Relv sat in his cramped Commander's quarters poring over the files on his crew. The new Abarath was a devastating war machine, but it had little in the way of comfort for its occupants, even its Commander.
"Little wonder they assigned me here," he thought. After everything he had seen in the last month, while they brought the ship up to operational status, it was crystal clear to him what their role in the fleet was. They were to be at the pointy end of things laying down as much damage and destruction as they could as fast as they could until they were destroyed.
Little need to provide too much in the way of comfort or living facilities to do that. The Admiralty had even handpicked the crew to best perform it. They were all brilliant in their own specific ways, all driven to succeed and all young. Every single one had been accelerated through their training and was under the normal active duty age, just like he had been back on the original Abarath.
They had no actual experience yet they had all the confidence of and naivety of youth to believe their skills would conquer all. He cursed loudly and flung the stack of holographic files hard at the bulkhead. The Fleet Admiral had handed him the perfect punishment; a suicide mission to be carried out by a crew more than eager.
Relv cursed under his breath. He did not fight for the better part of his life to be part of the fleet just to die in the opening moments of battle. This put him in a quandary. If he tried overtly to work against their mission the Fleet Admiral would have him removed. With the crew having been picked for him he had no way of knowing if any of them were actually planted to spy, so even acting covertly he had to be extraordinarily careful.
Up until now all he had been doing was training his crew hard and pushing them to their limits. If their skills were to keep any of them alive they would need to be the best of the best. With the fleet due to depart within a month he had now run out of time. It was now or never if he was going to risk all and shake things up.
He pondered for about the tenth time in as many minutes as to whether it was worth risking his command on such a gamble and once again came to the conclusion that his command was worth nothing if there was not at least a fighting chance at keeping his crew alive.
There was a knock on the bulkhead and Relv drew back his privacy curtain. Lieutenant Ibek was standing at attention. Relv stood from his compact desk next to his equally compact bunk and returned the Lieutenant's salute.
"Orders have just come through the fleet-com for today's combat exercise sir."