ring when it was formed and seal it tight before beginning to defrost any of the survivors, but the laborious process of unpacking the supply crates from the pods not holding human cargo was not something that seven people alone could do.
To ease the excitement of his team, Hendricks ordered the small patch on higher ground be cleared and set up as an OP—observation post, or guard tower overlooking the approach to their rapidly-forming enclave. Weber, Stevens, Geiger, and Jones all volunteered for the task, the two Americans eager to employ their bushcraft skills and the German and the Brit just wanting to be out in the field doing something useful. All of them had an overwhelming sense of having been cooped up for too long, as though their frozen bodies somehow held a feeling of having been in a car for an extended journey. Hendricks stayed with the two female members of his team; all three of them suited more to methodical, logical planning over instant action.
By the end of their second day back on Earth, the ring was complete and only three units remained in space. Of those three, one would bring down the last of the human cargo but as Annie would already have had to leave, it would need to be piloted. Farnham took that job, and of course his pod was the only one of them to land out of place.
If they could see it from space again, they would see a near perfect ring of scorched white metal cylinders, with a cloverleaf in the middle where one leaf was ever so slightly awry.
Annie showed another side to her new personality, and just as the others did, she gave him shit for it.
The eleven of them met in the center of the wide circle and quietly congratulated each other. The circumstances of their survival were vastly different to what any of them had expected, but that did not dull the sense of achievement that they felt collectively, and there was a buzz of unspoken excitement as though they were pioneers of their race. They were, and they faced as much uncertainty as any traveler to an unknown place anywhere in history, but they were well-equipped and there were no useless mouths to feed amongst them.
“Annie,” Amir said, still looking up as though he were addressing a speaker fixed to a wall. Hearing her deliberate chime of response via the radio he wore on a tactical vest that looked just as natural on him as a Saville Row made suit did he said, “shall we begin the second phase? Engineering staff first, if you please?”
Annie said nothing, but their radios chimed in acknowledgement. She began to wake the prioritized list of personnel, talking to each of them as she roused them gently and allowed them to regain consciousness more slowly than the first of them in a measured test to ease their transitions into consciousness. One by one, the pod hatches popped open and wary eyes blinked at the sunlight.
~
I’d asked Annie which pod Elliot was in, as he would be one of the first to wake and oversee the majority of the people being brought out of cryo. She told me which pod, which actually meant nothing to me.
“Where is that?” I asked, getting used to the fact that she was always listening via the radio without me having to key the mic or say her name and wait for a response. In reply, she simply flashed the lights on the outside of a pod about thirty paces from me. I thanked her and walked over to climb inside and pass Elliot a bottle of water as he reeled and coughed in a state of confusion like he was blind drunk.
“Easy, buddy,” I told him as his eyes slowly focused on me.
“How long?” he asked groggily with a croaking voice before taking a pained swig from the bottle.
“Not sure you wanna know, man,” I said carefully, wearing an expression that I hoped would tell him half the story. His eyes stayed fixed on me, waiting for an answer which I was forced to give with a sigh.
“A little over nine hundred,” I said simply. He choked on the water and began another coughing fit which lasted longer than was comfortable to watch. Eventually he lapsed back into silence and drank a little more before rubbing his face hard.
“We were never supposed to be under for that long,” he said in a small voice, “did everyone