Thirteen

Chapter 12

A Matter of Faith, A Matter of Trust

Kara "Starbuck" Thrace was a broken woman. Everything she believed in had been thrown into chaos with the events on Kobol. Knowing now that her gods were aliens that had interfered with humanity had shaken to her core, and she didn't know what to think anymore. She looked at her idols and saw them just as trinkets now.

She would go on, but her spirit was broken. If she died, well, so what? She knew that the Earthers would join the fight against the Cylons, so her people would survive. However, she didn't know if she wanted to go on. She was almost willing to throw herself in front of Ivanova or Hollifield not to save them, but to put her out of her misery.

Starbuck picked up her pistol and stared at it for a long time. She thought back to the mother who abused her mercilessly, supposedly trying to make her tough. She never told anyone that it was her mother who had slammed the lid on the piano as Kara played it as a child, breaking her fingers. Her mom had claimed that Kara was siding with her father in their never-ending battle, and she had to be punished.

Then she lost Zak Adama, and the pain grew even more. The holocaust came along and she was lost among the chaos of destruction at the hands of the Cylons, like a leaf caught in a hurricane. She felt like she had rallied when she found the Earthers, but now…

She slowly put the gun to her head, but then pulled it back. Tears came to her eyes, and she was frustrated at the fact that she couldn't pull the trigger. She cursed herself for her cowardice and tried again to put the gun to her head and pull the trigger, but she couldn't will herself to do it.

It was her chime to her door rang, and she shook her head out of her depressed reverie. "Enter", she said, and the door opened. It was Garrison Hollifield, president of the Earth Alliance. "Are you ok, Kara?"

She wiped the tears away from her eyes. "No, not really. It's not everyday that you find out the gods you believed in are lies."

Hollifield shrugged and said, "Well, you're not alone. Finding out the Vorlons interfered with life on Earth kinda killed any belief I had in Christianity."

"What?" Kara said, and Hollifield realized that she didn't know about the religion on Earth.

"Nevermind. So why do you have a gun behind your back?"

Kara was shocked that he knew for a moment, then realized who she was dealing with. Hollifield must have picked it up from her mind, so she slowly pulled the pistol out and set it on the coffee table in front of her. Hollifield walked over and sat beside her, picking up the gun and hefting it in his hand.

"If you only knew how many times I wanted to do what you had just been contemplating, it'd shock you. It's never the answer, because to pull that trigger is to give up hope, to give up on your dreams. In other words, you lose all chance to change your life for the better!"

"Why should I keep on living? I have nothing to live for!" Kara got up and stomped around the room, yelling. "My family was dead to me long before the holocaust happened!"

"What about Adama? Apollo? Anders? The others?"

"What about them?" Kara asked.

"Someone once said, 'it's easy to find something worth dying for, it's harder to find something worth living for'. At this moment in your life, you have to ask yourself, what can I find that's worth living for? If you look hard enough, you'll find the answer."

"And what about the Vorlons?" she said sarcastically.

"They're not the omnipotent beings that they make themselves out to be. They've lied before and they may be lying now. One of them once said, 'Understanding is a three edged sword.' There's one side, the other side, and the truth. You've only seen the Vorlon side, so you can't automatically assume that they are telling the truth."

He held out his hand and she took hold of it. "Do you trust me, Kara?"

"Yes, sir. I do!"

"Then do you trust me enough to see what I have seen? I'm willing to share with you what's helped me keep the faith."

Kara was willing to try anything, and she nodded. He grasped her hand tight, whispering, "Close your eyes", and she did. When she opened them, she saw what he wanted her to see. She saw all of it, from the beginning, and it was almost too much for her to handle. He must have sensed it, because he slowed it down to make it easier for her to comprehend. She shook at what she saw, awestruck at the visions inside her head.

When it was over, he let go of her hand. She closed her eyes and put her head in her hands. "Who told you all of this?"

"A friend, a long time ago. He helped me in a very difficult moment in my life, and I've been forever grateful to him. Hopefully what I've seen will help you to understand that we haven't figured out this universe just yet, not matter what some highly advanced races might think."

He started to get up, but she jumped on him and hugged him. "Thank you!" she said, as the tears started again. He hugged her again, embracing her and giving her a shoulder to cry on. She laid back and thanked him once again, then he left. She took the pistol from the table, stared at it for a moment, then put it back into its holster. She then picked up her idols, smiled and said, "There may be something to this after all."

"So how'd it go?" asked General Ivanova.

"She'll be ok. I showed her what I showed you, so hopefully she'll understand."

"Do you really think that's wise? She's not been through what we've been through…"

Hollifield put his hands on his friend's shoulders and said, "We're creatures of fate, Susan. You, me, Sheridan, Garibaldi, Delenn…and now her. That's a hard thing to come to grips with. What we have to do is be strong for her, because she's only beginning to realize that her life isn't hers anymore, and that's a hard thing to come to grips with."

Ivanova nodded, "I know." She then changed the subject, "So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

Hollifield shook his head and started walking, a clear sign that he didn't want to stand out here in the corridor to have this conversation. They went back to his quarters, and she sat down on the couch. He sat down across from her, and then told her his plans.

"WHAT? You want to work with him? Are you NUTS?"

"Well, I didn't say that we would let him roam totally free. He'll have someone watching over him."

"Who?" she asked, and he told her who it was. "You're out of your fragging mind, but if it works, it'll throw a monkey wrench into Vacit's plans."

In his cell, the former Psi Cop Alfred Bester slept. His nightmares kept him from sleeping a lot, but this one was a more pleasant one: the time he spent as a youth with Elizabeth Montoya. He had wanted to marry her, but she wanted to run away and turn rogue, so he turned her in. To this day, he still felt it was justified.

They came for him in the dark, injecting him as he slept. He couldn't feel them come, as he'd been on sleepers for almost a decade now since they convicted him in the war crimes trial for his supposed atrocities before and during the Telepath War. They injected him with a sedative, and he never noticed the needle enter his skin.

They put him in a cryotube and kept him asleep until he was needed. He was placed aboard a shuttle, and it took off into space. The Earthforce officers, telepaths who were loyal to the president, watched as the shuttle ascended into space, and wondered why the president wanted with Bester.

The pilot was loyal to Hollifield as well, and when he docked with the transport, her ship's captain was sworn to him also. They were telepaths themselves, and they also wondered why the president wanted with Bester. The pilot decided that figuring that out would wait, and he jumped his ship into hyperspace, setting course for the rendezvous point.

Hollifield couldn't bring Bester onto Babylon 5, because as soon as Garibaldi knew what he had done, he would kill Bester, then him. However, there would be a certain ironic justice in what Hollifield had planned, so he felt no guilt in doing some rewiring to Bester's brain.

A message came in from a trusted associate on a private channel, highly coded and which only a few had the protocols to transcribe the message. It said, "Vixen has been spotted, and links have been established. Request advise."

He nodded his head and sent a reply: "Lasso Vixen and corral her for inspection. Marshall will be back in town soon." He knew who Vixen was, and so did Ivanova, who had just learned of her existence as well.

"I thought she was dead!" Ivanova said, not wanting to believe the news.

"No, she's very much alive, and we've found that she's the link between the twelve on Earth and the twelve Cylon models. What we have to do now is to find out what she knows and what she knows of Vacit's plans."

"But she'll fight back, won't she?"

"Susan, she's never met a telepath like me before. I doubt she'd be able to prevent me from finding out what she knows."

The woman had dyed her hair again, but she still worried that she was too visible. She was older now, and the age was catching up to her. She looked at the mundanes around her and she barely held in the contents of the fettuccini Alfredo that she had ate for dinner. She also hadn't wanted to walk down the streets of San Antonio alone, but her date had stood her up, and she didn't want to get a taxi, because that would risk her being seen.

She sensed the two people coming towards her were telepaths, and she turned to go the other way, only to hear the hiss of a tranquilizer gun go off and feeling a dart enter her. She yanked it out and saw that it was a dual-purpose tranquilizer dart: one part held the stuff that knocked her out, the other the sleepers that would dull her telepathic abilities.

She collapses to the street, just as a skimmer pulled up to the curb. Two men stepped out and helped her into the vehicle, as the two women coming down the street assisted as well. The man who had shot her with the gun stepped into the driver's seat and began to drive away from the side of the street.

"Where are we headed to, sir?" said one of the new operatives in this operation.

"The spaceport. Have we made a positive ID yet?" the leader said.

"Yes sir! Despite the dye job on her hair and the age, she's Talia Winters, alright! But what does the president want with her?"