THE CHASE IS ON!

SPACE DATE 2235.113

This guy said he was from the Galactic Union and he was here to improve our engines.  So we let him on board and gave him access to the engine room, but the intraship skleeball tournament was going on at the time, and none of us wanted to miss the quarterfinals, so we left him there to do his business while we watched the Stellar Cartrography team beat the Waste Disposal team 14 to G.  After the match, we went back to the engine room to find the GU engineer gone and the engine core stripped of its most valuable parts!  Turns out he was nothing more than a con-artist who may or may not have had some sort of freaky hypnotic suggestion power or something. 

Now, he was making his getaway in a transit pod with our pilfered equipment, looking to sell it off at the nearest starpost.  Transit pods aren't very fast, but since our engines no longer worked, it was hard to catch up to him.  So, I ordered the pod destroyed, but Powell suggested that we simply shoot its thrusters to disable it instead.  Eager for any action involving shooting the villain, I agreed.  Our pulse beams were surprisingly accurate, and we managed to disable the transit pod's thrusters with one shot.  Now it's drifting slowly towards Starpost 284 on the momentum of its previous speed, and we are able to pursue using only our maneuvering thrusters.  Both of us are only moving through space at around 10 feet per minute, and Dr. Rena calculates it will take the pod approximately 3 months to reach the starpost at this rate.  Luckily for us, we should be able to catch up with the pod long before that, in about 6 weeks.  Plenty of time to move on to the semifinals!