"I'm awful sorry to do this to you fellas." Starbuck spread the round playing cards on the table with no trace of sorrow at all. "But this is three quarters of a perfect pyramid."

Groans accompanied the dropping of cards all around the table and a collective chuckle ran through the small cluster of observers in the officers' quarters.

"Someday I'll learn to stop playing pyramid with you," Boomer complained as Starhuck claimed the pot. "A guy could lose his self confidence around you."

Jolly stood and stretched while Greenbean gathered and reshuffled the cards. "That isn't all a guy could lose," he added morosely.

They had settled down to another hand, Greenbean having dealt the new round, when Apollo appeared at Starbuck's shoulder. "I hate to interrupt a winning streak," he said in the lieutenant's ear, "but I have to talk to you. Outside."

Starbuck shrugged and tossed his hand in. "This could be your lucky day after all," he said to the other players, and collecting his winnings he followed Apollo through the crowd to the outer corridor. When the door to the officers' quarters had closed again Starbuck expected to stop and hear the captain's news, but Apollo kept walking. "What gives?" he protested. "I'm on a hot streak in there; I"ve gotta get back before--"

"You're not going back," Apollo interrupted him. "We have a priority call from the Arachnia. Colonel Tigh wants to see us both right now."

Starbuck held his questions until they had turned the corner and entered Tigh's private quarters. The colonel was waiting for them. What puzzled Starbuck first and foremost was his attire. In place of his customary command-rank blue Tigh was wearing a warrior's tan and brown combat fatigues.

"Glad you two could make it," Tigh said. "We take off at 0900."

"Take off?" Starbuck echoed. "For where? Would somebody mind telling me what's...?" He caught Tigh's stern look and hastily rephrased. "That is, uh, I'd like to request a briefing... sir."

Tigh cleared his throat. "We're going aboard the Arachnia," he told them. "She's a D-class freighter retired from military service fourteen yahrens ago. She was in private hands as an ore transport at the time of the Cylon attack on the colonies. Now, of course, she's hauling human cargo: Refugees from Virga. In short, this ship has a reputation for unexplained 'accidents.' Fifteen yahrens back she had a massive radiation leak on her R-deck. It's been sealed off ever since. But over the yahrens it's said more than 100 people have simply disappeared while aboard that ship. We might have passed it off as so much ghostly legend, except that last week it happened again -- to one of our own security personnel. He went in to investigate a report of strange sounds coming from the sealed R-deck. He never reported back in."

"Wonderful," Starbuck moaned. "A haunted space ship. Just the kind of duty I enjoy. A little parlay with the dead and dear departed."

"Whatever 'haunts' that deck is far from dead," Tigh informed him. "The ship's shielding makes it difficult to get accurate sensor readings, but something is definitely alive down there. Something apparently human."

"Is it possible," Apollo wondered, "that the sensors are picking up some trace of the people who've disappeared?"

Tigh shook his head. "We won't know that until we've investigated."

Starbuck re-surveyed the colonel's clothing, mutely questioning a bridge officer's inclusion in a field mission, however unroutine it might be. Apollo, too, seemed curious.

Tigh solved the mystery brusquely. "I was stationed aboard the Arachnia before she was retired. I know the ship and I know the R-deck. Now if you gentlemen have no further questions..."

Apollo and Starbuck chorused a "No sir," and preceded Tigh back out into the corridor.

* * *

The Arachnia, resembling her namesake, was a sprawling freighter with eight tangent fuselages sprouting from her central hub. No one could ever have looked upon her riveted, 19-decks-thick bulk and called it beautiful, but beauty had not been a consideration of her builders. She'd served a noble purpose in her time, though now she served one greater still. She carried the Virgan survivors to the promise of a world free from Cylon rule.

R-deck, the lowest section of the hub, had been equipped with its own generators for independent power and air supplies, and the systems were still functional. Though tests had indicated all traces of radiation had long ago dissipated, distrust of the instrumentation and a large dose of superstition had conspired to keep the deck sealed, though now, with the overcrowded conditions of the refugees aboard, the space could well have been utilized.

Not without reservations of their own, Starbuck, Apollo and Tigh broke seals on the primary access hatch and descended into the first outer corridor of the R-deck. Apollo wondered as they cleared the hatchway if the missing security man had entered this way, and whether he were still alive down here somewhere. They stood in a dimly lit hall, the pungent odor of solium lubricant thick in the air. Throbbing from the overhead engines, though scarcely audible, could be felt like a heartbeat threading through the deck and bulkheads.

Starbuck looked decidedly uncomfortable. "Not that I' m worried or anything," he half-whispered, "but if we find whatever it is that's supposedly hibernating down here, what do we do with it?"

"For starters," Tigh replied, "you keep your lasers on stun. Remember the readings indicated a human being, so don't fire unless whover it is makes the first threatening move." He paused, drawing his own weapon and checking the setting. "I want us to split up and search. You two take the opposing circles of the outer corridor; I'll head center."

Starbuck broached a delicate objection. "Don't you think it might be a little safer if we stayed together?" Tigh's glare was withering and Starbuck relented. "I didn't think so,"he sighed.

"You've been issued wristband com links," Tigh said. "Use them. They'll be kept open continuously, and if you see anything -- anything -- yell."

Nodding, they moved in the assigned directions until each was out of sight of the other. Apollo had difficulty shaking off a sense of forboding at these eerie, deserted corridors aboard a ship that was otherwise so densely populated, and the legends of vengeful spirits haunting the R-deck were no help at all to his morale. The quality of the air, despite the still-functioning atmospheric system, was so stale as to be almost stifling and there was a distinct if inexplicable chill to it, as though the vacuum of space itself had somehow intruded here. An involuntary shiver ran down Apollo's spine as he reached the first doorway off the corridor and placed a hand on the touchplate to activate the door. It crawled open with a noise like a death rattle, then stood mutely daring him to enter. Defying it, he did, but found only a wide storage area littered with broken and overturned crates. Dust covered everything so thickly that it muffled his footsteps on the deck.

"Apollo?" Starbuck's voice coming abruptly over the comlink made him jump.

"Yo, " he said to it, not certain his voice had regained its composure.

"You find anything?"

"Just a room full of broken crates. Looks like some one -- or something -- might have been foraging for foodstuffs. How about you?"

Same thing. A lot of empty rooms, most of them rummaged through. And dust so thick you could swim through it. Brother, this place gives me the creeps."

Another voice came over the tiny speaker. "Then the sooner you complete your circuit, Lieutenant, the sooner we can all go home."

"Yes sir." Meekly, Starbuck signed off. Apollo continued his circuit of the curving corridor, opening each door in turn only to find the same scenario repeated again and again. Any container that might possibly have contained food of any sort had been overturned and searched. But the thick coating of dust had 1ong since covered over any tracks the subject might have left behind.

The scene had begun to become tiresome, and Apollo was considering reporting that opinion to Colonel Tigh as he came once more into the corridor. The noise made his hand fly instinctively to the butt of his laser, and in the periphery of his vision, something moved. Little more than a shadow, it scrabbled away in the dark before he could look directly at it. Apollo, his heart pounding, drew the laser and moved in the direction he thought it had gone.

"Colonel Tigh, " he said to the comlink and flinched at the too-high quality of his voice. "Sir, something just moved over here."

"What was it? Did you get a look at it?"

"No sir. Whatever it was seems to have disappeared again."

"Great." That was Starbuck again. "Then we can come and help you look for it. Be right over."

"Negative, Lieutenant," said Tigh's voice. "I'll rendezvous with the captain. You finish your leg of the search until you come back around to meet us."

If Starbuck had acknowledged the order it had been too faint to be picked up by the comlink. Apollo smiled grimly and, laser in hand, moved on into the shadows.

* * *

Starbuck had arrived at what had once been the freight elevators. Their power lifts deactivated from above, they waited like a row of beached assault transports in an alcove off the primary corridor. Shrugging at the sense of loneliness they implied -- Starbuck had never liked being alone -- he moved past them to a series of rivetted doors set into the wall. A functioning touchplate revealed these to be steam purge units. Presumably, some of the freighter's former cargo had occasionally been found in need of steam cleaning before delivery. He was looking in at the one unit he had opened when something about it struck Starbuck as odd.

"Colonel--" he started to say, but the word was cut off midway. Something hit him from behind. Pain exploded at the back of his head and the world went temporarily black. He had the vague impression of being dragged a short distance and dropped. Then a loud, echoing sound was followed by the soft hiss of something he couldn't identify... until it grew into a roar and the sensation of heat and dampness forced him to open his eyes. Steam. He was inside the purge unit.

Ignoring the agony that screamed in his head, he struggled to his feet and stumbled blind through the hot blasts of jetting steam until he hit the door of the compartment. It was locked from the outside. Rapidly approaching boiling point, the spray bombarded him from above with unrelenting force. He fumbled for his laser but his fingers found the holster empty. He thought of the comlink then and tried to shout into it. The futility of that action became apparent when he realized he could not even hear his own voice over the din of the steam jets. Their force drove him back to the floor, where in desperation he pulled the plastiform holster from his belt and tried to pound with it against the unrelenting door.

He did not remember stopping.

* * *

"I think he's coming around." Apollo was pleased when his friend began exhibiting signs of regaining consciousness. Tigh, who had been pacing the littered storage room, came nearer when Starbuck's eyes shot open and he groaned, more they suspected out of relief than pain.

"Apollo?"

"Take it easy. You're all right, but a few more millicentons in there and you'd have become the late Lieutenant Starbuck."

"Something hit me..." Starbuck tried to sit up and immediately regretted the effort. His blond hair clung wetly to his forehead and his uniform had absorbed half again its weight in water.

"We were pretty sure you didn't lock yourself in there," Apollo told him. "The question is, who did? And why?"

"Lieutenant, did you see anything?" Tigh asked.

Starbuck was rubbing a still-aching head. "Nothing," he said miserably. "Except stars. Oh... and one other thing. I was about to call you to say the fracking compartment was clean."

''It was what?"

"Clean. Everything on this god-forsaken deck is covered with fifteen yahrens worth of dust and litter -- except those purge units."

"That may or may not be significant," said Tigh. "They could simply have been covered all this time

"Uh-uh." Starbuck tried again and succeeded in sitting up. "I thought of that," he explained. "But the corridor leading in to the units was also clean... like a footpath."

"Does that make any sense?" Apollo wondered aloud. "Why would someone down here be using the steam purge units?"

Starbuck looked up at him earnestly. "Did you ever stop to think maybe somebody just doesn't appreciate our company?"

"Well whatever or whoever it is," said Tigh, "it has your laser. Considering that, and its having attacked you, I think we've got to assume it's hostile."

Starbuck grimaced. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Tigh made an adjustment on his comlink and signaled the Galactica, but to his consternation there was no response. They quickly discovered that something was blocking transmissions out of the R-deck, for although their comlinks could signal each other (Starbuck was amazed that after the steam bath his unit still functioned at all) they could not reach the Galactica nor any other deck of the Arachnia.

Tigh's decision to leave at that point was deemed a prudent one, but upon retracing their steps to the primary access hatch they found it as tightly locked as the rest of R-deck's entry points. They were sealed in.

"So much for going home," Starbuck lamented.

Unconsciously, Apollo stroked the handle of his laser. "Maybe," he said, "somebody wants our company after all."

"They've certainly gone to a great deal of trouble to keep us down here," Tigh observed. "But the transmission signals have got to be jammed from a controlling comboard someplace. We're going to find out where."

"But it may not even be on this level at all," Apollo objected.

"I'd make book that it is."

"I never thought I'd say it," Starbuck sighed, "but that's one bet I wouldn't take."

They headed together for the central complex that had once constituted the Arachnia's computer core, until an updated system on a higher deck had bypassed it. Tigh had searched part of this area earlier, but now they were seeking new prey -- anything that even vaguely resembled a jamming device.

The Arachnia's artificial gravity was marginally lighter here; the result was a slight giddiness and an annoying unsureness of footing.

When they had located the door into the former computer complex, its touchplate lit but refused to admit them. Starbuck and Apollo searched the nearby walls for an auxiliary switch. Tigh examined the door itself and was surprised when it swept abruptly open, as though on some delayed reaction to their summons. Starbuck and Apollo were equally baffled. They had touched nothing that could possibly have triggered the mechanism.

Without speaking, Tigh drew his laser and moved through the opening. The two warriors started to follow, but before they had reached it, the door banged shut again and stubbornly resisted their efforts to re-open it.

On the other side, Tigh was less concerned with his sudden isolation than with the sounds coming from inside the deserted complex. Something was moving -- and breathing raggedly -- behind the banks of silent consoles in the center of the huge room.

"Come out of there," he commanded, and tried to sound more sure of the order than he felt. The thing moved again, a rumble in the shadows.

* * *

Apollo and Starbuck, forced to admit defeat, had gone in search of another way into the computer center. A short distance down the corridor they reached a door marked "Computer Room Annex."

"This should coneect with the main complex," Apollo theorized, and hit the touchplate. Not surprisingly, it failed to function.

"Frack." Starbuck 'borrowed' the captain's laser and over Apollo's objections, blasted the touchplate with it. Petulantly, the door limped open. Starbuck shrugged. "Guess I just have a way with these things." He handed the laser back to Apollo.

They moved through the half-open door into pitch blackness and were immediately assaulted by a fetid, decaying odor.

Starbuck winced in the darkness. "What in the twelve worlds is that?"

"I don't know. See if you can find a light switch."

Starbuck produced a match from a pocket of his jacket and tried to strike it, but it defied his efforts. "Wet," he said lamely, and went to search for the controls by the feeble light coming in from the hall. He located the switch, but an instant later Apollo wished he had not.

They were standing in the midst of human carnage.

Bones, all of them unmistakably human, lay in every corner of the room, piled like the haphazard sticks of a sacrificial bonfire and strewn across the floor at random.

"What the-?" Starbuck didn't complete the question. The horror on his face was reflected in Apollo's.

"I think we may have found the one-hundred or so people who've disappeared from aboard this ship." Apollo bent to examine some of the remains, mentally commanding his stomach to calm.

Starbuck was having trouble forming words. "What... something... one thing killed all these people?"

"More than that," Apollo straightened, fighting an urge to be violently ill. "The bones have marks all over them. Gnaw marks. And they're discolored. Brown, almost as if they'd been..." The realization struck them both before Apollo had finished the sentence. "...boiled."

Starbuck's face had gone ashen. "My God," he breathed. "The steam purge units..."

Apollo spied the opposing door leading into the contrrol center and rallied. "Whatever did this could be in there with Colonel Tigh right now." He headed for the door, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the grisly scene he had to walk over to get there. When the touchplate did not operate he opted for Starbuck's method and fired at it, but the door held fast. Uttering an oath of his own, he began examining the mechanism's ruined wiring.

* * *

A horror was confronting Tigh. It had risen from behind a computer console, clutching Starbuck's laser in one claw-like hand. Moments before, from hiding, the thing had fired at him, sending his own laser skittering across the floor and blasting it to molten metal before he could retrieve it.

The creature had a hideous, gargling voice. And it knew his name.

"Hello, Tigh," it rasped.

Tigh stared back at it in horror. A mawkish deformity with bird-like appendages, it had no head to speak of, but a mound of melted flesh between its shoulders through which a single phlegmy eye peered out at him. Ragged, hirsuit and filthy, it moved in loping motions like an ape or bear, and the odor it exuded was strong enough to nauseate Tigh from across the room. "You should remember me, Tigh," the creature wheezed.

"Remember you?"

"Yesssss, remember. I am Arda. Have you forgotten Arda?"

Tigh failed to conceal his shock at this revelation. Arda had been the Arachnia's female first officer at the time he was stationed aboard. She had died -- or so it had been logged -- in the explosion and flash fire that had triggered the leakage of radiation from the overhead reactors onto R-deck. Tigh had seen her socially twice before his transfer, though the officers of the line had frowned upon it. He had been a lowly lieutenant, and she...

"I've waited for you to come," the thing in front of him was saying. "I prayed that you would come, so that we could be together again." It limped toward him. The wall soon blocked Tigh's backward flight. "I have kept the souls," it said, and threw a gangly arm back over its shoulder to indicate the room beyond. "Now we will keep them together. We are a new race of man, you and I. When we are sealed there shall be others of our kind, and they too shall keep the souls."

Tigh had no idea what she was babbling about, but behind her, on the surface of the door she had indicated, a growing black smudge silently burst into a tiny flash of fiery light: Apollo's laser was cutting through the door.

"I have only to touch you," Arda was telling him in her croaking voice. "You will become as I am and we will be one. Sealed. Together."

Tigh told himself these words were the ravings of a deranged mind, but his confidence rapidly dissolved when Arda started toward him again.

"Do you fear me?" she asked plaintively. "After a time you will not. I promise you." While one skeletal hand held the laser on him, the other outstretched to tighten, deathlike, on his shoulder. Tigh flinched, edging as far to one side as he dared.

Arda moved with him, her slit of ruined mouth coming open to reveal stumps of splintered brown teeth.

The noiwe of the door giving way made her turn, and she fired the laser at the intruders. Apollo dropped below the beam -- it narrowly missed Starbuck behind him -- and returned fire. His bolt struck Arda mid-chest and moaning, she crumpled to the deck in a disfigured heap.

Speechless, Tigh looked back at the warriors over the creature that had once been First Officer Arda.

* * *

"In a way I'm sorry," Apollo explained to Commander Adama later aboard the Galactica. "I hadn't really intended to kill her. But my laser had been set for torch cutting when we came through the door, and..."

"You've hardly any need to feel guilty," Adama assured him. "Your action was purely in self defense. From what you've told me, she might have killed you all, just as she killed all the others."

"It's almost impossible to believe that that... creature... could ever have been Arda, " Tigh said sadly. "The Arda I knew was a beautiful, vibrant young woman."

"Radiation sickness frequently alters the mind," Adama said thoughtfully. "Perhaps it's best you remember her as she was when you knew her."

"Still," said Tigh, "she almost had me believing her mad stories of touching me and making me as she was..."

"Fortunately, the ship's doctor has verified that as false," Adama told him. "And as for the 'souls' she spoke of, their remains have been afforded proper burial in space. The Arachnia's R-deck will be cleaned out and re-utilized for storage. One day it may become living quarters, but for the present..."

"Superstition and the fear of the dead don't quite fade that quickly, " Tigh finished for him. Adama nodded.

Apollo turned to Starbuck, who had been sitting quietly in the corner. "I don't think we've heard a word out of you since you changed into a dry uniform."

Starbuck managed a half-hearted smile. "Guess I don't have very much to say," he said and came slowly to his feet to head for the door. "I just want to forget..."

He went out, having voiced the sentiments of them all, and one by one the others followed.

In space, the Arachnia turned slow circles through the ships of the fleet, and offered no clue that the souls of Arda's victims might remain to haunt her.
 

-The End-