An aging starship that is the last of it's kind within a fleet of modern warships has become a sci-fi trope at this point. In the case of Supercarrier, that ship is the Providence and it is not the only trope embraced right off the bat. Captain Keyes is a veteran of the first galactic war, and loved by the public, but he is hated by the rest of the military brass and that is why he captains the Providence. He has also just been assigned a first lieutenant to serve under him as a form of punishment to go along with a demotion for not following orders. That's three tropes so far but we better stop counting or we won't get to the actual story. Humanity has ruled the galaxy since winning the first galactic war by deploying Dark Tech (lol, what could possibly go wrong there) and the other races have started to resent us for it. Dark Tech allows our modern ships to do amazing things like create their own wormholes for travel and curve ordinance after they fire it, so it is a carefully guarded secret and shared with no one. We humans view ourselves as peacekeepers and believe that we use Dark Tech for the good of everyone, but the other races don't see it that way and they have had about enough of us. This is a powder keg of a situation just waiting for a spark...
Supercarrier - book one of the Ixan Prophecies