SAM JOVIAN - PERSONAL LOG ABOARD THE M.M.V ANTLION
ENTRY DATE: 56.03.28
Yesterday was my first time aboard the Antlion, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t giddy to finally be on a front-line industrial vessel. It's a pretty big ship too, 240 metres is nothing to scoff at — and its even crazier when you realise there's only about two dozen of us to crew it. Although to be fair, the N.M.R isn't exactly known for it's manpower. I mean nor is any human civilisation right now, but you get me yeah?
We're heading out to the Asteroid Belt tomorrow, it'll be my first time past the Deimos ring*. Apparently, my name — "Jovian" — means "from Jupiter", it's a pretty common surname in the N.M.R. My parents tell me that my grandparents were born in a station hidden out at Neptune, and that their parents were resistance fighters during the end of the Sculptor war before they fled to the Kuiper Belt, and apparently they were born one of Jupiter's moons. So yeah, "Jovian"**.
Sometimes I wonder what it was like back then — and I mean way back. Like, before the Sculptors way back. I just can't imagine a dusty red Mars without any of the forests or great plains I know the planet so well for! The view from my apartment in Ulysses of the great forests of the Tharsis Montes that I'd wake up to every day, I just can't fully comprehend how young it really is.
Well anyway, I should stop dwindling on the past, I just graduated from the Spaceflight Academy! I've learnt a lot in the last four years, though only a single day on this ship was enough to show me that I've got a lot more to learn yet. Space is cold and cruel after all, its best to know what you're doing out here.
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Chief Karlson is a real nice fellow. He gave me a great first tour of the ship, had plenty of stories to tell too. My personal favourite was about a time they narrowly avoided a pirate fleet by hiding in the radar shadows of intermediary asteroids: apparently the navigator was able to perfectly calculate a trajectory that, from the pirate's perspective, would place the Antlion behind a particular asteroid — from almost three thousand kilometres away!
It's truly an honour to be a part of this crew. I'll be sure to be at the top of my game for the duration of the mission.
Sam Jovian, Second Gunner of the M.M.V Antlion — signing off!
*Editor: Recovered records show that distinctive thin outer ring of the planet Mars was once a moon. It is believed that this moon, "Deimos", was planet-cracked during the early years of the conflict with the Sculptors in a similar manner to that of Earth's moon, Luna — though seemingly far more destructively so.
**Editor: The remarks made by Sam here on his family lineage prompted an investigation into the Jovian satellites, through which several demographic surveys were uncovered on the moons of Calisto and Io. These surveys were dated using the pre-ITS "Anno Domini" system, and show "Jovian" to have been a relatively popular surname around the year 2087 A.D. Records uncovered on Mars however (dated to the early 2100s A.D) show a great increase in the prevalence of this surname. The leading theory, is that this surge of "Jovians" was caused by the dwindling number of Jupiter nationals during the end of the Sculptor conflict causing the survivors to take up the broad surname en masse to maintain a distinctness to their identity.