Inside Scylla, the walls of the coring chambers and access conduits had ears in a very real sense. And eyes, and phase signature detectors, broad spectrum sensors and a host of other surveillance and monitoring equipment. As a clandestine Syntha mining operation, on an asteroid orbiting a black hole in the Nemed Sector, the military presence was necessarily low key. The reason for all secrecy was that the asteroid was shot through with veins of Neutronium, formed by it’s proximity to the black hole. This was a substance associated with theoretical WMDs and its refining and use was banned under numerous galactic treaties. VASA’s agents had somehow got wind of the operation, and now tank squads supported by Suppressors moved through the wide access tunnels. Explosions and carbine fire echoed around the honeycomb of struts and conduits as they disabled comms and sensors by brute force, en route to the cavernous system of vaults at the centre of the rock.
NAA-49813-i, the Alpha in charge of defence at the facility, was an advanced SPOMM locked into a Persephone transport chassis. It monitored the progress of the VASA Protectorate’s incursion, logging available personnel, ordinance, method of approach and general threat level. It cross referenced them with the the status of available Syntha forces in the area of operation and environmental variables such as where the covered approaches lay, where the elevated positions and the best interlocking fields of fire were situated. The Alpha’s quantum computing capable SPOMM brain ran several thousand tactical scenarios based on its analysis. The scenario with the best outcome moved to the top of the list and the Alpha synched to the Beta SPOMMs slaved to its command, disseminating its battle plan. The Betas in turn interpreted their own roles in the imminent conflict and ran through the best options for completing the objectives the Alpha had tasked them with. Then they in turn passed their commands down to the base of the network, which was occupied by cells of standard military grade SPOMMs.
The service tunnels at the far end of the cargo chamber buckled inwards and the rocks around the frame cracked to rain down fine dust and grit. Three Nemesis Tanks glided between stacks of mag-locked crates of raw Neutronium ore to intercept the invaders. At the next impact, the frame gave way and the bulkheads clattered to the floor. In the wake of this destruction the bulk of a KV-18 Ikon pushed into the bay, its heavy treads crunching over the rubble and grinding it to gravel.
At the Alpha’s signal, the Nemesis tanks opened up on the VASA tank with their Starfire Cannons. Boiling lances of plasma scorched the Ikon’s surface. It returned fire with its Ion Cannon, but to no avail. The Syntha tanks concentrated their fire on the Ikon’s turret, causing a catastrophic failure of the main weapon’s beam generator. The force of the resulting blast detached the turret from the Ikon’s hull, lifting it several metres into the air, before it flipped over and landed next to the tank with a resounding clang. Fire and smoke licked up from the tank’s cabin, beneath where the turret had sat. Impassive sensors around the cargo chamber picked up the screams, the hiss and pop of cooked flesh, and the bright flare of organics subjected to the wick effect, and relayed them to the Alpha. It deemed this result a success within expected parameters.