“You want us to fit all of them with station-keeping drives, Ma’am?” Santos asked after a moment.

“That’s what I said, Commander.”

“But—” The engineer caught Honor’s glacial glance and changed what she’d been about to say. “I expect you’re right about fitting the sensor heads into standard beacon kits, Ma’am, but the numbers you’re talking about are going to clean out our kits in a hurry. We’re going to have to scratch-build an awful lot of drives and astro packs. That’s not going to be cheap, and I don’t even know if we have sufficient spares aboard.”

“What we don’t have, we’ll fabricate. What we can’t fabricate, we’ll requisition from Basilisk Control. What we can’t requisition, we’ll steal.” Honor bared her teeth in a humorless smile. “Is that clear, Commander Santos?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“A point, Captain,” McKeon heard himself say, and Harrington’s eyes whipped to his face. They seemed to harden a bit more, but there was wariness—and perhaps a trace of surprise—in them, as well.

“Yes, Exec?”

“I’m not certain how many probes we have in stores, Ma’am, but I am certain you’re right about our inability to achieve complete coverage even if we can—I mean, even after we have fitted them all with station-keeping drives.” He was speaking stiffly, and he knew it, but he was also contributing to the solution of a problem for the first time since Harrington had come on board. It felt… odd. Unnatural.

“And?” the captain prompted him.

“We also have the problem of their endurance, Ma’am. They were never intended for long-term deployment like this. But we might be able to increase their effective time on station by setting them for burst activation. They’ve got a passive detection range of just over twenty light-minutes against an active impeller drive. If they’re on the ten-light-minute shell, they’ll have a reach of over half a light-hour from the primary—call it forty minutes’ flight time.”

Honor nodded. The best radiation and particle shielding available still limited a ship to a maximum speed of .8 c in normal-space.

“If we set them to come up for, say, thirty seconds every half-hour, they should detect any incoming vessel under power in normal-space at least twenty light-minutes out. That should give us sufficient time to respond, and at the same time increase their endurance by a factor of sixty.”

“An excellent suggestion, Exec.” Honor smiled at him, grateful that he’d finally come out of his shell, and his facial muscles twitched as if to return it. But then they stiffened again, as if he regretted his momentary lapse, and she smothered a frown of her own.

“Lieutenant Venizelos.” The tactical officer looked positively harried as she turned back to him, and her smothered frown turned into a smothered smile at his expression.

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“Lieutenant Cardones will be taking over your responsibilities in your absence. In addition to your other duties before departure, I want you to get with him and work out the optimum drone deployment based on the availability figures I feel certain Commander Santos and Commander McKeon will have for you within the hour.”