[alarm sounds and yelling can be heard in the background] [expletives removed], I don’t know what happened, but there’s been an explosion in the engine bay! We suddenly lost contact with both biology and engineering and the ship is spinning out of control as well as running on emergency power! I don’t know what the hell that was, but it can’t be good... we’re making our way down there to see what the fuss is about... but I fear we won’t like what we see...

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[significant amount of expletives removed]!!! It’s worse than I had imagined! Something, though no one knows what, poked a massive [expletives removed] hole in my ship! Several compartments have been depressurized and we have a concerning amount of crew missing, mostly researchers from the “night” shift. I’m gonna need to sprint back upstairs to the bridge to release some repair limpets, so we can stuff the holes. I also want the fighters deployed so they can look for anybody that may have been vented into space and pick them back up. As far as I know, none of the escape pods have been deployed, so that either means everybody is safe and sound, or the ones that did get spaced are….. well, to be blunt, really screwed now. Either way, I want Camacho to search for them. Also, I gotta stop this damn ship from spinning... it’s making everyone space sick…

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Alright, good news is, Camacho didn’t find anybody, which means the missing researchers are still onboard and I managed to stop the ship from spinning. I don’t need Bright and his weak stomach making everything worse than it already is! We also managed to stop any serious fires from spreading around the ship, so we won’t be roasted alive in here any time soon. Now for the bad news: the engines are pretty much completely FUBAR, meaning we’re stuck for the time being… Lieutenant Simmons from the maintenance crew estimates that repairs will take about a week or two, depending on how [expletives removed] the machinery is… Let’s hope she’s right! Also, while we may have fixed the hull breaches, painting over the “scar” will also take a hot minute. We’re imperials, we gotta keep up appearances, but more importantly, we need that extra layer of radiation protection the special paint offers. There also hasn’t been a word from the lost researchers yet, but the marines are looking for them… At this point, we’re expecting the worst…

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More good news: the marines just found the researchers! Turns out, they were trapped below some debris. Luckily they didn’t get trapped in one of the compartments that got depressurized after the… impact? I don’t know actually, and neither does anyone else. The prevailing theory at the time seems to be that we got hit by some sort of meteorite, but it’s anyone’s best guess at the moment really. What matters now is that everyone is safe and sound, though I feel like our resident psychologist Dr. Pierce is gonna get a few more visits in the next few days. I’m just… just… really glad everyone is still in one piece...! [awkward laugh] Getting spaced may be the single most gruesome death a human can experience. I think so at least, I don’t know what the Thargoids do with the occupied escape pods they like to steal, and I wouldn’t care to find out.

- Admiral Hans Dieter of the imperial navy

The first part of the expedition was a resounding success! Upon leaving Dawes Hub, we immediately hit up Jackson’s Lighthouse, which catapulted us straight out of the bubble. The travel on the Neutron Highway was pretty uneventful, save for the fact that most of the crew have never had the misfortune of experiencing a neutron jump first hand, which caused some of them to involuntarily discharge their lunch. Much to the dismay of our janitor… you’d be surprised how difficult cleaning up vomit in a zero g environment is.

After we got 2500 light years away from the bubble, we set our course to the Statue of Liberty Nebula and started jumping. And wouldn’t you know it: the very first system we scan after the catapult phase has a water world with a breathable atmosphere in it. Permission to land and have a beach party has been denied, we only just left two days ago, we can’t take a vacation just yet! It’ll look bad on our report cards. Despite the widespread disappointment in the crew at the lack of some shore leave, the crew took this lucky find as a good omen. I don’t personally believe any of this hogwash, but if it gets morale up, I don’t see any reason to object.

Dr. Bright spat out his coffee today. And if I’m being brutally honest, I almost did too! See, this evil bastard of a flight computer (I swear, the people that make them deliberately program in small quirks, just to screw with its users) dropped us in right in-between two massive Stars without warning, which caused at best; a light startle and at worst a… coffee related accident all across the bridge crew. However, after the initial shock wore off (and the poor Janitor cleaned up Dr. Bright’s mess, I begin to sense a pattern here...) we decided to use this opportunity to do some stress-testing on the newly fitted heat-venting system on the Pegasus by continuing straight ahead and flying right in-between these two Stars. I hereby proudly announce that our heat-levels never rose above 60%!

Our FSS showed signs of geothermal activity on multiple moons, orbiting the gas giants in the “NGC 4463 sector PQ-Y B16-3”-system, so we decided to pay one of them a visit. The moon had very little gravity, clocking in at only about 0.05g, so the landing happened without any major disturbances, despite the absolute girth of our vessel. We touched down pretty much adjacent to a field of geysers that expelled a yellow looking substance, confirmed to be a mixture of sulphur and scolding hot water. After a quick game of rock-paper-scissors, it was decided that I was going to be the pilot of the SRV to go and take some soil samples from around the geyser, as well as grab some of the liquid for further analysis. Now, acquiring the soil samples was simple enough, however getting the liquid was… difficult. To cut a long story short, I got a tad too close to the stream, which I would have assumed would only damage the SRVs shields, since their sole purpose is to protect against such things after all. However, the forces of the universe had... different plans for me, and so instead of boiling the shields down, I guess the combination of almost non-existent gravity and high-pressured liquid sent me flying skywards. I panicked of course, as any human being would, however upon remembering that the moon had little to no gravity, I managed to catch my cool and stabilize the vehicle. Upon proper use of the on-board thrusters, I managed to achieve a clean touch-down on the moon’s surface. This got me curious though, so I got Dr. Bright to agree on doing some more “controlled testing”, which really just involved repeatedly catapulting myself into almost-orbit. After coming to the conclusion that this activity posed absolutely no threat to the vehicle or the driver, assuming halfway competent handling of the thrusters, though the temptation to just go completely bonkers is remarkably high, I admit, we decided to unleash the crew on this… newly discovered form of extreme sports. They spent most of the next few hours launching themselves in the sky over and over again and even competing for who could reach the highest. (That prize goes to Ian from the engineering by the way!)

Images attached in Addendum 1.

• Admiral Hans Dieter of the Imperial Navy

Addendum 1: https://imgur.com/a/RJ5muy5

We’re finishing up all the preparations for the Expedition. Automated drones and dock workers are loading up the last of the rations, the research division is checking all the instruments for what has to be the 10th time now, the Engineering team is doing their rounds around the Engine bay and the FSD, heck even the Janitorial staff is polishing the entire ship squeaky clean. After all, the Empress herself is going to see us off on this one! That alone has most of the 164 crew members sweating bullets already, so the fact that this Expedition to the galactic centre is going to last for at least 2 months, has them all pretty riled up. Despite the nervousness though, spirits on board are high, few scientists would pass up such a golden opportunity to experience all of these stellar phenomena we usually only hear about in textbooks first hand. The route me and our Navigator have come up with is a simple, yet effective one: we’ll take the neutron highway, starting at Jackson’s Lighthouse and travel about 1000-2000 light years away from inhabited space. Following that, we will set our course to the Statue of Liberty Nebula, and just sort of hop from nebula to nebula, exploring each of them as we go. Eventually, this “Nebula Hopping” will take us to a black hole in the Plielou-sector to the south-east of Sagittarius A*, which we’ll use as a reference point for any further exploration. Along the way, we’ll stop and scan every system we visit and examine as many places as Chief Researcher Dr. Bright deems necessary. Some crew members have shown reservations about our relatively low jump range of only 47 light years. I’ll have second officer Camacho remind them that this is an exploratory vessel, not a taxi! If we skip over most systems along the way, then what’s even the point of going out there? And besides, the thing about the Imperial Cutter is that you need to sacrifice some range if you don’t want the ship to turn into a 192.6m x 111.1m x 33.4m Pizza oven every time you charge the FSD. The Way that HMS Pegasus is outfitted now allows for a respectable resting heat of 14%. You’d have to actively try to get this ship to overheat, and even then, it’d be a difficult task.

https://imgur.com/a/dx7g6ns [HMS Pegasus in Dock at Dawes Hub in Achenar]

• Admiral Hans Dieter of the Imperial Navy