Baptism of Fire (Part 1 of the Fall of Virikal Trilogy)
an excerpt

Now for the first time in two thousand years, the Galactic Alliance prepared to go to war. More ships were arriving every day, by now some from the furthest reaches of the Alliance; as the fleet grew, Elarada spent more and more time in closed sessions with the Supreme Council, debating strategies and going over intelligence.
A number of extremely fast one- or two-man scout ships had been dispatched along the path of the attacks to spy out any Zilennian bases; while their reports were awaited, the growing fleet continued its exercises and practice manoeuvres.

It was eight days after the first of the scouts were sent out, and sixteen days into 3722, that the first reports began to trickle back. One of the ships had discovered a listening post of Zilennian design on the edge of Alliance space, intercepting and relaying massive amounts of Alliance communications.
As Elarada said before the Council, “It looks like the listening post was unstaffed, but had breathable air; our scout was able to dock with it and sneak on board. There he hacked into the computer systems, found out where all the information was going, and sabotaged the post. This is it: we've got the destination for our first strike!”
She grinned for the first time since before Kareshen's death; finally something was going as planned!

Later that day she came up to the command centre to watch the day's exercise. About a hundred of the Alliance’s newest ships and less experienced crews had divided into two squadrons, their weapons set to practice mode, and they were holding a mock battle. As Elarada watched, one squadron split into three smaller groups, moving around their opponents in a pincer formation, while retaining a loose enough arrangement to evade incoming fire. The surrounded opponents opened fire, scoring hits on many of the englobing ships, but they were simply outmanoeuvred and one by one the computers recorded simulated damage to all the second squadron with an estimate of forty percent casualties; compared to fifteen percent on the attackers. A few final exchanges of fire took place and then -
- one of the ships exploded. And it wasn't a simulated explosion. The weapons fire hit and the ship's defences went down and it just blew apart. In seconds nothing was left, but a spinning cloud of debris. And the shocked looks of everyone in the command centre.