He got hit with a projectile from the railgun of the enemy space ship.
Their fighting is with torpedo, rockets, railgun and the occasional nuke. It isn't super high tech more plausible what will happen to humans if in a few hundred years we discovered super speed aka 'hyper' driver (it is actually a fusion drive nerd out). It is very cool and a lot of it based on real science and not anything to freaky it is down to earth stuff noting too fancy.
A bit dodgy until they find their footing needs 3-4 eps then they take off. You will come to love the acting and the freaky South African accents used by the Belters
Best space Sci Fi out there for years by the end of season 1 you will want to jump into season 2.
Trust me you are over the hump every episode gets better and better and it all connects you like Mike well just you wait for the Mike of this show she rocks. Stick with it the heavy lifting has been done... seriously this is a great show puts Discovery and Picard to shame and even tops Orville but that one is comedy, satire etc others check-boxes to worry about.
