Clifford Nobles was a heavy sleeper. It came with his natural disposition toward sloth, matched only by his greed, arrogance and cowardice. He had a whole collection of personality defects, really. But the point is, heavily shirking all manner of responsibilities, even when it would clearly come back to bite him in the ass, was second nature to him. A mixture of that and the previously mentioned cowardice had lost him a 50 million dollar payday and gotten him a ticket across worlds in return, and while he was rightly fascinated with the scope of creation, he also resented having what amounted to a highly dangerous job for a mysterious organization and a faceless boss.

Going back to the actual point, Cliff was a heavy sleeper, which is why he completely missed two men entering his "Secret Sleeping Space", aka one of the escape pods in Meta Ridley's ship he had picked at random, the launch, the subsequent landing, the arguments including a third voice and even the firefight outside. How the other two missed him was anyone's guess, but since a coward like Clifford Nobles could make an artform out of hiding, him going completely unnoticed in the small structure wasn't entirely impossible, just extremely improbable. The cowboy did wake up, however, when a stray shot from the firefight below ricocheted off the pod's outer plating.

His pusillanimity, you see, was extreme enough to act like a sixth sense for danger, an instinctive reaction towards aggression that triggered a spectacular flight response in him. From lying face up in the floor tucked extremely deep under the seats, hat over face to muffle out the occasional noise, to out of the pod like a bat outta hell, hat in hand, through the door Our Hero had opened in olympic record time. He didn't stop until he ran into a very surprised security guard, who had no time to do anything other than mentally wonder who the crap this cowboy was as he was shoved aside in a panic, smacking the back of his head on a wall.

The dull thud broke Cliff out his panic and he stopped to take stock of his surroundings. He had no idea where he was or what he was doing. None. All he knew was, he had taken out an armed guard while making no noise whatsoever. So he was calling that a win. He turned around to the open door, believing he'd seen...two dudes he was sure he had seen before, probably SE guys like himself. "So uh, hey! Guys! I took out a guard here! Why are we here again?".