Damn, it's gotten REAL.

She took her helmet off early, I think.

I noted that as well.

Some folks have psychological quirks about having their heads or mouths covered up. We had a guy that just couldn't wear respirator masks for a minute longer than he absolutely had too. We even bought him a unit that had a battery powered fan and filter in a belt pack that blew the air into the mask way more than he could ever breathe, and he still kept removing it because he felt like he wasn't getting enough air.

I know that feeling all too well.

In this case, its all over. Some years later, after various changes in situation, Erma would often simply not suit up for action.

Fatalism?

I jsut think that there might be pinholes from high velocity shrapnel, ro aerosoled solvents sue to impact with lines and storage, and smoke from possibler electrical fires behind the panels, that may take a few minutes to appear.

I remember in one space tactical game where the combat is much as you described,
that the interior spaces were depressurized to avoid explosive decompression due to perforating habitable area walls, and also to not feed fires that may develop during damage. It seemed wiser to stay on ones suit and breath canned air for a while until the interior checked out as safe.

Fatalism, very much so.

Robots deal with leaks very quickly, but there is something to be said for a bit of caution. These ships have a minimum of potentially dangerious plumbing, and most of that is outside the living spaces, and everything is pointedly non-flammable. What little plumbing there is is mainly water, potable, sewage, and environmental, thermal management and CO2 sink. Then an air line and separate O2 line. A vacuum line, though only short venting runs. No hydraulics.

I am curious. how much of the internal storage of the water is frozen? I would think that a hypervelocity impact would cause a large hydrostatic event in the watr storage? wouldn't liquid water cause some maneuvering issues? (if we have a 1 ton per crewman weight of waster, even in baffled tanks?

The bulk of the water is distributed throughout the various staterooms and per level processors, not some big tank/s. No one tank is likely to be a ton or so, only about one meter cubed.

1 cubic meter of water is one tonne though (1000kg).

And most of the tanks are going to be that or smaller.

This *really* underscores how different an environment space is from nautical and land combat. Your space combat scenes are what have inspired and informed my own writing for the past twenty years!

And it's just kinetics in action with some AI thrown in, but yes, I think most of the people who know this stuff don't write and draw/direct compelling schemes using it. :)

Ah yes, and here it is, proper hard sci-fi space combat decades before The Expanse.