Probe Preparing

Posted on Tue Feb 18th, 2020 @ 9:43pm by Lieutenant Commander William Gunnison & Lieutenant Alexis Aenera

Mission: Dead Moon
Location: Sensor Bay One
Timeline: prior to "Don't go around tonight"

Alexis sighed as she looked at the rows of probes in front of her. She knew something about the Charybdis Sector, but what was being asked of her was difficult at best, impossible at worst. Preparing probes to survive in the maelstrom that was known as Charybdis was going to definitely be difficult. She slung off her uniform jacket and tossed it in a heap onto a handy console, then flexed her fingers, wriggling them as she approached the first one. Then she stopped.

Her eyes were only for the probe, but there was something else there, someone else, to be precise. "Are you going to just stand there, or are you going to come over and help?" She glanced over her shoulder, a slight smile on her face as she checked to see who it was.

"Coming, ma'am," Will said with a smile of his own. "Never try to sneak up on a Betazoid, eh?" He glanced over the compliment of ship's probes as he was thinking about what needed to be done. 'Oh this is going to be fun,' he thought sarcastically.

Alexis flexed her fingers once more, "It does get rather difficult, doesn't it?" She chuckled, "I figure that we need to upgrade both the particle shielding and radiation shielding without giving up any of the sensor reach. I think we can sacrifice some of the detail of the sensors, but perhaps set aside a half dozen that swaps reach for sensitivity in case we need to look at something? I can identify about thirty of the things in there from their basic makeup, but those plasma storms are bad, they'll fry a probe if given half a chance."

"No kidding," Will said. "The Charybdis Sector makes the Badlands look like a nice day on Risa by comparison. We should definitely look into your idea about exchanging reach for sensitivity. Things in the sector are so bad that even the long-range sensors of a starship aren't of much use at times. A probe's is going to be even less so."

"How good are you at flying probes?" Alexis asked after a pause, "If we can identify a safe zone with the endurance probes, do you think you can follow it with one that's got the eyes so we can take a look further in?"

"I like to think I'm a fair pilot, though it's admittedly been a while since I've had to actually directly pilot probes," Will replied. "It shouldn't be too difficult, though. The main problem could be the unpredictable nature of things like turbulence in the sector, as well that it seems like, as Lt. Rogers noted earlier, certain systems like impulse engines operating above a certain level seem to attract plasma storms like a magnet. It's a part of why the sector's never really been charted. The probes themselves will require careful monitoring."

"The ones on the probes have a significantly smaller signature to them and so long as we don't have them on more than seventy-five percent output, we shouldn't have a problem with that." Alexis opened up one of the probes and stuck her tongue out at it, "Turbulence is going to definitely be an issue, though. Would using the station-keeping thrusters work to adjust to counter the turbulence work? Or would it exhaust their fuel?"

"Using the station-keeping thrusters would work, though it does have the downside of using up the power supply faster," Will said. "We've got good old physics to thank for that - the more you do, the more energy it takes to do it."

"That we do, that we do." Alexis mused, "What do you think? This'll take four hours or so?" She shrugged, "It really is more just a mass-production situation."

"Four hours sounds about right," Will said, "since you're right - it is more a mass production situation than anything. Shall we get started, then?"