“Come on. We haven’t much time,” John said. “The reinforcements will be coming soon and they’re going to blow this place up.”
“Okay, I’ve started the transfer process. All we do now is wait.” Evan said, his fingers typing rapidly on the screen.
“Will we have enough discs?”
“Yeah,” Evan said to Ranjit, turning to face the vampire. “What’s the size of each hard drive?”
The vampire slouched on the floor, a broken man. “Each holodrive is about four hundred yottabytes.”
Evan got up and looked at the mini-computers, which were connected to the main CPU of the monitor. He inspected them closely.
“What are you doing?” Ranjit said.
“Just trying to find a latch...ah!” He unlocked it and slid the cover up. The box contained one hundred mini-drives, each one four hundred yottabytes. Evan counted. There were, two hundred and fifty such boxes totaling ten million yottabytes worth of information!
He inspected the number of discs he had. There were not enough. He shook his head in disappointment. “I don’t think so.”
“What?” Ranjit said, surprised. “Well, how much will be required?”
“We have two hundred discs. That means we have twenty thousand yottabytes. That’s not enough.”
“Then,” Ranjit sighed, “there’s only one thing we can do.”
Daniel ran along with the others but collapsed as soon as they got outside. There were hundreds of fighters flying around, shooting at vampire fighters and firing missiles at the base. The base imploded and shook the ground.
“John, wait!” Nikolas shouted after his friends who were about to get into one of the tankers.
John turned around to see Nikolas with Daniel in his arms.
“He needs blood.”
“Well, then give it to him inside!” John said.
All around them, fighters shooting lasers scurried about like deadly locusts. Some collided with each other and others crashed into the base. Kurt and his men were like a pack of wolves, ferocious, eager to kill, but wild and savagely undisciplined.
A tanker landed near the base and four soldiers helped John and the rest inside. Daniel hyperventilated. “Will he make it?” John asked, surprised by his own question. Daniel’s face was whiter than chalk. His eyes faded to an opaque milky color.
Nikolas took his sword, made a small incision on his wrist, and squeezed his arm to make the blood flow. He put his wrist to Daniel’s mouth. “Yes,” Nikolas said silently, as the others looked on. “Feed as much as you want and regain your strength, my son. You will need it.” Daniel slurped the blood hungrily and veins bulged out on his face. His fangs protracted out of his gums as he greedily bit into the wrist and sucked as much of the life-fluid as he could. His face regained a pinkish hue and his eyes turned a dark, golden color. He pulled away and let out a majestic roar. Nikolas sat down on the ground. Most of his color faded from his face and his lips turned ashen gray and dried. He moaned silently.
Daniel said, “Father, I’ll give you some back.” He bit into his forearm and squeezed it until twelve drops entered his father’s mouth. The humans on the tanker, although fascinated, were forced to look away in disgust. John was used to it and said nothing. He stood up and gestured the other Rebels to come and see him, away from the others.
When they were alone and out of earshot John said, “How can we trust Daniel?”
Liam said, “If we cannot, then we must trust Nikolas. He should be Nikolas’s responsibility.”
“But if Daniel does anything wrong, people will blame Nick and they may banish him,” Dante said.
“They can’t do that,” John said, his eyes constantly on the Gareng kid. “Nick’s the founder of this whole thing.” He shook his head. “We will have to experiment and wait it out.” He sighed.
“At what cost,” Dante said. “We can’t afford to use anyone as bait!”
“No one needs to know about it,” John said. “Don’t worry; I’ll deal with it. Besides, with him on our side, we’re sure to learn some secrets.”
“John,” Ranjit’s voice came through his earpiece, “We’re finished.”
“Really? That’s great! So you managed to do it without much trouble.”
“Well, the trouble is we haven’t enough discs, so...”
“So?”
“So, we decided to shift the hard drives to the tankers.”
John laughed. “Good Ranjit. You always have a trick or two up your sleeve!”
The tankers arrived at the Vatican Library and bulldozers were sent through so that the transportation process would be streamlined. All this while, as the loading and unloading continued, the button Evan had pressed was still on. The loading crew laughed when they saw the vampires suffering on their behalf. Ranjit felt a little remorse for what he had done and what he was doing. He asked himself if it was all worth it. Were they any better than their enemies? “I’m going outside,” he murmured to Evan. He didn’t wait for any response, but strolled into the forest, far from anyone or anything. He wanted to be alone, to think things through.
Why did he think like this? What was good? What was evil? Was this an evil that they were doing? What he had seen...his men laughing at the vampires suffering. They were behaving like merciless Nazis. Did that make him one too? A Nazi following another power-hungry Hitler: John Howe! In fact, wasn’t it John who had said that he would be remembered as a power-hungry dictator, just like Hitler? Okay, so this time it was different. Instead of fighting their fellow man they were fighting an alien race. But wasn’t fighting a race from another planet just another extension of their ethnic prejudice?
Ranjit shook his head and sat on his knees in the moist grass, the pale outline of the Regnum high above his head. “General?” Evan said softly. “I’ve shut off the frequency switch. Don’t worry; they’re too numbed to do anything for the next hour. We’ll be gone by then.” He was now a foot away from Ranjit. “General Singh? Are you okay?” Ranjit remained silent, praying. Evan continued. “That other vampire who helped us can’t attack; we bound his hands in semi-silver chains. He won’t dare to move.” Again silence. “General?” Evan remained silent for a few more seconds, and said plainly, “Sir, we must board the tankers. Everything is ready.” Still, no reply. “Sir! Watch out!” Evan shouted. Ranjit opened his eyes and saw a dark figure emerging from the wild grass. The vampire moved swiftly and waved his sword around and stabbed Ranjit’s chest.
“Oh, God. You are great! Protect them and see to the righteous!” were his last words before he collapsed. Evan drew his plasma pistol to blow the head off the masked assassin, who burned up into a heap of ash.
“Sir!” Evan shouted, shaking him and trying to get a response from him. But there was nothing. Only dead eyes looking at him with compassion.
The general’s face was blank but peaceful. A subtle smile rested on his lips.
The ship descended.
Alex knew things had changed and that they were going to change some more. He wondered about Angel and her parents. He was sure they would be apprehensive after the events that had unfolded. He thought of Grandma. What was going to happen to her? He was still running the events of yesterday and today through his head.
The massive tanker hauled itself into the Hangar. Once it was on the ground, hundreds of soldiers ran towards the tanker, searching around for their friends, hoping they had made it through and were safe and unharmed.
Alex was the first to get off. The Rebels followed with Richard and finally the rest of them. When Alex and the Rebels were off, there was no commotion whatsoever. Everyone stared at them as if they were unwanted. Richard, seeing their reaction, said loudly, “Is that anyway to welcome back the Falsifier?”