope, and I don’t see a yellow brick road out here neither,” he replied, a slight chuckle at still being called ‘kid’ at thirty-nine. Well, now it was forty two. Hell he’d hit forty and didn’t even get to celebrate.

“Fuck it, I’m owed a few birthday cakes but I’ll start with one of your donuts,” Reece snatched up a jelly filled glazed treat and took a bite. “Where’d you find these anyway?”

Mid bite he jerked his head up as the Marine shouted his greeting and he snorted, watching Bill's reaction. "Damn, jarheads. I wonder what he put in his coffee."

As he looked forward he caught sight of the blue haired kid looking back at the mining group. Reece's mouth twitched in a smile at the kid's shirt, and noticed the direction of his stare. The plate of donuts balanced on Bill's knee. He raised his eyebrows at Connor, taking a big bite of his jelly donut and licked the glaze off his thumb. The pilot reasoned the boy was likely a mechanic based off the smart ass shirt he wore and he slowly picked up a powdered donut and held it up, giving it a slight shake like one would do with a stick before sending a dog to fetch.

“I’m glad it’s holding up,” Gavin said, referring to the restorative tissue he had placed in Reece’s lower back. It had been a simple enough procedure, at least from a genetic standpoint, and one that Gavin had been more than happy to do for the rugged pilot.

“As for being a popsicle, I’ll admit I was a green one not long ago. I’ve never had a sensation that mixed the best parts of a hangover and a firm kick to the testicles, so I at least can mark that off my bucket list.”

Gavin chuckled at his own quip, before snorting a smirk in response to the boisterous Marine down near the front of the Auditorium.

“It’s good to know that our young friend awoke with plenty of piss and vinegar in his Blood Stripes,” the doctor said to both Reece and the large bearded man that had taken a seat behind them. Never being one to wait for an invitation to introduce himself, Gavin turned in his seat to extend a hand to the larger-than-life man with the pastries.

“Dr. Gavin Brock,” he said with a genuine smile, “it’s a pleasure to meet you. I must say that I’m encouraged to see so much facial hair among Third Shift. Bodes well for the future of humanity.” Gavin’s eyes narrowed, and he looked about the Auditorium in an exaggerated fashion before dropping his voice slightly. “It seems that even some of the women on our shift have taken to the trend as well. Our Esprit de Corps is intact, to be sure.”

(Collab between RoadRash, Idlehands and KuroTenshi))

“Bill,” the driller grunted briefly, enveloping the doctor’s hand in his own. He took a large swig of coffee and delivered the coup-de-grace to the eclair, shoving the rest into his mouth without ceremony.

“I’m a driller. I’ll be on the mining ship,” he said after another slug of coffee. “Hopefully I don’t end up having to come give you extra work. No offense.”

Crap he got caught staring and now the guy was taunting him with the glazed goods. The stare coupled with the thumb lick was a bit weird though and Connor nearly shook his head. He started to turn back forward, it was probably creepy how he was staring at the donuts, but stopped seeing the grizzled looking man holding one up with a little shake. Connor narrowed his eyes, giving the older man a suspicious look. Was he really offering the fried goody or was he messing with him because he was caught staring and drooling?

The introvert in him wanted to turn around and go back to being anti social, but his growling stomach stopped him. Ah, fuck it. He was hungry and free junk food won out being a hermit. He stood up from his seat and crab walked his way past people already sitting down in his aisle then trotted up the stairs to the row in front of the trio of older gentlemen. All of them were sporting facial hair of some kind and he was really tempted to dub them the Three Mustache-keteers.

His lips twitched from fighting the urge to grin at his own stupid thoughts.

He sat his happy ass down in the seat in front of the stranger offering up sweets and tried for a polite grin. "Hi." He greeted, holding up one hand that was crawling with the Celtic knotwork style tattoos. "Are you offering to share or am I just making myself look stupid right now?"

Reece watched with amusement as the kid scurried toward them and sat down. He looked over the blue hair and the tattoos. the facial piercings and he drawled, “Not as stupid as all that makes you look.”

He laughed and held the donut up, “Whatcha do on this ship, boy?”

Bill turned his attention to the new arrival, frowning briefly. After a quick once-over, he gestured vaguely to Connor’s hair.

“The fuck’s on your head?”

Connor grinned a bit and shrugged at the question. “Ridiculous head cover to keep my brains from floating out of my skull. Or hair if you want to get technical.” He reached out to take the donut that was offered to him. “My name’s Connor, I’m a mechanic for the mining ships.” He answered before taking a bite of the donut, his taste buds singing and dancing at the sugary taste. “Thanks for the donut, I haven’t eaten in three years.”

“For the mining ships?” Reece wiped his hand on his jeans, glancing at Bill and back at Connor. He was young, he seemed hardly more than a teenager and the blue hair and piercings did little to change that. “I hope you’re some kind of weirdo genius then because I can’t imagine where they must have dug you up.”

“You realize those tubs aren’t made outa Legos, right kid?” Bill growled, pointing at him with a donut. “Not fond of the idea of havin’ a kid workin’ on all that’s between me and suffocating…”

“You guys are miners?” Connor asked, sitting up a bit straighter and twisting a bit more to face them better. “Uh, well,” He hated talking about his intelligence since he had been raised not to brag about his accomplishments. “I got my bachelors in mechanical engineering when I was eighteen at MIT, I was going for my masters but that’s when the program found me and pulled me in. So yeah I’m kind of a weirdo genius.” He looked down at his donut and took another bite.

Reece leaned back, looking at Connor askance and he put a fresh toothpick in his mouth, rolling it around before he spoke, “So you got the book smarts and the paper...but you ever work on the real thing? Other than what you practiced on at the Mountain. You ever been in the field, had to jerry rig and improvise without all your pretty tools and materials available?”

He was quiet for a moment, “It’s a lot different in the real world. We go out onto those asteroids and something goes down...”

Reece cocked his eyebrow, looking at Connor intently, his grey gaze piercing. “Enjoy your donut.”

Connor looked up, being careful to keep his face neutral though he couldn’t stop his jaw from clenching. “I know everything about those ships, right down to the number of bolts holding it all together. I’ve worked on them every day for three years straight, hell I helped put some of them together. I know what those ships can do and I know the kind of potential they have; it’s why I asked to be assigned to work on them.” He shook his head, running a hand over his bright hair. “I wouldn’t be a mechanic if they thought I couldn’t do it.”

“Well, we’ll see,” Reece said, chewing on the toothpick, clearly at the end of this conversation. He lifted his leg and put his ankle across his knee, looking past Connor. His attention focused back onto Abby at the front of the hall where she was left alone, preparing to address the third shift.

Connor frowned and stood up to go find another seat. “Thanks for the donut.” He said as parting words as he moved away. That had been his first encounter with a miner and he found that while he didn’t care if anyone else scoffed at him...The conversation with someone that would be using them left him unsettled and frustrated.

Sure enough, Antoine wove his way through the familiar hallways and corridors to make it to the auditorium before any speeches had began. That meant he was still early, by technical definition, which worked out perfectly: It meant he got to enjoy the forest!

He poked a nearby tree as he walked over to the crowds, grinning as his hand sunk through the holographic trunk. Never could do that back on earth, now could you? He poked his hand through again and grinned all-the-wider, skirting the edges of the crowds and keeping his back to the auditorium wall.

Even from there, he soon-to-be speaker was visible. Ms. Larson if he was remembering the correct sleeper file. A soldier... like many it seemed, the familiar gait, bearing and mannerisms of the disciplined militant standing out amongst the various peoples that passed under his eyes. On the topic, it seemed military history had appeared quite a bit in the sleeper files, more than typical in a cycle, perhaps?

Was that an intentional decision, what with what happened before?

Or maybe not. Antoine poked a tree once more because he could, and shrugged off any further contemplation on the subject. Things were going to get... interesting enough, without trying to feel concerned, so why try to feel concerned? It was all past, and while there'd certainly be some suspicions, fears and likely false accusations, in the end nothing serious would come of the talk they were about to hear.

Which was good for more reasons than one... and anything good for more reasons than one was not something that ever had to be worried about.

With that bright thought in mind, the medtech moved to lean against the wall at the edge of the 'forest' when a sudden, sharp series of pains caused him to jump. They started as simple tugs up dark khaki pants, but then drove through the thin fabric of his light-blue buttondown inciting a desire to shout that he skillfully drove down. Too many years spent admonishing battlefield patients on crying over 'minor' wounds to act pained today, it'd be hypocritical.

No, instead Antoine jumped, flinched, then cast a sidelong look towards his shoulder, now occupied by a rather pleased-looking Bengal.

"And hello again, Mowzer." He reached up to scratch his pet under the chin, rewarded by a yowl and nip at his ear from the cat. He took it all in stride, Mowzer apparently deciding that was punishment enough, and accepting the scritches as he settled down on Antoine's shoulder. Front paws reached down to dig into the fabric over his upper chest, back paws fell back to rest just over the shoulder blades, and everything in between rumbled with a contented purr.

Well, his cat had found him again, as expected.

"Quiet down now, shhhhh." He moved his scritches up to behind Mowzer's ear, the cat purring only louder in rebellion. At least one ear was still clear to listen it, which would have to be enough.

Quiet apologies to the madam speaker, but Mowzer demanded slightly more attention, even now.