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It is the year 80 of the universal century, the first day of which was the end of the One Year War.
Humanity had moved the majority of its population into enormous colony cylinders in space at the LaGrange points of Sol before the start of the one year war. It was the first war in space and the first use of giant man-shaped machines of war, called Mobile Suits. The war began when the colony of Side 3, known as the Principality of Zeon, declared war on the Earth Federation with the stated cause of declaring freedom for Spacenoids from the rule of the Earth Federation. But the leadership of Zeon cared only for its own people and used deadly gas attacks on colony cylinders to empty them out for use by their own population, or outright destroyed colonies, killing billions. The Earth Federation retaliated with its own weapons of mass destruction in space, causing immense collateral casualties. The final use of WMDs had been the Principality of Zeon dropping an entire colony cylinder to earth from space, destroying the city of Sydney and permanently changing the climate for much of Asia and completely ruining the habitability of Australia. Half of all humanity died before a treaty was signed banning the use of WMDs and chemical weapons, and this was all in the first few months of the one year war.
But now the one year war that resulted in the extinction of fully half of humanity is officially over. The Principality of Zeon falls with the death of its autocratic leaders, the Zabi family, at the hands of the ace Zeon pilot Char Aznable "the Red Comet", and so the Republic of Zeon takes its place. The Earth Federation and the Republic of Zeon sign an armistice and the war officially ends. But, not all the fighting has ended quite yet...
The federation war hero Amuro Ray, pilot of the legendary mobile suit the Gundam, and his fellow crewmates from the now destroyed space carrier ship the White Base cannot relax just yet. While the leadership of the Principality of Zeon is dead, many pockets of Zeon soldiers fight on in the name of the dead Zabi family. The crew of the White Base are assigned a new and improved ship, The White Base Kai, given new crew to replace their losses during the war, and the Mobile Suit Gundam is replaced, before being sent on a mission of crushing leftover pockets of Zeon resistance. Months pass of relatively uneventful combat, the new White Base Kai and the replacement Gundam more than enough to destroy the odd guerilla fighter piloting outdated Zeonic Zaku II mobile suits, when the Earth Federation gives them a new mission...
It only takes a day or two to get to mars with the more powerful engines of the White Base Kai, plenty of time to patch up minor damage and relax. The new crew seem to be working well with the original White Base survivors as well. Eventually, the White Base Kai is nearing the specified coordinates. One of the sensor operators should be able to detect a structure at the coordinates.
Bright does not actually expect any trouble but he still orders level three battle stations plus deployment of the Gundam and both Guncannons since they'll likely enter the structure either way. Once everyone has a chance to prepare themselves he'll order the White Base closer in and call for the most thorough scan they can do.
There is some I field interference interfering with the scans due to use of Minovsky reactors, the kind commonly used in mobile suits and warships, but almost entirely concentrated in one spot instead of spread out, and not as strong as a reactor that had been running for a while would have produced. The interference is actually giving away the position of mobile suits since it hasn't had much time to spread, right inside the airlock of the structure on the surface, wich is much too small to fit a warship. The interference is stopping any good radar scans of the interior, however.
The door to the airlock on the surface begins to slide open, a mono eyed green Zeonic Zaku II mobile suit peeking its head out of the airlock to take a look, Machine gun still at its side. The giant war machine looking for all the world like a child peeking around a corner.
"Fraw Bow, tell Amuro and Kai not to shoot first. Then hail the Zaku." And into the phone "Battle Stations level one, but hold your fire."
The Zaku almost visibly flinches when it gets hailed and its monocular head swings around to notice the white base hovering overhead when it hears the hail, it raises its gun and a very shaky adolescent male voice can be heard yelling over the comms. "F-For the glory of Zeon! HAIL ZEON!" His voice breaking as he yells and clumsily charges forward, firing wildly towards the White Base. Even mobile suit sized machine guns cannot do much damage to the White Base from this distance, and the Zaku pilot seems to not even notice the Gundam and Guncannons on the ground.
He is clearly an utter non-threat. So Amuro will feel some regret at killing him on pure instinct, but thats what happens when you threaten the home of a traumatized Newtype.
The Zaku II explodes in a ball of pink mega particle smoke and shrapnel. Nothing else comes out of the Airlock for a long while, until a mobile suit sized gunbarrel with a white bedsheet tied to it waves out the airlock.
When the wait begins to stretch on Bright will contemplate what if anything he should have done differently. It is plausible Amuro's action was the actual best choice, and it was certainly within the scope of his orders. But it seems plausible they could have gained an advantage or at least costlessly avoided bloodshed if he had made the possibility of capturing the Zaku part of his orders.
All of this is set aside once the Zeon's respond.
"Fraw Bow, tell the pilots to stand by, then try to raise the base directly."
He'll also order two buggies and a landing party prepped.
The I field blocks weaker radio communication, even if the structure has a receiver to hear them, the Zeons might not have the power in their radio set up to punch through the interference and respond, and they cant beam laser communications at a receiver like they could at the now destroyed Zaku II unless the mobile suit waving the flag of surrender sticks more than just the barrel of its gun out the door.
Once a landing party drives up to the airlock door they will see a nearly nonfunctional Dom model mobile suit, missing one arm and part of one leg on the same side and much of the armour missing, the gun barrel holding the flag out the door is connected to a machine gun without its magazine. The pilot has left the cockpit and is leaning against the remaining leg of the mobile suit, himself also visibly heavily injured, a cast can be seen on one leg and bandages can be seen through his helmet visor. Two women in Zeon uniforms stand behind a glass wall looking in on the airlock from inside the structure, in a pressurized area and thus not wearing helmets. The shorter woman of the two being held back by the other as she shakes her fist at the arriving federal forces and yells at them, unheard due to the window separating them from the rarified atmosphere of mars.
Radio failing is completely unsurprising but it was worth a shot.
Bright and the two buggies advance into the base behind the Gundam, while the Guncanons stay to screen the White Base against any surprise attacks.
The first time the White Base captured anyone it a total mess, but after some time on cleanup duty the crew has something resembling an actual procedure for processing prisoners.
They give the screaming woman a second to see if she's accidentally revealing anything important. Assuming it is just the normal Seig Zeon claptrap, Bright will turn his attention to the sane one and give the spiel. Good treatment for cooperation, death for perfidy, Sayla and Job John will provide gender appropriate body searches and first aid. Oh and now that we are all nice and friendly, and clear that only one side is still armed you're going to tell us everything that is going on here.
The screaming woman is probably more accurately described as a girl now that she can seen close up, she can't be more than 15, Her uniform is a few sizes too big. Shes mostly screaming about how they killed Charlie, presumably the killed pilot, and what monsters they are. Nothing can be gained from her except curses and being spat on.
The injured pilot, who now the helmet is off you can see is maybe 30 and a clear veteran of the war, seems mostly resigned to his fate as a prisoner, just nods along to the standard spiel about treatment under the antarctic treaty. His cast and bandages are clearly not done by a trained medical professional and he seems relieved to be getting proper treatment, he jokes to the doctors that at least in feddie prison camps he will get better food than the nutrient paste that is all that their base had left. He tells the interrogators that he doesn't know much about what went on inside and he was just one of the planned guards and that his mobile suit had been shot up on the way there. He seems a little bitter but realistic about the pilot they had shot down, complaining that the commanding officer they had, had drafted and then filled the kids head with propaganda and zeal before leaving the base with everyone else under his command but the skeleton crew you saw now. He's fine giving away the size of the force that used to be stationed here that left a week ago, 4 Zaku II F type mobile suits in various states of repair, 2 prisitine Dom mobile suits and a Musai light carrier without much of its armor plating and an engine booster for added speed. He doesn't know where they went or even what this base was for, it was all kept top secret, him and the younger pilot were only left behind because he was injured and his mobile suit damaged and the younger pilot was barely trained.
Amuro is very aware that in retrospect the Zaku posed no real threat, and that he personally is good enough to have pulled normally impractical stunts like shooting the gun out of its hands. On the other hand the Zaku shot shot first, and a habit of not killing Zeon's as efficiently as possible wouldn't have served him well in the war. Also, and this can not be stressed enough the other guy was trying to kill his friends.
After some internal debate he will offer a sort of apology. It is simultaneously heartfelt, and pretty victim blamy to the extent a space nazi solider actively shooting at people can be considered a victim.
Sayla did not actually graduate from med school due to the war, but she's still a major step up in medical skills. And the White Base's sandwiches are great, at least by the standards of military food.
All of the prisoners can go to the White Base brig, except the sane woman. Who will still get sandwiches, but will also "volunteer" to help them explore the base.
The woman who was holding back the angry girl is at least not a child, like the dead pilot and the angry girl were. She is late teens to early 20s if one had to guess. When talked to by the white base staff she will actually volunteer to tell them about the base and help them explore.
As they enter the base through the airlock and take off their helmets. she turns to Sayla, who she feels safest talking to rather than these scary soldiers and the very very intense looking pilot boy. "I swear I'm not even a real Zeon soldier! I was an ancient languages student at Diekum college on side 3, I even supported the shift to a republic! but these men said I had to serve Zeon and shipped me off here to translate the ruins here. I haven't even finished my degree and they want me to decipher ruins on mars as if I'm going to be able to translate alien!" rambling a little and not really realizing this idle complaining would be important news to the federation. "It's not like ancient humans are going to be space travelling, first the war and now freaking aliens! I studied Sumerian and Hebrew, not Martian."
Get interrupted by Amuro asking rapid fire questions about Martian technology before she actually has a chance to speak.
"I'm not an engineer how would I know! they just dragged me down here to try and translate the squiggles on the big glowing rock they found, they hooked up a bunch of machines to it and showed me more squiggles on the screen like the ones on the rock, best I can figure out is maybe on and off, based on turning the glowing lights on and off when they return those symbols to it via their machines, and maybe the word star or star system because there's literally pictures of constellations next to those words, and like a smattering of other stuff. It's barely similar to even being structured like any language we know of, it's definitely not Sumerian I can tell you that. It's all right down the main elevator" Keying in the passcode to the elevator and letting them in. "Big spooky alien glowing rock underground, I've seen movies! Never Ever are big glowing things good, ever."
when the elevator arrives they are greeted with the scene of a big black obelisk with spooky blue glowing lines running through it in non natural patterns, surrounded by computers and other equipment. 
"I need my toolkit."
Amuro will begin examining everything, occasionally running theories by the linguist when there is writing near it.
Bright and the rest will do a quick sweep of the area to make 100% sure there are no more hidden Zeons. That done they will head back to the White Base to fetch more mechanics, a better camera, and Amuro's tools.
Bright will also have them maneuver to an area with slightly lower I field interference but still in sight of the base and attempt to raise Federation HQ.
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!