SAM JOVIAN

7TH STREET, ULYSSES, PAVONIS SECTOR

Hey Sam,

Heard you’re the new hire on the ship, I look forward to meeting you! The captain told me your orbital record* was pretty exceptional, so I took a look myself and let me say — a cadet that had a run in with a Sculptor Wraith and lived to tell the tale is not the kind of thing you expect to find scrolling through NMR recruitment boards. We have to deal with drones quite a lot out in the belt but rarely anything as bad as that. You better tell me all about it when you arrive!

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Another thing, since we operate outside of the Martian gravity well, we use the Interplanetary Time Standard. We’ve got 420 days to a year (a bit faster than the 668 on Mars, eh?), 30 to a month, and 24 hours to a day. We also write our dates with the years first. I’m sending this letter on the ITS date: 56.03.21, and you should receive it on 56.03.24.

Welcome to the team kid, I’ll see you on board.

— John Karlson,

Chief Weapons Officer, M.M.V Antlion

* Editor: Though few references to the “orbital record” have been found, it is commonly accepted that N.M.R. spaceflight cadets would operate primarily within low Martian orbits for the duration of their training before being deemed capable enough to graduate into apprenticeship programs.