Thirteen

Chapter Ten

Searching for Secrets

Garrison Hollifield knew what he had to do and he knew where he had to go. It wasn't hard convincing the others to go to where he had to go, one of the benefits of being commander in chief of Earthforce. It also helped that he was Anla'Shok Zha, or Ranger Two, a position he had held since he had joined the Rangers back when Jeffery Sinclair took over the Minbari institution and helped revive them to fight the Shadow War. He wasn't around for that, as he went back in time on board Babylon 4 to become Valen, a Minbari not born of Minbari who became the main messianic figure in Minbari religion.

He always thought that was as weird as his life would ever get, but he was wrong. In his sixty-five years of life, he'd fought in the Earth-Minbari War, only to eventually come to peace with them and eventually become more comfortable around humanity's former enemies than with his own people. He'd fought aliens of unimaginable power and was a part of the victory, which freed the younger races from the galactic games, played out over the eons by the Vorlons and the Shadows, as well as played a part in freeing Earth from the brutal fascist regime of President William Morgan Clark. He served briefly as Earth's representative to the Interstellar Alliance before becoming vice president for President Suzanna Luchenko, who died during the last days of the Drakh plague of a rare strain of fast developing breast cancer.

Hollifield hadn't wanted to be president, but he had it now, having served out Luchenko's remaining term and winning two more of his own. He had led the Earth for over a decade, weeding out the last of Clark's allies and putting in people who would do right by him after he left office. There was no guarantee of that, but there never were in the realm of politics.

It hadn't been that long ago when he sneaked out of Earthdome to assist Vir Cotto in exposing the Drakh presence on Centuari Prime, which led to the sad demise of Emperor Londo Mollari and the rise of Cotto to become Mollari's successor. Like himself, Cotto had not wanted to be head of state, but he had to assume the reins for the betterment of his people.

Now this had come, and he sometimes wondered if his lot in life was to be crisis management. He had been told by Delenn that he was a creature of destiny, and that it was folly for him to deny it. It made him angry at times, because all he had wanted out of life was to have a family and have a nice career he could look back on with pride. He had a wife, but no children, and he had a career that many would be proud of, but he himself wondered if he had done all he could, or all the mistakes could justify the blood on his hands.

He sat by himself in the mess hall, eating his meal. The officers and enlisted personnel were in awe of him, and not just because he was president. He was a survivor of the Battle of the Line, the climatic battle in the Earth-Minbari War that saw 20,000 humans go into the line of fire, but only 200 emerge. He had been one of them, and they had called him a hero. It had helped him to assist Luchenko in those days after Clark's overthrow to hold the government together, and had helped him in governing after Luchenko's passing.

Hollifield looked out the window in his cabin and out into space. They were on the way to Kobol, the alleged origin of humanity according to the Colonial religion. According to them, they had all been on Kobol two thousand years ago, when a great cataclysm occurred and the thirteen tribes of humanity left to head out into space. Twelve went to a solar system prepared by the Lords of Kobol (whom Hollifield strongly suspected of really being the Vorlons), while another went to Earth.

It seems ridiculous, because human history stretched far beyond two thousand years. Christ would have been a quarter of a millennia dead when the thirteenth tribe had arrived, and surely they would have been noticed. He didn't completely buy into the story, but there were parts of it that intrigued him nonetheless.

His advisors had said that he should just go straight back to Babylon 5 and go back to Earth after seeing to things there, but he had ignored them. General Ivanova understood why he was doing this, but only to a point. She didn't know the suspicions that he had come up with in regard to the Colonials and the Cylons. He didn't feel like sharing them with anyone until the time was right, or at least all of them.

The Sharon "Boomer" Valerii who was pregnant with Helo's child was on board the Independence with them. The captured human Cylons had been sent on to Babylon 5 to be checked out by his people there. Gina, under the care of Dr. Gaius Baltar was also aboard, and she was improving bit by bit thanks to Dr. Franklin's care. Hollifield didn't know what to legally do about the abuse Gina had suffered at the hands of the crew of the Pegasus, but he had plenty of ideas of what to do illegally. It turned his stomach to think of what they did to her, but it was also an opportunity as well, and he intended to seize it.

Boomer was in her quarters when Hollifield came in. When she came on board, Adama's crew had brought her on board in chains, afraid of letting her get free, but Hollifield had told his own people to not follow suit. She was confined to her quarters, but could receive visitors such as Helo. She had come with them down to Caprica, but had stayed behind on Hollifield's orders because of fears that she might get recaptured.

"So when do we get to Kobol?" Boomer asked the president.

"Less than a day away. We're taking an overwhelming force, just in case we meet some Centurions. You feel up to helping us find the Tomb of Athena?"

"Yes sir. It shouldn't be too hard to get there, especially since we can land closer to the location with your ships. But what do you expect to find there?"

Hollifield replied, "There are a lot of questions I have about these Lords of Kobol and all the other stuff that supposedly links we Earthers with the Colonials, as well as with you Cylons. When I got the vision, Starbuck, Adama, Apollo, and Roslin were there in the tomb, but I also saw someone I knew from long ago."

"Who was it?" Boomer asked.

"Her name was Lyta Alexander. She was a telepath, like me. She was officially a P-5 rated one, with P-12 being the highest rated telepaths known. However, like me, she got some help from the Vorlons.

"She was the first human to gaze upon the real form of the Vorlons, or at least officially. The Vorlon ambassador was allegedly poisoned upon his arrival to Babylon 5 for the first time, supposedly at the hands of her commander at the time, Jeffery Sinclair, an old friend of mine. The main evidence against him was found when she scanned the Vorlon and he showed her what he supposedly saw.

"I later learned that it was a manipulation by the Vorlons to take custody of Sinclair for their own reasons. It's a very long story about why they wanted him, but, in the end, Sinclair was proven innocent, as someone had impersonated him and was the one who 'poisoned' the Vorlon. When the Psi Corps found out what happened, they immediately transferred her back home and sent another telepath to the station, a woman named Talia Winters.

"They put Lyta through the ringer, so much so that some of my sources in the Psi Corps worried about what they would find. With some associates of mine, I helped her escape and go rogue, and she managed to get into Vorlon territory on her own, where she was, like me, altered."

"Altered? How?" Boomer asked. She had trouble following the whole story, even after finding out about the Corps and other parts of the story earlier.

"The Vorlons were the ones who created telepaths long ago, through genetic manipulation. We were to be used as cannon fodder in their ongoing war against the Shadows. They created telepaths on a hundred worlds to be used against their enemies, and they speeded up the process after they saw how effective telepaths were when the Shadows arrived on a world known as Narn. The Shadows managed to wipe them out thanks to some allies they had among the people of Narn, but not before the Vorlons had noticed what had taken place.

"So the Vorlons went to the Centauri, the Minbari, and to Earth to create telepaths and to help them evolve. They nudged us, helped us along, and pushed us to be as powerful as we could become so that we could be used in the next Shadow War. Which we were, but not in the way that the Vorlons had envisioned.

"Boomer, it's my theory that the Vorlons had some purpose with the Colonials. I think they came from Earth in our ancient times, took some of our people and settled them on Kobol for some reason. When the Shadows found out about them, they attacked and the Vorlons had to remove the humans from the planet and take them deeper into their territory. Thus, they terraformed twelve worlds to serve as home to the Colonials, to be used by the Vorlons when they found a need for them.

"I don't know why they did it. Perhaps as some 'insurance policy' if Earth came into peril or something. Perhaps they wanted to, eventually, create telepaths among the Colonials and use them as well as us in the war. I simply don't know, which is why we are going to Kobol.

"That, and the fact that I think that they are somehow involved with your creation as well. The Cylons don't know where Earth is, because if they did, they could have tried to do to it what they did to the Colonial worlds. But they had to have come into contact with humans from my world in some way, and I want to find out how. If we are able to do so, then perhaps we can find out how we can deal with the Cylons."

Boomer couldn't understand it all, but she understood the need for answers. "So what's to become of us if you get your answers? Will you try to wipe all the Cylons out?"

"Not if I can help it. Yes, the Cylons committed unspeakable genocide against the Colonials, but I've been too close to the brink of my own race's extinction to sentence an entire race to oblivion. Besides, in a way, you're just as much a victim of the Cylons as the Colonials are."

"Victim? How so?" Boomer asked, perplexed.

Before he could answer that, the chime to Boomer's quarters rang. Boomer told the computer to open the door, and Helo entered. "Mr. President, General Ivanova asked me to tell you that they need you on the bridge. There's been a problem."

"How is she?" Admiral William Adama asked.

Doctor Rachel Biggs replied, "Not good. The cancer has started to spread to other parts of her body, and her body is taking quite a toll. Finding out her chief aide was a Cylon was a huge blow to her, and it sent her body into shock. We've been able to treat her enough to keep her alive for a few more months, but the cancer is irreversible."

Adama put his hands on his face and leaned his head back, still in shock over the news of the discovery of all twelve humanoid Cylons models. Billy Keikeya, Felix Gaeta, and Clarissa Cally were now in custody on board Babylon 5, and the revelation that two more of his crewmembers had turned out to be Cylons had been devastating to his soul.

As he departed Medlab, Commander Saul Tigh, the commanding officer of the Galactica, met him and it was clear that Tigh was troubled by the revelations as well. "Of all the people, who'd have thought it had been those three? Especially Gaeta! I just thank the Gods we got here before he could do more damage than he did!"

"How's the computer overhaul going? Gaeta had complete access to the systems, so the Gods only know what all kinds of surprises he placed inside them."

"B5's techs are helping us out with that, and they're doing a damn good job of it. Rissen's asking Earth to send us some more techs through the president's office, not letting them know exactly why. Hopefully we can get them, because, right now, if the Cylons launch a full-scale assault on the station, we're not ready for them."

Adama reassured his old friend by saying, "Hollifield and Sheridan wouldn't have brought us here if we didn't have a chance to fight them off here. Sheridan's told me that they'll be sending some of the newer warships in the Interstellar Alliance fleet here for protection, along with Minbari ships as well as Earthforce's Sixteenth Fleet. We'll be ready as we can for them, if the need arises, but I hope that they won't be needed."

Walking up to them was Lt. Col. Sharon Valerii, and both of them were stunned for a moment, even though they knew she wasn't a Cylon. "Gentlemen, the admiral requests your presence in his office. Excalibur will be here shortly, and he wants you to be there when the twelve models we captured are brought on board. If you'll come this way…"

Admiral Rissen was finishing up a call on the monitor when Adama and Tigh entered his office. They were taken aback at the four other people in their office. They recognized the people on whom some of the human Cylons were based: Drs. Shelly Godfrey and Leo Conoy, administrator Aaron Doral, and D'anna Biers, sister of the First Lady. Adama knew that the D'anna Biers-named reporter for Fleet News Service was under arrest and on board Babylon 5, and she was raising a ruckus about being held as a Cylon.

"Admiral Adama. Commander Tigh. Good. We've found out where the other people who the Cylons supposedly based their humanoid models on are, and they are being asked to come here." He turned to the monitor and activated a presentation on it.

The picture of Billy Keikeya came up, clearly older and with longer hair. "William Keikeya is a writer based out of Hollywood, California. Hollywood is the main heart of our entertainment industry on Earth, and he's a well-known screenwriter. He's 40, and he's very different from the guy you know. I think the word 'abrasive' comes to mind."

"This is Clarissa Cally." Admiral Rissen continued as he changed the picture. She's a senator in the American Consortium's Congress, and she's based out of its capital, Washington, DC. Much like Keikeya, she's very different than the one you're used to. They say in the media that she's stuck between choosing to run for the consortium's presidency or for its seat in the Earth Alliance Senate. I know her through the president, and she's very no-nonsense."

Rissen flipped to another picture, this one of Simon Powell, who was an older black male of roughly mid-40s. "Simon Powell is a basketball coach for the University of Kentucky, which will annoy the president since the Wildcats are on of his alma mater's main rivals in college basketball."

Tigh interrupted, "Basketball? What the frak is basketball?"

Rissen sighed and replied, "I'll explain it later, but it's a sport played on Earth." Rissen changed the picture over and the picture of Felix Gaeta came on the screen, and both Adama and Tigh straightened their backs up, still shocked at the thought that the ever reliable tactical officer had been a Cylon all along. The human he was based on was different, and not because he was older and gray haired.

"Felix Gaeta is based out of New York, and he's a political activist who doesn't trust the government. When he was in college, he was jailed by President Clark's office for subversion, as he worked in the resistance. What he went through made him very cynical indeed, so I don't know if he'll want to come or not. Supposedly he's worked with the president back before Clark took power, but I don't know that for sure."

Rissen went down the rest of the list, and then turned his attention to the five originals already in the room. "You've been brought here because we wanted to tell you first hand about what was going on, and ask you to keep this a secret until we have figured out what to do about this. This is as much of a shock to all of us as I can imagine that it is to you."

"You bet your ass it is! I don't know when they did it, but I want to find out who got my DNA and made these beings, because it's a violation of my privacy! Lord knows what my copies may have done! I want whoever did this brought to justice!" Conoy said in his light Louisiana accent. He crossed his arms and looked as if he was about to explode with rage.

"I want answers as well. If what the Lieutenant Colonel told me is true, they could have grabbed us back fifteen years ago when I was in Earthforce, taken my DNA, and went off and made scores of copies of myself. It's bad enough that this is a massive invasion of my personal privacy, but to think that some of my copies may have been responsible for genocide…" Doral shook his head and looked down.

Godfrey looked like she hadn't slept in days, and Adama was struck by how different she was from the being he had met months earlier when a copy of her had brought it to his attention that Baltar may have been a traitor. That Godfrey tried to seduce him, while this one looked like she was about to fall asleep on the admiral's desk. She did have the energy to speak though. "Admiral, I don't know when they could have grabbed me. Fifteen years ago, I was a newlywed and in medical school, just trying to get my medical degree and making my marriage work. If what you say is true, then somehow they got me when I was unconscious and unable to notice them taking my DNA. I do know that the next time that I went to the doctor for a checkup, my left ovary was missing."

"That's funny. Mine's missing as well! I never knew it had been missing until I had surgery on my kidney fifteen years ago!" said Biers, who looked at Valerii, who added, "Same here. I only have one as well."

"So do you know what happened to your left ovary?" asked Franklin.

"I think they took it when I was in that farm after being shot. I don't know what good it'll do them, because why didn't they just do it to the others instead of hooking them up to those fraking machines! Speaking of them, how are they doing?" replied Starbuck.

"They're alive and recovering. Their reproductive systems went through a lot, but they should be able to fully recover. The women will have a tougher time to recover than the men, as they were directly hooked up to the machines while the men were…well."

Starbuck chuckled at the thought of the attachment used to milk the men of their semen, and was sure that Franklin was blushing despite his dark skin. Franklin managed to continue, "I'm having them taken to Babylon 5 for further analysis. The radiation damage to them is bad, but not as bad as I feared. Our anti-radiation meds should help them recover."

Franklin showed Starbuck out of his office, then went over to the lab where Gina was being kept. As usual, Gaius Baltar was there, doing what he could for her. This time, though, the president was there as well. "Morning, Mr. President. How is she doing today?"

"From what I can tell, she's getting better, but she's still not able to communicate. The brain scans you ran showed little damage to her physically, so the psychological trauma must be far worse than we imagined." Hollifield added.

"How's he holding up?" Franklin asked.

"Baltar? He's a few cards short of a full deck, that's for sure, but I think he's able to help us with finding out about how they Cylons developed these human versions of themselves. He'll come with us when we land on Kobol. I've assured him Gina will be alright in your care." Hollifield answered as they observed Baltar care for Gina.

Sitting on the floor, Baltar gently talked to Gina, telling her all about the woman he loved, and who was now in his head. Hollifield knew that it wasn't a chip inside Baltar's head, nor was it a mental projection on Baltar's part. It was as if Six's personality had "jumped" into Baltar when the shock wave of the nuclear blast ran through his home, destroying her but allowing him to live. He knew it wasn't Shadow tech in his mind, but he wasn't quite sure if it was Vorlon technology either.

Franklin and Hollifield left shortly thereafter, leaving Baltar and Gina alone. Six appeared before Baltar again, and, once again, was dressed very conservatively, as if in mourning. She had apparently abandoned all pretense of seducing him since they had found Gina. "She looks like she's getting better." Six said hopefully.

"She is. Franklin's helped deal with her malnutrition and dehydration, but she still won't talk to me! What could they have done to her to make her like this?" Baltar asked exasperatedly.

"Humans are violent people by nature, but, maybe, after seeing some of the other side of them, maybe there is more to them than we thought." Six mused.

"What do you mean by that?"

Six smiled at him and said, "I once said that God had a purpose for you, and he still does. But I think that the purpose was much different than I ever imagined. Maybe its something completely different than I had been led to believe."

Baltar looked at her with a look of complete lack of comprehension on his face. Baffled he said, "What about the baby that Boomer is going to have? The visions I've had about Adama being a threat to it? About all the rest? You've changed! Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe I've had a change of heart. Maybe it was the fact that encountering the president and Alwyn made me look at things anew. Or, maybe, I misinterpreted what God wanted me to do after all."

"Well that's a fine thing to say after all we've done! What do you have to say for yourself?"

Six looked at him and said, "I guess this child of humanity has started to grow up, Gaius, and realized that the parents weren't so bad after all."