A/N: I wanted to take the chance to thank those of you who have stuck with the story. It means a lot to me, and I hope you're all enjoying it. I certainly enjoy writing it.
CHAPTER 14
"You're all just a bunch of frakking sadists, you know that?" Starbuck ranted angrily from her cot in sick bay.
"On the contrary, young lady, I want you the hell out of here more than you do. Unfortunately, I took an oath to take care of brats like you until you make a full recovery, which you haven't yet," snarled Cottle, "why don't you calm down and just listen to the frakking wireless like a good patient."
"Frakking junkie," Kara muttered as Cottle walked away from her, lighting a cigarette. After wallowing in self-pity for a moment, Starbuck switched on the wireless next to her bed. The President's inexorable tone emitted from the machine:
"...has been found in the next star system, and it is apparently rich with tylium ore. However, the cylons have already built their...their own refinery on the asteroid. The Commander has determined that, because we only have enough fuel for two more jumps, it is imperative that we drive the cylons off the asteroid. The military is currently preparing a mission for obtaining the tylium. I'm sorry, but I will not be taking questions at this time."
The voice of Playa Palacios was now coming from the wireless, and Starbuck slammed her fist onto the device, turning it off. She stared at the most likely broken device.
"Frak," she said to herself. There was no way she was missing this mission; she was the best damn pilot in the fleet, and they wouldn't be able to pull this off without her. As she swung herself off the side of the bed, she grabbed some crutches and hobbled her way to the exit. Chaos appeared from behind one of the curtains, and Starbuck stopped in her tracks, anticipating a heated disagreement. Instead, Chaos gave her a saucy salute, and walked passed the pilot. Starbuck's scowl became more severe before she turned to address the doctor.
"Wait a frakking second, kid," Starbuck called after Chaos, who immediately turned as if she already knew that Kara was going to give her lip. The two stayed their distance. "Aren't you gonna stop me? Tell me I'll never recover if I keep this up? Kick my ass back to my cot?" Kara wasn't able to gesticulate with her hands, so she did so with her eyes. Chaos shook her head.
"As long as you're up there, I get to stay here. Plus, it's a lot quieter without you," she replied. Once again, before Starbuck could rebut, the young doctor stalked off.
Kara just rolled her eyes and continued her journey to the ready room. She felt a sudden tinge of apprehension at having to interact with the nuggets again. Though Adama seemed to have forgiven her after she admitted to her involvement in Zak's death, waves of guilt still ebbed at her heart.
Chaos was in Cottle's office fetching a file when he entered.
"I need you to personally deliver the President's chamalla again," he said with a lit cigarette at the corner of his mouth. Chaos threw her head back in defiance and sighed. She still felt as if the majority of her time was spent doing work that the medics should be doing.
"We just had our first session, don't you think we should give her a bit of time to mentally prepare for the next one?"
Cottle crossed the room and silently perused some of the papers on his desk. The young doctor stared at him inquisitively. "Are you going to tell me why I need to see her so soon? Or are you just going to keep pretending like you're looking for something?"
Cottle found the paper that he had supposedly been searching for, and skimmed it. He then lifted his head to finally direct his attention to the irritated girl.
"Have you no observational skills at all? The President stuttered during her speech and she refused to take questions. Both of those are highly uncharacteristic for her, and I can't believe you didn't figure this out for yourself."
Chaos was utterly bewildered at the old doctor. Her puzzled look only made Cottle even angrier.
"First off, as I've told you before, I don't listen to the wireless. And second, since when do you give differential diagnoses based on the frakking tone of someone's voice? In fact, why do you even care? Sound the alarms, the President got tongue-tied during one of her speeches. She's probably having a stroke, we should..."
"That's enough!" Cottle yelled. He didn't appreciate being mocked at all. "I have said about a thousand frakking times that the President's health is a matter of fleet security. As her doctor, it's my duty to ensure that she is able to perform her presidential duties. As her psychologist, you should damn well recognize that, too."
Chaos' look of bewilderment turned fiendish.
"Sherman, you dog, why didn't you tell me you had a crush on the President?"
Cottle pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, and put his face in his left hand as he exhaled.
"There are no gods," he muttered. Chaos left his office, but not before giving Cottle a small nudge with her elbow.
"Elosha?" Chaos called after the priestess as she entered the tent. This time, the tent smelled strongly of a Caprican weed that greatly resembled onion. She walked further into the tent, her eyes starting to water in response to the intense stench of the weed.
"Hello?" the priestess clearly wasn't there, but Chaos had no clue where she could be. She was about to return to Life Station when she heard a small voice.
"She went to talk to the President," a boy appeared at the entrance of the tent. Chaos thought, at first, that she was hearing things. Some of the aromas that priests use cause hallucinations and can sometimes make the user hear voices. Chaos whirled around to see if she was experiencing the latter.
"Elosha's on Colonial One?"
"Yes. You're really pretty," said the boy, blushing. He looked to be about ten years old. Chaos walked up to him and mussed up his hair.
"Thanks, handsome. Save that line of thinking for when you're helping repopulate the human race."
That was her philanthropy for the day. She left the confused boy alone in the tent, set on hiding from Cottle for the next few hours.
Laura Roslin and Elosha were sitting on a sofa on Colonial One.
"Thank you so much for coming on such short notice," said Roslin, who seemed a bit self conscious.
"It's no problem at all," Elosha's friendly smile caused some of the President's apprehension to disappear.
"It's just...well, I'm not very religious to be honest."
"You don't need to be religious to talk to a priestess, you know."
"I know, I know. I guess I figured you would understand my dilemma more than a doctor would. It involves the chamalla."
Elosha raised an eyebrow and shifted her position so that she was fully facing the President.
"You've been having visions, haven't you? Have they been prescient?"
"One of them, yes," she sighed, "I had a dream about the captured cylon, the one they call Leoben. It was before I went to see him."
"Very interesting...and the other ones?"
"The other one, I had while I was awake. During the press conference. There were snakes all over the podium."
This really made the priestess perk up, and she instinctively pulled the copy of the Scriptures she was holding closer to her chest.
"How many did you see?" she asked.
"About a dozen or so."
"Interesting..." Elosha's eyes narrowed in thought, but Roslin couldn't gauge the woman's thoughts. "You read the Pythian Prophecy, and now you're seeing snakes."
"Pythian Prophecy? From the Scriptures? But I told you I'm not religious. I've never really read the Scriptures. They were never a large part of the Caprican curriculum."
Roslin didn't understand why the priestess was suddenly so keyed up. The woman flipped through her text until she found the passage she was looking for:
"And unto the leader they gave a vision of serpents numbering two and ten, as a sign of things to come."
After reading the verse, Elosha looked back at the President. "It's just curious. The Scriptures give us metaphors as a way of teaching us morals. They help us understand mistakes that were make in the past so that we don't make those same mistakes in the this, too me, seems a bit literal," she chuckled, then, "but the vision was granted to a dying leader. One who was suffering from a so called 'wasting disease.' And you're certainly not dying...are you?"
Roslin became very silent, keeping her emotions undecipherable. Her lack of response, though, was enough to make Elosha draw her own conclusions.
"Could you read me the passage? The one about the dying leader?" Roslin asked as she removed her glasses with trembling hands. Elosha nodded, and quickly found the passage:
"And the lords anointed a leader to guide the Caravan of the Heavens to their new homeland. And that leader suffered a wasting disease, from which they succumbed, and was therefore barred from entering the new land. But not before the dying leader knew love."
The President of the Twelve Colonies stared incredulously at the priestess. She said she wasn't religious, but that didn't mean she denied the existence of the gods. The passage that Elosha just read, paired with the vivid dreams she was having, caused something to click inside Roslin's head. This was all just frakking great. Not only was she the President of a dying race, but she had to lead them to the promise land or whatever. And what was that about the leader not getting to enter the new land? Oh, frak it, Laura thought, these are all just metaphors, aren't they? Still, Roslin wanted to see just how relevant the Scriptures were.
"I have terminal breast cancer," she finally confessed to the priestess. Elosha's hand found her way to Laura's, and she uttered a small prayer for her leader. "Elosha...what is the homeland?
"Earth, of course. Wasn't it the Commander who told us he knew where it was?"
Roslin paused for a moment, and Elosha could perceive the answer.
"I knew it was too good to be true," she sighed.
"I thought priestesses believed in the literal interpretation of the Scriptures. Did you not truly think that there was an Earth?"
"I do not interpret them literally, I see them merely as allegories and personified thoughts; teachings regarding the cycle of time. Occasionally I draw parallels between what's happening now, and what was predicted in the Scriptures. Since the attacks, I've been under the impression that this fleet is the Caravan of the Heavens. I wonder what else in the Scriptures will turn out to be true."
All this talk about Scriptures and prophecies was beginning to overwhelm President Roslin.
"What about the last line in the passage, about knowing love? Is that what you meant when you mentioned personified thoughts?"
Elosha raised her eyebrows as if she just remembered something vitally important. She successfully schooled her features, though, before she responded.
"Yes, however, there are two main interpretations of that line," Elosha's eyes were sparkling, and the reason behind the priestess' delighted expression was completely lost on Roslin. The President raised her eyebrows, indicating that she wanted Elosha to continue. "The most apparent one is that the dying leader falls in love before Earth is reached."
The inevitable giggle fit from Laura ensued, but Elosha simply stared at her with a half smile.
"Right, right," she managed, still laughing, "my entire life was just incinerated and my race is dying, and yet somehow I, an old, dying woman, am going to find love." It took a few minutes, but the President finally found some semblance of composure. "What is the second interpretation?" Elosha's smile had waned while was waiting for the president to get a hold of herself, but a sly smirk crept its way back onto her face. The priestess, once again, opened her large copy of the Scriptures.
"This verse is not from Pythia, but from the eighth Book of Sage. I was thinking of the Sages when I brought up personified thoughts. Are you aware of the Sages?"
"Yes, yes, I thought that's what you were referring to. My sisters and I use to play pretend games about the Sages," a wistful, yet generally content, grin was painted on Laura's face. "I was always Alexis, Cheryl liked Allegra, and Sandy was Anastasia. I think I remember the others...Democritus, the Sage of Death, Demosthenes, the Sage of War, and Demos, Sage of Sadness."
"Yes, good. So..."
"Wait a minute, if there are only six Sages, then why are there eight books?"
"Well, the first Book of Sage is just sort of an introduction. The other eight tell the specific teachings of each of them. Ampelius, the Sage of Salvation, was once a Sage, and although she ended up being destroyed, her story was still recorded. The tales and teachings of the Sages are highly convoluted, and although I know the passages, there is still a lot about them that I do not understand."
The fact that the priestess seemed iffy on any part of the Scriptures rekindled Laura's misgivings. Elosha was the most level-headed priest that Roslin had ever met, and if she didn't fully comprehend the contents of the Sacred Scrolls, then it was safe to assume that none of the other surviving ecclesiastics would be able to help the perplexed president.
"Then what do the Sages have to do with love and the Pythian Prophecy?"
"The eighth Book of Sage is about Allegra, the Sage of Love. It references the Caravan of the Heavens, stating that she enters it on 'the ascension of the celestial asterisk,' and that love would aid you. In the Scriptures, the names of the Sages are used interchangeably with the emotion that they're associated with. I think that the Pythian Prophecy was saying that Allegra, the Sage of Love, is going to help you lead us to Earth."
Laura wasn't yet convinced that she was actually the dying leader, but Elosha's use of the second person still caused a shiver to run down her spine.
"So some deity is going eventually come help me, some supposed prophet, lead humanity to a planet that we aren't really sure exists?" Roslin stated with disbelief, something that was becoming a bit of a habit.
"I believe she's already here."
Laura was growing tired, not just of all the religious talk, but also from her illness. Press conferences took a lot out of her these days, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to follow the priestess.
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"I can feel her presence. Haven't you ever had a gut feeling before?"
Thinking back to the fiasco with Baltar and Shelley Godfrey, Roslin nodded. "It turned out I was wrong though."
"Well, you'll never know for sure. And the eighth Book of Sage states that Allegra is the only Sage to live completely as a human, and that she is to be shunned by the gods for the rest of eternity."
Honestly, the President hadn't really registered what the priestess had said about the Sage of Love. Her mind was too full of other things to think about love; like how she was apparently chosen by the gods to save humanity.
"I'm sorry, Elosha, but I am exhausted, and..."
"Oh, of course, of course, I should leave," she started to get up.
"Could I..." Roslin's words stilled Elosha's movements, "could I borrow a copy of the Scriptures? If you have an extra one?"
Elosha's eyes glimmered with happiness as she handed the President her own copy of the Sacred Scrolls.
"Oh, I don't want to…"
"Don't worry about it, Laura," the priestess waved her hand, "I have all the verses memorized, believe it or not. If you want to read the entire thing, you can, though I doubt you'll have time. I suggest reading the Pythian Prophecy as well as the first and eighth Books of Sage. They are the most relevant to your...situation."
The President nodded, though at the book rather than Elosha. The priestess smiled weakly at the poor woman, and then left silently. Laura opened the tome and began to read the eighth Book of Sage, but stopped after a few moments. She needed to get to Galactica; the tylium mission took precedence over the frakking gods.