Captain Katerina Urosova, perched atop her BMD-9 Bear, was unphased by the loss of the point tank. She knew the Syntha would have a heavy reception planned for them. The Ikon was a necessary sacrifice to carry out the breaching manoeuvre and draw the first volley from whatever the Synths had on the other side of that bulkhead. For the briefest of moments Urosova dropped her eyelids in silent thanks and remembrance for the crew she sent to their certain deaths. She lifted her head and squinted down the smoke filled tunnel. Through the ragged ruin of the bulkheads, three Nemesis grav tanks hovered just beyond the burning wreckage of the point tank.
“My turn,” Urosova whispered, clasping her hand over the mike at her jaw so she didn’t broadcast that to the troops. She released the mike and issued her order.
“Counter Insurgency Teams Winter Red Three and Four. Desant Protocol. Move now!” In response to the the order two SCIT fireteams, trailing in the wake of the tanks, rushed forward and clambered up on to the hull of the second Ikon in the squadron. The Desant Protocol was rarely used these days and Urosova banked on this being a gap in the Syntha’s tactical knowledge. The robots had a playbook, and they were very good at picking the best play from the available options, but they had trouble coping when an opponent threw away the rules.
Urosova’s driver gunned the engine and she dropped down into the cabin, slamming the hatch over her head. The Command APC crunched over debris from the wrecked bulkheads and burst into the Syntha held command bay behind the Ikon, chain guns blazing. Two of the Syntha tanks swivelled their turrets to meet the threat, but the Ikon was on them in a rush. After their interception of the VASA point tank, they were vulnerable, exposed. The VASA tank pour pointed blank fire on the Syntha tank at the centre of the formation, while the SCIT teams desanded. One of them took the tank on the left flank and the other team raced under the ion bolts to attack the Nemesis at the centre.
The Suppressors in the SCIT teams carried limpet mines for precisely the purpose of assaulting armour, and as they swarmed up to the Syntha tanks, they primed the weapons with a twist of a handle on the top. In response to their proximity the Syntha tanks discharged their Tesla Fields, electrocuting they first few Suppressors to close on them. It wasn’t enough though, as the remaining VASA troops hurdled over their fallen comrades and slammed the magnetic mines onto the Nemesis’ hulls.
The suppressors threw themselves aside as the mines sank into the armoured skin of the SPOMM vehicles. In less than two seconds they melted into the tanks’ inner workings on glowing pads of ions, whereupon they detonated with a bright blue flash. The limpet mines produced a powerful localised electromagnetic pulse that also threw out radiation deadly to organics. Not that the latter was of any consequence when fighting Syntha, but the EMP was certainly enough to scramble their SPOMM brains and kill the delicate electrics inside their hulls. The two Nemesis tanks shuddered and powered down with mournful drone. Emitting sparks and smoke from the holes made by the mines, the two tanks lost their grav capability and collapsed to the deck with a clang. “Two-one to the organics,” Urasova mused grimly.