08-03-2026, 08:02 PM
First Officer’s Log, Stardate 202608.03
Commander Sovar recording.
The Artemis has finally been given a chance to do that for which she was expressly built: explore. We were assigned a mission to survey Sector 285-Upsilon. The sector had, prior to our arrival, been relatively unexplored with only long-range scans from deep space survey arrays and some preliminary stellar cartographic data to guide us. Our launch went as expected, with the crew showing above average competence. During our transit, we encountered no issues. Captain Crawford has been busy, and we have been taking turns commanding the Bridge. It has left me a great deal of time to sit in… what humans colloquially call ‘the big chair’. It is not an unfamiliar position, with my experience in Tactical being helpful.
My initial excitement to traverse unknown space and seek out strange new worlds has now been tempered, however. There is, perhaps, a reason why this particular area of space was often overlooked for exploration.
The first system we arrived at was… uninspiring. Cataloguing the various planets and phenomena felt routine. While I was intrigued by some orbital dynamics of the system, the mystery was too quickly solved. At least the crew was able to enjoy a short away mission on an M-class moon that was only beginning to show signs of larger fauna. They were also treated to what one crew member described as a ‘dazzling display’ of a phenomenon similar to Earth’s aurora. Stellar winds from the system’s sun had a significant flux in output of charged particles, leading to the lights being particularly dynamic and colourful.
Aside from those moments, there has been little that I have found to pique my curiosity. I hypothesized before leaving Earth that, outside of Command requirements, I would be spending a significant amount of time in astrometrics or shuttlecraft. Instead, I have seen a sizable increase of my time spent at the gym, or meditating in my quarters. It has not been ideal.
It is with some amount of hope, as we prepare to move onto the next system in the sector, that we will find something of more interest. Archival data shows that somewhere outside this system there may be an instability in the interstellar medium. I would be fascinated to encounter a baryonic subspace shear zone.
End log.
Commander Sovar recording.
The Artemis has finally been given a chance to do that for which she was expressly built: explore. We were assigned a mission to survey Sector 285-Upsilon. The sector had, prior to our arrival, been relatively unexplored with only long-range scans from deep space survey arrays and some preliminary stellar cartographic data to guide us. Our launch went as expected, with the crew showing above average competence. During our transit, we encountered no issues. Captain Crawford has been busy, and we have been taking turns commanding the Bridge. It has left me a great deal of time to sit in… what humans colloquially call ‘the big chair’. It is not an unfamiliar position, with my experience in Tactical being helpful.
My initial excitement to traverse unknown space and seek out strange new worlds has now been tempered, however. There is, perhaps, a reason why this particular area of space was often overlooked for exploration.
The first system we arrived at was… uninspiring. Cataloguing the various planets and phenomena felt routine. While I was intrigued by some orbital dynamics of the system, the mystery was too quickly solved. At least the crew was able to enjoy a short away mission on an M-class moon that was only beginning to show signs of larger fauna. They were also treated to what one crew member described as a ‘dazzling display’ of a phenomenon similar to Earth’s aurora. Stellar winds from the system’s sun had a significant flux in output of charged particles, leading to the lights being particularly dynamic and colourful.
Aside from those moments, there has been little that I have found to pique my curiosity. I hypothesized before leaving Earth that, outside of Command requirements, I would be spending a significant amount of time in astrometrics or shuttlecraft. Instead, I have seen a sizable increase of my time spent at the gym, or meditating in my quarters. It has not been ideal.
It is with some amount of hope, as we prepare to move onto the next system in the sector, that we will find something of more interest. Archival data shows that somewhere outside this system there may be an instability in the interstellar medium. I would be fascinated to encounter a baryonic subspace shear zone.
End log.