Green with Envy

The Romans hadn't made it this far north. The English had. The Scots had thus become British, and the British had created an empire that spanned a quarter of the globe. Now, far as Angus was aware, Martians were all over the planet, and they weren't even trying to build an empire, even if their methods were the same as most empires in history – subjugate the native population, sweep them aside through superior firepower. Far as he was aware, they were succeeding in doing this everywhere. Certainly in England and Wales at least. And try as he might, watching the valley with the other soldiers around him, he couldn't think of any good reason why Scotland would be spared.

"Fuck it's cold."

He looked at Peter. "What?"

"It's cold." The lad was shivering.

"Course it's cold. We're in the Highlands."

"It's fucking summer."

Angus laughed and patted him on the head. "Poor lad. Wee chill up here, and you're on the way to getting frostbite."

Peter stared at him.

"You're not going to get frostbite."

"Oh. Okay." He didn't look convinced, but Angus nevertheless turned his gaze back south.

"You sure I'm not going to get frostbite?"

Angus sighed and gestured to Dinesh, who was looking through a pair of binoculars. "Look at him you twat. He's from warmer climes, but do you see him complaining?"

Peter didn't say anything.

"So suck it up."

"Yes sir."

Angus frowned – normally he'd have objected to being called "sir," but then again, this wasn't really His Majesty's Army anymore, was it? What it was, was a collection of around forty men, twenty stationed on each side of the valley. A collection of everyone from troopers to farmers who'd picked up their shotguns and decided to shoot at aliens rather than rabbits. Similarly, it was a collection of weapons ranging from those shotguns, to rifles, to a pair of Hotchkiss guns. All of which were useless against the Martians' tripods.

He made his way over to Dinesh. "How you holding up?"

"Fine sir." He kept looking through the binoculars.

"See anything?"

"No sir."

"Anything you want to talk about?"

Dinesh lowered the binoculars and looked at Angus. "I would actually sir."

"Go on."

"That you stop patronizing me."

"I…" He trailed off. "Sure. Okay."

"Thank you sir." He returned to looking through the binoculars.

Angus hoped he was okay. Hard enough to be in a world that was burning around you. Likely even harder when your part of the world had fallen silent. Granted, the whole world had fallen silent, but Angus was at least home here in Scotland. Neither of them could guess what was happening in India, but there was no reason to believe it was faring better than any other part of the Empire, or heck, the world.

"Heads up sir. Tripod approaching from the south."

He sounded so calm as he said it, Angus reflected. Nevertheless, he laid down on the rock and took the binoculars that Dinesh passed to him.

"Shite."

"My thoughts exactly sir. Shite indeed."

Angus kept his gaze fixed on the thing. It was one-hundred feet tall, carried on three legs, and moved with a speed and grace that belied its size and clunky body. He'd seen them before – once when he'd been stationed at Manchester, once when he'd fled Manchester as the city burned around him. The tentacle-like appendages on the top of the tripod didn't look threatening, but he'd seen what they could do. They could vaporize men and artillery in the blink of an eye, and their hulls were nearly impervious to anything the human race had thrown at them. This time however, it wasn't burning anything. Rather, it was spraying something on the grass.

"The fuck is that?" he whispered.

"Fuck is what sir?"

He handed the binoculars back to Dinesh. "That. The red stuff."

Dinesh didn't say anything at first. As the tripod got closer so that Angus could get a good look at it without the specs, he could see that the grass was dying around it. Like some kind of hyper-effective weedkiller.

"I think it's like a weedkiller sir."

Angus closed his eyes. "Thank you Dinesh, I really couldn't have pieced that together."

Dinesh glared at him. Angus stood up and went back to his men – Peter was still shivering, and he wasn't the only one. That, he could live with. What was harder to deal with was that he had eighteen men looking to him for guidance here, plus another twenty on the other side of the valley. No doubt they'd all seen the tripod by now.

"So…" Angus said.

No-one said anything. They just looked at him like he was bloody William Wallace.

"Yeah, so, there'd a tripod coming our way," he said. "Don't think it's seen us, but if it gets any closer, it will."

"So we run," one of the men said.

There was a cacophony of voices – some in agreement, some not.

"We won't run," Angus said.

The voices drowned out.

"We're here for a reason," he said. "And that's because we've got explosives set up in the valley, and on its sides."

"But explosives can't penetrate their hulls!"

"Don't need to penetrate it, need to topple it," Angus said. "Take out its legs, it can't walk. It can't walk, it can't fight." He unholstered his pistol. "We can."

No-one said anything. No-one had to. There was the unspoken truth that they all knew – they could fight. They might get some victories. But as far as the victory of saving king and country, of saving bloody planet Earth…who could see that victory?

"Anyway, we're doing it," Angus said. "Anyone who doesn't want to take part in downing the fucker, you can leave now."

A handful of men got up.

"But only in the knowledge that you're a coward, and will be remembered as such."

Two of them sat down. One of them remained standing.

"What is it?" Angus asked.

"Remembered," he asked. "You think anyone's going to remember us when we're all dead?"

"I don't know. Why don't you run like a rabbit and find out? I mean, you'll be alive, and get to remember we band of brothers at least." He holstered his pistol and instead took out a torch. "Decide quickly though because…" He glanced at the tripod. "Well, ain't got much time."

He didn't wait to see what the man decided to do. Instead, he started turning the torch on and off, pointing it at the other side of the valley. Whatever the Martians knew about the human race (and no doubt they were at least aware that they had methods of communicating), hopefully they hadn't cracked Morse code.

TRIPOD SPOTTED

If they had, they were screwed.

SPOTTED

CLEAR TO PROCEED WITH EXPLOSIVES

CLEAR

AWAIT SIGNAL

AWAITING

Angus walked to Peter. "Hey, Petey."

He looked up at Angus. Still shivering, now with absolute terror in his eyes.

"Think you can do something for me?"

"I…sir?"

He knelt down. "You know Morse code right?"

"I…"

"You were a signaller in the army?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. Now when I give the signal, you're going to send Mister McCoy over there two short flashes, followed by one long one. When that happens…well, you'll see."

"I…"

"Come on Peter," he said. "We're at our own Hadrian's Wall. Barbarians are coming, and we've got to kick 'em out." He handed Peter the flashlight. "Hear that lads? Martians are coming. We going to just lie down and let 'em take it?"

There was a general chorus of "no's."

"Didn't hear that. I said, are we going to let the Martians take what's ours?"

"No!"

"Are we going to let them cross the wall?"

"No!"

"Are we going to send them back to Mars packing?!"

"No!"

Someone actually said yes, poor chap. But Angus decided to let it pass.

"That's right. These little green men, why do you think they're green? It's because of envy. They want our land, our planet. But they ain't having it. Not on our watch!"

There were some more cheers. Not as many as Angus hoped for, but it was better than complete despair. So with that in mind, he went back to Dinesh, who was still following the tripod with his binoculars.

"Nice speech sir," he said.

"Thanks."

"Especially with the Hadrian's Wall thing – that was what the Romans built wasn't it?"

"Pretty much. Way of keeping the northern barbarians at bay."

Dinesh looked at him. "So are we the Romans or the barbarians?"

Angus didn't say anything.

"Or are we further down?" he asked. "Has it occurred to you that we're so outmatched that we may be the Aborigines, and the Martians are…well, us?"

"Us," Angus murmured. "As in the Empire?"

"You could say that sir. Not that I've visited Australia, but I don't think it worked out well for the native population."

"Probably not," he murmured.

Dinesh, despite himself, smiled. "Well, whatever the case, it was a good speech sir. And…" He put the binoculars down. "Well, I don't think I need these anymore."

He didn't. The tripod was close. So close that it could easily see them, if it had been looking at the walls of the valley. But thankfully, it wasn't. Its head was swivelling around, following its tentacles and the red substance it was spraying on the grass.

Green with envy, Angus reflected.

He'd heard some Oxford men theorize about it – that the Martians had come to Earth because Mars was a dead world, while Earth was teeming with life. It made sense, he supposed, but if the weedkiller analogy was true, then it appeared that the Martians weren't here because of the life currently on Earth, it was for its ability to sustain…what, he wondered? Their own plants? What even grew on Mars? Could it even grow here?

Maybe if he survived this, he'd find out. Because the tripod was entering the valley.

"Dinesh…" he murmured.

"On it sir." The lad crawled over to a plunger, one that was linked to explosives set on the walls of this side of the valley.

"Peter…" he said. He glanced back at the former signaller clutching the torch. He was shaking, and not just because of the cold.

"On my mark…" he said.

He had to synchronize both Dinesh detonating these explosives, and the men on the other side of the valley detonating theirs. Peter began to signal. Two short flashes, one long one…

"Mark!" he yelled.

Dinesh detonated the explosives. McCoy's lads detonated theirs. On both sides of the valley, landslides were triggered, approaching the tripod on both sides.

"Come on," Angus whispered. "Come on…"

The tripod's head swivelled around, looking at the coming rocks. It tried to move, but that was its mistake, as one of its legs landed not on ground, but at the rocks coming from both sides. It stumbled.

"Come on…"

It fell.

"Yes!"

Cheers erupted from the men. Some yelled. Some wept. Some hugged each other. Some did all of those things. Touching as it was however, Angus knew there was more to do.

"Alright, knock it off you ladies. Gunners, keep your Hotchkisses on the tripod. Rest of you, with me." He picked up the torch from Peter and signalled to McCoy – MOVE IN.

He led the men down the cliff face. It wasn't too hard a climb, certainly not for a man like him. Others had more difficulty.

"Hurry up lads!"

He broke into a semi-sprint – granted, he had the advantage of not having to lug a rifle around. But he knew it wasn't over. As they climbed over the rocks, he could see the tripod's tentacles flailing about. If it used its heat ray, it might have trouble aiming, but that wasn't to say it wouldn't do any damage. But luckily, it wasn't firing.

Can you feel fear? He wondered, as he reached the rim of the tripod. Do you know what's coming for you?

He held up a fist – the dozens of men that had come down into the valley stopped. He glanced at Dinesh, who had a rifle in his hands, looking stoic as he always did. He looked at Peter, still shivering, but nevertheless holding his own rifle as best he could. Peter himself looked at him.

"So…what now?"

"Pardon?"

"Like, there's no hatch, but-"

A hatch opened. It had nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the hull, but it was some exit point at least. Everyone pointed their rifles at it.

"Hold," Angus said, putting a hand up in the air.

A hand of a different kind crawled out of the tripod.

"My God," someone whispered.

Angus considered himself agnostic. But if God did exist, it was clear that when He had fashioned other sapient life, he hadn't made it in His image as mankind had been supposedly.

The Martian had no hands. It had no legs, but rather a mass of tentacles at its base. No hair, no ears, a very small mouth, and two very large, jet black eyes.

Not a little green man then.

But it was slightly green at least. Angus saw it lock its eye on him. The Martian was thinking something, but he could only guess what. There was intelligence behind it, but no emotion, or at least, none he could identify. Maybe the conditions of Mars had done this to the Martian psyche. Maybe it was so alien that he couldn't identify any emotions as humans understood them. Or maybe it did have emotions – the ones of arrogance and cruelty. The emotions that humans had shown to each other time and time again.

He never got a chance to find out. The Martian reached for something with its tentacles that, despite its design, Angus recognised as a gun. The Martian went to fire.

The humans beat the creature to it. Their rifles were no doubt more primitive than whatever the Martian wielded, but they were no less effective in tearing into its flesh, causing it to bleed and writhe. To scream with a voice that chilled Angus to the core.

Green with envy, he reflected as everyone stopped shooting. Can you even feel that?

He didn't know. He walked forward and lifted up the Martian's hand with his pistol. It flopped back down as soon as he drew the pistol back.

Dead then.

Right now, Angus felt many things.

But envy wasn't among them.