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The Prometheans currently had only three goals in life: Expand the colony, create new colonies, and make the colonies defensible. They would go to whatever means necessary to accomplish these goals in the fastest and most efficient manner possible. The resultant aggressive expansionism and industrial mining naturally put them at opposition with the elementals who had believed for eons that they ruled this planet.
While the Prometheans were not as creative as the other sentient species in the universe, they were resourceful and industrious, and Teknall had given them enough innovativeness to adapt and invent. The new directive had changed many things about how colonies were arranged. Density had been reduced somewhat so that a rampaging elemental would not do as much damage. Carriers frequently flew around the colonies, scouting for any sign of hostile entities. A clear defensive perimeter was present around every colony and mine, keeping a buffer zone between potential hostiles and the manufacturing districts.
And while the Prometheans were not built for fighting, that did not stop them from trying.
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The hydrocarbon elemental surged up from the lake, forcing its way into one of the Harvesters who were siphoning and distilling the lake, and burst it apart from the inside. The other Prometheans fled, departing as quickly as they could (which, for most of them, wasn't very fast). All of them, that was, except a single Manipulator. It had picked up a gas canister and was advancing upon the elemental as quickly as its legs would carry it.
The elemental seeped out of the burst Harvester and towered up over the Manipulator. It said something haughty in the strange tongue used by the djinn, then surged forwards towards the Manipulator. At that moment, the Manipulator twisted a valve on the gas canister and its colourless contents hissed out. The elemental engulfed the Manipulator, but in doing so became mixed with the gas that had just been released. It was a strange gas that it was unfamiliar with, but it immediately realised that this gas was bad for it.
The gas was pure oxygen. With hydrocarbons and oxygen blended together, it only took a spark to cause the elemental to violently explode into a fireball.
After confirming that the elemental was gone, the Prometheans returned to their stations and Manipulators moved in to salvage the destroyed Harvester and repair the scorched Manipulator.
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The activity in the mining colony was interrupted by a loud explosion from the outskirts. A burrowing earth elemental had triggered a buried landmine, and had been obliterated by the ensuing explosion. That earth elemental had been unlucky. The others avoided the traps.
The passage of the others did not go undetected, though. Arrays of seismometers detected the faint tremors of the passing stone djinn, and actively triangulated their positions. Bomb-laden Carriers were launched and circled above where the djinn were hiding, waiting for their ambush.
The elementals soon surfaced amidst the Promethean Processors of the colony and started to wreak havoc. The Carriers swooped in and did not hesitate to drop their payloads upon the elementals. The high explosives ripped through djinni and Promethean alike. It was over in seconds. While the bombing run had caused severe collateral damage, its swiftness had ensured that the damage was localised. To the colony as a whole, it was merely a scratch.
~~~~
The cyclonic form of Skylord Aurora approached the Promethean outpost colony. Lightning crackled between her billowing clouds of ammonia and methane. And scurrying around her was an army of elementals of all sorts, members of a coalition formed to combat these metallic intruders. The robots had been getting smarter and stronger every day, developing new tactics at every encounter, so Aurora was leading the charge to ensure that her hegemony would remain intact.
As the edge of her army approached the colony, the dull thud of distant mortars rang out, lobbing incendiary shells filled with thermite into the massed hydrocarbon elementals. Explosive shells also bombarded the ranks of elementals, stone and ice among them. When the burrowing earth elementals approached the border, buried charges detonated and killed those who had led the subterranean charge. Lesser air elementals which swept ahead were targeted by cannons firing concussive explosives set to detonate mid-air. Over the battlefield flew Carriers dropping bombs upon the elementals. For those who got through the gauntlet of explosions, a charge of Manipulators and Harvesters who had been modified to be somewhat better suited for melee combat met them.
Although the elementals took heavy losses in this initial charge, the Promethean border had been breached, and the Prometheans were starting to take losses too. From the unusually large size of the invasion force, it was possible that the elementals could have razed the colony without Aurora's direct intervention, although there would have been no proper army left over to fight the hundreds of other colonies, many much better defended.
Aurora had not been idle in this time; she had billowed into a cumulonimbus, and with the generated electric charge she unleashed a bolt of lightning upon one of the Carriers, detonating its entire payload and scattering shrapnel across the battlefield. The other Carriers, identifying the superior threat, all turned and flew towards Aurora. The Skylord knew what they intended to do, and commanded her subordinate wind djinn to intercept them.
This was not the first time air elementals had fought with Carriers. In the first battles, the Carriers were defenceless, generally unable to outrun the air elementals and with no reliable way to harm them short of self-destructing. The combat-designated Carriers soon received upgrades to deal with the issue. Their jet engines were made much more robust, so that weaker air elementals attempting to interfere with them would simply be shredded and incinerated. And they were equipped with short-range flamethrowers as a means to harm the elementals.
However, the servants of a mighty Skylord were powerful wind djinn in their own right. The Carriers started to fall, being tossed aside. Aurora herself launched a couple more bolts of lightning at them, and it was not long before the airspace had been cleared of Carriers.
Aurora rolled forwards into the colony. She slammed into the defending line of Prometheans with the force of a hurricane, toppling some but not all of them. The high mass and low profile of the Harvesters and Processors meant that simple wind would need to be extremely strong to blow them over. Aurora had more important things to do than waste her breath fighting these lowly robots herself.
Her clouds spread out over the colony. Mortar fire exploded within her, and though it harmed the Skylord she weathered it. From Aurora precipitation fell in giant droplets of liquid hydrocarbons, and when these droplets hit the ground they did not scatter but instead formed up into many hydrocarbon elementals, which proceeded to surge about the colony and cause considerable damage. They focused their fury upon the mortars, and were supported by lightning bolts from Aurora. The wind djinn swept around the roads of the colony and scattered and Prometheans trying to move around and support the defence of the colony.
Once the mortars had been taken out Aurora was free from harassment. She turned her attention to the Nexus which towered in the middle.
promethean.N000739: Warning! Colony defences destroyed.promethean.N000739: Warning! Destruction imminent.promethean.N000739: Uploading data about Enemy No. 001415 ("Storm elemental, colossal")Lightning arced from Aurora to the Nexus. While the bolts temporarily disrupted its communication and sensors, the Nexus was well-grounded electrically, so was largely unaffected by the lightning. Aurora sent the rest of the elementals to swarm the Nexus.
The Nexus put up a fair amount of resistance in its final struggle. Every floor of the Nexus was filled with industrial assembly equipment which could be used to attack intruders, and each floor was filled with half-finished Prometheans which could be jury-rigged into improvised weapons. But with its walls breached and the elementals swarming, it was only a matter of time before the elementals reached the Nexus' core and ripped apart its computer brain and fusion reactor.
promethean.N000739: Warning! Enemy is attacking the core.promethean.N000739: Error: Fusion core damaged. Power failure imminent.promethean.N000739: Error: Computational unit dam-ged. Da-a co-rup-ed.promethean.N000739: Er-or: -------------------------------------promethean.N000735: Error: Communication failure with N000739. Last known location: [3.023 32.932]~~~~
The elemental threat was becoming too great for Teknall to ignore. Even without Skylord Aurora's campaign, the elementals were providing enough resistance to considerably delay the growth of the Prometheans. And elemental lords like Aurora were powerful enough to overwhelm the ramshackle weaponry the Prometheans had managed to throw together. Teknall had given the Prometheans some time to develop their own tactics and strategies, but now it was time for the Prometheans to be properly militarised.
So Teknall presented a new type of Promethean: the Destroyer. It was a heavily armoured mobile weapon platform. Its size and means of locomotion was variable. One of the first designs was a very large box-like terrestrial machine with caterpillar treads. Another of the first designs was an aircraft like the Carriers, but sleeker in design, having a much higher top speed, and being far more maneuverable. And another was a mostly stationary smaller Promethean, which was much more heavily armed and armoured for its size than the other Destroyers. All were armed to the proverbial teeth.
To make the Destroyers effective, they needed better weapons. The mortars, landmines and flamethrowers the Prometheans had invented on their own had their uses, but they were more suited to support roles than as primary weapons.
So Teknall taught the Prometheans how to create guns, weapons to propel metal shells at high velocities using either low explosives or electromagnetic forces. He presented them with many variants, adjusting muzzle velocity, rate of fire, effective range, calibre, ammunition type, and so on. The most powerful among them was the railgun, based on his own personal weapon. While the Promethean railguns were more limited than Teknall's, they still had stupendous firepower and range, and they could launch a wider variety of payloads than simple metal shells.
Teknall also taught the Prometheans the principles of rocketry, and how to apply it into missiles. Against the less solid elementals, the versatility provided by the choice of missile warhead was critical. Smaller missiles could be fired from missile batteries at relatively close range. Larger missiles could strike targets from a great distance.
The Destroyers were equipped with this grand variety of weapons, and equipped well. The large tanks, with their great size, possessed the most weapons. They each had one or more large railguns as primary cannons, missile batteries, possible a couple of long-range missile launchers, many smaller guns for combat at close to medium range, and flamethrowers for really close range. The fighter jets were the most lightly armed, generally carrying just missiles, machine guns, and maybe flamethrowers for close-range defence against air elementals, but their speed meant they would often be the first to respond to any threats. The turrets were equipped with a variable selection of weaponry, typically including a larger primary weapon (such as a railgun, missile battery, or mortar array) with a few secondary close-range weapons for self-defence.
With Teknall's assistance, the Promethean colonies quickly integrated the Destroyers into their defenses and developed effective military strategies and tactics. The Destroyers made combating the elementals much more efficient. Artillery and missiles were more accurate than mortars and bombing runs, and often resulted in significantly less collateral damage. Strategic placement of turret Destroyers throughout the colony allowed for burrowing earth elementals to be responded to much more quickly and with far less damage to the colony. Long range missiles combined with Doppler radar allowed air elementals to be attacked long before they could reach the colonies.
With this new military advantage, the raids of lesser elementals became an almost trivial matter to deal with. Moderately powerful djinn could be fought with much less damage sustained by the colonies. Only the djinn lords remained as credible threats.
~~~~
The ice djinni and its contingent of lesser elementals lay in wait behind the hills for the cargo train to pass. The colonies themselves were well-defended, such that it would take a serious expenditure of power to attack a Promethean colony directly. However, smaller groups of elementals such as these could still strike out against the supply lines.
The deep rumble of the train was heard before it was seen. Over a kilometer long, and carrying tens of thousands of tonnes of steel and other metals, this frieght train was bringing resources from a mining colony to a manufacturing colony. It also had a stupendous amount of intertia.
As the train approached, stone elementals swiftly emerged and tore through the rails. With inadequate time to stop, the train hurtled onwards across the broken section of track and was promptly derailed. Propelled by its momentum, the train was hardly slowed as it tumbled across the earth, carriages shearing off and being shed along the path of destruction. The Prometheans tending to the train toppled off and rolled across the landscape. The wreckage continued to pile up for a couple minutes, and the elementals watched and gloated over their victory.
The ice djinni's apparent victory was then rudely punctuated by a blur of metal followed by a sonic boom which shattered half of its body. The ice djinni scrambled to reassemble itself, while trying to find its attacker. Amidst the distant wreckage there moved a Promethean Destroyer, of the turret type, which had been travelling with the train. It was severely damaged from the crash, but was still operational, and had managed to aim and fire its railgun at the ringleader of the elementals.
As the Destroyer limped back upright, the ice djinni bellowed in rage. Aurora's cautions against lingering be damned; this djinni was not going to let this challenge go unanswered.
The elementals charged, and were met by missiles which arced across the sky from the Destroyer to them. An earth elemental and an ice elemental were blasted apart by the explosive warheads. The leading ice djinni flung a cluster of ice spikes at a missile heading for him and it exploded mid air. The ice djinni strafed as it charged, sliding side to side and keeping low to the ground. Another railgun dart clipped what could have been the djinni's shoulder, and while this created a spectacular spray of shattered ice and water droplets it was but a glancing blow.
The ice djinni may have been cocky, but it wasn't a fool. It knew of the weapons these new metal beasts carried, to a degree anyway. As soon as the elementals reached the start of the wreckage, it ordered them to stay behind cover as much as possible. As they darted between toppled carriages, there were bursts of machine gun fire with the bullets shredding through elementals who stayed exposed for too long, but mostly they were safe from the guns. The missiles, however, still arced across the sky and over their cover, bombarding where the elementals ran.
They soon managed to get close to the Destroyer, although the small group of elementals was now even smaller. The Destroyer stood unsteadily on three elongated feet, the fourth foot sheared off in the crash. Its armour plating was battered and caved in, likely with significant internal damage. Half of its armaments were inoperable, and the rest were only barely functional. It was a testament to Promethean design that this thing was still fighting at all.
One ice elemental charged, and was shattered by a burst of machine gun fire. A hasty earth elemental was blasted apart by a missile fired almost point blank. The leading ice djinni was smarter. It circled around behind cover until it was in a direction where neither the Destroyer's railgun or missile battery was pointed. Then it lunged forwards and struck.
It knew it had to be swift, since from what it had heard if a Promethean knew it was going to die and had time to react, it would often explode if able in order to kill the attacker. So the djinni forced a limb into a gap in the battered and torn armour plating and forced more ice into the Destroyer, until shards of ice burst out from every hole in the Destroyer and it fell limp.
The djinni retracted the limb, which was half melted due to the internal heat of the Promethean, and drew itself up to its full height. The other Prometheans in the train wreck were only Manipulators, there to ensure the train stayed well maintained, and most of those were damaged beyond functionality, so the ice djinni was now safe to gloat in its victory.
Or so it had thought. Aurora had warned against lingering for a reason. In the distance in the sky, barely visible at this range, was another Destroyer, of the plane type, which had been dispatched the moment the train had crashed. Two missiles detached from the distant fighter jet, one after the other, and boosted ahead towards the grouped elementals. By the time they noticed the threat, it was too late. The missiles struck, the shockwaves tearing through the group of elementals with explosive force and striking them with fragmentation of the warhead. As the survivors were picking themselves up, the Destroyer swooped down low and opened fire with its autocannon, blasting apart the remaining elementals as it flew by.
The Destroyer continued to circle around the wreckage, keeping an eye out for any more elemental activity. Carriers were on their way with repair and clean-up crews. The track would be repaired and cleared as soon as possible, so that trains could continue to travel, and another train could be sent in to collect the cargo and wreckage of this train.
~~~~
Airborne Doppler radar reconnaissance had revealed the movements of a relatively large storm elemental, passing by the sea before turning to strike a colony, presumably picking up a contingent of hydrocarbon elementals at the ocean. The Prometheans mobilised their Destroyers for a preemptive strike.
Dust was thrown up behind the rumbling Destroyer tanks as they drove across the barren landscape. Overhead flew Destroyer jets, with a couple flying high and ahead to keep a lookout for the elementals.
Soon, the Destroyers spotted the storm djinni following the coast. It was still hidden over the horizon for the Destroyers on the ground, but that was not an issue. The high-altitude Destroyers communicated the coordinates to the others. Hatches on the ground-borne Destroyers slid open to reveal cruise missile launchers, and after a brief period of aiming and coordination dozens of missiles were launched in a flare of rocket-flame.
The rockets arced across the sky, and the djinni noticed. It moved faster, trying to evade the missiles, but the missiles stayed on target as the flying Destroyers sent targeting data to the missiles. Seeing that it couldn't outrun the missiles, the djinni billowed into a cumulonimbus while the lesser elementals residing within its form detacted and scattered. As the missiles neared the djinni hurled lightning at them. Two of the missiles were struck and exploded prematurely, but the rest made it into the form of the elemental and detonated violently, shockwaves tearing through the storm djinni's form.
When the steam settled, the storm djinni was greatly diminished in size and strength. There were no more cruise missiles, but the air-borne Destroyers were approaching at speeds faster than any wind could hope to blow. Seeing the futility in retreat, the storm djinni flew up to meet them flanked by its lesser wind djinn.
Their charge was met by air-to-air missiles launched by the Destroyers. The wind djinn strafed as best they could, but the salvo of shockwaves decimated their ranks all the same. When the wind elementals got close, the point defence flamethrowers flared, further wounding them, although due to their high speed there was only a fraction of a second of contact. The wind djinn slammed into one of the Destroyers, which left the collision in an uncontrolled spin and spiralled down to the ground below.
The other Destroyers flew on and circled back around to face the elementals again, shedding speed and decelerating into subsonic flight in doing so. Facing the elementals again, the Destroyers launched another salvo of missiles, further reducing their numbers and strength. A few of the remaining zephyrs stayed to fight, facing down autocannons and flamethrowers, while the rest scattered into the four winds.
Down on the ground, the hydrocarbon elementals receded back into the ocean, hidden from view and potential bombardment. With all the elementals gone, the Destroyers returned back to their colonies to reload, refuel and await their next dispatch.
~~~~
The zephyr flew up to the great cyclone. "Skylord Aurora, I carry news from Coriolis' force."
An eye of lightning framed by a ridge of cloud looked at the puny elemental. Aurora was listening, but her irritation at having to communicate with such an inferior being was evident. The zephyr shrunk back at her gaze, but continued its report.
"Coriolis is- is, dead, along with most of his force. We never reached the colony."
Aurora's eletrified eye wavered ever so slightly. It might have been surprise, but it was soon washed away by simmering anger.
How? The voice boomed like thunder and caused the zephyr to shudder. How did my lieutenant fail me?
Eddies of nervousness twisted at the zephyr under Aurora's withering glare. "I- we- they- the metal beasts launched dozens of large fire-flying-exploders from a great distance as we travelled along the coast. From the south. They were followed by dozens of flying metal beasts with more exploders and weapons. Both were too fast for us to evade, and they struck with overwhelming force."
The eye considered the zephyr for a few moments longer. In those moments Aurora's winds stilled slightly, and the eye betrayed the slightest hint of dread. Conscious of the other elementals present, Aurora's eye receded back into her form and she gathered together her clouds as she addressed the assembled djinn lords.
The metal beasts are becoming ever more powerful. They threaten all of our domains, consuming the land, polluting the sky and drinking the sea. Every day we waste is another day for them to build more weapons and grow in numbers. We must strike hard, strike fast and, most importantly, strike intelligently. Their latest weapons are a danger even to great beings such as us. We must develop tactics to counter these deadly weapons, and do so quickly because the enemy is moving onto the offensive. We must not relent in our attacks, in starving their colonies, lest their blight cover the whole world. Only our combined, cooperative power can overcome this threat.
There were cheers of affirmation and consensus from the gathered elementals. The djinn lords then continued to plan out their war.
