Note: contains possible spoilers to second season of Battlestar Galactica

Thirteen

Chapter Thirty-Six

Hurricane Over Geneva

Senator Clarissa Cally never really liked the capital of Geneva. It seemed to her to be a city too sedate to be the heart and soul of the Earth Alliance. Granted, you couldn't help but notice the mammoth structure known as the Earthdome, which would have dwarfed all the domed stadiums with their retractable roofs back in North America. It was its own miniature city, constructed along the same lines as the domed colonies on Mars. Designed to withstand a nuclear strike or an attack from space, Earthdome was well protected from the outside. However, as always, it was what went on inside the dome that was the real trouble.

As her shuttle landed near the spaceport, she sniffed again at the fact that President Hollifield was on Babylon 5. She didn't understand why the people liked him so much. Yes, he was a war hero and had been instrumental in finding a cure for the Drakh plague, but that was almost a decade ago. He'd won two presidential elections with relative ease, and the polls had him once again looking like a strong contender for yet another term despite the media and public response to her candidacy.

There were more than two parties in Earth Alliance politics these days, but, much like in American politics, it came down to the big two: the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. The smaller parties tended to be of the more radical ilk, so they were almost always relegated to alliance partners in governments.

For Cally, this was a short trip to see the Earth Senate leadership in her new party, as well as putting in an appearance at the party headquarters inside the dome. As she stepped out of the shuttle, a cold wind whipped down from the Alps, and she shivered and cursed her ancient predecessors for not having the sense to just locate the Earth Alliance capital in Washington, DC. Granted, it got hot as hell down along that stretch of the Potomac River, but it was much better than freezing parts of your body off here in western Switzerland.

The walk to the limo was a short one though, and she wouldn't have to step outside when she arrived at the Liberal Democrat party headquarters. She made herself a drink and downed it to settle herself before looking over some paperwork before the meeting.

Liberal Democratic leaders tended to be of a moderate liberal bent, much like the president himself. There wasn't a whole lot of difference between the two main parties, which made the switch relatively easy for Cally. She had always gotten along with her Liberal Democratic colleagues when she was in the House, and she most definitely got along with her Senate colleagues in Congress in Washington these days.

They made a spectacle of her arrival for the media, and she waved to the crowd assembled there. Already signs proclaiming "Cally '83" were out in force, which made her smile. Almost all the potential candidates for the presidential nomination would be here, and she intended to effectively eliminate them as soon as possible.

Twanissa Hollifield struggled to walk as she gripped the parallel bars on each side of her. Dr. Shelly Godfrey stood at the other end of the bars, while Twanissa's twin sister, D'anna Biers, stood directly behind the First Lady. Hollifield grunted and grimaced as she slowly walked the course, trusting her legs a little more each day as she went through the grueling physical therapy after her surgery to repair the damage she had suffered from the bike riding accident.

When she got to the end of the bars, she collapsed into the arms of Dr. Godfrey. "Great work, Mrs. Hollifield! You're getting better each day!" said the doctor encouragingly, and she helped the First Lady, with the assistance of D'anna, back into her wheelchair. The First Lady simply nodded and wheeled herself back to Godfrey's office.

When their daily appointment was done, Godfrey made her way out of the hospital and towards a building that housed Gina and Dr. Gaius Baltar. She saw the younger copy of herself almost every day, and it still bothered her a bit that someone would have gone to the trouble of taking her DNA and making clones of her to be used in the destruction of an entire system of humans. That was why when the president approached her about this project, she signed on immediately.

The Earthforce security officer checked her credentials and cleared her to pass on through, remarking to her about the recent outcome of the Oklahoma/Texas game. Godfrey sighed and said, "Yeah, rub it in! Those damned Longhorns got lucky this year!" Her beloved Oklahoma Sooners had been beaten the previous weekend in the Red River Shootout in a huge upset, which saw them knocked off their perch as the highest ranked team in the weekly poll to be replaced by the Georgia Bulldogs, who had beaten Alabama to claim the premiership brass ring of college football for the week.

She shook off her disappointment in that result as she entered the lab where Gina was housed. Baltar lived her as well, and rarely, if reports were accurate, ever left this area. The lab was split into a mock house, with apartments for Baltar and Gina for privacy. Gina was monitored, and it relieved Godfrey that Baltar hadn't tried to make a move on her, because, to her, Baltar gave her the impression of a womanizer. She was glad he'd kept his hands to himself, but a part of her wished he'd at least make a pass at her.

Gina smiled as Godfrey walked into her apartment and happily reported on the progress that they had made in freeing her from the Cylon programming. It was essential to the long-term project, because if they could keep the Cylons from being able to order their humanoid clones, it would give the Colonials and their allies a real weapon in which to turn the tide of the war.

They talked for an hour about how things were going with Gina. Gina informed her that her therapy sessions were going well, and she was making progress in dealing with the emotional scars caused by the brutal rapes and beatings at the hands of the crew of the Pegasus. She was eating quite well and had gained some more weight that she had lost because of the trauma. It was a remarkable improvement, considering how she had been when she first arrived here.

When they concluded, she walked over to Baltar's apartment and knocked on the door. Baltar welcomed her in and invited her to sit down on the couch in the living room. "And how are we today, Dr. Godfrey?"

"Tired, exhausted, and beat, like I always am, Dr. Baltar." Godfrey remarked as she brushed back a strand of her messy hair from her face. "So how goes your work with the captured prisoners?"

"It's getting better. They are becoming more independent minded and less inclined to follow the Cylon programming installed within them. The telepaths assigned to us from the Metasensory Bureau have helped a lot, but we've still got a ways to go before we're able to free them completely." Baltar replied.

The meeting was brief, as they always were between them. Godfrey, to Baltar's chagrin, was all business. It also took him by surprise that she dressed so shabbily and so frumpily, like clothes were just something to be worn to cover the body.

When she left, Six came to him and sat down on the same couch where Godfrey sat. Baltar missed the days when Six would seduce him, and remarked upon it to her musingly.

"Those days are long gone, Gaius. How can I seduce you with something that I no longer believe in?" Six replied, wearing, as usual, a conservative business suit that, while it did hug her appealingly firm figure, wasn't exactly titillating. "Besides, wouldn't you rather have a real woman to seduce?"

"What do you mean by that?" Baltar said.

"Well, Dr. Godfrey is single, you know. The only reason she dresses the way she does is because she's a workaholic, and doesn't have anytime for anything other than her job and her children. When this is over, perhaps you could…"

Baltar shook his head violently and said, "Last thing I need is to try and seduce the mother of the woman I used to love. I mean, next thing you'll tell me is to seduce Gina!"

"No, she's off limits to you, Gaius!" Six said with surprising anger. She calmed herself and added, "When the time comes, and she's interested in you, let her come to you. I doubt she will, but you never know."

Gaius sat down in a chair and put his face in his hands. "Why am I even thinking of sex anymore? Look where it got me!"

Six replied, "Look where it got the Colonies! It's not really entirely your fault, Gaius. I had a hand in it as well."

"You know, it's funny. With the way that Dr. Godfrey acts, she's a long way from being a seductress like your used to be!"

Six thought about that for a minute, then said, "Perhaps she might have been in the past, for all we know."

That evening, in her apartment, Godfrey retreated to her room after putting her kids to bed. She got out of her clothes and into her pajamas, then slid under the covers. She hoped the dreams wouldn't come tonight, but they did.

It was back in college, at the University of Oklahoma. She had gone there because she had heard from the older sister of a high school friend of hers that they had some hunky guys there. Having grown up in a very religious household, she yearned to rebel from under her parent's rules and cut loose.

She'd been a total slut in college, learning the art of seduction quickly in college. Shelly had managed to hide her recklessness from her family, who would have disapproved of her bed hopping. She didn't care, as she was having fun and still managing to excel in school.

The night came to her again where that all changed. It was the spring semester of her senior year. They were at a frat party, and Shelly had some sort of alcoholic drink in her hand. She was having a good time when she met a tall white male who asked her to dance.

Later in the evening, she fought to get him off of her, but in her drunken state, she couldn't put up much of a fight. He laughed as she fought back, managing to get what he wanted, then left her there in a heap on the bed and going back to the party.

She couldn't tell her parents of the rape, or the abortion that she had to have when she found out she was pregnant. Her friend Boomer helped her through it all, but she couldn't do what needed to be done: punish the man who had raped Shelly. He stalked her for a while, and made lewd advances towards her. It didn't help that he was the prominent son of an Oklahoma politician. Her friends noticed her change, as the partying, happy-go-lucky Shelly was long gone, replaced by a woman who spent as much time in the library as she used to at parties.

She graduated near the top of her class, and her parents were beaming. She managed to hide the pain and beam with them, but she threw herself into her medical school studies almost immediately. In medical school, she'd met Dieter Krieg, who was just as dedicated to his studies as she was. They fell for each other and eventually got married, graduated from medical school, and had kids.

It hadn't worked out, because Dieter's bisexuality became an issue as he began to lean towards an attraction towards men. Shelly let him go and divorced him, and they shared joint custody of the kids. Curiously enough, they got along better now than they had when they were married, and Dieter and his partner Michel were great with the kids.

When she woke up the next morning, she could feel that she had cried during the night. It had been one of those bad dreams again, and she walked to the bathroom to shower and try to come to life again. Sometimes, she thought, it was tempting to end it all, but she quickly dismissed the thought as she remembered her kids. They meant the world to her, and she wanted to be there for them.

In a way, she had another kid as well: Gina. In fact, she probably had a lot of kids, for all she knew. One of the reasons she had gone along with this project was to help them gain some measure of revenge upon those who had created them just to use them. From her experiences with the other human Cylons, they had independent thoughts and wills of their own. They were just as much of a victim of the mechanical Cylons as she had been of that spoiled brute that had raped her years ago.

However, the brute got what was coming to him, as he had been jailed for attempting to rape Miss Oklahoma five years ago. The judge didn't like his dad, so he sentenced the young man to the maximum sentence in a maximum-security prison. As karma had a way of working, he was murdered by his cellmate for using a racial slur against him. She took no pleasure at the news, just some satisfaction that justice has somehow been served.

She managed to find some clean clothes as well as a clean lab jacket, but she knew she'd have to find some time soon to do the laundry. Her boys were old enough to do it themselves, so she left a note on the fridge for Dieter to get the boys to help him take the dirty clothes to the launderette in the building to wash up. Once that was done, she left for yet another day at work.

Senator Cally hadn't wanted to stay the night in Geneva, but when she found out what the president was up to, she decided to skip the flight back and stay for the party at the Liberal Democrat headquarters. The free flowing alcohol loosened some tongues of some higher-ups, and she found out that the president was going to use the secret Cylon prisoners in an attempt to free them from their programming and to rebel against their mechanical creators.

In theory, she agreed with what he was doing, but she despised him so much that she wanted to use his project against him. He always railed against the way that the Psi Corps had used telepaths and how corporations used employees, so it would be sweet to throw the project in his face. She couldn't come out and say it just yet, because the whole project fell under ultra violet security, so disclosing it publicly would wind her up in jail, and put a premature end to her burgeoning political career.

However, she knew of certain reporters who didn't like the president either, and who had ways of digging around and finding more information about the project. More than that, they had ways of getting said information downgraded to lower security clearances, so that, when the time was right, she would be able to use it against the president and bring his little attempt at empire building to an end.

When she returned to DC, it was raining heavily. She had tickets to the Washington Generals game against the New York Jets, but decided to skip the game and gave them to some of her staffers instead. She curled up in her blanket on the couch and watched the game instead in her living room, and smiled with glee as the Generals pounded the hapless Jets, much like she hoped to do with Hollifield at the polls in three years time.