The orders are transmitted to the marines and they spring to action.
As the corridor lights up with the familiar blasts of the battle rifles, two marines sprint across the smooth featureless tiles comprising the inner hull of the ship, arriving unharmed at the solitary pillar.
While the rest of the marines continue filling the air above the Uarks with energy, a squadmate aims his gun carefully at the fuel line and pulls the trigger.
*BOOM*
The feed from the marine at the pillar is interrupted with a flash of white and a resounding explosion.
"What happened to the feed?!"
"Try secondary channels!"
"Check for feed damage in sectors 3b through 7z!"
"Loop through all available channels with the original point of origin!"
"Have you tried compensating for hypertransmission feed damage in sector 5g?!"
Moments later, the monitor comes back to life with a slightly distorted and almost still image of Athen's sun. A peaceful image, really. Separated from the chaos behind it; simply uncaring.
Over the viewtable, a 3d window displaying a still line appears.
"Vitals appear to be flat. Is the suit intact?"
"Damaged, but intact!"
"Try remotely starting emergency medical procedures."
A couple seconds pass, then the vital signs of Tills begin resuming as normal.
"Tills is coming to!" someone yells.
The image of the sun slowly rotates around to bring the Uark ship back into view as it seemingly flies away from the camera. A gaping hole is present where the battle took place, but the rest of the ship seems intact. Floating bodies are scattered in the space around Tills as pieces of debris fly by.
Beside you, Smith looks at the image with a worried expression. Even with your experience, you know that a fuel line shouldn't have caused that big of an explosion.
On the main monitor, the status of each suit transponder is overlaid on top of the feed. Every transponder but Tills' shows "N/A", meaning that the suit transponder is erroring. Without the transponders, you don't know if anyone else is alive.
Mission Status
Objective: Evacuate squad/Investigate ship.
6 out of 7 squad members unaccounted for.
Tills
-Damaged EVA Suit - Tills' suit is rather damaged, but the important parts are still present - thrusters seem to be intact, oxygen scrubbers are online, and there are no detected punctures anywhere.
-U.E.F. Battle Rifle – Tills' Battle Rifle was luckily holstered at the time of the explosion, and the magnetic attachment system is still operating just fine.
-1 Grenade