Stardate 20161231.2327

Another solar year on Terra is ending tonight, and the tradition of reflection upon the last year is not altogether a foreign one.

There was much death. The supervisory board had some fractures, resulting in a feeling of impending civil war. But the war never came. Instead, the fleet is doomed to be forever shared between two separate entities, maintaining what pretenses of normalcy we can. This has been a source of much pain. There was an unexpected assignation of a new Ensign to the crew, a lengthy separation for our Ambassador's first solo mission with repeated shorter intervals, and an emergency boarding of a Cadet. The Commander has finally accepted the usage of multi-linguistic abilities onboard, a source of much contention in the past, and he is now even to the point of willingness to learn. And just in the last 24 hour period, the Commander's father had a medical emergency and is confined to planetside for the time being; even with the scientific abilities on their side, we feared we might lose him and there are no certain answers available to us yet.

What is handed to us as our mission may not ever be what we have desired, what we encounter in our journeys may simply be the result of our own decisions or the butterfly effect of others. But the grace and determination required to continue on in this is exemplified by our Admiral, trained and drilled into us, and will be the proof to our time spent here in the dark wild. For that is where we are: wrapped in the darkness, surrounded by countless bright spots.

This is our continuing mission: to explore our strange world, to seek out new life and new understanding, to boldly go where no crew has gone before.