Acropolis Now
Andre Baros would have said it would be a cold day in Hell before a Greek allied with a Turk. But then, Hell had come to Greece regardless.
Indeed, Hell had come not just to Greece, but the Ottoman Empire, and as far as he could tell, the rest of the world. The cylinders fired from Mars had landed on every continent on Earth (even Antarctica, according to some rumours), and as far as he was aware, not a single army had been able to stop them. There were tales of great trenches and artillery batteries being established in western Europe. How in Arabia, Berber horsemen would weave in and out of tripods, tossing explosives and evading their heat beams, before retreating. How the forests of the Amazon were burning and replaced with red plant matter, of naval battles raging across the island chains of Asia.
Countless battles in what people called the War of the Worlds. And one world was losing.
Not that these were opinions that enlisted (read: conscripts) men such as himself were wont to vouch for, be they Greek or Turkish. This very year, their armies had been fighting over Crete, but for all their differences, the similarities, it seemed, outweighed them. And among them were charges of sedition. Say too much, say the wrong thing, wallow in too much despair, and a bullet might find your brain.
Which, Andre reflected, as he cleaned his rifle in the innermost trench of the Acropolis, was still preferable to dying at the hands of the Martians.
"They're not moving."
He looked at Stavros – a man from Crete, and one of the few survivours of the island before the Martians had razed it to the ground. Not the oldest or wisest member of the platoon, but the one with the binoculars fixated on the tripods in Athens. Not as tall as Olympus, but more terrible than any god of ancient myth.
"They've taken the city, but they're not moving."
"Maybe they're afraid," piped up Kamal.
Andre glanced at the teenager – a Turk, but he'd learnt not to hold that against him. Maybe when this was all over, when they either scurried under the rubble of the old world, or started to rebuild it, they could share tea, and dream of better tomorrows.
"Afraid?" asked Stavros. "Of us?"
Alas, tomorrows were few in this world, and were becoming fewer by the day.
Athens didn't have a tomorrow. The lucky had been able to evacuate before the tripods had unleashed their black gas. The unlucky would have suffocated under the fog, their lungs liquidizing, blood pouring out of every opening in their body. There were numerous reports of entire cities being razed, but in Athens, the Martians had been content to just kill the stragglers and regroup.
Despite that, Greece had been spared the worst of it. The tripods were much more adept at covering flat terrain than mountainous ones, and there were those who believed (or rather hoped) that the Martians' war machines were better suited for the lower gravity of Mars than Earth. With its mountainous terrain, with a people that had spent years fighting for their independence, Greece had held out longer than many other countries. Not like those to the north, who were just…gone.
"We've got the pounders, don't we?"
Andre glanced back at the guns mounted atop the hill of the Acropolis. Centuries ago, much of the Pantheon had been destroyed – the Acropolis had been used as an ammo storage house for the Turks, and had been destroyed in the resulting explosion from a Venetian shell. Now, it was the most valuable target in Athens, for as tall as the tripods were, the hill was taller. And not even the armour of the Martians could last indefinitely against heavy artillery.
The Acropolis's buildings had remained intact, but every piece of open field that could accommodate it now had a trench or foxhole. Most of them were filled with soldiers equipped with naught but rifles – weapons that, as deadly as they might be to Man, could not damage a tripod's hull.
Many fired them regardless. If, or rather, when, the tripods moved on them, the men in the lower trenches would die quickly – while the gas masks they had in their sides would protect them from the black fog, the heat rays, they had no protection against.
Stavros and Kamal fell silent as Lieutenant Khoury walked down the line. Brave, or foolish enough, to stand above the trench, rather than move through it. A pistol at his side, a cane under his arm, he would often speak of the demons that had invaded their world. That by God's grace, they would be driven back to the Hell that had spawned them.
Andre wanted to believe that, even if the God the Turks worshipped wasn't his. Wanted to believe, but then looked back at the Parthenon. His ancestors had worshipped different gods than he, and they had fallen, from one invader to the other. Persians, Spartans, Romans, Ottomans…many yearned for a new Alexander to lead them to victory, but more often than not, they got another Otto.
As one of the tripods let out the sound of death's horn, Andre prayed nonetheless. That even if God would not intervene, He might grant mercy.
Each tripod had a single 'eye', that outside of battle, was an icy blue – the colour of indifferent sky. Now, however, each eye was the colour of blood red. As if the Devil himself had laid eyes upon the world. No wonder, then, that while some prayed to God, others saw this as the Lord's Judgement. That this was no war, but the End of Days.
"Stand to! Gunners, ready!"
Men gripped their rifles. The artillery batteries were readied. Three tripods strode across the silent city of Athens, heading to the Acropolis. What had changed, Andre didn't know. Perhaps they were on a timetable. Perhaps they were desperate. Perhaps they were confident that they could crush the humans before them.
Either way, he put on his mask, and readied his rifle. The latter would avail him little, but there were reports of Martians having vacated fallen tripods, in what few victories mankind had claimed against the children of Mars. There were stories of everything from Martian bodies being dissected, to fancy stories of new machines of war that would turn the tide of war. From armoured ships on land called tanks, to flying machines that dropped bombs from the air.
If he was lucky, he might live to see them.
In reality, he almost certainly wouldn't.
The order was given for the guns to fire, not that Andre heard it. He winced, his ear drums ringing with the force of worlds, as the artillery unleashed its payload on the tripods below. Doing more damage to Athens itself than even the Martians had.
The tripods shuddered with each impact. Wobbled with every detonation. Andre had heard that the gunners had been trained to direct their fire on one tripod at a time. Of battleships sailing right up to the coast and opening fire at point blank range, taking both vessel and tripod out in the same inferno.
Some of the soldiers cheered as one of the tripods finally fell, collapsing into the rubble that surrounded it. It lay there, a strange liquid seeping from its shattered hull. The red light of its eye, fading. What had become of the pilot, Andre did not know. He could only hope that its end was as long and painful as possible.
More painful even than the men of the first trench, who were incinerated by the heat beams of the remaining two tripods. Their screams like that of a wailing babe, torn from its mother's breast, for indeed, what was Man but a child? What was Earth if not their mother, defiled by the colonizing forces of Mars?
The heat beams incinerated all organic matter. How, he could not explain. He'd seen men turn to ash beside him. He had seen horses carrying flaming, yet empty wagons, and he had seen similar sights on Crete. Heard of the Martian tripods scaling the cliffs of Gallipoli, withstanding everything the armies of the Ottoman Empire threw at them. How by day's end, over 100,000 men had been reduced to ash, and the entire peninsula set ablaze.
This was no better. The first trench was incinerated, then the second, then the third. Black gas began to emanate from the tripods, carried upwards in the wind.
"Masks!" yelled Lieutenant Khoury.
The foolish, like Kamal, fumbled for them. The wise, like himself and Stavros, already had them on. The black gas was not always stopped by the masks, but a chance at survival was better than none.
But such chances were falling as quickly as the fourth and fifth trenches. Black mist engulfed the Acropolis, the only sight of the tripods being two eyes of the Devil himself in the gloom. Their whirring, their moaning, the howl of "aloo," be it their war cry, or the sound of final trumpet.
Heat beams flared through the darkness, flashing in hellfire, before fading. The guns roared, and Andre heard the telltale rat-tat-tat of machine guns.
How they could see anything, he did not know. He doubted it even mattered. They would die here, he knew that. Their only duty now was to take as many of the Martians with them.
Kamal got his mask on. But that did nothing to avail him against the tripod's tentacle. Crushing the man and tossing him asunder.
Stavros kept firing his rifle, useless as it was, until he was reduced to ash.
Men were fleeing, screaming. They died all around the trench. Khoury shot a fleeing man, before being crushed by the tripod's foot.
And yet, be it chance or the grace of God, Andre survived. The world was naught but swirling darkness. His skin blistered under the gas's touch. Shadows moved through the darkness. Two swivelling lights surveyed the hilltop, as if aware that they, the gods of Mars, had surpassed those of Earth.
Athens had fallen. The Acropolis had fallen. Andre knew he had but minutes – he could flee, and die, stay put, and die, or find a third way, and die as best a man could in such times.
He chose the third option. He ran to the guns, now silent.
He ran, and somehow, the heat beams did not touch him. He ran, and found the slumped out body of a gunner, his mask cracked, blood pouring from his mouth. As the heat beams swivelled to and fro, incinerating the men in flight, he rummaged around the shells, and found it.
The deadman's switch. The last resort.
The fog began to clear, and soon, all that was left on the hill were the dust of incinerated men, the bodies of suffocated men, and the elegy of forgotten gods. Andre Baros stood by one of the guns, waiting. There were tales of the Martians taking prisoners. Perhaps that was why, as the two tripods looked down on him, they did not incinerate him then and there. Perhaps they found him curious.
Perhaps they found it humorous.
Perhaps they were as all conquerors were – cruel, and eager to salivate in victory.
Or perhaps the minds of the Martians were beyond that of Man. Their motives and emotions only able to be guessed at. Perhaps they looked at him now, scarce different as a man might study bacteria in a dish.
History would never know what passed through the mind of the Martians upon the Acropolis that day, in what would be one of countless slaughters in the War of the Worlds. They would not know the name of the man who held the fuse linked to the ammo stores beneath them. Enough shells and gunpowder to sink a battleship.
They would not see Andre Baros take off his Mars, and whisper, "elefthería í thánatos," before igniting the ammo stores.
They would record, however, the entire Parthenon being annihilated. The top of the hill sheered off. Hundreds of Greek and Turkish soldiers buried under the rubble, and two tripods falling with, unable to maintain their balance in the collapse. How the bodies of Man and Martian alike would be studied decades later, after the Great Disillusionment.
The man died, and the Martians fell, beneath the shadow of ancient gods.
Mars was named after the Roman god of war.
But on Earth, His children had no divinity.