CHAPTER 12
Adama had dealt with a number of crazy women in his life. On the top of that list, of course, was his alcoholic ex-wife. In a close second was a girlfriend from high school that had already decided the names of their theoretical unborn children. He would have gladly set Tigh up with any of those women if it would have prevented him from marrying Ellen Tigh. She had pre-gamed their dinner, and was currently feeling up his son. It was under the table, and it was only her foot, but the Commander wasn't frakking blind. He surprised himself by thanking the non-existent gods that the President was there. She seemed completely immune to Ellen's ostentatious disposition. Normally, Laura Roslin's upturned chin and tight smile would have instantly agitated him; he hated self-important politicians. On her, however, the facial expression seemed somewhat refreshing, as if it reminded him that not all women were as slovenly and boastful as Ellen Tigh.
"So, Ellen, we're all very interested in your story. How did you get aboard the Rising Star?" asked Adama before taking a sip of his ambrosia. Ellen turned her attention from the younger Adama to address the Commander, her eyes heavy with inebriation.
"Oh, someone just found me and picked me up. It's quite a miracle," she slurred, turning back to Lee, who loosened the collar on his uniform.
"How lucky for us all," grinned the President. Adama smiled at Roslin's comment, but kept his eyes trained on Mrs. Tigh. Ellen suddenly knocked over a bottle of ambrosia, which Saul was quickly able to catch before all of it spilled.
"Alright, Bill," Ellen began, resting her chin in both of her hands, "where is Earth, and when are we getting there?"
The Commander and President exchanged looks that didn't go unnoticed by Lee. The older Adama leaned toward the trashed woman.
"I'm afraid that information is classified, Ellen," he responded, downing the remainder of his drink.
"There's that word again," Ellen huffed as she waved her arm, almost knocking the bottle over again.
"The need for secrecy is pertinent, Ellen, " Roslin explained, "or maybe you haven't heard. The cylons look like us now."
Ellen quieted down and stared at her plate. "Yes, I did hear that. It's horrible."
"It is," Roslin continued, "any one of us could be a cylon."
That statement brought all dinner conversation to a screeching halt. Ellen could feel everyone's eyes on her, and her own darted around the cabin.
"Boo!" she shrieked, causing everyone except her husband to jump in their seats and wet themselves. Saul simply roared with drunken laughter.
"Thank you all for coming, this has been a wonderful evening," Adama stated abruptly, wanting the night to end already. The Tighs both shrugged, and gathered the alcohol before leaving. Ellen, of course, had to give Lee one last pat on the ass before exiting with a wasted Saul. As soon as the hatch closed, the President of the Twelve Colonies burst into laughter. Adama, though he was confused, had to chuckle himself, but only because her laughter was contagious. Lee simply stood and stared with raised eyebrows.
"I'm sorry," Roslin apologized as she pulled herself together, "I was just imagining what their wedding must have been like." Her laughter returned, and Lee actually joined her.
"Have you ever been to one of those colorful circuses on Scorpion? With all the half naked men and women?" the Commander asked her. Roslin nodded at him.
"Yes, why?"
"Then you've been to the Tigh wedding."
More laughter ensued as a Private came to take away the dishes, and Lee bid his father and the President a good night. As he was exiting the hatch, another officer appeared at the hatch.
"Sirs," the young man articulates as he gave them a tight salute. Roslin smiled warmly as Adama muttered a quick 'at ease,' and the ensign continued: "I'm here to inform you that Dr. Baltar has his cylon detection solution ready, and that he is prepared to perform the test on some woman named Ellen."
Commander Adama shut his eyes slowly as the President's widened; Roslin had specifically asked Baltar to prepare a test for Commander Adama. The two stood there in silence, refusing to look at each other, and the ensign gave another hurried salute before marching away.
Baltar finally thought he had a break from the leaders of the fleet until they were both suddenly in his lab. They were intruding on his work area, and they were having some sort of couple's quarrel over who thought who was a cylon. He had only been able to procure, again, one batch of the solution from Dr. Aerugo. Making more would have taken too long, and he knew that the President wanted the results on the Commander right away. When the Commander had asked him to test Ellen Tigh instead, he decided to just use the solution he already had instead of having another one made.
"Listen, ladies and..."
"Shut up!" Roslin and Adama had both turned to yell at him simultaneously, and then directed their attention back to each other.
"You think I'm a frakking cylon?" barked Adama.
"I think it's safe to say, Commander, that you've been acting...strange lately. What with all your off-log calls and..."
"Off-log calls? Have you been spying on me?"
"For the safety of the fleet, I've had you observed."
"Great. Well, your observations are completely unjustified. Those calls were on a secure line because I didn't want Saul to know that Ellen was alive just yet."
President Roslin squinted her eyes, for his confession only served to make her even more skeptical.
"It's not what you think. She's a bad influence on my XO, and I was suspicious about how she ended up on the Rising Star. I was always planning on reuniting them, but I could never find the right time. I just wanted to keep an eye on her. Then, I decided that bringing her to Galactica would be safer because I could keep her close to me."
"See!" none other than Ellen Tigh burst into the lab, dragging her husband behind her, "I told you, Saul! Bill's been after me for years!" she exclaimed.
Adama jerked his head toward her in utter disbelief.
"What!?"
"Now, now, everyone just..."
"Shut up!" this time the entire room ordered Baltar not to talk. The arguments and accusations continued for only a moment, because Tigh and Adama were suddenly called to the CIC. The three women and Baltar were left in the lab. Baltar's narcissism actually left him for a moment, and he wished that he had died back on the Colonies.
"I'm going to continue the test on Mrs. Tigh, here, then," he said, his voice shaking, "because I only have enough of the test solution for one person, and Commander Adama isn't here at the moment." Neither woman protested. They stood their ground, staring at each other with their arms crossed.
"Very well, then," said the President, continuing to eye the drunk blonde woman. The headiness of Ellen's eyes was replaced with rage as she stared back at Roslin.
"Wonderful," said Baltar facetiously. As he prepared the test, he eyed the President, who was now removing her glasses.
"You're incorrigible, Gaius," Six chided into Baltar's ear.
"Really. Regale me on your analysis of my behavior, then," he whispered flippantly.
"The President," she stated simply. He finished siphoning the solution into a pipet, and then turned to the cylon.
"What the hell about the President?"
"You actually want to find out if she's a real redhead," Six accused with a wicked smile. Baltar, in the midst of choking on his own saliva, dropped the glass pipet from his hand. It shattered as it hit the floor, and the substance splattered all over the place. The four stood there, staring at the mess.
"Ah, I...we..." Baltar stammered.
"What the hell is wrong with you, Doctor!?" Ellen finally screamed, leaning toward him with her teeth bared. Gaius jumped back in fear; Mrs. Tigh had the longest frakking nails he'd ever seen. And tearing his face off in his lab wasn't what he had in mind when he imagined being scratched by them.
The doctor, only for a microsecond, believed in the gods when he spotted Chaos at the entrance of the lab. She was holding a new batch of the solution, and her eyes were unusually large. Baltar didn't register that she was shaking her head back and forth before he called out to her.
"Dr. Aerugo, thank the gods!" he shrieked, and the two women turned to see the girl slap her forehead with her free hand.
"Chaos?" Roslin questioned as she held her glasses to her face without putting them on.
"Hey, Roz, I was just delivering the solution," Chaos answered tensely as she made her was to the counter and set down the full beaker.
"Delivering it from where," the President's glasses were now on her face completely, and she was currently cocking her eyes through the frames.
"It's dangerous to use work with radioactive elements in a battlestar, especially here in this pathetic excuse for a laboratory. Flammability, and all. Sick bay is the safest place to make it. Your lovely doctor, here," she gestured toward Baltar, who smirked awkwardly as he listened to her little narrative, "makes the solutions, leaves them in sick bay until the ingredients assimilate completely, and then I bring them here. We don't trust the idiot medics to deliver them, so I've been saddled with the job."
With her expertly crafted spiel over with, she put her hands on her hips and scowled at the adults in the room. If the President knew that Baltar wasn't the one making the solution, then she'd be chained to the lab with the lunatic. Chaos could see the urgency in the woman's eyes, so she turned to tell the doctor that he could proceed with the test.
"Wait, I know you!" Ellen blurted out. Chaos swallowed her words, and then rotated her head to look at the woman. "You were on the Rising Star!"
"Yes, I was," Chaos said as she narrowed her eyes in thought, "You were the woman in the coma."
"What? You two know each other?" Roslin's eyes widened in skepticism.
"She was brought into the Rising Star's emergency center by some old dude. Your dad or something?"
"No, I have no idea who saved my life," she breathed as she looked at the ceiling. Gods, this woman was a dramatic drunk. Though Chaos, and the President, for that matter, discerned that the alcohol probably didn't make that much of a difference.
"Weird. He stayed by your bedside and prayed all the time. Kept having to ask him to leave, the creep."
The President's curiosity spiked even more, but Tigh and Adama had returned before she could inquire anything more. Saul immediately went to his wife and put an arm around her waist.
"So, you a toaster?" he joked. Ellen just shrugged.
"We still haven't found out anything, this man insists on sabotaging the test at every turn," she complained. The President frowned at the Ellen's unwarranted impatience, desperate to know more about what Chaos knew about her.
"It looks to me like there's enough solution here for two tests," Chaos mentioned after pretending to observe the beaker, "I say we use it on the Commander and the President."
"I concur, Dr. Aerugo, they...they hold the highest positions in the fleet. It's only fair and...and right that we ascertain whether they're cylons first," he replied before anyone had a chance to protest. Adama and Roslin both glared softly at Chaos.
"If you two were cylons, we'd all be frakked, and you know it."
The two leaders looked at each other, and Roslin was the first to smile.
"She's right. Now that the fleet knows that the cylons can look like us, we should quell some of their concerns by proving that their leaders are, indeed, human," she offered him her hand.
The Commander looked at her outstretched hand, still affronted that she had accused him of being the very thing that he despised the most. They needed to move forward, though, for the sake of humanity. Ultimately, he reached out and he shook her hand amicably. He flashed her a smile as well, and they both spun to face Chaos and Baltar. The antsy doctor had already prepared two new pipets of solution.
"Please roll up your sleeves and hold out your forearms," he asked politely. The Commander and President obliged, and Baltar applied the solution simultaneously to their arms. The room was quiet for a moment; even the hum of the ship seemed to stop to hear the results.
"I knew it, they're both cylons," Chaos stated with undetectable sarcasm. Roslin looked frantically first at the drop on her arm, and then the one on Adama's.
"Are...how can..." she stuttered uncharacteristically.
"No, no!" Baltar exclaimed, waving his arms around, "the test is negative, I assure you!"
Chaos was then thrown into a fit of laughter, but only Ellen joined her.
"This is nothing to joke about, Lt. Aerugo, our entire race is hanging on by a thread," Adama flared.
"Lieutenant? Just how many titles do you have?" Ellen chimed in.
"Just one. No one else finds the idea of the two of you being cylons just a little bit hilarious? Like, out of all the people to be cylons, the Commander of the fleet and some woman who ends up being the President are?"
All of the adults in the cramped space remained silent, and the only noise that bombarded everyone's ears was the boisterous laughter of Ellen Tigh.
