You tell Greg to hurry up fixing the terminal, and tell Reg to take a position on the catwalk. You can tell Gordon to get up there once he's finished. You tell Mark to get in cover, while Reg rips off a beam from the catwalk handrails, and slides it into the door, keeping it shut.
Gordon shouts, "Got it!" and goes up to join Reg on the catwalks. You walk over to the communication relay, and set it up to the I.P the Highlanders gave you.
You explain the space station is in pieces, likely torn to shreds by a Dreadnought or bigger, and this brings silence to the end of their line.
"Is it still there?" They ask.
You reply, no, it is not there.
You hear a muffled shout, and a even more frantic response. "Do you know who attacked?"
"No." You reply, anxiously looking at the door.
"Have you encountered enemy resistance?"
"We don't know, there is a squad of heading towards our position, we don't know the nationality.
"If friendly, recruit and use them to assist you. If not friendly, kill them quickly. You need to gather information on this Dreadnought, as we suspect it is part of a large invasion force. Your pay will be doubled, hell, tripled if you can let us know exactly what's going on."
You have a bad feeling about this.
Eventually, the doors burst open, and the squad is met with a host of raised weapons. "Stop, state your allegiance!"
"Highlander." Was the reply, but you don't lower your guns. The squad consists of about 5... no, 6 men, and they do indeed have the Highlander markings on them.
"Where's the rest?" You ask, standing up from your cover.
"They're engaged in the other sections of the ship. We had just managed to nail this part down when we saw you... mercenaries enter the comms room." The man said, and judging from the insignia on his shoulder, he is the squad leader.
"If we are mercenaries, why do you assume we are Highlander allegiance?" Mark asks, and gets a dirty look from Greg.
"You haven't shot us yet, have you?"
After having a talk with the Highlander squad, you learned the exact number of marines on each part of the station. On the comms part, there are the 6 you see before you. The hangar, with the weakest field, has 10, and is currently engaging a large number of enemies, and the medium sized part, with the strongest field, used to have 9, but they went dark.
"Who is attacking?"
The squad leader replies, "It's Kapellan Empire, for sure. But what strikes me as odd... is that Landon over here swears he saw a couple Sol uniforms."
You are taken aback, "Are you sure?"
"He's sure." The squad leader says, "Not me."
You take that into consideration. You have a confirmed attacker, you tell Greg to go communicate that fact to the Highlanders, minus the part where Sol has any possibility of being involved. Only one man saw it, and he seems shell-shocked as hell.
"Do you know how many ships attacked?" You ask.
"The piece with the largest field has all sensor data. Our squad over there went dark, so if we need to figure out who attacked, we need to go there. I bet the Kapellans are trying to delete it."
"What about our guys in the hangar?" One soldier asks.
"They can wait." The leader replies, though doubt shows on his face.
Do you go and retrieve the data, or do you go assist the marines in the hangar? If you go one way, you will definitely lose the other. While the database might have limited data on the ships, in the hangar, there might be some pilots, who would have seen for themselves the actual fleet.
Go one way or the other, go get data, and know something about the attacking fleet, or go to the hangar, save the marines and whatever pilots might reside there, and possibly one of them can tell you how many ships there were. Either way, you aren't getting an exact number on frigates, if your fears are right and this is a massive attack force, but you could hope to learn how many of the big fish there are.
COMBAT INFO
Greg - Handgun - Light Exo Armor - Simple tools - No injuries.
Reg - Prototype rifle - Heavy Exo Armor - Grenades - Just a scratch.
Mark - Submachine gun - Light Exo Armor - Medical supplies - No injuries.
Gordon - Prototype Rifle - Medium Exo Armor - Grenades - No injuries.
((I have a question for you guys. Is this becoming too story/word intensive, and you'd like me to lessen up a bit, or keep it the way it is?))