[He tilts his head just slightly. The ghost comment gets a more pointed moment of attention, but he'll come back to that. His accent is mild enough - and his English is good enough, being fully bilingual - that most people don't pick up on his sounding Russian unless they wind him up in some way.]

I'm from Mars. The outpost colonies there are mostly descended from Russian colonists.

[And that has blown a few people's minds, so far.]

The Federated Alliance is Earth military, mostly.