The Raptor made a strange, eerie screeching noise as it flew by - at least, that's what it probably sounded like; it maked that noise in an atmosphere, so it probably does in space too. The largest fleet ever assembled, from all planets in the Pela system besides Osiris (the closest to the star, and therefore, the hottest) was directed toward the equally massive Centauri fleet. Even the PPS was put on high alert, should this fleet fail to neutralise the threat.
As with any war, the Pelagians stated their objective as to "neutralize all enemy ships, and conquer the enemy planet". Only a handful of wars didn't have this objective, and even then most in that handful still had one of them. The Centauri and Pelagian ships were almost exact opposites: the Pelagians preferred having either extreme; large or small. There were few "medium sized" ships in the fleet. The Pelagians also had very Euclidean ships - they had straight edges, and even the central pod of the Raptor wasn't a perfect circle. Most ships had dark colors also. Only the capital ships had a bright color (red), and even then it was just two stripes down the center.
The Centauris, on the other hand, had flowing, beautiful ships. They were fishlike, much as their people, and were a bright blue color with stripes of purple and navy all across it. Even their guns didn't protrude like the Pelagians'. They fit into the wings shape. Yes, wings are another difference. The Pelagian's ships weren't aerodynamic, because they needn't be. The Centauris, who patrolled the skies of a planet rather than the ground like their enemy, used aerodynamic shapes to save money. The Centauri ships were much cleaner - most relied on solar or battery power unlike the nuclear and ion engines of their contemporary. In fact, the Pelagian ships even had portholes to shove out nuclear waste on their large ships. In a nutshell, the Centauris could be compared to spacefaring Indians, and the Pelagians to spacefaring eighteenth century Europeans.