Infantry weapons damage in a space habitat. *Spoilers*

We learn in ITL that the infantry weapons of choice, a hand held rail gun rifle has a truly impressive range, and is supremely able to inflict massive damage to people or things. In TCH a full on infantry assault is launched on a space habitat by troops armed with these rail guns, and some additional advanced weapons. It seems to me that they would be tearing up people and their surrounding environments from all that high velocity weaponry, yet there is very little of that in the text. More along the lines of what we might expect from our modern day weapons of war. I wonder if that might be explained away as a dialing down of the rail gun's power? Not that that was in any way stated as such in the story, but is just my own effort to make the story make sense. Just a thought is all.