#The name 'Sarmak' comes from Edgar Rice Burroughs

[thenewnio]

The War of the Worlds

The story opens with the Sarmaks, a subterranean alien race who live on Mars, plotting an invasion of Earth since their resources are dwindling.

The main narrative begins when an object crashes near the town of Hyannis, Massachusetts. The object is discovered by 13-year-old Nicky Herbert, along with several others, to be an artificial, cylindrical craft, the top of which begins to unscrew. The next morning, as Nicky brings her older sister, Deana, to visit the impact site, where a large crowd has gathered, the lid falls off, and Sarmaks emerge from the cylinder. As a group of police officers and U.S. government agents attempt to approach the cylinder to make contact, the Sarmaks obliterate them using a heat ray. The sisters flee with the crowd. Later, as mechanical noises are heard from the pit, U.S. Marines later surround the site, as reports pour in of more cylinders landing all over Earth. In the Sarmak's camp, Zerkan, the frail leader of the invasion, dies suddenly. Two of the Sarmaks, rivals Maol and Probox, challenge each other for succession, resulting in Maol defeating Probox, who is cast out to die. Meanwhile, the Herberts join an evacuation to West Dennis, but Nicky is separated from her family in the chaos. She boards a bus which is soon attacked by a three-legged Sarmak war machine. These "Tripods" have already wiped out the marines around the cylinder. After barely escaping with her life, Nicky encounters a group of children who have also been separated from their families: Duncan Best, Giada Fisk, and the autistic Sloan Brennan. The cunning Probox, witnessing this, begins stalking the children, who attempt to escape towards West Dennis, only to be caught in a crossfire between human soldiers and Sarmaks. They are nearly captured, but Probox intervenes, keeping the Tripod from pursuing them by killing its pilot, Leciac. Meanwhile, as the world's capitals fall to the invaders, experts predict total world domination in just weeks. The government thus authorizes the use of nuclear weaponry fired from the U.S. battleship Thunderchild. However, it proves ineffective, as the Sarmaks protect themselves with force shields, allowing them to easily destroy the Thunderchild. The children travel to Yarmouth, where they find it on the verge of being overrun with the genetically-engineered Red Weed. They are interrupted by Probox, who reveals that Mars' decline of resources was the reason for the human genocide while trying to trick them into coming with him to his camp. Distrusting him, the children hide in an empty house, and are nearly buried by yet another crashing cylinder. They remain undetected until a probe sent by Probox catches them sleeping, causing Sloan to flee outside only to be abducted by the tripod. Chasing after the tripod, the other three grab a belt of grenades from an overgrown Humvee, then intentionally allow themselves to be abducted. In the Sarmaks' camp, Probox is reinstated for his actions, while the children witness adults being selected from a squat, spider-like "Handling Machine" to be harvested, with the Sarmaks intending to raise the other captive children as livestock. With the help of the other abductees, along with a female Martian biped who is one of the last of the livestock brought from Mars, Nicky's group destroys the camp with the grenades, killing the Sarmak scientist Detzu in the process. Joined by the biped, named "Ivory" by Sloan, the children steal one of the Sarmaks' flying machines to use as transport to West Dennis, only to find it under attack by Tripods led by Maol and Probox. Shot down by a heat ray, they find Nicky's family taking refuge in a church among many praying and injured survivors. Just as the Tripods near the church, they suddenly lose power and collapse. Maol is already dead, with Probox expiring soon after. The rest of the Sarmaks abandon Earth soon afterwards.

As Nicky and her new friends return to their families and their normal lives, it is explained that the Sarmaks were slain by the countless microbes inhabiting the Earth, to which they had no immunity; only Ivory and the Martian bipeds abandoned on Earth were spared because of their similar genetic makeup to humans, allowing them to both live and thrive as free individuals.