Spoilers for Between the Darkness and the Light
The Advanced destroyer group was still somewhat in the works when they hauled
it out to go after the fleet. They'd been expecting mainly to go after other
Earth ships (as was noted in the episode), and didn't count on exclusively
being confronted by Whitestars. Still, there were a lot of them here, and
they did a lot of damage by sheer force of numbers.
Corwin would be running the station in everyone's absence.
jms