Read Chapter 37: Last Stand

The drone’s rotors screamed overhead as a volley of automatic fire chewed up the gravel twenty meters from the cabin door. Étienne flattened himself against the generator housing, the acrid smell of cordite and hot metal filling his lungs.

Werner slammed the bolt of the old Mas 36 forward and fired from behind the stone well. The shot went wide, but it forced the three advancing men in black tactical gear to dive for cover behind the supply shed.

“They’re testing our angles,” Werner shouted, his voice hoarse. “Two more coming up the eastern ridge. I saw their silhouettes against the snow.”

Étienne's mind raced. The transmitter stood ready, its vacuum tubes glowing faintly through the ventilation slats. He could be broadcasting in ninety seconds if he could reach the microphone. But every route was covered.

“The fence,” Étienne said, pointing to the rusted cattle wire that ringed the compound’s perimeter, sagging between weathered posts. “You said the old battery bank still holds a charge?”

Werner’s eyes lit up with grim understanding. “Twelve thousand volts, if I rewire the step-up transformer.” He chambered another round and fired toward the ridge. “Buy me four minutes.”

Étienne crawled to the generator shed, bullets splintering the doorframe above his head. Inside, he threw the main breaker, killing all power to the station—including the transmitter’s warm-up cycle. The lights died. The drone’s spotlight swept across the yard, painting everything in harsh white.

In darkness, the men advanced.

Werner fired twice. A scream confirmed one hit.

Étienne yanked coils of insulated wire from a shelf and ran in a low crouch to the perimeter fence, dragging the line behind him. His hands moved with the muscle memory of a man who had spent years inside substations, turning chaos into control. He spliced the wire into the fence’s top strand, then ran to the transformer housing near the well.

“Now!” he shouted.

Werner slammed the lever on the battery bank. The fence hummed, then crackled with a violent discharge that lit the night in electric blue. One attacker touched the wire and flew backward with a strangled cry, twitching on the frozen ground.

The others pulled back, firing wild.

“That’ll only slow them,” Werner said, dropping down beside Étienne. He was breathing hard, his lined face streaked with grime. “The drone’s circling back with a spotlight, looking for the source. Once they kill the battery, they’ll come through the gap in the eastern wire.”

Étienne looked at the transmitter. Thirty meters of open ground separated him from the broadcast.

“I’m going for it. Cover me.”

Werner grabbed his arm. “You said your brother’s got a journalist in Brussels. That’s the last word I’ll ever hear if this goes wrong.” He nodded toward a photograph taped to the window frame—a young girl with braids. “For her. Tell Europe what these bastards did.”

Étienne squeezed the old man’s shoulder. “We win this, the lights come back on. All of them.”

He broke into a sprint.

Bullets chased him across the yard, kicking up gouts of dirt and stone. The transmitter loomed ahead, squat and ugly and glorious. He launched himself through the cabin door and slammed it shut, locking it. A bullet punched through the wood, whining past his ear.

He reached the microphone.

Hands shaking, he plugged in the SD card reader and loaded the purge protocol file. On the monitor, the data scrolled green and endless—proof beyond doubt of the consortium’s algorithms, signatures, and kill-switch timestamps.

“Broadcast ready,” the system whispered in electronic monotone.

Outside, Werner’s rifle barked once, twice. Then a sound Étienne dreaded: the crash of the wellhouse door going down. The battery was dead.

He reached for the transmit key.

A boot shattered the cabin’s window. A black-gloved hand reached through, groping for the deadbolt.

Then—above the melee—a sound that stopped everything.

Helicopter rotors. Not drones. Heavy aircraft. And with them, the high-pitched wail of sirens rising from the valley road.

Étienne froze. The hand at the window withdrew.

Outside, voices shouted in French, amplified through loudspeakers: “Gendarmerie nationale! Drop your weapons! You are surrounded!”

The attackers broke. Some threw down rifles; others bolted for the treeline, where armored vehicles had already sealed the only paths down the mountain.

Étienne stumbled to the door and threw it open.

In the clearing, floodlights bathed the compound in white. Gendarmes in full tactical gear swept the perimeter, securing the attackers face-down in the snow. And there, limping between two officers, his arm bandaged and his face pale but alive—

Marc.

“Étienne!” His brother raised a hand weakly, grinning through the exhaustion. “The journalist got the file to the Minister of the Interior ninety minutes ago. Field Command didn’t waste any time.” He gestured at the encircling cavalry. “I told them you’d be here. That you were about to do something very stupid and very brave.”

Werner emerged from behind the well, cradling his rifle, staring at the spectacle with a bemused shake of his head. “Your brother,” he said to Étienne, “needs to learn better timing. I had one bullet left.”

Étienne laughed, the sound raw and empty and full of relief all at once. He clapped Marc on the shoulder, then turned back to the transmitter.

The microphone still glowed.

“I’ve got to go on air,” he said. “Before they find a way to bury this again.”

Marc nodded. “Make it count.”

Étienne stepped back into the cabin, sat down at the console, and pressed the transmit key. The red ON-AIR light burned like a beacon.

“This is Étienne Moreau, senior engineer with Réseau de Transport d’Électricité,” he said, his voice steady despite the trembling in his hands. “I need the people of Europe to hear what I have to say. About who turned off your lights. About why. And about how we’re going to turn them back on.”