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Chapter 24

The hike was long and tedious. There was no clear path and Sharon seemed to know where she was going on instinct. They passed some ruins and there was no way of telling if they were remnants of ancient farms from the colonial period or if they were more ancient. Sharon said she did not know. The ground was soaked by rain and they often slipped on the mud. Then, a fine rain started again and they continued under the steady rain until the evening, scarcely exchanging words. They set up camp in a clearing that was mid-point to the first ridge. The camp was minimal, set up quickly and to be taken down just as fast, with only just tarps attached slanted to the trees for rain protection and ground cloths away from the running water to set their sleeping bags. The men and the soldiers took watch after the others. Dr. Evans sat with Sharon under a tarp making small talk. Dr. Hsu was talking with Dr. Bordes. Helena ended up sharing a tarp with Takashi Inoue. They were both the oldest members of the team, well in their fifties, with a lot of experience in research and exploration.

"Thank you" said Takashi.

"For what?" Helena replied surprised lifting her face out of her notes.

"For allowing us to do this. You translated this text. You had the insight to search the right sources and were able to decipher it almost completely."

Helena smiled. "I'm not done yet. There are still plenty of tablets to read and translate. And then the last book, which I have no clue how to start."

"I have been studying this region for a long time. I know there is something special about it." He said.

"I should be the one to thank you", Helena replied, "for bringing me here. This…" she waved her hand around her "is extraordinary".

With a sigh, she put her notes away, smiled at him and lay down inside her sleeping bag. He did the same after turning down the lantern.

"We continued to follow the cues to guide us on the direction of Earth, the lions head nebula with the two blinking eyes, pulsar emitting in the blue and red wave lengths. This is what we determined from the scientific work of Baltar, when he was working on trying to find cues to guide us to Earth. So we moved in that direction, jump after jump. While we traveled, I remained on board of Colonial One. There was a lot of work to do to reorganize the government and find space to all of the people without a place to live. A large number of refugees were still on Galactica and it seemed that they would remain there for now. Our excitement was growing each day, as we were moving closer to the Lion's Head nebula. Bill Adama sent a recon mission and to our puzzlement we discovered cylon basestars and raiders, which were completely out of order to say the least. It turned out that the team that boarded the ships found cylons dying from a disease, which dreadful side effects. Immediately everyone who got in contact with the sick were quarantined, as they could bring back the disease to us, but after careful examination, Dr. Cottle was able to identify the virus as a long lost form of encephalitis, which humans were immune to. This infection could very well be our salvation, as it attacks cylons only and for them it is fatal. Apparently, the virus would follow them if they die and are downloaded into a new body, hereby contaminating their resurrection ship and the entire cylon race. I am not really sure I understand how that is possible, since I always understood their process of downloading as a transfer of their consciousness into a new body, without transfer of physical characteristics. But the cylons are so convinced that the virus would follow them into the download that they actually abandoned their sick ships to die outside of the range of the resurrection ship. Leaving their kind to die without hope to be saved. So here is the thing, if we could bring some of the sick cylons in range of a resurrection ship and then kill them, or simply let them die there, we could contaminate the entire cylon race and be done with this war, which has nearly driven us to extinction. That was the idea of Lee Adama and I have to say that it is really a strike of genius."

"Being a leader was also accepting that in order to protect my people I would have to kill. I had not problem telling Bill to kill Admiral Cain, when I realized she would kill him and, not only that, but also bring our destruction with her ruthless authoritarian policies. I never liked this part of leadership. It could not be avoided. We had to do what was right for the survival of the human race. I did not like it, but I would never let cowardice win over me. Karl Agathon, the husband of Sharon, the number Eight cylon, fiercely opposed the idea of cylon genocide. The half- cylon baby, Hera, saved my life. It seems that the race is evolving and, aside from this newly acquired ability to conceive children, are also developing characteristics of individuality, where they are not programmed anymore but actually developing real individual personality traits, and starting to make their own choices, independently from their programming."

"In any case, when my suggestion to use the virus as a biological weapon to wipe out the cylon race was debated, Karl Agathon, Helo, was clearly taking the other side, accusing me of committing genocide and hereby a crime against humanity. Then he said something that shocked me. He said that cylons tried to live with us on New Caprica. But of course he was not there. He was one of those, who remained in orbit on the ship with Adama. He did not see the horrors we saw and were victims of. I chose to ignore his remarks and dismissed him before I would explode at him and do something I would regret later. Bill saw the fury in my look, but he did not comment. Yet I could see that he understood my feelings. My decision to go along with the plan was taken before I even debated it. If we had a chance to get rid of the cylons one and for all, we could not pass the opportunity to end this. The cylons destroyed the twelve colonies and billions of people died. Where they provoked? Yes, many times. Still, they did it. They bombed without mercy twelve planets with nuclear weapons. Oh yes, we would commit genocide, but they were committing genocide against us. They were wiping us, and we had to remain alive as a human race. We could not let ourselves be exterminated because of high moral principles. Those who survived would praise this genocidal act as an act of courage. I do not care how I would be judged, if there were anyone left alive to make this judgment. We saw what happened when we stuck with our high moral principles: I did not steal the election and we ended up losing thousands of lives on New Caprica, because of my high moral principles. I knew that I had to follow the rules of democracy, but it led us to death and destruction. I knew Agathon had convinced Bill that we were committing an act of genocide and he did not want to make the call. As president and as commander in chief, I had to make the decision. I made it without regrets and even with the cynical gladness that we would definitely would get rid of the cylons. Yes, I acknowledged that the cylons were evolving and that maybe, just maybe, there were some of them who objected killing humans, that maybe some of them were starting to think individually and making their own choices. But, we could not take the chance that these would be saved and turn towards us, when the majority were seeking to exterminate us. If we had the chance to kill them all, we should take it, because our survival depended on it. That was a chance we could not pass and I made the decision without regrets. Adama looked at me with resignation, fear almost at my cold determination to kill them all. He remained silent watching me, questioning my motives in his thoughts. He wouldn't make the decision. I realized he had become softer than me and I had become more ruthless. He left without engaging in conversation to carry the orders he just received from me, his commander in chief, not Laura anymore, the president. I remained anxious while the Galactica jumped away to carry the mission, leaving us behind with some vipers for protection. The plan was to jump in a area where cylons would find the Galactica, let us find it, kill the cylon prisoners, affected by the virus, and let them download to the resurrection facility carrying the virus with them and contaminating the cylon race. It just did not happen that way, because the prisoners were executed before contact was made with the cylons and Galactica had to retreat and regroup with us later on."

"As soon as it was safe to do so, I took a shuttle over and met with Bill, who explained to me that he found the infected cylon prisoners dead in the cells, due to a lack of oxygen. The system had been manually disabled and that was clearly the job of someone knowledgeable with the engineering schematics, an officer and member of the crew. To me it was clear that Agathon had done it, but conveniently Bill dropped the charges. I barely could contain my anger at him. I knew he was against the idea of genocide, but his sentimentality would probably cause our demise. He offered me alcohol, but I refused and to defuse the tension between us, he started to talk about the fact that the beacon, which originally carried the virus affecting the cylons came from the thirteenth tribe, which was the tribe seeking earth and they left it there as a sign post, a beacon indicating their route. We were on the right track. They were unaware that the beacon was contaminated by the virus. Unfortunately, the cylons were on the same track as us, looking for Earth as well and now that we had missed our opportunity to get rid of them forever, they would be chasing us all the way to Earth. I told so to Bill and he reacted with a sigh. We sat together in silence in the comfortable chairs of his quarters, the room heavy with unspoken feelings.

'Laura' he said and I lifted my eyes to meet his deep blue eyes. 'You have changed. You have become so cynical' he added.

'Bill, they will not let us live in peace. They are out to exterminate us. This is war. Don't talk to me about being a cynic. I thought you were a soldier. On New Caprica, they had no mercy. But you were not there, how could you know?' I said bitterly.

'There has not been one day, since that day the cylons came, in which I did not wish I was down there with you.'

'They just would have killed you right away. You were better off on Galactica.'

'Tell me about New Caprica.'

'It was hell, Bill. They tortured and killed thousands of us. Nobody was immune, Tigh, Kara. Anyone of importance that they could find was detained. Zarek was there the entire time of the occupation. They can do this to people, Bill; they have no mercy. They will do it again given the opportunity.'

'What did they do to you?'

I swallowed hard and remained silent for a moment, emotions surging like a wave. Was I ready to talk to him about this? Maybe.

'They put me in detention, twice. Relatively speaking they treated me better than others, because of my status of former president. After all, I am still alive. They did not want to make a martyr of me, I suppose. And yes, if that is what you want to know, I was beaten several times, but less than most others. And really my personal experience does not matter, thousands were murdered or tortured, Bill, thousands. Those, who were not the victims, were the perpetrators, losing their souls just as well.'

He looked at me, with tears in his eyes.

'I don't want your pity, Bill.' I said to him.

'Pity? No, and I am sorry,' he murmured, 'I am sorry, Laura, that it took so long for us to get you out of there.'

'I thought you didn't do regrets!' I said with a hint of sarcasm.

'Maybe I have changed too.' He replied.

I got up to leave in silence and we realized that we were comfortable again with each other, just like old friends. I hugged him tight and he held me as I let my head resting on his shoulder for a moment.

'We are going to be ok', he whispered in my ear.

'I don't know' I replied equally. We parted and he held my hand in his for a minute, until I turned around and stepped out of the hatch to return to Colonial One."

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