It has been said that a commander has the toughest job in combat, because after people are trained and plans are made, the commander has to sit back and watch, unable to do much to affect the outcome, while his people fight. In my very limited experience, that saying is a hundred percent bullshit. The commander does not have the toughest job, the toughest job is done by the grunts carrying rifles, exposing themselves to enemy fire. The grunts do the fighting and dying. That's the toughest job. The commander has the loneliest job, the job that makes you feel guilty and useless that you aren't out there on the front line, doing something useful for your buddies. After the combat is over, I always felt like things might have gone better if I'd been there, that maybe I'd have seen the enemy and shouted a warning before someone got shot, maybe I'd have killed the enemy before they got one of our guys. Maybe I could have made things better. Or maybe I'd simply get killed. Either way, I'd be doing something. What I did, after jacking Skippy in, was hold onto a wall  and try to follow the battles forward and aft on my zPhone, and it was beyond chaotic, I wasn't able to get a picture of what was happening until the fighting was over. So much for me 'commanding' anything.

Our losses were four dead and three seriously injured in taking the ship. Four dead and three injured out of twenty one in the assault teams. A third of our force was now gone or combat ineffective. In one battle. In taking one ship.

Take the ship we did, it was ours. Giraud had only one casualty in taking the ship's control center, Private Arun Kurien of the Indian Army died from being shot by one of the two Kristang who were blocking access to the control center. All the other casualties were in Chang's team that seized the engineering compartment. Chang's team had the toughest job, they had to kill five Kristang who were motivated and desperate to prevent their ship from being captured. Three of those Kristang were killed in the initial firefight when we had some advantage of surprise, the remaining two were much more difficult. One of them managed to get to a suit of powered armor, despite Skippy jamming the door of the locker where the suits were kept, this Kristang had the armor almost on and partly powered up, when three people fired blindly into the compartment, giving cover for Chang to throw in a grenade. The Kristang was tough, he was still trying to get the suit buttoned up after the grenade hit, it took concentrated fire to take him out.