***Hold your heatrays! New extended edition coming late March 2019***

Two decades after the great Martian invasion...
The journalist and his wife, Carrie, have a son. A criminal selling poems and nursery rhymes contraband on the streets of Artilleryman's glistening underground metropolis New London. A police state enforced by a disillusioned gunslinging-parson.

Our once green and lush island above infested by dense forests of resilient carnivorous red weed. The entwine tomb lid to our citadel is also our best defence against the hostile Free Lands Coalition, France, Germany and fresh from civil war the newly born Confederates of Ireland. All vigorously hunt for lucrative alien technology left derelict after Mars' failed conquest.

The French managed to retrieved a few cylinders, plus three complete tripods from the English channel. Reversed engineered what they could. Unable to replicate a certain Martian alloy, Marsuminium. Their alien-hybrid-steam-tank division edge ever closer to New London's research laboratories and the hoarded stock pile of fighting machines.

Artilleryman hasn't been frivolous with his time or resources. His technicians have created abominations far worst than the original tripods.

All this is coincidental...

Revengeful Martians have been busy scheming humanity's downfall. Learnt from their previous mistakes. Intensified research in all fields including inoculation.

Phase one: Using the advantage of space, an orbiting weapons platform bombards Antarctica and Greenland's ice sheets with a constant harmonic hum. Oscillating molecules generate heat, melting millenniums of frozen layers. Causing our oceans to significantly rise. Flooding most of the world's capital cities within a matter of weeks. Displacing fifty-five percent of the planet's population, business and commerce cease. Unimaginable pandemonium ensues. All without setting a single mechanical foot on Earth's germ infested surface.

Phase two: One colossus floating sea cylinder containing military logistics and processing factories splash lands. Hundreds of new Martian amphibious handling machines wash ashore with the rising tides. Captured men, women and children transported as food cargo back to Mars.

Mankind hasn't united against this universal threat.
We've bickered among ourselves.
Our greatest flaw will be our demise.

*** *** *** *** ***
Excerpt:- Preacher's lament (aboard HMS Phoenix Child).

Martian stories have replaced the normal tales of ghosts under the bed. Children told that if they don't eat up all their greens then the Tripods will come for them.

Preacher rolled an experimental pathogen cartridge around his replacement robotic fingers. He too was now part cold machine like the Martians. Swishing inside the transparent shell clear water teeming with microscopic nasties. "I used to expel evil with holy water." Reflected on the past as he loaded his six-shooter. "Not much has changed.

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