War of the Worlds no.1 - the Eve of War

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complaceny men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the insuforia under the microscope do the same....

...Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to ours as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us...                       - H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds

From the first story of an extra-terrestrial invasion, this is an exerpt from the first chapter. On August 2, it says, a massive, green flare spurted from Mars. It was near instantanious, but it happened on midnight for the next ten nights. Unbeknowest to anyone on Earth, the flares were actually the launches of giant cylinders, carrying the armies of onslaught and invasion. Nine-million miles of empty space they crossed, coming at incomprehensible speeds, and nothing could possibly stop them.
Rendered in Truespace 3.2.