“I see.” Honor glanced at McKeon. “Exec? Suppose we reconfigure a dozen or so survey sats and tie their weather radar into the air traffic control net?”

“We could.” This time it was McKeon’s turn to rub his nose and frown. “We’re making a mighty big dent in our equipment list, Ma’am,” he warned.

“I know, but I don’t see an option… and it’s there to be used, Exec.”

McKeon nodded, eyes slitted in thought, and Honor wondered if he even realized he’d said “we’re” instead of “you’re.”

“Then I think we can do it, but their radar sets aren’t going to get as good a paint off of an aircraft as standard ground radar would, and they’re not set up for air traffic-quality doppler. They’re intended more for radar mapping and weather observation, not real look-down capability, and air masses don’t move that fast.” He frowned some more. “If you’ll give me a day or two with Santos and Cardones, I think between us we can come up with a fix to refine their target differentiation, and we should be able to work in a decent doppler and ranging capability, too, especially if we set them up in pairs. It’ll be rough, but it should work.”

“Good,” Honor said. The survey satellites were standard issue and rarely used, since regular warships seldom pulled survey duty. They were also short-ranged and simple-minded, but they should suffice for this. Of course, McKeon was right about the carnage she was wreaking with her equipment list. Just her sensor network had cost the RMN somewhere in the vicinity of two hundred million dollars, even assuming most of the probe heads were recoverable, and she’d personally signed for every penny of it. But there was no other way to get the job done, and if the Admiralty objected to the cost, they should have assigned either more ships or narrower mission parameters. Besides, the survey sats would “only” up the price tag by another half-million or so apiece.

“In that case,” she went on to Isvarian, “I’d like to leave air-breathing traffic in NPA hands and set up a space traffic control center staffed by our people.” She toyed with her cocoa cup for a moment while she considered. “Better make it a ground station, I think, in case something comes up out-system and we get called away. In fact, we might install it right next door to your air traffic people so they can coordinate better. What do you think, Exec?”

“I think we’re going to be lucky if we’re still at half-strength when the dust settles,” McKeon replied, using the calculator mode of his memo pad to check figures. “By the time we crew those pinnaces and shuttles, we’ll have another forty of our people on detached duty, Ma’am. We can probably use Marines to eke out the ratings in the inspection crews, but when you add enough Fleet people to man a control center on top of that—” He shrugged.

“Agreed, but I think it’s necessary,” Honor said quietly. She kept her gaze on McKeon’s face, but her eyes cut sideways at Isvarian for a moment, reminding the exec of their audience, and McKeon nodded. It wasn’t a happy nod, nor a very graceful one, but it was a nod.