Chapter 33: Last Stand

As the sun set on this bloody day, the fight on the surface was finally winding down. All four crowd-control vehicles had been put out of action, their crews killed, one buried by the collapse of Arcturus City Hospital. The Planetary Administration Building was a wreck, burning and threatening to contribute its building materials to the general wreckage that surrounded it. Other office buildings around the Council Building were either collapsed or about to. Only the Council Building itself still housed gunmen making a valiant last stand.

Brother Jed sent for Brother Henry to join him in the bunker deep under the Council Building; he needed his wise counsel at this moment. The 14-year-old lad at his elbow looked ready to lose bladder control from fear, but was manfully trying to carry on. The older boy, a strapping 17-year-old, had had a head injury which was clearly affecting his judgement.

"You should go up and see it, Brother Jed! We are surely inflicting great pain on the heathen invaders! It is glorious!" The boy looked at the ceiling ecstatically.

Just then Brother Seth, a senior member of the Wallace clan, ran into the room. "We've lost the Grosvenor Building."

"Send men from the Planetary Administration Building to retake the Grosvenor Building," Brother Jed ordered.

"Impossible," Brother Seth advised regretfully. "Not only is the Grosvenor Building completely collapsed, the Planetary Administration Building is but a shell and on fire, all who were in it are dead. I expect it to collapse at any moment."

"Do we have any tanks left, Brother Seth?"

"They were the first to go, hours ago. Every man inside killed."

"Have you seen my brother, Brother Henry?" Jed demanded.

The older man hesitated. "Yes," he announced sadly. "He died about an hour ago, in front of my own eyes. A rifle round cleft him in twain whilst he was trying to direct the defence of Industry Hall." As he saw an ache of pain cross the Chairman's face, he felt compelled to add, "His death was instant, he felt no pain."

Rounds from the tanks and portable artillery were now slamming into the Council Building itself, making the bunker shudder. Brother Silas Lawton burst into the command bunker. "Why are you still here?" he demanded of his fellow patriarch.

"I must command this fight!" growled Brother Jed, glowering at Silas.

"This fight is lost. We must evacuate. We are almost out of men."

"It cannot be lost. We have our Gods on our side!"

"Our Gods do not have heavy artillery, or laser rifles, or the support of the general populace. We have lost most of our men, those who are left are almost out of ammunition. Most of the buildings surrounding this one are reduced to rubble. If we wish to fight further, we must retreat and find some secure place from which to regroup and attack. That place is not here."

Brother Jed just continued glowering at Brother Silas. "You are a traitor to our cause. Our Gods should abandon you to your fate."

"Have your wits abandoned you?" demanded an incredulous Brother Silas. He went over to the large map of the city centre, and started stabbing each structure with a finger. "This building is down. This building is down. Every building in this block is down, and this block and this one and this one. We only have men left in this building," he added, pounding with closed fist on the location of the Council Building, "and it is only a matter of time before they fall. We must get as many of ourselves to the sewers and out of the City as possible."

"I should not consider myself or my brave brothers to be sewer rats!" Brother Jed screamed.

"You should, Brother Jed, if you want any chance of continuing the good fight!"

"I will see for myself. Come," he gestured to the staff left in his bunker.

The dozen or so men climbed the stairs and made their way to a back door. The damage was as bad as Brother Silas had said; worse if possible. The riflemen on the upper floors were now completely cut off by the damage to the lower floors and being destroyed one by one. Not just killed: destroyed, as the Solaria soldiers responded to rifle fire with tank and artillery fire. The lower floors were already well ablaze, the staircases reduced to twisted and mangled wreckage blocked by debris.

The back and side doors led nowhere. Debris from fallen buildings blocked them.

That left the front door. It led not to safety, but to a killing zone swept frequently by laser rifle fire and littered with blackened bodies and wrecked cars and pieces of the buildings opposite. Tantalizingly, a single sewer grate sat in the middle of the street.

Heedless of the danger, the two teens accompanying the Chairman and his generals raced into the middle of the killing fields armed with only a single crowbar. Before they could lift the heavy steel plate a single inch, both were cut down by laser blasts.

"That was my grandson," Brother Seth said of the younger man, his eyes tearing.

Another body, alive but ablaze, flung itself from the topmost floor of the Council Building, hitting the ground with a sickening thunk and continuing to burn.