I field interference can last for weeks, part of the peace with the republic of zeon included an agreement about not using Minovsky reactors around populated areas, radio is very important to civilian needs after all, so the need to manoeuvre out of range of it will be there for a while. But luckily mobile suit use was minimal and it does not take much distance to not have to rely on point to point laser comms anymore. Mars is about 10 light minutes away from earth right now so there is a big delay between a message and a response.

"This is Federation command, we are receiving you, what is the status of your mission?"

While Bright is hailing the federation, the Zeon linguist is still chatting away, shes very... stream of consciousness, maybe out of nervousness or maybe that's just how she is.

"I haven't even been allowed down here for months, and they wouldn't let me go home either. The last thing they showed me was little over a week ago, they were all 'tell us what these circles mean and what this lit up dot means', and I was like 'uhhh I don't even have to be a linguist to recognize the shape of all the planets orbital path, that's the solar system and the lit-up one is Pluto'. I thought space captains were supposed to know about... you know, space? so just a few days later they pack everyone into a Musai and leave the 4.... well I guess 3 now..." She looks sad for a brief moment but then puts back on her usual energetic mood. "Anyway they left the rest of us here and all packed up and flew off as fast as they could! And then you guys got here, and now here we are." She seems to ponder for a bit, finger on her chin. "You think anyone on your ship would let me borrow some clothes? I kind of hate this uniform, long pants! and thick material too." She turns to Sayla. "Even your uniform looks way more comfortable even if it is a bit... like the person in charge of uniforms certainly was a man with the uniform having a skirt like that." Gesturing to how short it was, and she keeps chatting about less relevant to the mission things, not really caring if she doesn't get a response.

"This is White Base we have secured the facility and taken 3 prisoners. Interrogation indicates that the majority of the Zeon forces, consisting of 4 Zaku II F type mobile suits, 2 Dom mobile suits and a Musai light carrier stripped of its armor and equipped with an engine booster, departed half a week ago. Destination currently unknown. The base contains a large amount of exotic technology that the remaining Zeon personnel claim no understanding of. Our personel have begun an examination, but not yet reached any conclusions. One of the Zeons claims to be a kidnapped civilian and that the technology was created by aliens...

She's also showing severe signs of mental instability so we are currently discounting this information. Is it possible to confirm if she was actually a linguistics student at Diekum college?"

Honestly she seemed more stressed than anything, but someone in her situation having a breakdown will sound a lot more plausible than aliens. He's seen the glowing rock himself and is still less than fully convinced about the aliens. But at the same time he can't just leave out what could be the most important part of his report. Once their own tech team has reported in, and HQ has had a chance to look into the girl's background they can get things settled.

The Federation runs the ID of all the prisoners who got captured, they all seem to be who they claim to be, at least according to normal publicly available side 3 records. Jacinda Sen a third-year ancient languages student is definitely someone who exists, top grades at Diekum college, and she looks like the ID photo from her school. The pilot and female soldier both check out as well. Federation command relays all of this back to the White Base. Along with a query for how exotic do they mean by exotic? like the Psycommu tech for newtypes Zeon had at the end of the war exotic? superweapon exotic? command is very worried about another solar array class superweapon.

Back in the ruins, Jacinda is trying to make her case to a disbelieving soldier.

"We radiometrically dated every single thing in this room, the big glow rock is over 50,000 years old, it can't be human! We didn't even have agriculture back then! We were still beating mammoths to death with rocks!"

She is very grumpy that someone would not take her seriously, she thought she was very serious!

In time it takes them to run the records and handle both ends of the light speed delay Bright hears back from Amuro and receives detailed pictures to forward to the Federation as proof he has not gone insane himself.

"Alien Exotic. I didn't believe it at first but you can see the photos and the attached written summary by our tech team. We still do not know the purpose of the technology present here, but further questioning of Ms.Sen suggests that the departed forces are headed for Pluto based on her interpretation of the image shown in figure 3 as a star chart."

The written report and photos are pretty strongly in favor of the aliens theory, but not super useful beyond that.

From under one of the desks; "She's right this is obviously alien, can you hand me the oscilloscope."

Sayla will try to placate her by discussing the possibility of replacement clothes only slightly hindered by their lack of selection.

Jacinda is absolutely petty enough to stick her tongue out at the disbelieving soldier when Amuro confirms she is right, and then happily chats about clothes with Sayla, for some reason she seems to really like Sayla even though Sayla acts as much the professional as any of the others. The other soldiers were mostly pretty large and dangerous looking male soldiers so that might have been why.

More importantly, because Amuro proved she was right to the soldier, she also helps him out even if she did get spooky intense vibes from him and would otherwise have stayed away. Helping by pointing out the glyphs for ON and OFF, and how some of the Zeon computers are connected to the obelisk and how they displayed even more glyphs and symbols. She wasn't a computers kind of person but she knew that's what those computers over to the right did. 

Federation Command must have taken a long while to look over the data because the reply takes a long time to return.

"Command believes the threat of a superweapon to be even greater with the data you have sent them, whether alien or not this technology is beyond ours and clearly dangerous if the Zeons were in such a hurry. White Base is commanded to collect all data and records in the base as quickly as possible and then make your way to this rendevous with all haste" The console shows the relevant coordinates. "Going full burn including using Minovsky reactions in inhabited space. Where you will be provided with an engine booster and a GM Sniper Custom mobile suit for long-range support in case the Zeons have more forces than expected there. We apologize for sending you all the way out there for a months-long trip out past even where the Jupiter energy fleet travels, but this threat cannot be ignored. You will bring the prisoners with you in case they have relevant experience about the exotic technology. We again apologize for sending you so far out."

The tone of voice changes from the one used to give orders. "Hey I've been your operator for this whole mission, this is wild huh? Ive been told this entire mission is classified and revealing it is treason! they can shoot you for that! crazy stuff going on. Even command feels guilty for their orders this time and command never feels bad about anything, I guess spending months stuck in space on just one ship, past where anyone can talk to you or come help seems worse to them than combat orders. So I'll see if we can swing you some officers luxury supplies for the whole crew, help keep morale up during the long trip, good luck White Base!"

Bright will forward the relevant prep commands to the crew then responds; "We have commenced data gathering and will launch in 45 minutes. Sending flight trajectory confirmation now." Fraw Bow forwards the relevant data.

"As for the base here should we leave it intact for future investigation or scuttle it on our way out?"

More informally; "Thanks for the supplies we'll take whatever you can spare. Ms.Sen has requested civilian clothing if you can find any in her size. She's been very cooperative and I think it will be better for everyone if she stops looking like a Zeon solider."

Amuro would really like more time to investigate, but him and the rest of the landing team will make it back in time for launch.

The Federation sends back commands for them to weld the airlock shut but leave the possible alien object intact, the federation will send its own team shortly. It also asks for personal requests from the crew for anything they want as supplies, within reason. Civilian clothes in miss Sens size is perfectly doable, and better food than the long shelf life vending machine style sandwich rations is already planned for. 

The easiest solution for the landing team to collect all the data is just to rip all the computers out of the walls and take them with them, every hard drive in the mars base and every specialized looking equipment, even if nobody knows what it does, is loaded onto the White Base just in case it's useful.

Bright will see that carried out and get people to forward their requests via Fraw Bow.

The kids want lots of sweets and toys. Fraw Bow includes some of this while replacing others with somewhat healthy kid focused requests.

Kai has taken a liking to the image of having a fancy cigar in his mouth and sipping champaign so he requests some of each, even though he doesn't smoke at all and only slightly drinks. He does refrain from putting in a request for more of the "aviator glasses" he found last time he had shore leave.

Amuro and the other technical people all request a lot of equipment that should help with their mission, most of which was already going to be included. After talking to Jacinda they will add some books on the rather speculative field of xenolinguists and the more concrete history of attempts at reconstructing past languages.

Beyond that they're a lot of requests for the typical "good stuff" in terms of popular food and uniform parts that are hard to find in good sizes. The crew also collectively requests some library and rec room upgrades since they will be out of dock so long.

While veterans are hardly going to let an opportunity like this go to waste, the requests are more subdued then they might otherwise be for a two reasons. One the crew is well aware of the space constrains they are under, and two they are already pretty well supplied. In particular the various civilian ports they have docked in while chasing Zeon remnants had much more "fun" things than the military, which probably had Kai in mind when inventing uniforms. And while the crew is hardly rich they did have their war backpay and the rather mysterious gold bars Bright somehow got for them to play around with.

As the ship travels to the rendezvous with the supplies and booster, the information warfare trained crew (who were pretty useless in combat due to I field interference being put out by war machines) finally had a chance to shine, getting and collating and organizing every scrap of data in the Zeon drives, and avoiding protocols meant to wipe the data when accessed by someone without the right codes, really doing a great job and not losing any of it. Plenty of stuff to pass onto the Federation for analysis during the rendevous. 

Eventually, the White Base comes into view of the Federation rendezvous, the engine booster is almost as big as the whole ship! 

Amuro will of course stick his nose into the booster before it is set off. He quickly realizes that it is made from mobile suit reactors, and enough of them for a literal small army. When he tells this to the rest of the crew it finally sinks in just how terrified HQ is of the potential super-weapon they are chasing.

All the supplies are loaded onto the ship, the hangar is now very crowded with supply boxes, ships do not usually travel this long without resupply, there are always emergency nutrient pills to last a month if left adrift in space but the crew cannot be expected to live on those for the trip, so bulky luxury food for multiple months for the whole crew is loaded on as well as a whole box of media collected from the crew of the supply ship who decided to donate their personal collections. There has never been a trip this far out by a federation ship so a feeling of patriotic comradery overtook the crew of the supply ships when they heard about this mission, even if they did not get to know WHY the White base was going out that far.

Along with the supplies the White Base has to fit in an entirely new mobile suit to add to the 3 already on board. The GM Sniper II is on paper as strong as the original Gundam in both power output and maneuverability, With specialized cameras for long-range sniping and a powerful long-range beam cannon that shot much further than the Gundams medium range beam gun, but its ammo capacity was much smaller as a tradeoff. Though its stats were near equal to the original Gundam, it did not have the AI the Gundam does that enabled it to pull off insane manoeuvres, and the new replacement Gundam Amuro currently had was even more agile than the original Gundam due to an improved Minovsky reactor and so outclasses the GM Sniper II. The GM Sniper II truly was a machine for Ace pilots or the legendary Newtypes who had improved reaction speed compared to normal humans. It did not come with a pilot so Captian Bright has to pick who will pilot it.

This is a very difficult decision, but he eventually goes with Hayato. Sayla is a very tempting choice since she is more likely to actually be a Newtype, but she is needed for the G-fighter and with no learning AI he wants the new GM to go to someone with plenty of mobile suit experience. Kai is also tempting, and would probably make slightly better use of it, but at this point has really mastered the Guncanon so Bright doesn't want to reassign him.

Finally Job John will get the spare Guncanon.

The booster is fitted, the supply crew undocks. The supply crew can be seen saluting from the bridge windows of their Salamis cruiser at the White Base as it departs. All the supply crew were told is it was a top-secret mission as far out as Pluto, but this is the near-legendary White Base so they are sure its important, and nobody has ever gone out that far before, so they are showing their respect to the White Base.

For the captured Zeons Jacinda doesn't mind this trip so much, she is much less nervous and rambling around the White Base crew and is assigned to poring over the language data that was collected. The captured pilot is fine being confined to a room, it's nicer than what he would expect a Federation prison camp to be and the food certainly is better. The angry girl calms down but still has to be confined to a cell, refuses to leave on the promise of good behaviour in fact, but the pilot and Jacinda visit her to keep her company often enough.

And off they go after the Zeon army remnants to Pluto, to stop whatever it is they are up. It is going to be a VERY long trip.

The kids, and for that matter the adults that aren't busy actually flying the ship like Bright, Mirai and the operators will enthusiastically return the salute.

Even with the booster the trip lasts for months. Making things worse, the White Base is effectively overstaffed for much of the trip.

On paper the 13th Autonomous Corps is on the small side to crew a Pegaus class ship. And that is with the accidental inclusion of the kids. Three war orphans who have been tagging along since their parents died and they were defacto adopted by Fraw Bow.

This showed during the war when even the kids frequently found themselves covering other peoples' roles.

However, those numbers and reality were both for a combat intensive posting. Without near daily firefights, as well as the accompanying repairs, and need to cover for casualties it would be quite possible for the crew to get bored. Luckily they have ways to fill the time.

One of the newer crew is unpacking a crate specifically marked for the kids and is currently surrounded by the kids who are wondering what they would get. The lid gets pried off and revealed are...

A bunch of models of the various mobile suits and vehicles of the Federation, meant for an old school tactical war table? The crewman supposes they'd make decent toys once assembled, handing the kids the boxes with the unassembled plastic and metal models of various military hardware.

"Here you go, you might need some help putting them together but you can fun playing with these Gundams and GMs and Zakus, ooohh look they even have little buggies and tanks and fighter jets, isn't that fun kids?"

"Yeah that looks cool."
"We can put them together ourselves. It will be fun."
"Thanks mister."

One broken Gundam arm later...

"We should ask Amuro for help.

"Yeah he fixes real Gundams."