When a Plan Comes Together
Posted on September 26th, 2014 by Alexis Wright

In the time spent waiting for the balloons to be deployed, Alexis had probably entered about 100 work tickets for sensors arrays to be repaired based on her recalibration and self-diagnostics. She set another one aside, unfinished, when the word came in that the grapplers had connected successfully and the balloons were being filled.

It was working, it was working! She’d needed a lot of help, of course, specifically in the form of the grapplers… Alexis was willing to admit this to herself. But her plan, her last best hope, was TOTALLY working. Telthis was rising. She hovered anxiously over the readouts, impatient to have enough data to tell how far the station would rise, how fast, how much of a difference it was going to make. The good thing was, now that she could see that it was working, they could always attach more and larger balloons – especially once the station rose above the level of the storm. The engineering team had outdone themselves. Commander Harper and the other pilots had outdone themselves. Her plan wouldn’t have worked at all if it hadn’t been for the extraordinary effort and expertise lent by the rest of the crew. Alexis briefly closed her eyes and mouthed a quiet prayer of thanks just in case anyone happened to be listening.

And what a jewel she had found in T’Lira! Alexis hadn’t hesitated to recommend a full commission as an Ensign to the Admiral. She didn’t know T’Lira well yet and was somewhat intimidated by her greater age and experience – not to mention her Vulcan-ness – but felt that they’d already worked quite well together. Taking a deep breath, Alexis reminded herself that even though she was younger and possibly less experienced, she was no less an expert in her fields. Leadership was something that didn’t come easily to her, but the Admiral had seen fit to trust her in a leadership role, so she would just have to trust his judgment and do her best to live up to his expectations.

She let a small flush of gratitude wash over her before turning her thoughts to the last option to raise the station.

Alexis agreed, scientifically, that hot air currents created convection… but that was the end of her agreement with the plan to heat the gases beneath the station to cause it to rise. There were just too many problems with the plan, not the least of which was that Telthis was rather large and wasn’t particularly aerodynamic and, in her estimation, would do poorly in capturing the heated air currents to rise. In addition, it would take a sustained production of heat over a fairly large area in order to have any useful effect at all: if the convection currents were too brief, it would just cause Telthis to bounce around, because it would simply drop again as soon as the air cooled. If the area were to concentrated, the currents would be too unstable. Creating heat with explosive devices, such as torpedoes, was an absolute "no" in her mind… not only would it bounce the station around significantly and be too brief to provide sustained convection, but it was just too risky in the turbulent atmosphere of a gas giant that there would be unintended consequences.

No, she’d made up her mind – raising the station with heat was a bad idea. Oh, she’d prove it if she had to, but it felt like a waste of time. Additional balloons, if necessary, were a much better idea. She was prepared to fight for it.

Decision made, she went back to hungrily watching the readouts.