That thought had caused him a few anxious moments when he reflected upon the existence of the Committee of Public Safety, but he’d soon realized that it was a false comparison. Military operations were a specialized and limited sphere of human activity. The larger macrocosm of the entire People’s Republic required a different approach, and the combination of centralized power and multiple viewpoints represented by the Committee of Public Safety was undoubtedly the best possible compromise.

But Citizen Captain Hall’s firm, demanding command style certainly had its place in the military. That, Diamato had come to realize, was the reason Addison supported her to the hilt. The people’s commissioner didn’t actually seem to like her very much, but he respected her, and the record of Schaumberg’s accomplishments under her command was the reason Citizen Rear Admiral Kellet had chosen the battleship as Task Force 12.3’s flagship.

“Don’t beat your apology to death, Citizen Commander,” Citizen Captain Hall said now, with a slight smile that took most of the sting from the words. “You are my tac officer. I suppose it’s not totally unreasonable for you to spend some time reviewing tactical problems… even when you have the watch.”

She stepped past him and seated herself in the command chair, and Diamato folded his hands behind his back while she ran her eyes over the readouts to catch herself up on the state of her command.

“Did Engineering find out what was causing that harmonic in Beta Thirty?”

“No, Citizen Captain.” Diamato was glad he’d checked the status of the after impeller room with Citizen Lieutenant Commander Hopkins less than fifteen minutes ago. Letting the Citizen Captain catch one less than fully informed was a seriously unpleasant experience, and Citizen Commissioner Addison wouldn’t do a thing to preserve one from the consequences. In fact, Diamato thought, he usually gets behind her and pushes when she comes down on someone.

“Um,” she repeated. Then she leaned over and tapped a command code into the touchpad on her chair’s arm. Her tactical repeater came on-line, and she frowned pensively at the data codes moving across the display. Diamato glanced inconspicuously over her shoulder and realized she was rerunning the same sim he’d been reviewing when she arrived. She let the one-on-one duel play through on a six-to-one time compression, then looked up so quickly she caught him watching her. He tensed for an explosion, but she only smiled.

“I see why you were so intent on this, Citizen Commander,” she told him, and waved him over to stand beside her chair, then restarted the sim again.

“I hadn’t realized at the time quite how neatly you pulled off this maneuver here,” she went on, freezing the display, and Diamato nodded cautiously. He’d been rather proud of the shot himself. It wasn’t one that was likely to prove practical in a fleet action, of course. Walls of battle didn’t take kindly to units which suddenly pitched up perpendicular to their original vectors while simultaneously rotating on their long axes and turning through a radical skew turn. Doing that usually caused Bad Things to happen when impeller wedges collided, but the sim had been a single-ship duel, not a fleet action, and the unorthodox maneuver had given him an up-the-kilt shot at his simulated opponent that had inflicted extremely heavy damage.