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Chapter 27

At sunset, Helena and the rest of the team arrived to a mountain pass on top of the first ridge. It was cold and windy with wisps of fog floating by. They decided to set camp along the pass on top of the ridge, looking for a flat section, sheltered from the wind by the mountain. They were high up above the tree line. It was colder and there was almost no vegetation, only small bushes growing low on the wind beaten plateau. The view from both sides of the ridge was breathtaking. On the north, the Tanzanian plains were stretching beyond the first ridges of the Arc Mountains, where the Lady's Ridge and their permanent camp was located, and further away Mount Kilimanjaro, its white cap shining orange in the sunset. The sky was turning shades of deep red and violet. On the southeast, the Uluguru mountains were dark, and lost in fog, with a sharp descent to the hazy Mikumi National Park in the plains and then further away the dark Udzungwa mountains. On the east, the Indian Ocean was already a deep ultramarine blue in the distance, with the lights of Dar es Salaam defining the coast and a few lights on Zanzibar outlining the island in the darkness. The guys set up the camp and pulled their camping stove to start warming up a small dinner. Helena and Sharon sat together away from the group away from the propane lantern's lights.

"What is your specialty in this team?" Sharon asked

"I study old languages" Helena replied. "I have heard that your language is quite different from the other's in this region. And I am intrigued."

"As far as I know, it is pretty unique, yes. I do not know of any other group in the region speaking it."

"Does it have a written from?"

"It does and I will show you when we get there." Sharon replied.

The others called them to share their food. The two women smiled at each other and walked back together. Dr. John Evans of course was making geeky jokes with the young men helping them carrying their packages. Dr. Evelyne Bordes joined Helena and Sharon.

"She is the biologist of the group", Helena stated to Sharon. Evelyne was a quiet woman in her thirties, with short brown hair and an unmistakable French accent.

"Yep, we want to do a genetic study to see if your people are related to other ethnic groups in the region. Using special markers, on mitochondrial DNA for instance, we can trace back the migration of humans all over the planet. It is quite fascinating. Of course the mitochondria will show us only the female lineage since they are only passed from mother to daughters. We have to use markers on the Y chromosome to follow the male lineage, but it is a bit more imprecise."

Sharon was surprised. "You are telling me that some DNA is passed only to girls?"

"No, it is passed to boys too, but they do not give it to their children. Only the girls can transmit the mitochondrial DNA to their descendants, because it is found in the egg that is fertilized. Because of this, you can follow it from daughter to mother to maternal grandmother etc… and then you can establish matriarchal family trees".

"Well, we do have female family trees too!" Sharon stated.

"How come?" asked Helena.

"The women are in charge and they hold important positions in each village. The village chief is always a woman and so is the priestess. When they get old, they pass their duties to a younger woman they have trained, often their daughter, if they have one. It has been like this for generations. We keep archives of all the women who have been in charge, and that is a huge family tree, since they are related to each other."

"How far do these archives go back?"

"Pretty far, but when they switched to parchment and paper a lot of these books got destroyed. Before that, they engraved the names in a rock in a sacred cave, but most of them are not even readable anymore."

Helena could barely contain her excitement.

"Do we know how all of this started? I mean, I know it is ancient, but you must have an oral tradition. Do we know who the first chief was?"

"You are right, it is very ancient and, yes, we do have an oral tradition, stories that were told from generation to generation. The name of the first woman to take charge was Hera." Sharon nodded.

"Hera!" Helena exclaimed loud enough for all heads to turn towards her.

She lowered her voice again. "I would have expected her to be Laura!"

"How do you know this?"

"I heard of the legends!"

"Laura was never a village chief. She is the Dying Leader who led her people to Earth. She arrived from the skies with other Gods according to the legend. She was their queen. Hera was the daughter of the Gods. She was the first one, the first Earth woman." Sharon stated.

"Tell us more about Laura," whispered Helena.

"She died here after her arrival."

"Was she alone?" Evelyne asked.

"She was with a man who loved her and was a leader too. He died by her side." She looked at her watch and then added: "We better go to sleep, we have a lot of walking to do tomorrow".

Helena walked to her tarp, put a fleece shirt and a hat and slid inside her sleeping bag next to Takashi.

"Interesting talk?"

"You bet", Helena answered, "She says that the first woman on Earth was Hera"

"Yes, I heard you" he said with a chuckle.

"Hera was half cylon!" Helena said, "These people are descendants of cylons".

"We need more evidence. In any case, Evelyne is going to have a field day studying their biology" He whispered, half asleep.

The next day at dawn, they watched the sun, a glowing red ball, rise from the Indian ocean in the distance, as if pulled out of the water by an invisible string, and set up for the descent into the foggy dark valley.

As the hours progressed, the walk was becoming increasingly more difficult, over slippery rocks and wet tree roots, enveloped in dense fog. Animals ran away at their passage. Sharon seemed to know the way she was going, even if to everyone else the forest looked the same in all directions. Helena reflected on how easy it would be to get lost in this place. Trees were dripping condensed water on them as a fine rain and Helena knew immediately that they would not find any old artifacts in such an environment. With time passing, the group was getting tired from slipping over low branches and moss-covered rocks. They heard water in the distance, a stream maybe. They could hear cries of animals, which remained invisible. As the afternoon sun touched the forest, the fog started to rise and it started to get warm. They continued walking in the dense humidity and increasing heat through the afternoon along side the little stream, taking short breaks to rest and drink. They heard in the distance the increasingly louder sound of a waterfall and, as they progressed, they knew they were getting closer. Then, they saw sunrays going through the forest canopy and all of a sudden they were enveloped in light. The clearing was just marvelous, the path led to a tall waterfall coming from the cliff above and splashing into a deep emerald green pool surrounded by flat rocks. The sun played with the water reflecting through the clear water. Algae were growing at the bottom of the pool and small fish were swimming, scattering when the group approached. Everyone stopped exhausted and put their backpacks down and looked at the beautiful landscape around them. They were at the bottom of a circle of tall cliffs, with several caves entries along the cliffs' faces. The dense canopy of forest surrounded them, opening up just for the pool and the stream. It seemed to be the end of the path. There were no villages in sight.

"There was a contamination in the food processing plant, which destroyed our food supplies. And just like this, in a matter of a couple of hours, we were without resources. Living in space is dangerous; we always knew that. It would not be so much of a problem if we were still by Caprica and able to bring the ships in for repairs. Those ships have been just going and going. We have been in space without a stop for so many months, well years, right now. No way to have them temporarily docked for repairs. We used to have a lot in storage. A little over one year on New Caprica and a rushed escape had depleted our supplies and whatever we had stored was just gone. It is incredible to think that we really are at the mercy of a technical difficulty like this and that in one instant, our hopes of survival have just vanished. It really does not matter whether the cylons will kill us, because in a couple of weeks or even less, we will be dying of starvation, unless we find quickly a reliable source of food. Barely a couple of weeks of reserves, which we would have to make last as long as we could. Already, we started to distribute the remaining rations equitably between all of the military and civilians. I am worried riots will start on ships. There is nothing like lack of food to start violence, suspicion and attacks among the people. There are some who believe others are hoarding food, some that are actually hoarding the food, some that are stealing it and are ready to kill others, and the ones who are caught in the middle. It is a recipe for disaster, no pun intended. I am not sure whether I want to cry or laugh. We survived all of these disasters, the cylon holocaust, our months of struggling to escape New Caprica for what? For this?"

"Immediately Adama sent the vipers in recon missions to try and find a planet, which would supply some food for us. While the pilots were searching, operating on no sleep, no food and stimulant tablets, the rest of us were waiting. All transportation shuttles were suspended to minimize riots. All non-essential operations were stopped, because we wanted people to conserve their energy. How long could we operate without any rations, before we started killing each other? Colonial One was deserted; the government was operating minimally. Reports were coming in day after day of people starving, cases of malnutrition, especially among children. This made me deeply sad. Some people committed suicide. There was a case where young guys killed someone's pet to eat it. Truth is, we will not survive long in these conditions. We should have been accustomed to famine on New Caprica, but even then, with the cold and the cylons, there still was some kind of food, even just enough to keep us alive. Here and now, there was nothing, no root to go and dig, nothing to salvage except whatever food was on the ships and did not get contaminated by the chemical leak in the storage area. It seemed ironic that we would end up dying of starvation after all of this. I had not eaten in a couple of days now, but I really cannot complain, at least I had comfortable quarters and a bed to lie on. If we died now, I was glad for the few happy moments I was able to steal while on New Caprica. That was more than most of the refugees on this fleet."

"Time is just moving so slow when you are hungry. I feel that I have difficulties concentrating. Each day, I have started to broadcast a status of our resources on the wireless, number of rations left, number of dead, malnourished or sick people. But today, I am alone in my office and it is late. I am tired and, yes, hungry, like everyone else. And I am getting reports of people starting to fight each other's. This time, it is not a 'dance', but fights breaking out of hopelessness, out of the need to survive and I am thinking of all the time lost. I am thinking of the futile time arguing and second-guessing each other, of all the petty disagreements, the lack of trust we often experienced, our lack of confidence and openness. I am thinking of all that was and what could have been. I started my address on the wireless and stopped mid-way chocking with emotion. Was I really going to tell my people, my friends, how bad our situation was? Instead, I talked about our bonds with each other. I wanted them to realize that, after all, the only support we really had was found in one another. We were surviving because we had this trust and these connections with each other, and at the end it was just the most important thing. My friends, my family, my people, the human race, we cared for each other and that was our strength. It was quite the opposite message than Bill declared on the boxing ring, where he separated himself from his family, because a leader could not afford sentimentality. No, he was wrong, it is our affection for each other, all of us, our human family that makes our strength and separate us from those who seek to destroy us. It is not a flaw, but strength. And we should nurture it and revere it as the ultimate gift and grace of what it means to be human."

"Search parties have come back. Planets with that kind of resources are difficult to find, but we located a planet capable of supporting some kind of life, in this case abundant algae, on the other side of a star cluster. We are just waiting for news that we have found a safe passage to go to that algae planet through that nebula of deadly radiation. The star cluster is way too big to go around and would have to be traversed with two or three jumps, except that the radiation levels were huge and lethal. It would be dangerous for us to attempt to go through. We had to wait for Sharon to find a route for us to go. As a cylon, Sharon was more resistant to radiation levels than most. Her biology allowed her to regenerate faster, or that is what was explained to me. Adama devised a way to cross the star cluster in two or three jumps, and we would all go through guided by a raptor. Raptors would go back and forth escorting each ship until everyone was safely on the other side. They would do a number of trips and when their radiation exposure levels were too high the pilots would be pulled out. It would be terribly tough on the pilots and quite a big sacrifice to ask of the Galactica pilots. I knew they would not even question this and risk their lives for us. Their dedication was heartbreaking. We finally made it to the other side, but we lost one ship and one of our best pilot, Kat. Each death is personal to me. I wiped down the number of survivors on my white board and wrote the new one, minus a few hundreds, with of course those who did not make it through the famine. Gods, Hear my prayer for those who did not survive."

Thank you for reading. As always, please review; it keeps me going. ;)