Welcome Home, Sasha (G/t)

Two.

(A/N: Show some love to the picture seen here, "Lt. Sasha", and its artist Alexandra Hodgson over on ArtStation. It inspired this entire story.)

The change in lighting was glaring, blinding Sasha as he walked forward. The vacuum of atmospheric particles following the path of least resistance brought and flew dust toward and onto his form but not enough to be an endangerment of any kind. White noise and low, mechanical hums soon dissipated into the nothingness of nature enveloped around him. His echoing footsteps were replaced by the crunching of minuscule dirt mounds beneath the treads of his feet. Hearing them brought back Tshepo's bizarre directive; however, the expanse around him had more of a hold on him, causing him to pause and take it all in.

Aside from the onyx and violet-trimmed Demeter, all Sasha could see was a planet's red desert-like landscapes: the mountains almost meshing into the horizon, the bulbous clouds going across the heavens yet looked within arms' distance, and the speckled earth below with its cracks, canyons, and craters as far as he could tell. All of them glowed like a crimson colored screen had been set over its light.

In Sasha's vista, light rays peeked through the sky puffs, but they didn't clarify what kind of solar system he and the distant admiral were in. There was no way to see the number of suns here. Illuminate everything in sight was all they did, such as the shards of reflective surfaces of presumed water in the far distance. Having it accessible could imply that terraforming the place might be worth it. That would be the case if it hadn't already been done.

If Sasha's running theory about his location was correct, then any more terraforming would laughably overkill.

"Damn, Ki," Sasha breathed, almost fogging up the entirety of his helmet's glass. "Your testing mission must really be important if you couldn't even tell me we were going to Mars."

He was shocked and confused, having ended up in a place so far from one home and so, so close to the sister planet that was his other. There weren't many red planets as far as he knew of the billions or so in the Milky Way Galaxy that had ruby surfaces and sky. As long as they weren't controllably corrosive, they weren't necessarily a problem. But, having been terraformed for over two centuries, Earthlings had already made a comfortable place and/or new home for themselves there for all to know throughout the cosmos, adding Mother Nature's blues and greens across the landscape... or, at least, he thought they had.

Novis was usually always in the know of the red rock's doings on the daily, and Sasha had visited several of its colonies a few years – Earth and Martian ones – ago, seeing some of the civilizations for himself. However, the topography of this area wasn't familiar, not matching up with anything on the most recent update of the Martian maps he thought he had memorized. Olympus Mons or any other notable prominence didn't appear to be in sight, so there weren't any major, natural landmarks from which he could work out where exactly on the planet he was.

No area looked this barren as far as he remembered: no flags, beacons, or anything. It looked too similar to not be Mars, yet it was still different. If that were truly the case, then things had definitely changed since the last time Sasha was there, but there was only one way to prove it.

"NAIMA, ready." With Sasha's single instruction, the innards of the helmet finally awakened.

NAIMA, the Novis Artificial Intelligence Management Application, lightly flashed green icons on the window, symbolizing all of the functions accessible upon first use. However, just like within the Demeter, the exact details of the location were still hidden. If Sasha didn't know any better, then he would've figured that the systems to detect them were either encrypted for only Tshepo's eyes or just straight up broken. Neither option seemed reasonable, but perhaps that was part of the mod testing... somehow. Checking the livability of a place was as simple as going down a checklist, and that is exactly what Sasha did.