Ships like the Hecate, Titan, and Anemoi are roomy and luxurious - quite literally flying cities unto themselves. One could live quite comfortably on such a vessel for years, possibly even decades. Crew quarters are nicer than some apartments planetside, complete with private baths and panoramic window-like displays.  It's basically paradise on a spaceship.

And then there are hulls like the Bellerophon: The alliance's attempt to build a warship that is just a flying gun, and nothing else. The crew of a Bellerophon is another gun-part, a wetware fire control system. There is no room for elevators, so the decks are conjoined by ladders. A lot of places inside the hull are not even gravitized, marked only with blue hazard stripes on the floors, walls, and ceilings.

The mess hall of the Marcus Glaive is an extraneous niche between a beam capacitor and a cryogenic slurry manifold. One wall is hot to the touch, and the opposite wall is so hazardously cold, it's covered by a protective aluminum grate. The room is only gravitized so that food does not float everywhere.

They discuss anything and everything. 

Serkr keeps spirits high, and hope alive. He tells them every detail imaginable of the UEF war effort. Every freighter they kill means another squadron of UEF fighters have to take off without enough grimlers or paveways to go around. There is a list of UEF frigates on a bulletin board - every time they damage one, they mark the date it will be repaired and back in the field.

But one topic dominates the murmur of the mess hall today: Treason. Serkr is definitely not playing by the book and obeying the proper chain of command.

Lieutenant Hirau vocalizes to the admiral what the entire crew fears: "Sir, we're operating in direct violation of our standing orders. We will face court-martial as soon as we arrive back in Delta Serpentis."

The mess hall goes silent for a moment.

"Only if we lose the war," Serkr replies confidently.

"What makes you so certain?"

"Because the security council cannot afford to bicker over the details of Earth's surrender. The Vasudan Imperium is the economic engine that propels the GTVA - and they know it. The Vasudans came within a hair's breadth of forcing the security council to the negotiating table two months ago."

"Really? Why didn't they?"

"Steele convinced them that the threat exigency initiative wasn't a colossal waste of money, and the program designed to destroy a third Shivan invasion could obliterate the UEF in the span of a few weeks."

"And we saw how that worked out: He's dead, and now Delta Serpentis is getting antimatter-bombed into oblivion by the Toutatis."

"The security council has probably already been dissolved," Admiral Serkr smiled. "And I am friends with the most powerful individual in the GTVA."

"Secretary-general Toqueville?"

"Khonsu II. So when we pull this victory out of our ass, and succeed where our better-equipped superiors failed, we will be the greatest heroes in human history. That's what the GTVA needs: Heroes. Not politicians pretending to be warriors."

Serkr shares his vision for a GTVA that upholds freedom. It's a vision that Khonsu-II apparently shares. He tells them that freedom is the point of existing. Existing only to exist, spreading only to spread, that's a disease. That's intelligent cancer. That's what the Shivans hunt and exterminate.
