Alexia smeared the bathroom mirror with her hand, giving her just enough clear glass to see her reflection in the opaque mess. With her new small window, she could just barely make out her dark brown hair, blue eyes, and thin facial features through the steam. Taking her comb, she began to slowly brush through her tangled mess of hair. After several minutes of stroking, the steam from the shower began to clear, and the bathroom began to take on a chilly hair.
She grabbed her towel, wrapping it snugly around her body with a tug. She turned to leave the bathroom, and she hadn't taken one step outside when the ship's intercom sounded throughout the small ship.
"Arriving at Jannada in five minutes. Arriving in Jannada in five minutes."
Jannada, the Mystery Colony. Nobody knows when it was founded, but twenty years ago it began to accept applications for immigration. However, its immigration applications were anything but standard. On top of requiring basic information, applicants also had to submit a full DNA profile of themselves, along with a full-body picture.
Nobody truly knew what the precise criteria was for how they accepted applicants, save that every known immigrant to Jannada had been a lesbian woman, including herself. To add to the mystery, nobody seemed to know where the planet even was, as none of its immigrants had ever returned. Alexia herself had been instructed to wait on a certain park bench until approached by a women, who asked her a coded question. When she answered correctly, a car with pitch-black windows pulled up next to the park, and she was invited inside.
The dark windows prevented her from seeing where they had gone, and she was quickly shuffled aboard a landing pad she'd never seen before when they exited the limo. For all intents and purposes, Alexia was off the grid.
She felt as though she should be worried, but the anxiety was fleeting. She was more surprised than anything when the application she had submitted as a half-joke was processed, and she was given a personality test in return. When she completed that and submitted it, it was only a few days until she received a message on her com about the designated meeting place.
The intercom suddenly crackled back to life.
"Alexia to Medbay. Alexia to Medbay".
With a sigh, she unfurled her towel and walked over to her suitcase, dressing herself in the first things she grabbed. Still damp, she opened the door to her room and walked to the Medbay just down the hall.
It was instantly recognizable from the window outside; an almost absurdly white room filled with all manner of medical equipment. The door slid open at her approach.
A red-haired doctor had her back turned to Alexia, drawing something into a syringe. She spun around, slightly jumping when she saw her new guest.
"Oh! Alexia! How are you?"
"Fine," she replied. "Just wish there wasn't all this spooky secrecy stuff about coming here."
The doctor smiled. "We just have to make sure we let in the right people."
She beckoned over to a chair. "Now, could you please sit here? I need to do something before we land."
Alexia nodded, walked over to the chair and carefully sitting down. The doctor raised her syringe, tapping it a few times.
"What's that?" Alexia asked.
"Oh, just something you'll need for the surface. They'll explain more there."
The doctor gave coy wink. "This won't hurt a bit."
Walking over to Alexia, she glided the syringe to the top of her arm, pressing down slightly to insert the syringe. The clear liquid inside the syringe slowly disappeared, and after a few second she withdrew her impliment.
"There! All done."
They both heard the loud click of the intercom.
"Now descending to Jannada. Now descending to Jannada."
The sterile whiteness of the medbay suddenly took on the slightest shade of orange as the fires from re-entry raged outside the one viewport in the room. Even with equipped with gyroscopes and the most modern equipment, the ship still jangled slightly from the immense forces at play.
The black of space outside the window gave way to light blue, and soon white clouds zoomed past the window.
"We'll be landing in a few seconds. And welcome to Jannada." the doctor stated.
Alexia nodded, turning to leave. As their arrival was imminent, she walked back to her room to grab her suitcase, then to the cargo bay where she would disembark. She could hear the loud hissing outside as the craft kicked in its VTOL thrusters to ensure a soft landing, and the gentle lurch downward as the shuttle made landfall.
With a mighty mechanical sigh, the cargo door dropped downward, temporarily blinding Alexia with sunlight. When her pupils adjusted, she took a deep breath and marched into her new home.
The cool air of the cargo hold was instantly throttled by the gentle warmth of the sun shining brightly in the sky.
Looking around, Alexia could see their landing pad was on a beach. Crystal-clear waters lapped up against the sandy shores, and inland there was a thick jungle. Several paths were cut through it, and she also spotted what looked like a large on the very far end of the beach, modern buildings set up right next to the ocean.
"Alexia?" a voice called out.
She looked ahead to see a women standing on the end opposite to her on the landing pad, waving her over.
When she was closer to the woman, she could make her features out more clearly. She was striking; her thick brown hair perfectly covered one of her piercing gray eyes, complimented with red, shapely lips and chiseled features. Her pale figure was just slightly curly, and she wore a small two-piece bikini wrapped with a floral pattern cloth.
"Alexia?" she asked again.
"Yes?" she asked, not sure of the woman's purpose. A welcoming committee, perhaps?
The woman grinned. "I'm Brooke. Nice to meet you. And let me be the first to welcome you to Jannada, lesbian utopia!"
Lesbian what? Before she could ask, the woman grabbed one of Alexia's hands and pulled her away from the landing pad. A roar behind them could only have meant the shuttle had taken off, and she was now at the point of no return.
She was guided down some stairs by Brooke, leading to the sandy beach. There, a small hovercraft waited, bobbing just a few inches off the sand. Brooke let go, turning around. Instead of talking, her attention went to Alexia's briefcase."
"Oh, what's in there?"
"Just some clothes," Alexia answered.
"But you're n-"
Brooke stopped herself mid-sentence, then giggled. "Whoops. Almost spoiled the surprise."