Starbuck grunted and turned over, pulling most of the quilt with him.

"Starbuck. Alarm."

"I heard it." Starbuck sat up, punched energetically at his pillow and sank gracefully back again. "What d'ya expect me to do about it?"

"Get up. Go. Depart. Darken my bed no more." Apollo yawned widely. "And close the door behind you."

Starbuck rolled onto his back and sighed. "Why? Why do I have to go? I'm not on duty for three centars, I'm warm, I'm comfortable, I had some very hot sex last night and I'm..." he paused, raised the quilt and squinted south. "Yep.. Thought so. I'm horny. So why do I have to go, Pol?"

"You know why," Apollo said, but there was the merest hint of interest in his tone. "And you're always horny when you wake up."

"Noticed, huh?"

"How could I miss it? You're usually waving it in my face."

"Trying to hint that you take advantage of it. You're awfully dim, sometimes, Pol, and visual aids help get the message across. Look, why don't you just tell him about us? I'm sure he'll be cool about it."

Apollo shuddered slightly. "I told you that'll have to wait. When he's a bit older, maybe."

"How much older? He's almost old enough to claim his pension, for Sagan's sake. I know what it is! You're just trying to avoid the little father-son chat." Starbuck sounded scornful. "Coward."

"Am not. I've got medals to prove it." Apollo absent-mindedly trailed one hand down Starbuck's chest, checking, the Lieutenant supposed, to see how horny he was. Starbuck didn't protest. Not if it delayed him being sent out into the cold dark corridors to scurry back to his own quarters before Boxey woke up.

"You bought those medals in a penny bazaar," jeered Starbuck, wriggling in closer, invitingly. "You forget I was with you at the time."

"Oh yeah. Goldclusters, two for the price of one. Yours was the free one."

"Told you they were a bargain. Now, about facing up to your responsibilities and telling Boxey the facts of life...."

"Don't need to. Teachers are wonderful things. They did some human biology last sectar."

"Which bit?"

Apollo squeezed gently and the Lieutenant's eye's bulged slightly. His mouth dropped open into a round O of physical gratification and Apollo had to fight the urge to kiss it. Too dangerous. One kiss and the Lord only knew what they'd end up doing.

"This bit. Boxey was grossed out by the whole thing." Apollo's fingers smoothed down Starbuck's erection to fondle the testicles at the base. "He hasn't discovered girls yet."

"Their function and value, you mean?" Starbuck's breath was coming a little short, but he managed that much.

"He sees them as a totally unnecessary piece of creation." Apollo leaned across and ran his tongue over Starbuck's lips. "Mmn You taste of stale beer. Love it." A centon to recover, then the Captain went on: "They don't play Triad, they can't run, they can't catch, can't pitch, and they always complain about getting dirty."

"I don't mind getting dirty, Pol," Starbuck's voice was husky.

"Just as well." Apollo pulled his hand away despite Starbuck's wails. "No, it's no good, Starbuck. You've got to go, so there's no point in us getting hot. I can't tell Boxey yet. He was upset enough when I admitted, under close cross examination from the little darling, that it was true that me and his mother did *that* together."

"*That*?"

"That what you want and that what you ain't gonna get - just now at any rate." Apollo was ungrammatical, but firm.

"Oh," said Starbuck, sadly accepting the inevitable but willing to put off getting out of Apollo's warm bed for a few more centons. "So what did he say?"

Apollo grinned. "Well, it was pretty funny, really, although I don't know who was reddest, me or him. It wasn't that he was after information so much as reassurance. Like 'Dad, you *didn't* do *that*, did you?' After I'd explained that, well yes, that's what adults do to show how much they love each other, he went into shock and asked me if I enjoyed it or whether I just *had* to do it."

"Tell!"

"I said that it was very nice, thank you," said Apollo primly.

Starbuck stared in disbelief. "Sex with his mother was 'very nice thank you?' Hell, I'll bet she was impressed."

"Aren't you?"

Apollo ran his tongue suggestively over his lips, almost pouting at his lover. Starbuck moaned at him, irresistibly reminded of what that mouth and tongue could do to him.

"See?" Apollo said, complacent. "Unfortunately, that's what grossed Boxey out. He thinks there's something unmanly about liking girls."

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

"Priceless. So, let me guess what happens next. Suddenly there's this major flaw in his otherwise splendid and heroic father, and you've fallen off your pedestal."

"Catapulted off, big time."

"Just as well. That much hero worship is downright unhealthy. Now the kind of worship I have in mind is very, very healthy..." Starbuck reached for the Captain with both hands. His preferred form of worship was evidently tactile in nature.

"Gerroff!" Apollo said indignantly. "That's *my* erection, thank you very much! Unlike you, I don't go around waving it in other people's faces hinting that they might like to take care of it."

"I don't need the hint. Come on, Pol. If he's old enough to be asking you questions about sex, he's old enough to be told about all of it. Our kind as well as all the hetero stuff we've given up on." Starbuck rolled onto his side to face Apollo, propping himself up on one elbow. "Besides, if you're right about him not having any time for girls yet, he'll be delighted when you tell him you've seen the error of your ways and you only do *that* with me now. Seriously, he's eight. Nearly nine. He can't be that innocent about life."

"Well, I'd rather he was innocent for a bit longer." Apollo said. "I'll thank you to take your hands off my prick and get out of here before he wakes up."

Starbuck slid reluctantly out of bed. "I'm going to dump you for someone who's unencumbered with tender-minded infants. Geez! Why's it so bloody cold?"

"Energy conservation," said Apollo. "The heating comes on at a time when *decent* people get up."

Having an eight yahren-old son whose every sentence seemed to end with a question mark had blunted Apollo's grasp of rhetoric, as Starbuck proceeded to tell him. It didn't offend Apollo, and it at least kept Starbuck warm as he hurried into clothes that had ended up scattered all over the bedroom floor the night before. Fully dressed now, but still looking sleepy and tousled, he leaned down for one last kiss.

"See you tonight?" he asked hopefully.

"I'll see you in the duty office in two and a half centars," Apollo said pointedly. Starbuck had been known to get back to his own quarters then doze off again. "But yeah - tonight."

"Good." Starbuck kissed him again, fingers tracing the line of Apollo's mouth. "Love you, Pol."

"Love you too." Apollo said, ostentatiously snuggling down under the quilt.

"Unfeeling bastard." Starbuck muttered, and headed for the door.

He turned just for a micron and looked back yearningly. He and Apollo had been lovers for sectars now, but he still couldn't believe his luck. The sex was nothing short of incredible, but Starbuck got almost as much satisfaction, although less physical and more spiritual, in just looking at the god-damn beautiful face and knowing that Apollo was his. After almost fifteen yahrens of waiting and longing, Apollo finally belonged to him.

"See you later." he said with such longing in his tone that anyone with an ounce of decency and compassion would have invited him back to bed and offered to take care of that morning erection for him.

But military training instilled discipline and an acceptance of hardship and privation. All Apollo did was wave and disappear under the quilt, and Starbuck crept out into the main living area, crossing it as quietly as he could. It was just past six, but Boxey was known to be appallingly energetic in the mornings and burst in on Apollo with the dawn.

Starbuck opened the door and glanced around. All quiet, and once out in the corridor, he headed for the turbo-lift and his own quarters, three levels down. He was in a hurry. The sooner he got home, the sooner he could deal with the little problem of the erection Apollo had summarily rejected, damn him. And just to pay him back, thought Starbuck resentfully, I'm going to fantasise about someone else while I do it. And no, I don't know who. Anyone.

***

"You'll be late," Apollo said, swallowing the last of his tea, and scooping up the case of reports he had to take back to the duty office with him. Reading them had whiled away the time between Boxey's bedtime and Starbuck's arrival when the coast was clear.

"It's only maths," Boxey said with a shrug. "Hate maths. Why do I need to do it?"

"You want to be a Viper pilot, right?"

Boxey nodded.

"Then you need to do maths so you can navigate your way around."

"Starbuck says the computer does that for him," Boxey reluctantly gathered his school things together.

"And how often does Starbuck get lost?"

"Oh. Yeah," Boxey agreed. "See what you mean." He trailed after his father out of their quarters. "He says you used to do his maths for him at the Academy. Why won't you do mine?"

"Why should I?"

"You did for Starbuck." Boxey pointed out, aggrieved.

"Well, just look at him, Boxey. Do you really want to end up like him? I did a very bad job of bringing up Starbuck, even allowing for the fact I was working with some very unpromising material. I never make the same mistake twice." Apollo grinned down at his son, wishing Starbuck was there to be outraged.

"He says he had a lot of trouble bringing you up, too. He says it took you sectars to learn to play Pyramid, and I'm faster than you ever were."

"My morals kept getting in the way of what Starbuck likes to describe as creative playing strategies." Apollo punched the button to call the turbo-lift.

"Cheating?"

"Cheating."

"I don't cheat. Promise," Boxey said cheerfully as they stepped into the lift. "Hey, Dad! That's pretty cool. What is it? A bird of some kind?"

Apollo had stopped dead and was staring at the beautifully executed little drawing on the lift wall. His heart hammered and he felt momentarily sick. Stupid, stupid, stupid. After all this time he shouldn't let it bother him. It was a long time ago. Half a lifetime ago.

"On I see it now" Boxey said, not noticing how pale his father was. "It's an angel. Good isn't it?"

Apollo put a hand on Boxey's shoulder, to reassure himself about where and who he was. For a micron the little drawing had catapulted him back into a past he tried so desperately to forget.

"Dad?" Boxey was looking slightly alarmed now, disturbed by Apollo's stillness and silence.

Apollo touched the drawing carefully with one finger. The paint was still wet. Whoever had done this, whoever it was had such an odd taste in vandalism, had just gone.

"Yeah," he said at last, wondering why the vandal had chosen this particular image. "It's good."

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and rubbed it across the drawing, smearing the paint. He rubbed harder, until it was no more than a featureless black mark on the lift wall.

"That's a shame," Boxey said, alarm deepening. He was a little bit scared by his father's reaction. "Didn't you like it?"

Apollo looked down at the stained handkerchief, then crumpled it up into an ball, clenched in a hand that was shaking visibly. He took a deep breath, steadying himself.

"No," he said. "I don't like angels."

***

"Starbuck?"

"Mmmnn?"

"You awake?"

"Well, I could be," said Starbuck, getting very awake indeed. "If you're disturbing my well earned rest to offer me your body, then I most definitely am awake. Wide awake and raring to go."

"I can't sleep," Apollo said, glumly.

"What's up?"

Apollo stared up into the darkness and his mouth twisted into a thin, bitter line. What indeed? How could he tell Starbuck why, even after a lifetime, the sound of the word alone was enough to make him feel sick at the rush of memories? That a drawing on the turbo-lift wall had the power to disturb a hard-won stability? He'd kept silent about this for fifteen yahrens. He couldn't tell Starbuck, not after all this time.

***Angel. Sweet Angel.***

"Nothing. I just can't sleep." He kept his tone light. "I thought you might have some way of getting me tired."

"Now then! *That's* a challenge eminently suited to a man of my outstanding talents. Lights, 15 per cent." Starbuck liked to be able to see Apollo when they made love, to watch that beautiful face flush with passion and pleasure. He raised himself up on one elbow and grinned down at his lover, the lighting in the room now dim and romantic. "Just what did you have in mind, gorgeous?"

"Well," Apollo said slowly and thoughtfully. "I thought we might start by you kissing me - right here - " he indicated the little hollow at the base of his throat. He adored having Starbuck nuzzle and lick him there. For some reason it had a direct connexion down to his groin and always got him hot and bothered. "And then sort of work your way down below the equator and give me some head, just for starters. Then while I suck you I want those wicked fingers of yours inside my arse, getting me good and ready. And *then* I want you to fuck me senseless."

Starbuck considered the proposed itinerary, head on one side, expression serious. "Well - okay," he said after a centon. "But only because I'm not going to get a better offer tonight. Start kissing you...somewhere about here, wasn't it?"

He rolled over until he was lying on top of Apollo, pinning the Captain down with his weight, and started with small, fast little kisses, kisses that barely made contact with the skin of Apollo's throat, kisses that were meant to tease. Apollo tilted his head back to give him unfettered access, giving himself up to the pleasure, losing himself in it, because nothing mattered at that centon except the feel of Starbuck's hot mouth on his throat and lips. He tangled his fingers in Starbuck's thick blond hair, pulling him tighter and closer.

Starbuck's chuckle was decidedly throaty and sexy as he moved on to phase two, the flickering little kisses roaming across Apollo's shoulders and chest.

"Starbuck?" Apollo was writhing now, making his own little noises of helpless pleasure, the little noises that always got Starbuck as hot as hell. "Star, do you love me?"

Starbuck raised his head from the nipple that had been receiving some serious attention, leaving it taut and swollen, gleaming with saliva.

"I thought that we decided this morning that you're lousy at rhetorical questions?" He smiled down into the wide green eyes. "More than anything, Pol. More than anything in the entire universe."

Apollo managed a slight smile in return. "Then I don't want you to fuck me senseless, Star. Make love to me instead."

Starbuck gave him a slightly puzzled look, that faded into something that was so tender and loving that Apollo had to blink back tears.

"I love you too," he said. "Make love to me, Star."

"My pleasure, sweetheart." Starbuck ducked down for a long satisfying kiss, then resumed his ministrations on the other, hitherto neglected, nipple, grinning to himself as Apollo moaned softly.

Apollo's hands slid slowly down Starbuck's sides to run over the smooth buttocks. He parted his legs to hook them around Starbuck's waist, sliding in a hand to stroke along the sides of the rigid shaft that was pressing into his belly. A few more centons of that hot mouth and tongue anointing his body, and he wanted it so hard, so urgently, that he tugged Starbuck's head up before the Lieutenant had got as far as his navel.

"Come inside me, Star. Right now."

Another fleetingly puzzled look. "I'll hurt you, Pol." Starbuck said.

"Just take it slow and I'll be fine. I want you, Star. Please."

Starbuck, still dubious, sat back on his heels and reached for the lube, coating his prick liberally.

"Pol.."

"Please," Apollo said again, needing to feel Starbuck inside him, needing to have Starbuck make everything else fade into silence. He lifted his legs up onto Starbuck's shoulders, shuddering slightly as he felt the head of his lover's hard prick press against him. He reached up to get one hand around Starbuck's neck and kissed him, the other hand reaching down between them to guide Starbuck home.

The kisses had long ago stopped being butterfly light and teasing. Now they were full, hot, hard and left them breathless as Starbuck pressed forward with a steady, demanding pressure. Apollo gasped softly as Starbuck slowly filled him, Starbuck moving forward gently, a tiny bit forward, half that distance back again, letting Apollo get used to the feeling. When he was sure Apollo was ready, he pushed forward in one smooth, steady thrust.

"Oh Lords," Apollo's voice was a thread, body rigid for a micron, back arched, then he sighed and relaxed.

Starbuck, eyes closed as he concentrated, moved with long, deep, deliberate strokes that had Apollo wordless, moaning, barely able to stroke himself as Starbuck, intent on a long, slow lovemaking, moved inside him.

Sometimes when they made love and he was on top, Starbuck would tease Apollo, pulling almost all the way out to make him almost whimper at the sudden loss, before plunging back to fill him again. That always ended in a frenzied, abandoned fuck that left them both exhausted. But not this time. He knew that Apollo needed something less wild and furious, something more loving and reassuring. He didn't know why, but he knew he was right.

He opened his eyes and stared down into Apollo's face, watching as the pure physical pleasure wiped out the strain Apollo had tried to hide, the usually pale cheeks flushed with heat and exertion as they moved slowly together, each deep thrust met by a surge from Apollo to get him in deeper, every thrust wrenching a groan from each of them.

"Gods, you're beautiful." he whispered, leaning forward to kiss the parted lips.

Apollo, responding as if his life depended on it, took his hands off his prick to hold Starbuck closer to him, his legs slipping down. Knees bent outwards to make the maximum room, he pulled Starbuck forward to hold him tight, kissing him with such deep passion that the Lieutenant could barely breathe.

"Harder," Apollo said at last. "Harder, Star."

Starbuck didn't reply. He didn't have the breath. But he picked up the pace a little, driving in a little faster, a little harder, pounding on Apollo's prostate now.

That was all it took.

"Pol!" he gasped out as an unbearable wave of heat and pleasure, the almost-pain of orgasm, flooded over him and he came, shooting his load high up into Apollo's writhing, sweat-slicked body. "Oh God, Pol..."

He held himself very still for a micron, then relaxed when he heard that deep almost animal noise that was torn from somewhere deep inside Apollo's chest, the unmistakable, sexy noise of a man whose orgasm was at least as profound as the one he'd just experienced himself. There was a burst of wet heat on his belly as Apollo shot onto him where they were pressed up hard against each other.

Almost sobbing for breath, he allowed his rapidly softening prick to slide out and lay down beside Apollo, pulling the still gasping Captain into his arms.

"Impressive," he managed. "You came without me even touching you."

Apollo, chest heaving, smiled at him, sated, and touched his face.

"One of the best ever," he said drowsily, eyelids drooping. "Thanks, Star. I love you."

Starbuck smiled and pulled him closer, until he could feel the warmth of Apollo's breath on his throat.

"Love you too. Go to sleep, Pol. Go to sleep."

***

"Shit!" Ensign Cree said furiously. "I don't believe this! Who the hell's done this?"

Ensign Meade, his partner in crime and sharer of the punishment an irate Captain had handed out the day before for them larking about on patrol when they should have been concentrating on watching for hostiles, came to join him at the store room door.

"What's wrong?"

"Look!" Cree said, glowering dramatically, and pushed the door open wide.

Meade looked past him in dismay. "Shit!" she said in echo of his disbelief. "But how did this happen?"

"He'll kill us," Cree said, despairing. "He's due down here to inspect this in twenty centons and he'll kill us."

"No, he won't do that," Meade said fairmindedly.

"Then we'll just wish he'd killed us. He'll have us scrubbing out the turboflushes with nailbrushes."

Being female, Meade was infinitely more practical and sensible than her excitable wing mate.

"He can be a bastard, but he's not unfair. Loads of people saw us cleaning this place out yesterday, and they'll back us up. But who'd do this? I didn't think anyone had it in for us enough to pull a nasty trick like this."

She looked at the mess. The Captain, deciding that they needed tidier minds and tidier habits to help them concentrate, had come up with a punishment to fit their crime. Meade had suspected, rightly, that Apollo had been looking for an excuse to get some of the store-rooms spring cleaned. As a consequence, she and Cree had spent centars clearing out the storeroom on Beta deck where spare helmets, uniforms and evac suits had been kept in complete confusion.

"I don't know," Cree said, sulky now. "But that wasn't here before."

He nodded to the graffito on the wall, above a tumbled mass of uniform jackets.

"Never seen it before." Meade agreed, then sighed, remembering the painfully neat storeroom they'd left the previous evening. "I even sorted out the helmets by size," she added sadly.

"What'll we do?"

"Go and tell him. It'll be worse if he gets down here and sees it first."

"I suppose," Cree said, and pulled the door closed.

He trailed unhappily in Meade's wake all the way to the duty office, muttering to himself. Some of the suggestions concerning the physical peculiarities and likely parentage of the perpetrator of this "joke" would have shocked a less Cree-immune young woman than Meade, but she let him grumble on while she tried to work out who was so hacked off with them that he or she had tried to get them into trouble with the Captain.

Once in the turbo-lift, Cree's grumbles died away into an apprehensive murmur. Apollo was generally deemed to be hard, but fair, and it didn't do to cross him: he could be very inventive, not to mention evil, where administrative punishments were concerned. The pilots liked and respected their Strike Commander, but it was a risky business getting on the wrong side of him two days running.

"That for the Skipper?" Meade asked, and Cree glanced up to see that they weren't alone in the lift. One of the elderly civilian mess stewards, Barnaby, was carrying a tray loaded with tea.

"It is." Barnaby agreed. He smiled at the two young officers.

"Hope it's sweet enough to sweeten him," Cree said. "Hey, why does he get biscuits as well as you bringing him tea?"

"He *is* the Captain," Barnaby said. "Privilege of rank."

"You lot just spoil him." Meade said disapprovingly. "Oh boy. Here we are. Who's on shift with him?"

"Starbuck, of course." Cree said and they grinned at each other. "That's all right. He'll be on our side."

"And we'll need all the help we can get. Here let me, Barney." Meade rang the chime to save the old man from trying to reach for it, and as the door slid aside she and Cree exchanged fatalistic looks.

"Lords, all the domestic staff at once. Butler and both the housemaids." Starbuck didn't sound as if he was on the Ensigns' side, but his blue eyes were full of amusement as he watched them sidle in behind the steward.

Barnaby laid down the tray and carefully set out the cups.

"Well?" Apollo asked, looking up from the computer terminal. "I'll be down when I've had my tea. You don't need to escort me there to admire your industry."

Cree looked imploringly at his wingmate and stayed mute. He decided it was safer to let Meade do the explaining. It wasn't that he was sexist or anything, but she was prettier than he was and anything that might soften the Captain's wrath was to be welcomed.

"Thing is, sir, there's been a bit of a hitch," Meade said confidingly.

"A hitch," repeated Apollo. His tone was not encouraging.

"Cree and me spent four centars clearing out that storeroom, sir. Lots of people saw us..."

"Mistake," Starbuck said to no-one in particular. "Don't pull in your alibi too early. Lacks finesse and credibility, somehow."

"Ignore the Lieutenant," Apollo said. "I usually do. So. Lots of people saw you working very hard, just like I ordered? That's gratifying for all of us. I get taken seriously, they have the pleasure of watching someone else do some work, and you two get to present me with a nice clean storeroom. So where's the hitch?"

"We just went back to check on it, sir, before you came down. Someone's been in and messed it all up again. It looks like they just threw everything around until it's worse than before." Meade's indignation was genuine. "It's not a locked store-room, sir. Anyone could get in."

"Not bad," Starbuck said, again to no-one in particular. "That's so unconvincing it has to be true. Or brilliantly devious."

"Neither Ensign has shown much sign of brilliance," Apollo pointed out, unkindly, if accurately. He took the tea that the steward handed him. "Thanks, Barney."

"Then it must be true." Starbuck took his own cup from the steward and nodded his thanks. "As it happens, Captain, I passed by there yesterday myself and they were about half done. Doing a good job, too. Next time you punish them, could you assign them to clean my quarters?"

"I doubt if anyone could sin that badly." Apollo sipped the hot tea. "Okay, you two. Who've you pissed off? Apart from me, that is."

"I don't know, sir," Cree said, relieved to find the Captain in such a reasonable mood. *He must be getting some*, Cree thought enviously, wondering who it was and wishing that Meade was a little less strong minded and a little more available. "The only thing we noticed was a drawing painted onto the wall. That wasn't there last night."

Apollo stiffened, the cup half raised.

"What sort of drawing?" he asked, hoping that his voice was steady, and the tone held the right amount of detached interest.

"An angel, about so high. Pretty thing, too." Meade held her hands about a foot apart.

Apollo put down his tea with extreme care and dropped his hands to his lap, below the level of the desk, to hide their shaking. He thought back to the angel in the turbo-lift the secton before. He'd regained his equanimity, persuading himself that he was being stupid, letting it affect him. Now he was jolted again.

"An angel?"

"With wings. And a halo." Cree agreed, wondering why Apollo looked as if he'd been hit.

"Definitely not a portrait of me, then," said Starbuck, cheerfully, but he gave Apollo a very thoughtful look.

***

"Something bothering you, Pol?"

The Captain had just returned from inspecting the wrecked storeroom and staring long and hard at the little angel picture. It was identical to the one he and Boxey had seen in the lift, and he'd looked at it for a long time, fighting down the sickness until he'd found some quiet and calm again. It was nothing. It couldn't touch him any more.

"I'm fine." He smiled at Starbuck and picked up his lukewarm tea. "Yeuch. This tastes disgusting, cold."

"It always tastes disgusting. It's the downside of being your wingmate that I have to drink the stuff." Starbuck gave him a considering look. "I'll call Barney and ask him to bring up some more, and some decent java for me. Was it bad down there?"

"Messy, but no real damage. I felt sorry for the kids. They were peeved."

"You mean you didn't make them do it again?"

"I'm not that evil. I asked a couple of the cleaning staff to sort it out."

"Sorry, Pol, but if you're trying for most popular senior officer award, the position's filled."

Apollo grinned. "I'm content for a judicious mix of the younger ones being scared of me so they do what I tell 'em, and liking me. Otherwise I might cop a laser bolt up my rear thrusters one day, and that would be unpleasant."

"Depends what sort of bolt you were after," Starbuck said, and leered at his commanding officer in an extremely unmilitary fashion. "You've got a very pretty rear thruster."

Apollo gave him a cool, unimpressed look. He was quite Puritan in his behaviour on duty and expected the same from Starbuck.

"And the picture?" Starbuck went on. "Maybe it's the joker's calling card."

"Maybe." Apollo's voice was even. "It's a very good little drawing, and I was quite impressed with it - then I realised it was a stencil. Hell, even I could be artistic spraying paint through a stencil."

"In a pig's ear. The only artistic bent you have, my love, is sexual." Starbuck grinned at his lover, the grin widening when he saw that this at least had provoked a faint blush on Apollo's face. "Aw, I love it when you go all pink for me."

"That's enough while we're on duty, Lieutenant." Apollo said very firmly.

"Although you're too dedicated to duty for your own good, Pol." Starbuck turned his mind back to the vandalism. "I can understand him - or her - using a stencil for speed, but it's an odd image to use."

"Irony is lost on you, it seems."

"Don't be snooty. You don't think this is the start of a campaign, do you? Someone relieving the tedium of space travel with a spot of disruption?"

"Probably," Apollo said, and God knew, he hoped it was something as essentially harmless.

He sighed and sat back down at his computer. For a centon he stared blankly at the screen, unaware of Starbuck's measuring gaze.

"Pol? Pol, if something's wrong you would tell me, wouldn't you?"

Tell him? No. He couldn't tell Starbuck. Not if he wanted to keep him, and he most definitely did. He couldn't bear to see Starbuck turn away from him in disgust and contempt. That would kill him. He pushed away the thought that by his silence he was deceiving Starbuck, deceiving him about the kind of person he was, pretending that he was worth the love and friendship Starbuck gave him. Better a little guilt about that, than Starbuck leaving him.

He looked up and smiled reassuringly, thinking how beautiful Starbuck was and how much he loved him.

"Of course I would, idiot. But there's nothing wrong. Nothing at all."

***

Suddenly, it seemed, they had a plague of angels.

The Book of the Word, so far as Apollo could remember from his childhood lessons, had a lot to say about the plagues a vengeful God inflicted on humanity when they were cast out of Kobol. He could remember reading of plagues of blood that sounded downright gruesome; plagues of little insects that infested food and clothes and hair, biting and drawing blood; plagues of unpleasant sounding skin-eruptions that had always seemed to him to be a trivial kind of revenge, a petty little God inflicting humanity with a kind of permanent adolescent acne until, presumably, it repented.

Apollo had lost his faith in early adolescence, and apart from his wedding to Serina, hadn't been inside a Kobolian chapel or opened the Book for well over fifteen yahrens. But his memory was still good. Inconveniently so, sometimes. He couldn't remember anything at all about a plague of angels. Angels were, after all, supposed to be the good guys.

But over the next couple of sectons, angels were found all over the ship. They were everywhere. Sprayed onto walls, doors, lockers, in the mess hall, the ready room, even the Viper launch tubes, and on one never to be forgotten day, on the polished surface of the table in the Briefing room at the morning command meeting.

That was when official notice was taken of the plague that alternately amused and exasperated the Galactica's crew. The annoyance came from the acts of petty vandalism that so often accompanied the angelic presence. Missing uniforms or finding that all the Triad balls had been deflated was one thing, damage to essential stores was something else altogether. Whoever the joker was, he or she had little discrimination about how and where they perpetrated their little pranks.

Commander Adama had stared down at the angel, tastefully sprayed in silver paint at his place at the table in the briefing room, eyes cold and unamused. The rest of the staff meeting waited for the explosion, but all Adama did was give his son a strange, questioning look. Apollo, pale faced but composed, had shrugged, and the Commander had made no more of it at the time, covered the offending image with his papers and got on with the briefing. Later he talked privately with Apollo and made a broadcast to the entire ship about the foolishness of such juvenile behaviour and the seriousness with which he would deal with the offender, when caught. Maybe he even thought it would have some effect.

Everyone talked about the angels, all the time, speculating and wondering. Frankly, there wasn't much else to talk about except Triad and wondering who Starbuck was romancing these days. Otherwise, things were pretty quiet and that left plenty of time for speculation. Even IFB got interested enough to send a news crew to film each manifestation, and for a day or two the entire Fleet talked nothing but angels.

Everyone had noticed that the military was being targeted. All the angelic activity was directed at the warriors or at the military areas of the ship, not at the technicians or places like Isometrics or Life Centre. That bred a few theories. Some were merely obscene and, given the androgynous nature of angels and archangels, extremely speculative about divine biology. Most were more mundane and, in Starbuck's view at least, betrayed a distressing lack of imagination.

It wasn't difficult to believe that someone had a grudge against the warriors. Despite the danger attached to their (often short) lives, the pilots were greatly envied, usually seen as privileged beings with better rations and living conditions than anyone else in the Fleet. The pilots' argument that they deserved some reward for the risks they took to defend the civilians didn't cut a lot of ice in some of the crowded and insanitary refugee ships. But the pilots had to concede that the civilians, ungrateful bastards that they so obviously were, had little opportunity to get onto the Galactica, much less mount this kind of heavenly campaign.

Seeing that Apollo, much he tried to hide it, was disturbed by the angels, one briefly held theory was that it was someone the Captain had hacked off severely. Possibly someone he'd bounced off the warrior training programme - there had been some who hadn't made the grade and Apollo was ruthless about not allowing them to be put up to be cannon-fodder - and who was now trying to get their revenge on him by causing havoc and general embarrassment. Apollo's reaction to this particular hypothesis had everyone within hearing wincing and protesting loudly that they hadn't heard this ridiculous theory, sir, and didn't know anyone who had, and no-one, sir, with a grain of sense would believe it was even marginally possible. Sir. Sheesh. Sometimes the man had no sense of humour at all. Storm warnings were signalled all over the troopdecks that day.

The more cynical, some of the Council among them, suggested that Adama was behind it somehow, that it was some scheme of his to bolster his holy quest to find Earth, and if they all just waited, no doubt the Commander would find messages hidden in the images that would help him plot their route across the heavens. And co-incidentally maintain his grip on power. Colonial politics were always fun, especially when mixed with religion.

Apollo deeply resented any link being made between him and the graffiti angels. He and Adama had agreed that there was no way that this was anything other than a co-incidence, and he told himself often that his response was ludicrous. Angels were a fact of - well - not life, maybe, but of mythology, or something. He didn't own the exclusive rights on the word or the image. Coincidence. He was stupid to let it get to him.

And he was coping with it better. Perhaps the almost continuous exposure to the image was beginning to dull the reaction; perhaps the constant telling himself that it was nothing personal helped put things back in perspective. By the time that the pranks had ceased being a diversion and were becoming a real bore, he found now that he could look at an angel - sprayed above a pile of messed up weapons components, perhaps - and feel only a vague unease that was heavily overlaid with annoyance at the perpetrator of the pranks.

Until the image changed.

***

"Over here, Captain." Hallam, one of the group of techs clustered mournfully around a storage bin in one of the hangers on Alpha Deck, waved Apollo across.

Apollo, Starbuck and Boomer just behind him, walked across to join the techs. Apollo had the mildly nauseous feeling in the pit of his stomach that he'd come to expect whenever he heard the word "angel" or saw one of those damnable drawings.

"Another one?" he asked.

Hallam nodded. "We keep some of the Viper spares in here, sir. The Angel's been at them."

"Don't call him that," Apollo said sharply. He saw the surprised looks, and tried to speak more normally. "Whatever he or she is, it isn't that. What have they done?"

Hallam held up a spare gryo unit. "Trashed," he said. "Maybe we can cannibalise some parts, but the unit's trashed. There's fifteen units in this bin that are in the same state, and we'll have to go over all the others to check them all. That's days of work. This is getting serious, sir."

"This is the first time there's been any real damage," Apollo said, puzzled. "Why?"

"This isn't funny any more," Boomer muttered.

"It never was," Apollo said distantly.

"Yeah, but now things are getting dangerous." Starbuck said. "I'm not one for stating the obvious, Captain, but our lives depend on stuff like this being useable."

"I know." Apollo said. "It worries the frack out of me. What about the monitors? Did they show anything?"

"Security's checking it out. But it's unlikely. Although the deck itself's never quiet, in between patrols no-one has much call to be in a hanger and there's nothing but emergency lighting in here unless one of us is working or an alert's called." Hallam looked round gloomily. "It's normally semi-dark. I don't think the monitors would show anything in the shadows."

"And the Vipers?" Apollo looked at the starfighters hanging above his head in their immense racks. "He didn't get to them?"

"It's almost impossible to get to them in their racks, and moving them would attract attention. When we're parking them or the ground crews are readying them for take off it's noisier than the engine room in here. All that gear.." Hallam waved a hand at the overhead rails that moved the starfighters out into the main bays and the launch tubes. "Noisier than you could ever imagine, Captain."

Apollo nodded. "Just the same, I'll post orders about people double and triple checking on their pre-flight inspections. We'd better talk to Reese about extra security as well."

"Well, a gleam of light in the darkness. I could enjoy seeing those lazy bastards in Security having to do some work at last." Starbuck had all the warrior's traditional disdain for the Council Security Service.

"Who found it?" Apollo asked.

"A couple of the cleaning staff spotted his calling card and came and got me. When I checked and found the damage, I thought I'd better tell you."

Apollo glanced across to the two civilian cleaning staff who stood watching from a few metres away, and nodded. "We should call Reese. Security's been told to take official notice of it now. He'd better come and take a look."

"Much good that will do," Hallam evidently shared the warrior prejudice against Security.

"Maybe. Still, Council orders, and anything that catches this nutter is okay by me. Especially if he's starting to cause serious damage."

"We're sure that this is him?" Boomer asked, hoping against hope.

"Usual trademark." Hallam said, and nodded to two of the other techs.

They lowered the lid of the storage bin, pushed back on its hinges up against the wall. The angel had been sprayed in black paint this time. But this time there was a difference.

Apollo stared it at, eyes very wide and dilated. It was the usual, now very familiar little angel, wings unfurled behind its shoulders, halo above the slightly bent head, beautiful face framed in rippling hair. But there was an addition.

Apollo had always loved history. He knew the history of his people: the long exodus from Kobol, the founding of the Colonies and the long slow decline into a primitive, pre-industrial society where they'd forgotten so much of what the Lords of Kobol had taught them, and the equally slow climb back to the knowledge of their ancestors. He remembered that despite his dislike of the image, he'd been mildly amused, with all the cynicism that extreme youth held for "those in charge", when he'd discovered that during that Dark Age of ignorance, disease and dirt there had been one hot topic of debate in the churches and the just-founded universities where what little knowledge they had was preserved. Scholars wrangled and argued, not about technology or how to feed the starving when the crops failed or the need to teach everyone to read and write and lift them out of ignorance - but about how many angels could dance upon the head of a pin.

The angel staring back at him with its calm, unreadable face wasn't dancing on a pin, but one small foot was poised gracefully on the pointed tip of a letter.

The letter A.

***

"What's bugging the skipper so much, Starbuck?" Jolly asked curiously. "I've never seen him this antsy."

Starbuck put down his fork and took at a pull on his beer. He shrugged. "I don't know."

The faces around the table in the Mess-hall showed varying degrees of disbelief.

"I don't," Starbuck protested. "Much to my surprise, he doesn't tell me everything, you know. Can't think why."

"Couldn't be something to do with your essential untrustworthiness, could it?" murmured Boomer.

"That was below the belt," Starbuck said, wounded.

"That's where you're most untrustworthy," Boomer said dryly. "Below the belt."

"It this get-at-Starbuck day or something?"

Jolly grinned. "More like cheer-up-Apollo day. This angel thing is getting to him."

Starbuck hit high protective mode. He was as anxious about Apollo as any of them, more so, but the Captain was a very private person, remote. He knew how much Apollo hated to be talked about and how much the speculation would annoy and upset him. Starbuck had to offer them something to explain Apollo's odd behaviour.

"He's getting worried about the way these incidents are aimed at us. He was really pissed off about the Viper spares yesterday. You know Apollo. He takes the Captain thing very seriously. We're his responsibility and he worries enough about us without some maniac trying to sabotage our fighters."

"That's true." Jolly agreed.

Apollo might be Adama's son and sometimes difficult, and his temper was semi-legendary, but there was one thing his troops were all agreed on. He took his responsibilities seriously. He could be relied upon to do everything in his power to protect his troops, from everything ranging from "them" up on the command deck to Cylon fighters. He agonised over every one of their losses, and every pilot in the squadrons knew that if they went down and there was any chance they'd survived, Apollo wouldn't go on without them. Inevitably, pilots had been killed, lots of them, but not one had ever been taken, and remained, a prisoner. If you were alive, the Captain would come for you.

"He's always serious," Greenbean said. "But he looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders at the moment. Any ideas for cheering him up?"

"One or two," Starbuck said and grinned at Boomer, who ignored him. "But if we're keeping it clean, we could always let him take it out on some willing opponents in a Triad game."

"Oh-oh," Bojay said. "Apollo, in the mood he's in, is downright dangerous on the Triad court. He's competitive enough without that."

"Say what you mean, Boj. You mean he plays rough."

"I mean that he plays like he's waging all out war even when he isn't antsy. If you're going to let him take out whatever's bothering him in Triad, Bucko, you aren't talking about willing opponents. You're talking about human sacrifice."

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few - or in this case, two." said Starbuck sententiously

"It's all right for you," Giles reminded him. "You play on his side. You're safe."

"Unless I drop a shot," Starbuck said. "Then I'm dead meat. Come on, guys. It'll be fun."

"Fun! Annihilation is fun?"

"If you're on the winning side. C'mon. There's two teams sitting here right now - why not toss for it?"

"Do you know the old saying about turkeys voting for Yuletide, Starbuck?" Bojay asked gloomily, but they consented to the tossing of a cubit between him and Boomer for the honour of taking on the Captain and letting him beat them until he was in a better humour.

"Capstone." Bojay made the call, and breathed easier when the coin landed right way up, the incised pyramid peak gleaming in the light. "Thank you, Lord," he said fervently.

Starbuck laughed at the resigned expression on Boomer's face and Giles' look of panic. He glanced at his watch.

"Our shift ended half a centar ago but he's still in the duty office catching up. C'mon, Boom-boom. Let's go get him."

"We'll go get the ringside seats." Jolly said. "Just try not to splash your blood too far, Boomer."

"I don't feel too well," Giles said sadly. He looked around the Mess hall. "Farewell, cruel world."

***

"A triad practice will make you feel better," Starbuck said. "I can coax, you know. Very prettily."

He fluttered long, dark-blond eyelashes at Apollo.

Apollo appeared to be unmoved. "Is that the best you can do?"

"Not at all, and you know it. But it's the best I ought to do with Boomer only two feet away. He was very delicately brought up was Boomer, and we wouldn't want to disturb his sensibilities."

"I'd rather you didn't," Boomer said apologetically, as if sorry for causing them inconvenience. "Save it for the bedroom later."

Apollo looked him, then accusingly at Starbuck. The Lieutenant went pink about the ears.

"He guessed, Pol. Honest. I never said anything."

"I saw him sneaking out of your quarters one morning last secton and made him tell me," Boomer said. "I knew he was up to no good."

"Oh, he's good," Apollo said with a reluctant grin.

"I know," said Starbuck with becoming modesty. "The best."

"I dare say," said Boomer. "Anyway, I won't talk about it. It's your business, no-one else's, and I know how much you hate gossip."

"Especially if it's about me. Not bothered?" Apollo asked

Boomer grinned. "No. Except I don't know what you see in him."

"Nor do I, sometimes." Apollo turned his attention back to his beloved. "And why do you think I need to feel better?"

"Come on, Pol. Something or someone tripped your gloom mood circuit sectons ago. You've been pretty heavy weather ever since."

Apollo frowned, wishing he was able to hide things better. He took evasive action and changed the subject. "Why Triad? It's well out of season."

"You look so sexy in the gear," Starbuck said with complete honesty. "Turns me right on."

"Oh great." sighed Boomer. "I'm going to get spread all over a Triad court so you can get horny. Thanks, Starbuck."

Starbuck ignored this. He was always horny where Apollo was concerned. The sexy triad gear was merely a bonus.

"Come on down to the Court and take it out on Boomer and Giles. They're just dying for a beating."

"Starbuck exaggerates. But he did convince us that we would be immolating ourselves for a higher cause, and that anything was worth it if we succeeded in cheering you up."

"Lords, am I that bad?"

"Yes," they said in unison.

***

Giles was waiting at the locker room door. He watched the three of them come along the corridor, trying to gauge the Captain's mood. Apollo was laughing at something Starbuck had said, and the Ensign relaxed a little. That augured well both for what Giles had to tell them and the match, if that went ahead.

"And why haven't you prepared yourself for the sacrifice?" Starbuck asked cheerfully, then caught Giles' expression. "Oh shit..."

Giles shrugged. "We've had another visitation, skipper."

The smile on Apollo's face died away. He looked away for a micron, and closed his eyes, as if denying what they'd be looking at in a centon or two.

"Let's see it," he said when he'd screwed up all his courage and fought down the stab of nausea, and followed Giles into the locker room.

Several warriors were gathered around one of the bank of lockers : Jolly was there, Bojay, Greenbean. Apollo's expression darkened. His locker was in this bank.

"So much for taking his mind of it," Starbuck sighed, following along behind.

Boomer nodded glumly.

"Mine?" Apollo asked abruptly.

Bojay nodded. "The bastard's trashed it, Apollo. Shredded your gear."

For a centon Apollo stared at the locker in shocked silence.

"Hell's teeth," Starbuck muttered, behind him, taking in the extent of the damage.

There was nothing of the joke about this, but something infinitely more menacing. Whoever had done this had indulged in extravagant, wanton damage, exulting in the destruction.

The door had been wrenched to one side and was hanging crookedly on one hinge. Apollo's gear had been literally torn to rags. Gloves, boots and helmet had been slashed with a knife. The angel, still balanced with serene indifference on its letter A, had been sprayed in gold paint on the inside of the door. Apollo touched it gingerly. Almost dry. Only the merest hint of gold on his finger tip.

"Shit," Apollo said. "Who found it?"

"We did, skipper, when we came in to cheer Giles through his last centons," Jolly tried to lighten the atmosphere.

"Why the hell's this guy getting at you, Apollo," Bojay asked, watching the Captain carefully.

He was rewarded by the flush of anger on the high cheekbones.

"Who the hell says it's got anything to do with me?" Apollo shot back, furiously.

"That looks a bit pointed." Bojay said with a nod to the trashed locker. "And it's not standing on the letter B."

"B is for bastard, is that, Bojay?" asked Starbuck acidly.

"Leave it, Starbuck," Apollo said, looking Bojay in the eyes. "If this is aimed at me, Bojay, how'd you explain the damage to the Viper spares? Seems a bit indiscriminate to put a dozen of you at risk on the off chance that one of those spares might get loaded into my Viper at some point."

Bojay shrugged. "I didn't mean anything, but it's one hell of a coincidence, Apollo."

"Life's full of 'em," Apollo still held Bojay's gaze until the Lieutenant looked away.

"And the A could mean anything," Greenbean said, as annoyed with Bojay as everyone else. "Not least, A is for angel."

"Sure," Bojay said, uneasily, recognising the hostility and that he'd gone too far. "Sorry, Apollo. I honestly didn't mean anything."

"And A is for apology," Starbuck's eyes were hard and unfriendly. "Nice one, Boj."

Bojay reddened but said nothing. Apollo turned his back on him and kept his attention on the locker.

He looked more carefully at the torn and shredded gear, very aware, despite not looking at them, that all of the warriors were watching him covertly. Some with sympathy mixed with curiosity; Bojay watching with malicious interest, looking for an opportunity to needle; Boomer and, especially, Starbuck watching him with loving anxiety. All of them wondering what this was about and what he knew. Bojay wasn't the only person to think that Apollo knew something about the angels, something that he wasn't telling.

And he thought he did know. He thought that he understood what was going on. Despite everything Adama could say and had said to him in reassurance, he agreed with Bojay's assessment. This was aimed at him. Right between the eyes.

A is for Apollo.

And, as Greenbean had said, A is for Angel.

Sweet Angel.

All the other incidents had been bad enough, but this was different. He recognised that the destruction of his gear had a kind of malice about it that the other angel-attacks, irritating as they had been, had lacked. And it wasn't just because it was his stuff that had been trashed. It was the way it had been trashed. He looked thoughtfully at the knife marks and shivered. He wondered if this was a warning, an indication that things were getting less whimsical, more serious, more threatening. *More* threatening? He could hardly feel more threatened than he did already, not if this was who he thought it might be. He'd call it a ghost from the past, but this ghost had never been left in the past. It had been with him for a long time, for sixteen long yahrens.

As was the way with ghosts, this one had faded in and out, not always there. These last few sectars with Starbuck he'd barely thought about it, its voice and presence dimmed until he'd begun to think he was free of its haunting presence.

He touched the angel again with a gentle finger. Well, the ghost evidently wasn't having any of that and was determined to be right back where it belonged. In Apollo's mind and memories. Malignant and waiting. Crippling him.

"Could one of you get Security?" was all he said.

"I've already called them, Skipper," Jolly said. "Reese said he's sending Sergeant Castor down. Damned shame about this. You want me to rustle up some kit for you? Nothing much of mine would fit, but we could see what we could do."

The smile Apollo gave him was warm. As ever, Jolly's unfailing good nature was comforting.

"Thanks, Jolly, but I don't think I'll be playing tonight. This has put me off a bit."

Giles looked heavenwards and gave silent thanks for his unexpected deliverance.

"In that case, I'll head back to the OC," Bojay said to no-one in particular.

No-one in particular took much notice of his departure, but once the door had closed behind him, Starbuck gave it a cool glance.

"Tosser," he said, succinct and pithy.

Jolly laughed despite himself. "You used to be friends once," he reminded Starbuck.

"That was before he got the transfer to the Pegasus. He could always be a pain, but serving with Cain did something to him. He's a wanker."

"But one we're stuck with," Boomer pointed out.

"Short of marooning him." Greenbean suggested.

"Don't put temptation my way," Starbuck pleaded. "I fail real easy."

Carefully and gently, Apollo put the slashed boot he was holding back in the locker.

"I'm going to need a new kit," he said in a perfectly normal tone. "That's going to be a bother."

"Like Jolly said, we can put one together for you, Pol. You and me are the same size. You can use my spares."

"Next time maybe."

"It'll do you good to play, and it'll show the bastard he can't win," Starbuck said slyly.

Apollo looked at him, then grinned reluctantly, pushing away - again - all that he was feeling about the angels.

"I distinctly felt a button being pressed there."

"As long as the programming works," Starbuck grinned back, ignoring Giles' anguished looks. "We on?"

Apollo thought about it and nodded. "Can I borrow your helmet, Jolly?"

"All yours," Jolly said promptly and went to get it.

"My boots should fit you," Greenbean said, and went to his locker.

Apollo pushed the locker door shut, the expression of distaste on his face very obvious. He caught the look Starbuck gave him.

"I'd rather not look at it. I don't like angels."

"Angels are supposed to be the good guys." Giles observed.

Jolly was back with the helmet. "And that?" he nodded towards the locker.

"Maybe they don't play Triad in heaven," Greenbean suggested. He offered Apollo a pair of boots.

"I just don't like them." Apollo took the helmet and boots, and smiled his thanks. He was grateful, and not just for the loan of the Triad kit. He was lucky. They were a good bunch, supportive and loyal.

"Giles is right, Skipper." Jolly said. "The bad guys are the ones with horns and tails."

"Yeah," said Boomer casually, very busy not looking at anyone. He was very, very busy not looking at either Starbuck or Apollo. "Way I hear it, Captain, the one you *really* have to look out for is the horny little devil."

***

If there was one thing that Starbuck prided himself on it was his kissing technique. He'd honed it over yahrens of practice and it was, quite rightly, semi-legendary. He'd been known to reduce a lover to incoherence with the way the little kisses he scattered over skin and nipples teased and stimulated; or the way he closed his lips over theirs, exploring their hot, eager mouths, cutting off breath and thought; bringing a dizzying warmth with his moist, hot tongue, making his lover moan with need and delight.

Apollo hadn't seemed immune before. Apollo liked kissing. In fact, Apollo was damned enthusiastic about kissing, and he'd always taken any and every opportunity to check whether the Starbuck magic still worked.

Always had. Never failed.

Until now.

Starbuck raised his head from Apollo's right nipple. He'd spent some considerable time working his way down, kissing and anointing every square inch of skin on the way, paying special attention to the bruises Apollo had picked up in what had turned out to be a tough and energetic "friendly" Triad game. He'd licked them, brushing his lips over Apollo's skin, and nibbled gently on the taut little nipple until it looked red and swollen, slick with saliva.

By this stage Apollo should have been writhing, hands working on Starbuck's prick or rubbing sensuously down his buttocks, or pressing his own prick up to stroke the sensitive area between Starbuck's legs. Apollo's fingers were in Starbuck's hair, it was true, but it was half hearted, mechanistic; and he was almost still, rigid with something - fear? Starbuck couldn't tell what it was.

Starbuck sat up, watching as the absent expression on Apollo's face sharpened into a guilty awareness.

"Excuse me," Starbuck said politely. "I'm working my butt off here making love to you. Do you think you'd like to join in? Some sort of reaction would be nice. At the moment it's like kissing a block of wood."

Apollo flushed. "I... I'm sorry, Star," he said.

"You are really going to have to tell me what's bothering you."

"Nothing is. I'm tired, that's all. It was a rough game."

"Only because, like now, you were thinking of something else." Starbuck abandoned any idea of lovemaking, and lay down beside Apollo. "Okay, Pol, it goes against the grain but I'm going to be patient and coax the problem out of you. 'Course I'd rather bounce your head off something hard to knock some sense into you, but that might wake up the child and explanations are so tiresome. Tell me."

"I'm just tired. That's all there is to it." There was an edge to Apollo's voice.

"I was politely brought up so I'll bite back the various disbelieving monosyllables."

"Please, Starbuck." Apollo said, and the edginess was more evident. "Please leave it."

Starbuck rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. His heart was pounding painfully, and he felt his stomach tighten.

"Do you want me to go?"

There was the merest hesitation.

"No Of course not. But, I'd rather we didn't have sex tonight. I'm sorry. Please, Star..."

Starbuck looked over at him, not hiding his hurt. "Don't close me out, Pol. I know that these angels are bothering you. Tell me why."

For a centon Apollo thought about it, thought about risking it. Starbuck loved him, he knew, but would it be enough? Enough for Starbuck to forgive him, not despise him? But in the end, fear won out. Silence, the old familiar silence, was safer. But he didn't want Starbuck mad at him. He had to offer something, however vague.

"Not tonight. Maybe later. I just need a bit of time, Star."

"It's nothing to do with me? Nothing I've done or not done?"

"Nothing at all. It's.. it's something else entirely."

Starbuck gave him a long look. Apollo looked so distressed, that the Lieutenant decided not to press it.

"As long as you still fancy me, really." he said and was relieved when that won a faint smile. "All right, Pol. That's enough for tonight - I know when I'm beat. But I love you, you know. I've never said that to anyone before, and I mean it and you're my whole world. I'm not going to let you get away with this for long. You're getting me worried."

Apollo evaded that. "I love you too. And I'm sorry, Starbuck."

"Don't be sorry. Trust me. We'll talk tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay." Unmistakable relief that he wasn't going to be pressed for an explanation now.

Starbuck stroked Apollo's cheek with his finger. "Love you, beautiful. Lights out."

The bedroom lights dimmed, and Starbuck turned to gather Apollo into his arms.

"Good night, love," he said.

Apollo said nothing, but let Starbuck hold him. And for a long time they both lay silent and wakeful in the darkness, Apollo staring up to see the ghost that haunted him, and Starbuck agonising about the salty tears he'd tasted on Apollo's face when he'd kissed him goodnight.

***

"Reese told me about your Triad kit getting destroyed yesterday. I'm sorry about that, son, but please don't let it get to you," Adama said quietly. "It can't have anything to do with you. It's just a co-incidence."

"Is it?"

"It has to be. These incidents are random, Apollo. Apart from the vandalisation of your locker, none of them have been directed at you personally. It's all been storerooms and Viper parts, nothing personal."

"And the letter A?"

"Could mean anything. Have you looked at the dictionary recently to see how many words begin with A? Apollo, no-one knows except you and me and I don't think either of us are running around the ship with spray paint cans. You've never told anyone?"

Apollo shook his head.

"Not even Starbuck?"

"Especially not Starbuck. I couldn't bear it if he found out. He'd never speak to me again."

Adama looked at him thoughtfully. They were having lunch in Adama's quarters, something they rarely did. Adama was always careful not to seem to favour Apollo at all, and on duty they maintained a proper professional distance. They seldom socialised during the working day, but Adama was anxious enough about the effect the angel incidents were having on his son to bend the rules a trifle. Apollo knew that his father was concerned and worried. A further cause of guilt. This was all his fault.

"I doubt that." Adama said now. "It can't make a bent cubit's worth of difference to anyone who loves you, son. Especially the way Starbuck loves you."

Apollo flushed slightly. "Oh. You know?"

"I just got tired of waiting for you to tell me. Until this all started, I'd never seen you so happy. It didn't take me long to realise the cause."

"You don't mind?"

Adama shrugged. "I don't deny I'd rather that you'd settled down with someone like Sheba and gave me lots of grandchildren.." he smiled at the look Apollo gave him. "....but if Starbuck's what you want, Apollo, I'm okay with that. All I want is for you to be happy."

"I would have thought that Boxey's enough grandchildren for anyone" Apollo said dryly, remembering the horror of Boxey's biology lessons. "He's more than enough son for me."

"Well, now" Adama said. "At last you know how *I* feel".

Apollo grinned and Adama smiled back, wondering if there was ever a time when you stopped worrying about your children, no matter how old they got. He was desperately proud of his son and all Apollo had achieved against the odds, loved Apollo and his sister dearly, but both were a cause of as much anxiety as joy. This spate of incidents was really upsetting Apollo, stirring up memories of a time that had almost destroyed him. Adama worried that his son wouldn't be able to cope, worried about what he'd do if Apollo lost it.

"I'm glad you're okay about it," Apollo said, shyly. "It just sort of happened. I never thought I'd ...." He paused, and put down his fork, unable to go on.

"This is different." Adama said reassuringly, understanding what his son couldn't say. "I know. I was surprised myself."

"It is different with Starbuck. I couldn't imagine it with anyone else." Apollo managed that much.

Adama nodded. "I think you should tell him."

Apollo thought gloomily of the previous night. When Starbuck had left that morning, he'd been quiet and subdued. He'd gone without the usual argument, almost eager to get away. It was already affecting them badly. If Starbuck knew....

"I'll think about it, Dad, but it scares me, telling him."

"I know," Adama said comfortingly. "But I think you owe it to him, Apollo, if you two are serious about being together."

More indecision. Then, more evasion.

"I just wish I knew what it was all about. I know I'm being stupid about it, and it can't be aimed at me. Like you said, no-one knows but us."

"No."

"I mean, it's not as if there's anything in my records that someone might have got hold of."

"One of the advantages of the family doctor being a good friend. Jerry did us a good turn there, making sure that nothing was recorded."

"Just as well. I'd never have got into the Academy." Apollo gave him a bitter little grin. "Maybe I shouldn't have if I can't deal with this joker without getting paranoid."

"You aren't paranoid. It's only natural that it should remind you, but please try to keep it in proportion, Apollo. It can't really be anything to do with you, so try and relax. Now, finish your lunch. You don't look as if you've eaten properly in sectons."

"I haven't been eating much," Apollo confessed, trying to get down some of the food.

"Or sleeping?"

Apollo suddenly seemed distant and withdrawn.

"I don't mind sleeping. It's the dreams I can't handle."

***

The head steward prided himself on the way he kept the Officers Club. It was a lot smaller than the entertainment centre he'd managed before the Destruction, but it was better than being stuck on one of the crowded civilian ships. A helluva lot better.

A sectar into the Fleet's long journey to Earth and, it was hoped, safety, the Galactica's command staff had reviewed the disposition of staff on the huge battlestar. A number of people had found themselves pitched out of comfortable, easy, not to say on occasion, lucrative, little numbers and into what Captain Apollo had smilingly told them were real jobs, befitting their rank and expensive military training.

The sergeant who'd run the Officer's Club and occasionally manned a laser gun turret when there was call for it, found himself sitting in his gun turret on a permanent basis and a civilian stepping into his shoes. The sergeant bewailed the change, but Callan, the lucky man who'd inherited his mantle, had soon seen that there were great advantages in living and working on the Galactica.

He had been one of the first to volunteer when civilian workers were called for. His living quarters on the Galactica were undoubtedly better than on the Tiegan, the small freighter on which he'd made his escape from the Colonies. He was a little surprised - and disappointed - to find that the rations weren't much better or more plentiful: only the pilots were on extra rations to ensure maximum operational efficiency. But on the whole the move had been a good one. He had a job he enjoyed, one at which he excelled, and he directed his staff of bar and mess stewards with an almost military efficiency. Within sectons, his talents had been recognised and the Quartermaster, occupied mainly with making inadequate rations stretch further than they ought to, handed over responsibility for the newly recruited cleaning and general maintenance staff as well.

Callan enjoyed his responsibilities. He was a man whose tidiness of mind was semi-legendary, a neat precise little man whose appearance and character were completely in harmony. He kept the Galactica as clean as it was possible with a grey, utilitarian warship, and his stewards provided a sterling service to the officers.

But his pride and joy was the OC. After much coaxing he'd persuaded Captain Apollo to authorise a limited refurbishment, and the room was now as good as he could get it with the limited resources available. It always gave him a sense of pride and achievement when he walked in to open the bar formally at ten every morning, and he could look around his little empire.

Except the morning that he walked in and found that the OC had been visited in the night.

***

"I'm not sure that I really want to go and look," Apollo said, resisting Boomer's invitation. "I've seen enough angels, thank you."

"Apollo, these are all over the OC."

"So what?" Apollo turned resolutely back to reading the latest patrol reports. "I've enough work to do here."

"Ignoring it won't make it go away," Boomer argued.

"Look, Boomer. This guy - we'll assume it's a guy, okay? - this guy's getting off on watching us all run around, wringing our hands and wondering who he is. Running down to the OC and getting agitated is just pandering to this nutter's thirst for sensation. Well, I'm fed up with it. I won't play his stupid game anymore."

"Pol, everyone's down there," Starbuck said quietly. "They're wondering and worrying, and I think you need to do something about that, even if you don't want to go for any other reason."

Apollo threw the report onto the desk in disgust. "Why the fuck can't you all leave me alone? I am totally pissed off with these bloody angels!"

"Yeah, we guessed," Starbuck said in a tone he kept carefully neutral, but he was watching Apollo anxiously. He was very aware that Apollo had avoided the promised talk. The Triad game had been three days before. He'd gone as usual to Apollo's quarters every night since, but he might as well have stayed in his own. Apollo wasn't going to tell him what was wrong, and hadn't been interested in making love either. Starbuck, hurt and confused, just didn't know what was going on.

Apollo gave him a hard look.

"They're freaking you out, Pol," Starbuck went on, braving the coming storm. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Boomer's stealthy retreat. Boomer recognised the signals as well as he did, and was intent on getting himself out of range as unobtrusively as possible. "And there's no point in you yelling at *me*. I'm not the one with the cans of paint. You can be as antsy as you like, but you can't expect it not to affect the troops. They take their cue from you, Captain, and you're not handling this any too well. They're getting spooked now. When it comes to Viper parts getting trashed and your gear getting slashed - no-one's missed the fact the guy used a knife for that - they stop thinking it's a joke and worry if the next thing he sticks his knife into will bleed all over the flightdeck. It's your job to deal with that."

"I do *not* need you to tell me how to do my job, Lieutenant." Apollo grated out.

"Someone has to." Starbuck held the cold green-eyed gaze. "It may as well be me. You need to handle this, Pol. You need to go down there and say something and get them feeling that everything's under control, or they'll get really spooked. You can't just ignore it."

The fact that he knew that Starbuck was right did nothing to improve Apollo's temper. "Oh all right!"

Starbuck stood firm. "And you can't go down there and throw a tantrum."

"Shit, I know that, Starbuck!"

"Good. Now take a deep breath, take a firm hold of your temper, put me on report for insubordination, promise you'll forgive me later, and let's go soothe the troops." Starbuck gave it his most winning smile.

Despite himself, Apollo grinned at that archetypal Starbuck speech.

"That's better," Starbuck approved. "You know, Pol, I'm really very good for you. Who else can charm you into a good temper?"

"And without your usual blandishments," Apollo said, taking control of himself.

"Not with old Boom-boom here. Wouldn't want to scare him."

"Way too late for that, old buddy." Boomer took what felt like his first breath for several centons, satisfied that the storm clouds had evaporated. "Next time you want to commit suicide, leave me out of it."

Apollo raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, he's hinting that you're bad tempered. Want me to come with you?"

Apollo sighed and nodded. "Call Core Command and tell them where we're going."

He said little more until they were in the turbo-lift on the way down to the OC, two decks below.

"How many, did you say, Boomer?"

"Eleven. And this time, some sort of message. It says.."

"Don't tell me," Apollo said, who was certain that he knew what it said and would rather have time to prepare his reaction. "Let it be a glad surprise."

Boomer grinned. "Okay. Not that it anybody so far knows what the hell it means, but at least he's making it clear that he's trying to say something to us."

"You mean that all these incidents have been his attempts to get a message to us?" Starbuck asked, interested.

"I'd say so." Boomer sounded thoughtful. "Incidents like this are never as random as they seem. I mean, it's not like the Eastside where I grew up, where vandalising something was a way of filling in the time between bunking off school and starting your career in a juvenile detention centre. There we're talking social deprivation on a big scale, and no-one respected anything that smacked of authority or the establishment. We'd smash up anything. This guy's different. I think he's carefully choosing his targets, getting maximum effect."

"Hasn't he ever heard of the comnet?" Starbuck said. "All he has to do is dial the right number and say hello. How'd the old adverts have it? Oh yes, it's good to talk."

"Not as exciting, though. And he's probably jacking off on the excitement," Apollo said, as they stepped out of the lift and started down the corridor.

"Maybe that's part of it. But wait till you see the OC. This has to mean something to somebody. It's a real message."

They could hear the buzz of conversation several yards away from the OC. Apollo took a deep breath, and walked in, flanked by his two friends. There had to be about eighty pilots clustered around the latest angels, at least half of whom ought to have been at their duty stations on the troop decks two levels above. One of them spotted Apollo.

"Captain on deck!" she yelled, coming to attention and suddenly very conscious that she shouldn't be there at all.

An abrupt silence fell, then all the pilots scrambled to each side, giving Apollo free passage to the centre of the room.

"At ease."

Apollo stood still, looking at the angels on the walls. Two blocks of five black angels, each standing on the tip of a letter; a gold angel, twice the size of the others, acting as kind of divider between the two groups. The gold angel was sprayed onto the wall directly above his own customary seat at Blue Squadron's table.

Apollo read the message the joker had left for him. Just as he expected. He was pale, but managed to hide the sick terror that surged into him. For a micron he thought he might lose it, then pride stiffened his back. He was right, then, and Adama was wrong. It was aimed at him, as he'd thought. The panic ebbed away, leaving him feeling empty inside. He supposed that now the uncertainty was gone, now he knew for sure, he could cope with it better. He could look at the message and not show that it had any significance for him. He felt calm, chilled. Now all he had to do was wait. There was nothing else to do.

Callan bustled up to him. "Captain, can you believe it?"

Apollo's voice was pitched a little louder than normal, intended to carry to all the watching pilots.

"A bit over the top, I think. If he didn't like the decor, why not just say so?"

"What does it mean, do you think, sir?" Bojay asked, watching Apollo avidly.

Bloody Bojay. Typical of Bojay to try and needle him. Apollo gave him a cool, contemptuous look, a look that said I know what you're trying to do, and you won't manage it.

"It means that we'll have to redecorate the OC again." Apollo's voice was calm. "It's a shame, Callan, after all your hard work to clean this place up. The angelic decor in a place like the OC's just a touch out of place, don't you think? Given your usual clientele, the joker's a poor judge of character." There was just the right shade of amused tolerance in his tone now.

He looked around at the pilots. They were all watching him, and some of the tension was already draining away. Starbuck gave him a satisfied little nod.

"Security?"

"On the way," Callan said, looking around mournfully.

"That gold angel's right above your seat, Apollo." Bojay commented.

"So I see. At least this guy's not a total washout when it comes to recognising my sterling qualities and angelic temperament." Apollo glanced around, noting the grins. "I'll ignore the sniggers, ladies and gentlemen. But there's really nothing to see here, and we'd better leave this to Security. The less we interfere, the faster Security can catch this guy. And I'd strongly advise you all not to take any more notice of what this man's up to. He's getting off on the buzz and he'll get bored if we ignore him. So I suggest you all return to your duty stations now. Squadron leaders remain behind, please."

He waited until the pilots had filed out, still quiet but reassured by his calm reception of the latest incident. The senior lieutenants waited fatalistically, wondering what was coming their way. Apollo looked around at the message one more time, then looked them over. Bojay, Kyle, Drake, Sheba, Jillia, Dietra.

"I do understand that everyone is getting concerned about the number of incidents we're getting now, that this joker's beginning to get at them. But I expect better from you that you lead them in a stampede down here to gawk at the man's handiwork and allow them to leave their duty stations. I expect you to have the sense to know that this joker's getting his buzz from having the warriors running round from incident to incident and the best way to get him to stop, is to stop reacting. And I absolutely expect you to show some discipline and restraint. It had better not happen again, is that understood?"

Apollo's voice was very quiet now, but they all heard him. Oh, but the Captain was not pleased with them. Not pleased with them at all. They all knew Apollo very well. The flash of temper was always to be avoided, but they knew it would thunder briefly and was soon over. When he got calm and cold, reminding them of the Commander, that was infinitely worse. Even Bojay, squirming, knew better than to argue with him in that mood.

"Yes sir," they said in varying tones of mortification and resentment.

"Good. Dismissed."

Apollo turned his back on them, not bothering to see them go, but turned his attention back to his message. In stark contrast to his mood when Boomer had told him about this, he still felt calm, slightly detached, as if he was watching this from a vast distance away, standing silent and watchful, waiting for the next move.

"I thought you might like this, sir," came a voice at his elbow.

Apollo stirred and looked at Barnaby. The steward was holding Apollo's usual mid-morning tea.

"Thanks, Barney," Apollo said gratefully, and took the cup. He glanced at Starbuck and Boomer. "Starbuck, you'd better get back to the duty office. You off duty, Boomer?"

"Nope. Due on patrol in twenty centons. I'd better get ready." Boomer could take a hint when he heard one. He was just relieved that Apollo hadn't included him in the acidic little dressing down the other squad leaders had got.

Starbuck hesitated, came close. "Are you all right?" he asked quietly, almost as disturbed by Apollo's calm as he was by the temper flash earlier.

"I'm fine. I'll see you later. We'll talk later."

Starbuck nodded, relieved. "All right. Take care."

"Stop worrying." Apollo watched him go, then turned to Callan. "When did you find it?"

"When I opened up at ten." Callan looked around sadly. "I don't know who could get in here, Captain. There's only me and my staff have the codes."

"Apart from Command and Security who can override all codes," Apollo said thoughtfully.

"You don't think it was one of them?" Callan asked.

"I don't think anything at all. It's safer." Apollo's tone was rueful. "What time do you lock up?"

"By the time the cleaning staff have finished in here it's usually about two. They lock up when they're finished."

"Eight centars. You can spray paint an awful lot of angels in eight centars."

Plenty of time to send simple messages like this one. No-one else other than Apollo would understand it. Although Adama might wonder, no-one else would recognise it. The guy didn't need to write a book to get his message across.

Callan nodded, glum about all the work he'd have to get through to remove the angels.

"As soon as Reese has checked it over, get it cleaned up as best you can, Callan. I'll post orders keeping the OC off-limits until 18.00: that should give you enough time."

"It'll be quickest to paint over them. The place will smell a bit."

"It usually does, and not with anything as wholesome as paint." Apollo grinned at Callan, and handed Barney his empty cup. "Thanks, Barney. I needed that."

He took one more look at the beautiful gold angel decorating the wall above his chair, and sighed slightly.

"I'd better go. Call me if anything turns up."

Apollo walked slowly along the corridor and into the lift. The doors slid closed.

//State level.// the computerised voice activation system invited.

Apollo said nothing, staring blindly at the closed lift doors. The unnatural calm was ebbing away and he was feeling increasingly sick.

//State level.//

"Level six."

The turbo-lift surged upwards, heading up to the heart of the huge Battlestar. Apollo backed into a corner, needing to feel something safe and solid at his back, suddenly shaking and insecure. Just as suddenly, he needed some time to think, to be on his own. If he went back to the duty office, Starbuck would be waiting, would be expecting some sort of explanation...

He lunged forward and punched the emergency stop button. The turbo-lift came to a sudden, bone-jarring stop between floors, and even though he was prepared, Apollo was thrown off his feet.

"Oof " was all he managed as the breath was driven from his body. He lay still for a centon or two, winded, half welcoming the pain as something substantial to worry about, something less tenuous than a ghost.

//Emergency stop.// the computer announced, just in case he hadn't noticed..

Still wheezing as his lungs fought for air, Apollo rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling.

"Hold here."

Silence.

This was a safe place. No-one could get in at him, he couldn't get out, not until he ordered the computer to resume the ascent. This was safe, secure, and silent. Above all, silent.. No voices except the one inside his head. Not the voices of those who loved him and worried about him. No Adama to talk to him in carefully measured tones, advising, loving, reassuring. No Starbuck, more emotional than Adama, just as loving and anxious. And not the one who hated him, either, and was trying for the second time to destroy him. Not the ghost who still haunted him.

Apollo lay on the floor, staring up. But the problem was that the other voice was speaking by other means. He didn't need to hear it.

Instead, the images were there, his mind's eye painting them across the turbo-lift's plain grey ceiling, a sequence of black and gold angels hovering serenely above him spelling out the message, each black angel balancing on a letter with one dainty foot.

Apollo lay there for a long time, ignoring the hardness of the floor under his back, ignoring the calls on his communicator from Core Command, ignoring the calls Starbuck was making to try and locate him.

Instead he stayed in the safety of the turbo-lift, filtering out everything but the message, staring up at the ceiling with eyes that were blurring with helpless tears, fighting down the sickness and trying not to admit to himself how afraid he was.

The angels looked down serenely, always there in his mind and memory, spelling out the message. Spelling out the message that only the ghost could send him.

Sweet Angel.

***

"You want us to *what*?"

"Just for a few days, Starbuck," pleaded Apollo. "I just need some time to myself, to sort this out."

Indescribably hurt, Starbuck stared at him. "Are you telling me it's over?"

"Gods, no! I don't mean that at all. I love you, Star. It's just that I'm not very good company these days, and I......."

"It's those bloody angels, isn't it? Just what is this all about?"

Apollo looked away for a centon. "I can't tell you" he said miserably. The green eyes, haunted now, returned to Starbuck's face, watching for Starbuck's reaction.

"Can't or won't?"

"Both, maybe." Apollo looked away again, his voice flat with the amount of effort he was putting into controlling it, keeping it from shaking.

Starbuck swallowed. This was turning out to be dreadful. Apollo had eventually turned up having taken a centar to get from the OC back to the duty office. He'd been subdued and quiet, offering no explanation and shutting Starbuck out when the Lieutenant tried to talk to him. But as soon as their shift had ended, he'd asked Starbuck to join him in his quarters. Starbuck had hoped that this meant Pol was going to open up at last. He was devastated when Apollo, who was looking increasingly pale and ill, asked that they didn't see each for a few days instead.

"You used to trust me, Pol." he said sadly.

"I do.."

"Really? And it looks like it!".

Apollo said nothing for a centon, then in a low tone: "Starbuck... Starbuck, I'm just scared, okay? If you find out what I've done...I couldn't bear losing you. Leave it, Star. Please."

Starbuck frowned at that. What in hell could make Apollo think anything he'd do would make Starbuck leave him? Didn't the idiot realise how much Starbuck loved him?

"Pol, that's the most stupid thing I ever heard. Nothing you could do could ever make me leave. You're stuck with me for life, I'm telling..."

Apollo wouldn't let him finish. "I'm not risking it." He sighed. "I know. I know it's not fair on you, not telling you. I should give you the choice, and I'm sorry if this changes things between us a bit. But it's better than what I'd have if I told you"

"You aren't making any sense." Starbuck complained. "And for frack's sake, don't you think all this uncertainty and the hints about some dark secret isn't damaging us? I don't care about your secret, Pol, but I *do* care that you won't trust me. Please, please, trust me with this. I love you. You're all I want, and I don't care about anything else. But I'm getting fed up with you living in some sort of wasteland and not letting me in to get you out. It makes me feel that you don't value me much anymore"

"Oh, it's me I don't value" Apollo said moodily. He looked at Starbuck, saw the determination on the Lieutenant's face. "Are you going to make this some sort of test, Starbuck? I talk or we're finished?"

"I wasn't going to be quite as unsubtle as that" Starbuck said. "And I'm damned if I'm letting you go. But I won't let up until you start talking".

Apollo shook his head. "And if I do, you won't be able to let me go fast enough. You'll never want to speak to me again. No. This is my problem, Starbuck. I'll handle it."

Starbuck took a deep breath. "If that's the way you want it, Pol. But you can't just let me into little bits of your life, and close me out in others. I love you, and God knows, I don't ask much, but I do think I've the right to share your problems and help you see a way out of them. If you can't do that, if you can't trust me enough to do that, then that's a major problem for both of us. One that could scupper us making something out of this." He headed for the door. "You'd better give that some thought."

***

The one thing that Lieutenant Bojay usually thanked the Gods for, was that while he was often on the same shift as the Captain, they rarely shared a spell in the duty office together. He was willing - under extreme and painful torture - to admit that the Captain had his good points, but in Bojay's view these were more than counterbalanced by the fact that Apollo was Captain at all. It wasn't that Bojay was ambitious or anything... Oh no. It was just that Bojay thought that he would make a far, far better Strike Captain than Apollo ever could.

For some unaccountable reason, Apollo met all of Bojay's helpful suggestions on how he could run the squadrons better with a stony silence and often, a cold look from green eyes that could look hard as agates. Sharing the duty office usually left Bojay with an more-than-ordinary sense of grievance at the way fate had dumped him on a ship where the Captain was the Commander's son. Short of Apollo buying it in battle - which, of course, Bojay would naturally regret - there didn't seem much opportunity for advancement.

He didn't derive much comfort from Apollo's philosophy. The Captain, too, regretted the circumstances that had prevented his own advancement. If the Destruction hadn't happened, he'd have been looking for a Colonelcy after over five yahrens as a Battlestar Strike Captain, but the Cylons had put paid to that. Apollo comforted himself with the reflection that he was at least doing his duty, and things like rank were immaterial in the fight for survival.

Bojay, whose nature was built on envies and competition, didn't share that viewpoint at all. He was always delighted when it was his turn to man the duty office. Sitting in the Captain's chair, at the Captain's computer, he could just pretend for a few centars that he was really there by right. It pissed him off to have to hand it back.

What really pissed him off, though, was to arrive at the duty office within twenty centons of Apollo's departure on a tour of inspection, and find that the joker had wrecked the place. Completely.

And, incidentally, had left another message.

***

"I've told core command," Bojay said as Apollo stood on the threshold and looked around at his wrecked office.

Apollo said nothing, just nodded. Everything was turned upside down, chairs and cabinets pushed over, only the desk still in its right place. Files had been opened and their contents showered all over the room. The computer sat in the middle of the desk, strangely untouched by the devastation.

The angel was gold again, again the larger size, sprayed onto the wall behind the desk. If Apollo's chair had been where it was supposed to be and he was sitting in it, it would have been directly behind his head, watching over him. Its expression was calm and remote, eyes downcast and pensive, hair rippling back in some unseen breeze.

It was very beautiful.

It made Apollo feel sick.

"It's a hell of a mess." Bojay went on, a faint edge of satisfaction in his tone. "I guess you saw nothing before you left?"

Apollo stirred at that. "Well, actually Bojay, I just sat here and let him rip the place apart around me. Of course it was okay when I left."

"He wouldn't have had much time," Bojay said, ignoring the sarcasm and determined to score the point.

"He'd have had no time at all if you'd been here when you were supposed to be," Apollo snapped, unfairly. He'd given Bojay permission to see Salik about a troublesome tooth, knowing that would make the Lieutenant late on duty. He wished, savagely, that Salik had extracted the tooth with rusty pliers and no anaesthetic.

"You knew where I was, sir." Bojay was delighted to see Apollo so jumpy. He rattled the bars of Apollo's cage more loudly. "He left a message. I assume it's for you. He seems to save his gold angels for you. Your locker, yesterday in the OC, here. They're pretty in gold."

Apollo threw him a dirty look. "What message?"

"On the computer. He didn't damage that."

Apollo turned the screen on its turntable and looked at the message scrolling over and over. He closed his eyes for a micron, hoping against all hope that it was a dream, that the message wasn't there. When he opened his eyes again, the words were still scrolling over the screen, hard edged little black letters on the white screen, sharp and spiky.

With the greatest effort, he managed not to scream at Bojay to get out. Somehow. Instead, he turned the screen away with careful hands.

"God alone knows what *that * means." he said with a calm he most definitely did not feel.

Bojay looked disappointed, and once more innate pride came to Apollo's rescue. He would not break down in front of Bojay, not if his life depended on it.

"Thank you, Lieutenant. You can return to your squadron. Security will contact you, I expect."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure." Apollo looked up as a large figure appeared in the doorway. "Commander?"

He and Bojay snapped to attention as Adama surveyed the devastation.

"At ease. You found this, I think, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, you'll find Security Chief Reese on Alpha deck, looking at another Angel visitation there. Please report to him and tell him what you found, and ask him to join me in my office in half a centar."

"Yes, sir." Bojay saluted smartly, and left, itching to know what the Commander was doing there.

Adama stepped into the room and closed the door.

"Sit down, Apollo. When Bojay reported this to the Bridge, I thought I'd come and look at it myself." Adama looked around the wrecked room. "What's the damage?"

"A mess, but I don't know that anything's been destroyed." Apollo said, trying hard to sound normal. He pulled his chair back into place and half fell into it, sitting beneath the gold angel.

His father winced internally at the sight, carefully put the other chair upright and sat down.

"Still getting to you?" he said gently.

Apollo nodded.

"We've talked about this, Apollo. It's just a co-incidence." Adama looked at his son's closed, expressionless face. "You mustn't let it affect you like this, son. It was a long time ago."

"It's not a co-incidence." Apollo said, and his throat was dry and his voice strained. "I wanted to believe that it was, the same as you did. But it's not. You heard about the OC yesterday, the message. It was for me, Dad. We both know it's aimed at me. There's no doubt."

"Apollo, no-one knows but us." Adama prayed that this was just Apollo over-reacting. That it could have nothing to do with his son.

Apollo's green eyes were wide with the distress he was trying to control. "Someone else knows, Dad."

"I can't believe that," Adama said. Dear God, not after all these yahrens. Not now.

"He's started talking to me. The message in the OC yesterday, the message he left in here after he trashed this place."

"What message?"

Apollo turned the screen around again, allowing his father to see the screen.

***Hello, sweet Angel. Remember me? Hello, sweet Angel. Remember me? Hello, sweet Angel. Remember me? Hello, sweet Angel. Remember me? Hello, sweet Angel. Remember me? Hello, sweet Angel......***

Adama watched the words scroll across the screen, mind numbed with anger, fear, pain, anguish for what this was going to do to his son. What it had already done to his son. He got up quickly, came around the desk to put his arm around Apollo's tense body.

"See?" Apollo said dully. "Someone knows. Someone knows I'm the Angel."

***

Reese, the head of Council Security, was never quite sure how he ought to think about Commander Adama. On the one hand, Adama was a Colonial Warrior, and therefore to be despised and, whenever feasible, terrorised, bullied and threatened with arrest for any trivial offence that security could pin on him. On the other hand, he was also head of the Council and therefore Reese's direct superior, and ought to be the object of veneration and respect. Reese usually settled for a demeanour that was half-truculent, half respectful and which left him feeling uncomfortable. He suspected, correctly, that it left Adama feeling amused.

But Adama wasn't amused now.

"Anything at all?" Adama asked.

"We've a list of about twenty people who've joined the Galactica in the last three sectars, sir, mainly low-grade support staff. Half of them wouldn't have cause to go anywhere near the troop decks and would be challenged if they tried."

"Let me see." Adama took the list and studied it for a centon. "Hallam - he's the tech who called Captain Apollo down to the hanger on Alpha, when the Viper stores were sabotaged."

"Joined us from the Alcestis about six sectons ago. Nothing against him at all, nothing to suggest he's anything other than a damn good tech."

"He's the right age," Adama said half to himself.

Reese's ears pricked up. "The right age, sir?" he asked.

Adama looked up from the list and shook his head. "Nothing, Reese. Just thinking aloud." He returned to the list. "I don't know half of these people. This woman, Kaye, is a medtech, I think?"

Reese nodded.

"And Barnaby I've met when he's been my duty steward."

"He was duty steward the morning the angel was painted onto the table in the Briefing Room," Reese observed. "He brought the coffee up. But again, there's nothing, no history to suggest anything against him."

Except that Barnaby, too, was the right age.

"What are you doing about them?"

"Just watching them for now, sir, and increasing the security patrols on the troop decks. But whoever he is, he's clever and he's observant. He chooses his moment very carefully."

"I've noticed." Adama sat back in his chair, and rubbed his hand over his eyes, a rare gesture of tiredness and irritation. Reese hid a grin. He'd seen Apollo do that countless times. There was a lot to be said for genetics, after all.

"Of course, we don't know that whoever's doing this has only recently joined the ship." Reese pointed out. "They might have been here all along, and only just started this campaign." "If that's the case, why wait for over two yahrens?"

"Who knows?" Reese shrugged.

Adama sighed. This speculation was getting them nowhere.

"Reese, this is getting the warriors spooked and nervous. They're getting more convinced that this is a campaign aimed at them, that someone's going to get hurt if this man - or woman - continues to damage essential spares and parts. We've got to find him. If necessary, check out every civilian on the ship, no matter when they joined us."

"It's a priority, sir, but there's damned little to go on."

"I know. Well, do your best."

It was a dismissal, and Reese knew it.

"Sir," he said, politely and went, leaving Adama studying the list again carefully.

The name Adama was looking for wasn't there. For a few centons he sat still and quiet, lost in his thoughts, then turned to the computer terminal at his desk. It took him several centons to search through the Fleet records. The name he was looking for wasn't there either, not listed in amongst any of the 120,000 survivors.

Which left him with two possibilities.

The first was that the name had been changed. It wasn't unknown. They'd found people in the fleet before carrying names they hadn't been born with: Karybdis, for one, who had almost succeeded in pinning a murder on Starbuck So it was entirely possible that the ghost who haunted his son had indeed survived the Destruction, and had lain hidden and quiet for over two yahrens, building a new life and a new identity, and was now moving against Apollo. For whatever reason, the ghost had decided to haunt Apollo again.

That was a disturbing enough possibility, and Adama didn't like to think of the implications, that this was indeed aimed at his son. He didn't want to think of someone that malevolent stalking his son, watching him, waiting for the chance to harm him.

But the alternative was worse.

Only a few days ago, at lunch, Adama had assured Apollo that neither of them were running around the ship with cans of paint and a spray gun. Since then Adama had tried to avoid questioning what he'd said, had shied away from even letting himself begin to think it, but for the first time he faced up to the fact that that might not be true.

Sixteen yahrens before, haunted by guilt, Adama had despaired that Apollo would ever get over what had happened, and for a long time afterwards watched his son carefully for signs of stress or for the abnormal, disturbed behaviour that had so frightened him. But there'd been nothing, and gradually Adama had accepted that although Apollo had changed for ever, had become quieter, more thoughtful and reserved, he had recovered fully. Adama had never forgotten that time - God knew, he could never forget - or could ever quite conquer the intense feelings of protectiveness and guilt he felt towards the eldest child he thought he'd failed so badly. But it was yahrens since the Commander had seriously worried that the stability that Apollo had achieved was uncertain or fragile.

Apollo had not only coped with the tensions and stresses of the Academy and of a demanding career, he'd excelled at both. When so many had despaired at the Destruction, Apollo had been rock steady, despite his own grief about Zac and his mother, and then Serina. And not even the guilt Apollo felt about Zac's untimely death had threatened his balance and control. Adama had had no qualms at all about trusting and relying absolutely on Apollo's rational judgement. Over the last couple of yahrens, he'd come to trust in Apollo more and more, giving him more command responsibility. Apollo had performed exactly as Adama had expected, showing an appetite and aptitude for command that reminded Adama of himself at Apollo's age.

Now Adama went over and over their conversation at lunch, looking for signs and signals that might make him regret the decision he'd made all those yahrens ago. Apollo had been edgy, it was true, but there was little to wonder at in that, given the significance angels had always had for him. Nothing there to make Adama wonder if he'd done the right thing, all those yahrens ago, in suppressing the evidence and wiping clean the records. As Apollo had acknowledged, if the truth had been known, he'd never have been accepted at the Academy. Adama still had nothing to convince him that he'd been wrong to use - to misuse - his wealth and influence to hide the past.

He was still more than half convinced that he was being stupid, that his fears and anxieties were groundless. But he forced himself to face up to the possibility. He laid it all out and looked at it, as coolly and analytically as he could.

If Apollo were ill, was heading for a breakdown through grief and the unrelenting stress, for whatever reason... if Apollo was.. was mentally unbalanced, then Adama could understand that fears and terrors that had lain hidden for such a long time could re-awaken, that these images and words could be some outward sign of inner trauma and disturbance. It was possible, for all Apollo's love for Starbuck, that the relationship with the Lieutenant has been the trigger. The angels had a deep, very deep significance for Apollo. If he was losing his grip on sanity and reality, for whatever reason, it might just manifest itself in this way. Just possibly.

No-one would ever challenge Apollo's right to be anywhere on the troopdecks at any time. He had every opportunity to get at the Viper spares, could over-ride the OC security codes, could have trashed his own Triad gear, had had every opportunity to vandalise the duty office knowing that Bojay was going to be delayed. If it was him, he might not even be aware that he was doing it, but might, subconsciously, be providing the cause of his own breakdown.

It made perfect psychological sense.

If Apollo was mad, that was.

***

"Thanks for coming to see me, Starbuck. Sit down." Adama waved a hand at the chair set opposite his desk in the Bridge office.

Starbuck allowed his body to relax after the salute and dropped into the seat with his usual loose-limbed grace. He tried to look interested, but innocent. He'd racked his brains all the way up to the office after getting the summons, wondering what the authorities had found out about and were, in the manner of authorities, going to come down on him for doing or not doing or just thinking about doing. He couldn't think of anything he'd done recently to offend. Being asked to sit down possibly hinted that this wasn't a bawl-out-Starbuck session.

Adama hesitated for a centon, studying the Lieutenant and the expression of spurious innocence. Starbuck and Apollo went back yahrens, meeting when Apollo had gone to secondary school when he was fifteen. He'd wanted his quiet, shy, reserved eldest son to make friends, to be more like the average teenager, but the advent of Starbuck had alarmed him. A streetwise, cynical, rule-bending, troublesome orphan wasn't exactly what he had in mind.

If it hadn't been for the fact that Starbuck, for all the little kicks against authority, was very good for Apollo, able to get behind the barriers and force Apollo out of himself, Adama thought he'd have put his foot down and forbidden Apollo to see Starbuck again. But he'd hesitated, and the next time he'd returned home on leave it was to find Starbuck a de facto extra member of the family, a firm fixture in Apollo's life. And the improvement he had seen in his son, the occasional glimpse even of the old Apollo, was reason enough to accept that.

Over the yahrens he'd become fond of the brash young man who hid his own problems behind barriers that were different to Apollo's, but almost as difficult to get through. He had seen how close they were, how automatic it was to think of them together. He wasn't surprised that they'd become lovers. Adama thought that it was only Apollo's fear that had kept it from happening yahrens before, and although he might have preferred another, more traditional mate for his son, he and Apollo had shared some deeply unhappy experiences that had left Adama determined never to be judgmental or demanding, but to accept whatever situation made Apollo happy. God knew, his son deserved it.

Starbuck fidgeted uncomfortably, wishing Adama would just get on with it, and the Commander smiled slightly as he guessed the younger man's thoughts.

"This is a private matter, Starbuck, not work, so you're under no obligation to stay or discuss this with me."

Starbuck froze for a brief micron. Apollo. It had to be about Apollo.

"Yes, sir," he said with a bright attentiveness that had Adama's smile broadening. Starbuck was the only person Adama knew who could signal insouciance and insubordination without departing once from correct military behaviour.

"I wanted to talk to you about Apollo, Starbuck, as you've probably guessed. And I'll start out by putting some of my cards on the table: I know about you and him, so you don't need to pussy-foot around trying to keep me in the dark about you two being lovers."

Starbuck's jaw dropped slightly. "Oh," he said, for once bereft of words.

"And no, he didn't tell me. I guessed."

"Right." said Starbuck, mind whirling.

"And I don't mind. So we'll start with your relationship with Apollo and my acceptance of it as a given, shall we?" Adama was still smiling slightly. It wasn't often he blind-sided Starbuck.

Starbuck nodded dumbly.

"Good. Then let's talk about Apollo." Adama's smile vanished abruptly, and there was a careworn, anxious expression on his face.

Starbuck hitched his chair forward. "What's this all about, sir? He's getting me really worried the way all this stupid angel stuff is getting at him. People are noticing how antsy he is."

Adama sighed. "I can't tell you, Starbuck. I've worked hard to win Apollo's confidence and I can't jeopardise that, even for you. But I will tell you it's serious, and he is deeply affected by these angels. It upsets him, and reminds him of something he'd rather forget."

Starbuck frowned. What the hell was the old man talking about, having to win Apollo's confidence? He'd known them both for almost fifteen yahrens and had envied the deeply affectionate relationship that they had, wondering often whether if he'd ever known his own father, they'd be as close as Adama and Apollo were. There was never any indication of lack of trust. Beyond the usual adolescent tensions and rows - and even the ones Starbuck had been privy to had been very tame affairs compared to what Adama and Ila later experienced with Athena and then Zac - Starbuck had never even seen them have a serious disagreement.

"You won't tell me. He won't tell me. So where do we go from here?"

Adama looked down at the papers stacked on his desk, and carefully neatened the edges of one pile that had slipped to one side. "I'm trying to persuade him to tell you, Starbuck. I think if he and you are to have any chance at all, you need to know, to understand why Apollo is the way he is."

Starbuck's frown deepened. "He's always been the way he is. As long as I've known him."

"As long as you've known him, yes." Adama agreed.

Starbuck thought about that. Whatever Adama was talking about had happened before he'd known Apollo, then, when Pol was a kid. Okay, Starbuck wasn't so stupid that he couldn't hazard a guess, but he couldn't possibly be right. Pol had never, ever said anything. Ever.

"Cryptic, Commander, and not exactly helpful. And it brings me back to where I was before. Where do we go from here?"

"I'm an interfering old man, Starbuck. Your relationship with Apollo is your business, and no-one else's. But I know it's important to him and the last thing he needs is to think he's losing you. So I want to ask you to be patient. I truly think he's trying to find a way to tell you, and that he will do it. It's just very hard for him, and he's going through hell at the moment."

"I'll be patient, but you know that he's cooled things off with me? For a few days he said."

Starbuck's pain and bewilderment were so acute, so obvious, that for a micron Adama was tempted to explain. But that would hurt Apollo so badly, he couldn't do it.

"I didn't know. But I do know he needs you and loves you, Starbuck."

"Not enough to trust me." Starbuck choked and looked down hurriedly, feeling the tears sting.

"It's not about trust, Starbuck, believe me. It's something that hurt him so deeply that he can barely talk about it even to me, and I know all about it."

Starbuck looked at him thoughtfully. "Athena doesn't know, does she?"

Adama shook his head. "No. Only me and Apollo, now that his mother's gone."

Starbuck looked down at the floor and thought about it for several centons, weighing what he knew about Apollo against this cryptic non-message he was getting from Adama. Then he nodded.

"All right I can make some guesses, and from what you're *not* saying they may not be so off beam. I can't believe he's never said anything to me. But I do know what you mean about when he's hurt. He goes sort of still and quiet and those barriers come down like steel. It's like he's in some sort of wasteland, lost. Like he was when Serina was killed. I suppose I can see that if it was something so horrendous, he might still be trapped in the wasteland over it, hiding even from me."

"That, Starbuck, is the perfect analogy." Adama looked at Starbuck with respect. The Lieutenant really did understand Apollo. That was hopeful. "Except that you were there for him when Serina died, Starbuck. You got him out of the wasteland. These last few sectars, I've never seen him so happy. I owe you some thanks for that."

"Me too. I've been happy, too, I mean. He means a hell of a lot to me, Commander, so I'll wait for him to tell me. But not for long. If I have to, I'll force him to tell me. I can't wait for ever. He'll be ill if this goes on."

"It worries the life out of me too." Adama was carefully stacking his papers again, lining up the edges just so. "Starbuck, I want to ask you something. I know that he's affected by the angels, is rattled by them. When did you first notice that?"

"When Cree and Meade came to tell us about the storeroom." Starbuck's reply was prompt, unstudied. "The first time we heard of the angels."

"Sure? Not before then?"

"No." Starbuck's eyes narrowed. "You *don't* mean what I think you mean, do you?"

"I think it's a possibility that I can't close my eyes to. He's badly affected by this, Starbuck. He's not sleeping, and he's not eating, and that's a sure-fire sign he's under stress. If he were ill, I could understand the angel thing being both the cause and the result of it."

"No way! He's jumpy, Commander, but there's no way he's out of his head. No way at all!" Starbuck's indignation was immediate and genuine.

Adama looked at him soberly. "Please God you're right, Starbuck. Please God, you're right."

***

"I don't know why I'm bothering talking to you," Boomer said in disgust. "You aren't listening to a word I say."

Starbuck looked up from the drink he'd been nursing for two centars now. He was trying, without success, to banish the fears that Adama had implanted.

"You were talking about the joker wrecking the office," he said wearily. "Give me a break, Boomer. Everyone's talking about the joker wrecking the office. Can't we talk about something else?"

"You can't blame us for being interested, Bucko. Especially given the message that Bojay says was left for Apollo."

"It had Apollo's name on it?"

"Well, no, but who else would it be for? It was the same as in here. Something about 'sweet Angel'. What do you think?"

"Boomer, I love Pol to death, but I'd never describe him as sweet, would you? He's beautiful and he's hot and sexy, but he is not sweet. And anyone that bad tempered is no angel. Bojay's just stirring it, as usual. I wish he'd give it a rest."

"He's told the entire OC," Boomer said, looking around the crowded - and repainted - club.

"He would." Starbuck scowled over at the table where Bojay was talking loudly about the latest and most exciting developments.

"What does Apollo say about it?"

Starbuck sighed. "Boomer, he won't talk about it. You know what he was like when you told him about the angels in here. He really doesn't like what's happening. And if he found out that Bojay has everyone in here talking about him, he'd go spare. He hates it when people gossip about him."

"They will, until the mystery's solved." Boomer glanced up as someone approached their table. "Hi Barney. What can we do for you?"

Barney grinned at them. "A message from the Captain for Starbuck. He says he's been trying to get you on your communicator, but it must be malfunctioning. He wants you to join him down on Beta deck, in the hanger."

"What the hell for?" Starbuck demanded, forgetting for the centon that he and Apollo had more than once made use of the shadowy hangers when lust overcame their better judgement.

"He didn't say. But I suppose it has something to do with all this." Barney's hand gestured at the now angel-less walls.

"Now?"

"He said so."

"Thanks."

Barney nodded and moved away, back to the bar.

"Want me to come along?" Boomer asked slyly.

"Gooseberries, Boomer old son, are round and hairy and green. You miss out on all three characteristics." Starbuck downed his drink. "See you later."

"Maybe. But not if you can help it, I bet."

"*I* do the wagering around here, thank you very much." Starbuck grinned at him, and headed for the door.

"Where's he off to?" Giles asked, joining Boomer at the table.

"Guess."

"Let me see - Apollo calls."

"Got it in one." Boomer finished his drink and looked at his Triad partner expectantly. "Mine's an ambrosa, Giles my boy."

***

Unaware that most of Blue Squadron, at least, had a fair idea of his relations with the Captain, Starbuck headed up to the main flightdecks, housed in the wings on either side of the huge central engines. It took him some time to reach Beta deck: Galactica was a big ship.

The deck itself was busy, bustling with techs and pilots as one group of picket ships came in from their tour of duty, and another group were taking off to replace them. The ground crews were swarming over the returned Vipers, carrying out the post mission systems checks and getting them ready to be lifted into their racks and transferred into the immense hanger at the side of the bay.

Starbuck picked his way across the deck, avoiding the worst of the activity. He skirted a pile of bales and boxes of supplies, waiting for the Deck-master to arrange transfer to one of the civilian ships, and ducked into the hanger.

It was a cold place, cavernous, dark and shadowy but for a far corner where a tech was working on a Viper under some stronger, but localised lighting. Starbuck looked at the man sourly. Well, whatever Pol wanted it wasn't sex, not with the tech watching, that's for sure.

"Pol?"

No answer.

Starbuck looked over to the tech.

"Hey, have you seen Captain Apollo?"

The tech didn't even look up. "Not tonight. Sorry."

"Oh. Thanks."

Starbuck hesitated, then sighed and settled down on the edge of a storage bin, facing the door and readying himself for a long wait. The tech worked away busily, seeming to respect Starbuck's silence and didn't disturb him. The faint tech-y noises the man made as he worked on the Viper were soothing.

For a few centons Starbuck sat lost in thought, staring down at the toe of his combat boot where it was tracing patterns on the floor, thinking hard about what Adama had said. He thought that the Commander was over-reacting. Yeah, Pol was antsy, but there was no way that he'd lost it to that extent. He wasn't mad, or ill. Starbuck thought about Adama's hints. Maybe he'd misread the man? He couldn't believe that Apollo would keep anything from him, certainly nothing important. And if Starbuck's guess was right, and it had affected Apollo so badly, how come Apollo had ever accepted him as a lover? And how the *hell* did those bloody angels fit into the picture?

It's all such a mess, Starbuck thought, and I was always lousy with detective novels. I always have to cheat and look at the back page.

He shivered, chilled. The hangar was an uninviting place: too big to be comfortable on any human scale, too cold and dark. Even when he and Apollo had made love in the shadows behind the storage bins and most of his mind had been taken up with the giving and receiving of pleasure, Starbuck had always been conscious of the fighters hanging in their storage racks ten metres above his head, silent and shadowy. He looked up at them, just able to make out their black shapes against the dark ceiling.

Enough. He'd waited long enough, watched by the Vipers. He glanced down at his communicator, and raised it to his mouth.

"Core Command, can you locate Captain Apollo for me, please?"

Pause. Wait.

"Off duty and his communicator's on standby," the duty bridge officer answered after a centon or two.

That usually meant Apollo was at home with Boxey. Putting the communicator on standby meant that only emergency calls got through, if there was a red alert, or Colonel Tigh wanted an immediate weapons count or whatever it was that Colonels needed immediate reassurance about.

"Okay, thanks," Starbuck said, then looked at his communicator in bewilderment. He'd forgotten for a micron that Apollo had told Barney that he hadn't been able to get through to Starbuck, but there was obviously nothing wrong with the communicator.

Something was extremely fishy about this. Very fishy indeed. He wasn't going to wait around any longer. Time to go and find Pol and get things out in the open with him. And if he was lucky, they could discuss this in bed and get other things out in the open....

Starbuck jumped to his feet. He never made it the door.

***

"Hallam! Col!" The Beta Deck-master's yell echoed across the flightdeck. "Get the systems fired up in there, please."

She signalled to the ground crews to start loading the Vipers. Rows of computer-controlled cranes on huge gantries closed their metal arms around the sleek fighters and lifted them up onto the overhead rail, started them rolling into the hanger. The techs and crew walked "their" Viper towards the hanger, doing last-centon visual checks to the underside of each ship, concentrating on making sure that the little fighters were in perfect condition. So much hinged on these ships and their pilots. And both were useless without the techs and ground crew to support them.

"On my way." Hallam quickened his pace, leaving his partner to look over the Red Squadron fighter they'd been checking.

Col jog-trotted across the deck to catch him up at the hangar door. "I'll take the port system."

"Done. And I'll get the lights."

They separated just inside the door, heading for the bank of controls on each side of the door. Hallam set the lighting from the starboard console. It took only microns for the huge overhead lights to flicker into life, and the hangar was suddenly brilliantly lit, the shadows banished.

"Hallam!" Col's voice was hoarse with alarm. "Quick! Over here."

The tech turned quickly. Col had abandoned the port console and was running across the deck towards the still body huddled beside some crates.

"What the hell?" Hallam hurried to join Col to stare down at the warrior in surprise and consternation.

He knelt down beside the body, taking in the blood matted in the blond hair, the angel painted on the floor.

"Who is it?" Col asked fearfully.

"Lieutenant Starbuck, I think. Warn the Boss."

"Have you seen it?" Col nodded towards the angel on the floor beside Starbuck's head. "Is it blood?"

Hallam, intent on trying to find a pulse, gave the red angel only a cursory glance. "Don't be a fool. It's red paint. Get a medic, fast."

Col took a few steps backward and spoke rapidly into his headset.

Starbuck was lying beside the storage bin where he'd sat waiting for Apollo, his face covered in the blood that had poured from the ugly gash on his left temple. The blood was still seeping from the wound, and there was a little pool on the floor beneath the Lieutenant's head, very bright red. As he knelt beside the still body, desperately feeling for a pulse, Hallam could smell its thick, warm saltiness. For a few microns he thought that the joker had claimed his first victim, then he found a weak, erratic pulse and saw that Starbuck was still breathing.

Barely.

***

"No news yet? Adama asked quietly, taking the seat next to Apollo.

Apollo's face was in his hands, his voice muffled. "No."

"He'll be all right." Adama put his arm around Apollo's shoulders, pulling him close, comforting. "It takes a lot more than this to get Starbuck."

"My fault." Apollo said indistinctly. "It's all my fault."

"Don't be stupid, Appy," Adama found himself using his son's childhood nickname almost automatically, and skated hurriedly on, hoping Apollo hadn't noticed. "How can it possibly be your fault?"

"I should have told him."

Adama rubbed the shaking shoulders comfortingly. "Well, you know I think you should tell him anyway, son, but for different reasons. Starbuck loves you: he needs to understand, and he's hurt and scared by you pushing him away. That's the reason to tell him. But, if you had, what difference would it have made to what's happened now?"

"Why do you think he was the one who was attacked? That bastard's out there somewhere, watching. He must know about me and Starbuck."

Adama scowled into the air above his son's bowed head. There was no arguing with that. Since the message in the wrecked office, he too had stopped trying to persuade himself that the attacks were random. If this was aimed at Apollo, then the attack on Starbuck made a twisted, malevolent kind of sense.

"If I'd told him, he'd have been more careful." Apollo straightened up, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. Adama dug into a pocket and handed him a handkerchief. "Thanks," Apollo said gruffly.

"And I thought that Boxey was the only snotty nosed kid I needed to carry around extra handkerchiefs for these days." Adama said, trying to cheer him.

"Maybe I'm regressing," Apollo said, not noticing the anguished look on his father's face. Adama had been deeply worried that had been the case. "What the hell was Starbuck doing down on Beta anyway?"

"Boomer said that he got a message from you to join you there." Adama said carefully.

"From me?" Apollo stared at his father, his astonishment genuine and obvious. "But that's nuts! I didn't ask him down there. I was at home with Boxey and if I wanted to see him, I'd have asked him to come to me in my quarters."

Adama looked at him thoughtfully, then nodded. The one thing he was sure of was that Apollo would never, ever hurt Starbuck. He certainly wouldn't have hit Starbuck over the head and left him to die. Adama's fears about Apollo's sanity were groundless: this proved that the ghost was back, that someone was stalking Apollo, coming ever closer to him. The comfort was only marginal. Any relief about Apollo's state of mind was definitely tempered by the fear of what was menacing his son.

"I'm sure of it." he said gently.

"Geez, and Starbuck fell for that old trick?"

"The message was relayed through Barnaby, in the OC. Whoever it was, suggested that Starbuck's communicator was out of order. Barnaby passed the message on in good faith. Boomer said it was so casual it was very convincing."

Apollo gave his father a sharp look, missing nothing of Adama's speculative tone. "What are you getting at?"

"Barnaby's the right age."

"It's not Barnaby." Apollo shook his head. "I'd know."

"He could have changed a lot in sixteen yahrens," Adama pointed out. "And Barnaby was there when the storeroom was vandalised, as well as being instrumental in sending Starbuck down to Beta hanger."

"He couldn't change that much." Apollo was positive. "I'd know if it was Barney. Shit, Barney's been my duty steward for the last two sectars. I see him every day. I'd know."

Adama nodded, accepting that. "What about Hallam? He's the right age too, and he was around for several of the incidents. He found Starbuck."

"Too tall." Apollo said, no hesitation. "He could change but he couldn't grow taller. And I'm sure I'd know, no matter how much he'd changed. I'm not saying he's not here on the Galactica, Dad, I'm just saying it's someone I haven't seen too much of. If it was someone I saw often, I'd know."

Adama nodded again. "Someone who you might have seen occasionally, but not had anything to do with? We've over three hundred civilians on this ship, and only a few of them are likely to come into contact with the warriors."

"But not all of them could be him."

"True. Reese has compiled dossiers on everyone who's come onto the Galactica in the last three sectars. No one else on that list is a feasible possibility, if you're sure about Barnaby and Hallam. Reese will have to widen the net to look at all of the civilian staff, and I'll give him a point in the right direction. Without telling him everything, of course."

"No." Apollo looked towards the closed waiting room door, and sighed.

The 'everything' that his father was worrying about didn't matter any more. It wasn't that finding who had done this wasn't important, that finally laying the ghost to rest wasn't important, it just that neither was as important as Starbuck. For the first time in sixteen yahrens, the ghost lost its potency to frighten Apollo. He was far more frightened about Starbuck. Everything else faded into insignificance, came into their right proportion. What was past was over. Only the present with Starbuck mattered.

Somewhere beyond that closed door they were working on Starbuck. Apollo had raced to the Life Centre as soon as he got the panicky summons from Cassie, barely pausing on the way to leave Boxey with Athena, pushing his way in past the medtechs to get to Starbuck. His lover had been lying very still on a treatment couch, barely breathing, his face unrecognisable under its mask of blood. It had taken Cassie and Salik a few centons to persuade Apollo that he was just in the way, that he must wait outside, and he'd gone reluctantly. Cassie had looked grave and anxious, and Apollo knew that Starbuck was deeply unconscious, in danger. Every instinct pushed at him to be there, with Starbuck. The waiting was intolerable.

"They won't be long." Adama said, understanding. He knew how his son felt, the frustration and the utter, almost corrosive helplessness that burned at you when you had to leave others to care for someone you loved.

He and Ila had sat in a waiting room like this once, waiting to find out if their son was going to live. Later they had lived - existed - for days in a quiet little room in the intensive care ward in the children's hospital, listening to the humming of the machines that were keeping Apollo alive, listening to his harsh, laboured breathing. His son had looked so very small and helpless attached to the life support machines, intravenous lines in both arms. Adama hadn't left Apollo's side for over a secton, sitting stoically through all the crises, seeing the doctors' concern as Apollo struggled to survive, watching the thin white face with its dark bruises and the glazed, unseeing green eyes. Even now, yahrens later, Adama still quietly celebrated the anniversary of the day when Apollo had finally recognised his parents. Despite all the horror and distress that followed, that was still a day of deliverance that Adama remembered on his knees in the chapel, in grateful thanks.

He pushed away the memories. He still had Apollo. Amid his losses, that was one thing to still give thanks about. And be thankful, too, that his son still needed him.

"They won't be long," he repeated, and the arm he kept around Apollo's shoulders squeezed gently. "And we both know how tough Starbuck is."

"There was so much blood," Apollo said quietly, despairing.

"Head wounds always bleed out of all proportion. You know that. He's getting the best treatment, Apollo."

"I just want to be in there."

"I know, little son." Adama said, and pulled him in close. "I know."

It was a long, silent wait after that.

***

Starbuck had been drifting in and out of the dark for a long time. Sometimes he stayed out of it long enough to see Apollo or Cassie, and even tried to respond to Apollo's pleas to stay awake, to talk to him. He'd frown and try, manage a word or two, Pol's name, worried about the anxious look on Apollo's face but the pain had been intense, as if someone was jabbing a long thin knife into his head, and the light had hurt his eyes. He'd close them to rest them, just for a micron, and fade away again into the darkness.

This time though, he managed to keep the dark at bay. It took one hell of an effort. His head pounded and even trying to open his eyes hurt abominably. But he knew that he was lying on something soft and comfortable and someone was holding his hand. He forced open his eyes, squinting against the lights that were dim enough, but which still stabbed painfully through his eyes.

Apollo was sitting next to him, leaning forward with his head resting on the edge of Starbuck's pillow, obviously asleep. It was his hand holding Starbuck's.

Starbuck knew where he was. He was in one of the small rooms in the Life Centre. Everything was quiet and peaceful, and he was just thinking vaguely about joining Apollo and closing his eyes again, when a soft voice spoke.

"Well, I see our slumbering boy has finally decided to wake up and join us."

Starbuck managed to turn his head. If he did it very slowly, there wasn't any real danger of it falling off. Not if he was very, very careful. Cassie was standing by the bed, smiling. But her eyes were watchful.

"I suppose," Starbuck said cautiously. Join them from where? Why'd he been asleep?

Apollo's head snapped up at the sound of Starbuck's voice. Joy and relief lit up his pale face. "Starbuck? Oh God, love, you scared me."

And despite Cassie being there, he leaned forward and kissed his lover gently. Cassie didn't even blink, just gave them both an indulgent smile.

"Pol!" Starbuck protested faintly, rolling his eyes towards Cassie. He wished devoutly he hadn't done that. It hurt.

"Secret's out." Cassie said. "The way he was carrying on down here when you were brought in, me and Dr Salik guessed that something was in the wind. You don't get that hysterical over someone you don't care about."

"I wasn't hysterical!" protested Apollo.

"Running around yelling wasn't hysteria? Classic case. At least now I know who I lost out to." Cassie gave him a good-natured smile.

"Sorry Cass," Apollo said perfunctorily.

"Just as well for you I don't bear grudges, How do you feel, Bucko?"

Starbuck raised his free hand to his savagely aching head and touched the dressing on his left temple. It hurt.

"I don't know. What happened?"

"You were found in the hanger on Beta, out cold on the deck floor." Apollo said gently "Someone had hit you pretty hard. You've been out of it for thirty centars, all told."

"If we count the way you've been playing around waking up and falling asleep, teasing us for the last ten." Cassie said looking intently at the scanner.

"He always has problems waking up." Apollo's lips brushed Starbuck's again.

Apollo was smiling at Starbuck with such obvious love and relief that Starbuck felt warmed by it. He'd never had anyone to love him the way Apollo did. But his head throbbed and he felt even more confused, like his sensors had been scrambled. In the end, he settled for just staring at them and looking plaintive, hoping that they'd stop teasing him and tell him what was going on.

"You'll be fine." Cassie was reassuring, giving the scanner a satisfied little nod. "You've a severe concussion. Serious enough, but nothing was broken, and the brain scans showed no permanent damage."

"Always said you had a thick skull," Apollo said, grinning at him. His free hand was stroking Starbuck's cheek gently, something the bewildered Lieutenant found soothing, but, paradoxically, distracting. It reminded him of other things those long fingers could stroke.

"Why'd anyone want to hit me?" he said plaintively, turning his head slowly to press his cheek against Apollo's hand. If Cassie was okay about it, he didn't mind, and Apollo's fingers were so comforting...

"We've compiled a list," Apollo said. "There's the odd rejected lover or ten, several thousand bad losers at cards... lots of people. Not that we're suggesting that you have any kind of reputation or anything, Starbuck, but let's say that of all the people in the Fleet who might get whopped over the head and you'd be surprised to hear it, you'd be the least likely to be in that company."

"Very funny," Starbuck said, when his aching head had worked that one out.

"We thought so," Cassie agreed, then bent and kissed his cheek. "You two can have ten centons, then you, Starbuck, need some sleep. Don't exhaust him, Apollo."

"Fat chance with this headache," Starbuck grumbled as she left. He watched Apollo. "Our friend with the spray can?"

Apollo looked away, nodded.

"Oh great. Tell me what happened, Pol."

"Hallam found you. You were out cold, and there was nothing near you that you could have hit your head on. Someone walloped you with that old cliché, a blunt instrument. He left the calling card sprayed onto the deck beside you. Do you remember anything about it, Starbuck? Did you see anyone on the deck?"

Starbuck frowned, trying to remember, to concentrate. He could remember that the hanger deck had been very quiet, but for the slight noises coming from a nearby starfighter, where the tech had been making some repairs. He couldn't remember anything else.

"Well, I got your message to meet you there from Barnaby - only I guess it wasn't really from you?"

Apollo shook his head. "No. Reese thinks it was a decoy, a trick to get you down there." He tried for a lighter note. "Honestly, Star, you should have known. Anyone would think that we hadn't spent long rainy afternoons when we were kids watching all those old films on the vid..."

"Those ones where the heroine gets decoyed by the villain with a false message and ends up tied to a railway track and the express on its way? I musta slept through 'em. Besides, I'm the wrong shape to be a heroine."

"I like your shape just as it is."

Starbuck grinned. "Still love me, then?"

"So much." Apollo said, and leaned in to kiss him.

"Good. I was beginning to wonder." Starbuck said several centons later. "Love you too, Pol, and I love it when you kiss me and you can do it again any time you like, but I'm not that easily diverted. This guy hitting me: decoying me down there means it wasn't a random attack, with him hitting the first warrior he came across. He really wanted to hit *me*."

"Looks like it." Apollo sighed inwardly at Starbuck's ability to focus on the essential. Despite his frivolous reputation, Starbuck was only ever distracted if and when he wanted to be.

"Are you going to tell me why?"

Apollo took a deep breath and nodded. "I talked to Dad a lot while we were waiting for news of you. He's right. I should tell you. I owe you that much. But not right now, okay? Cassie would kill me."

"When I get out of here?" Starbuck was too tired and headache-y to challenge yet one more delay, one more evasion. When he felt a little bit better he was going to pin Pol down on this. Preferably somewhere where they wouldn't get disturbed and he could kiss Apollo into submission.

"Promise." Apollo said, relieved that Starbuck wasn't going to insist on being told immediately.

"Good." Starbuck settled back on his pillow, hoping that the softness would soothe his aching head. "Okay, to get back to me being whopped. The flight deck was pretty crowded, as usual, and the picket ships were just coming in. Loads of people would have seen me heading for the hanger. The hanger was quiet, but there was a tech working on a Viper at the other end. He must have seen something."

"Did you know him?"

"I don't think so, but I don't know all the techs, Pol." Starbuck sighed. "I only spoke to him to ask if he'd seen you. We didn't get into swapping life stories. You think he was our man?"

"I don't know. I don't know what showed on the security scanner. I think we'd better get Reese to check him out."

"Reese!" Starbuck said contemptuously. "Reese couldn't check in his pants to make sure his equipment's still there and get the same answer twice running."

***

"I've told you, Lieutenant," Barnaby said patiently. "I thought it was the Captain. He says it wasn't. That's good enough for me. It wasn't him."

"It's odd, though," Bojay persisted. "You must have recognised the voice."

"It was a bad connexion. I was mistaken," Barnaby said again. He picked up the tray of used glasses from the table and went on firmly: "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do."

He walked away, all outraged dignity at this cross examination.

"And what the hell do you think you're trying to do?" Boomer demanded, having overheard enough to get his protective instincts fired up.

"I'm not trying to do anything," Bojay snapped back. "Just trying to get to the bottom of this little mystery."

The OC was quiet, watchful, listening. Boomer glanced around. Gods, but they were all spooked to hell. The attack on Starbuck had them so spooked they weren't thinking. This could get nasty, if he didn't do something to nip it in the bud. He allowed the sarcasm full rein.

"Well, I never thought I'd see anything that would make Reese look intelligent, Boj, but the thought of you as a detective does it by comparison. Stick to what you're good at." Then with the perfect timing he'd learned from Starbuck, a pause and : "Whatever that may be."

Several of the pilots laughed, and Boomer watched in satisfaction as the tension drained away. Bojay flushed a dull, unpleasant shade of red.

"You can't deny that Apollo knows something about this that he's not telling. What the hell does all this 'sweet Angel' crap mean? He knows, but he's keeping bloody quiet about it."

"Balls," Boomer said succinctly. "Just because the guy leaves the message on the duty office machine, doesn't mean it was meant for Apollo."

This fell on less fertile ground. Almost everyone believed that the message was for Apollo and nothing Boomer could say would shift that. They had no proof of it, but who needed proof? Several pairs of eyes swung to Bojay, to see what his reaction to this would be. They weren't disappointed.

"And," said Bojay in soft, dulcet tones. "Don't you think it's odd that for the past day and half Apollo's been in the Life Centre with Starbuck - such close friends, they are, as we all know - and there's been no other Angel incidents. Not one."

There was a shocked silence. Bojay's snide insinuation about what was going on between Apollo and Starbuck was outrageous enough. It was something most of them might have suspected but wouldn't have said anything about, knowing how much Apollo hated to be gossiped about. But the suggestion that Apollo was involved with the Angel incidents, might be the perpetrator of them, hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of the chance of crossing anyone's mind. Until Bojay planted it there.

"Boomer?" Jolly said, his face suddenly creased with worry as the implications hit him.

Boomer gave Bojay a look of the bitterest contempt. "Are you suggesting that Apollo has something to do with this? That Apollo - *Apollo!* - would do anything that might put us in danger or that Apollo would attack Starbuck? Geez, Reese has nothing to worry about at all."

The pilots swung Boomer's way again, many nodding their agreement. There was no way that the Apollo they knew would do anything so stupid and dangerous. All the same, it was odd how much it all affected him, how nothing had happened while he was in the Life Centre with Starbuck...

Boomer scowled as he read the signals. They didn't want to believe what Bojay was suggesting, but quite a few of them were wavering, wondering if there was something in it after all.

Bojay grinned at him, and lifted his glass in ironic salute, claiming the victory. All he needed was suggestion, not proof, and he could undermine Apollo just as effectively.

"There might be something in it, I suppose" Jillia said doubtfully.

"Something in what?" Apollo asked.

Intent on the discussion between Bojay and Boomer, no-one had noticed him come in. He looked around the faces, seeing the expressions of guilt and surprise, and his eyes narrowed. Hyper-sensitive to gossip, as always, he looked at them with cold suspicion.

"N-nothing" Jillia stammered, her face red.

"Oh?" Apollo shrugged, seemed to let it go. "I just came from the Life Centre. I thought you'd like to know that Starbuck'll be fine. You couldn't dent that thick head of his if you picked up a Viper and hit him with it."

There was a muted chorus of relief and good wishes. Apollo was looking increasingly grim. He didn't like the way that no-one would meet his eyes. Only Boomer looked at him, and the merest hint of nod in Bojay's direction gave Apollo all the clues he needed.

He waited for a centon. "Your joyful surprise is overwhelming. What were you all so engrossed in that the news of Starbuck is so uninteresting?"

Boomer grinned at him. "Just this little theory of Bojay's," he said innocently, and then he raised his glass, giving Bojay back that ironic salute. Bojay scowled back, furious and resentful.

"Really?" Apollo turned to face Bojay. "Share it with me, Boj. Don't be shy. I'd *really* like to hear it."

***

"So what did he do then?" Starbuck asked, thrilled. He really resented having missed out on the whole incident.

"Nothing," Boomer said. "He was really cool. He made Bojay cough out what he'd said, then he was just brilliant. Normally you'd expect a volcanic explosion of galactic proportions, but he did his Adama act instead, getting all cold and calm. That's really scary, Starbuck."

"I know," Starbuck said impatiently. "They're a lot more alike than you'd think. But what did he *do*?"

"Nothing much. He looked Boj up and down like he was seeing something nasty on the sole of his shoe. Then he made some comment about the fact that Bojay seemed to have all too much time on his hands to think up half-arsed theories, and his undoubted talents would be better employed on long patrol. Apollo said there wasn't much he could do to cure stupidity, but Boj could spend the next twenty centars cooped up in his cockpit with only his malice for company, and if the said Bojay wasn't off ship within ten centons he could spend the twenty centars in the brig instead for gross insubordination. Geez, it was funny. Even those who'd been tempted to listen to Bojay laughed their socks off."

"I'm missing all the fun, cooped up in here," Starbuck complained, but it was half hearted. What really worried him was that Bojay felt able to voice his stupid theory at all, and that enough people could listen to it to start wondering about Apollo. "And he hinted about me and Pol?"

"Hinted? Yeah, you could say that." Boomer was amused. "I think you two are going to have to come out of the closet."

"Fine by me. But I don't have an eight yahren-old kid to worry about."

"Point," acknowledged Boomer. "But when you do, don't expect many people to be surprised. Except maybe the child."

"And not even him, I bet. Pol's overprotective there." Starbuck shifted uncomfortably in the narrow hospital bed. "I want out of here. If Bojay's stirring it against Pol, I really need to be out of here."

"Try leaving, and Cassie will tie you down," warned Boomer. "And I doubt she'd tie your arms and legs."

***

"Which deck"? demanded Apollo.

"Coming in on Alpha." Core Command told him.

"On my way." Apollo was heading out of the duty office at a run, Boomer close behind him.

"How long do we have?" Boomer asked breathlessly as they hurtled into the nearest turbo lift.

//State level//

"Alpha Bay" Apollo gasped, and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. He glanced at Boomer, answered the question. "You heard Core Command. Bojay was just past the first pickets when it blew. He should hit the outer marker in about three centons."

"As Starbuck says, the guy's a wanker, but I hope to God he makes it." Boomer took several deep breaths, readying himself for the next sprint when they reached Alpha deck.

"Me too." Apollo said, and meant it. He didn't like Bojay, but he didn't want the man dead.

At first sight the deck appeared to be in chaos. But it was organised chaos. The Alpha Deck-master stood in the centre of the bay, shouting orders into his headset above the noise of wailing klaxons, and people were scurrying in all directions, heading for emergency stations. The techs were rushing to get as many of the parked Vipers out of the way as possible, clearing a run to the crash barriers on the inner edge of the bay.

A group of pilots were gathered behind the safety screens to one side. They looked around as their Captain joined them.

"Who is it?" one of them demanded

"Bojay," Boomer said, chest heaving. Then to Starbuck. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Cassie just let me out of Life Centre. I was on my way to say hello when all the fun started. You okay, Pol?"

Apollo glanced at him and nodded, then turned his attention back to the bay entrance watching for Bojay's Viper. Starbuck moved closer, ready.

"Here he comes." Jolly said, sucking the air in through his teeth when they saw how fast Bojay's approach was. "Shit, he's coming in like a rocket."

The incoming Viper made a half roll as its pilot lost control for a split micron, was corrected at the last centon and hauled back onto course.

"Shit!" said several voices at once.

"Come on, Boj," Apollo said, softly.

Then the Viper hit the deck with the scream of tearing metal that set everyone's teeth on edge. The landing gear was caught by the catcher lines, almost tipping the Viper up on her nose. The first lines snapped, the metal ropes whiplashing across the bay to snap viciously at the safety screens. Several of the watching pilots and techs jumped back. Those steel ropes would have cut them in half if the screens hadn't been there.

The second set of lines caught and held, bringing the Viper into a sliding skewing stop up against the crash barrier.

For a micron the bay was eerily silent, then to ragged, relieved cheers, the emergency crews were racing across to free the pilot. Bojay popped the canopy himself and almost fell out of the little fighter into the arms of the waiting ground crew. They pulled him away without ceremony, wanting to get him clear of the Viper in case she blew. Other techs, wearing protective gear against flash fire, swarmed over the ship, securing against fire, closing down all the systems.

Half walking, half carried, Bojay was hauled to safety behind the screens.

"Stay back and let the paramedics at him," Apollo was grinning with relief as he tried to hold back the pilots rushing to congratulate Bojay on his narrow escape.

"Dear God," Bojay said faintly. His knees buckled and the paramedics let him down onto the deck.

"Head between the knees and you'll be all right," one of them said briskly, and pushed Bojay's head down. She looked up at the watching pilots and grinned at them. "He's fine. It's just reaction. He didn't cop so much as a bruise."

"Helluva landing, Boj," someone said. "Many more of them and even Starbuck wouldn't give you odds on collecting your pension."

"I don't give odds on *any* of us getting a pension." Starbuck said. "Glad you did it, Boj. Not sure about the victory roll as you came in though. You cut that a bit fine."

"Can it, Starbuck." Apollo said. "Give the guy some air, you lot."

Sheba knelt down to hug her wingmate. "Geez, Bojay, you scared the hell out of us."

"I was bloody scared myself." Bojay raised his head, feeling better. He looked around at the ring of faces, so relieved to see them again he felt faint again for a centon. They were all grinning at him, delighted that he'd made it.

"What happened?" Apollo asked, giving Bojay a relieved smile.

Bojay's expression grew cold. "And why don't you tell me? Sir."

An abrupt silence fell, and grins faded. Everyone got very still and tense, the way they'd been in the microns before the Viper had landed safely.

Apollo's smile died. "What the hell do you mean by that?" He spoke very quietly.

"I mean that the ship was sabotaged. Those circuits were rigged to blow."

"And you think I know something about that?"

Bojay, having planted his little dart, decided that discretion was the better part of valour. "Of course not, sir. I'm only concerned that it was the Angel again."

"And?" Apollo's voice was icy cold.

"And it seems he's getting more desperate about getting some sort of message to you. I don't know about the rest of the pilots, but I'm not happy about the methods he's using to attract your attention. Maybe if you answered him, he'd let up on the rest of us."

Apollo could see the speculative looks the other pilots were giving them both, wondering, calculating looks. He turned to look at them all. "Most of you should be somewhere else, I think. Return to your duty stations. I want this deck clear in thirty microns. See to it, Boomer."

"Yes sir," Boomer said, and the pilots melted reluctantly away, chivvied by Boomer, who knew better than to try and stay. Starbuck had no such qualms. He was giving Bojay some very belligerent looks.

Apollo took a deep breath and looked at Bojay, recognising the Lieutenant's tactics for what they were. "Nice try. But I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of getting mad with you, Bojay."

"They're still wondering. You'll have to tell us sometime." Bojay said, half afraid of what he'd started, but he'd gone too far to back down now.

"I think you've said enough. I'll excuse your remarks on the grounds of you being in shock, Lieutenant. But I'd advise you to be careful about what you're implying. They're spooked enough without you making things worse." Apollo looked at the paramedics. "Get Salik to look him over. If he's okay, I want to see him in the Briefing Room in half a centar. We'll discuss your theories there, Lieutenant, with the command staff."

He half turned to go, then turned back with a slight grin on his face. "You seem to need some hard-landing practice, Lieutenant. That one was pretty sloppy. You're grounded for the next secton, and you'll spend that time in the simulators. You can reflect on your unprofessional behaviour while you're in there."

Bojay watched him go, and scowled. "Bastard," he said.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Bojay?" Starbuck demanded. He could hardly believe that this was the same man he'd once called a friend. Cain had done something terrible, to warp him that much. "That was a mean trick even for you."

"Starbuck, don't you wonder who really called you down to Beta deck? And don't you think it's odd that it's my ship that's sabotaged just after I started wondering what Apollo knows about these angels. You know he knows something. What does the message mean to him, eh?"

"You're nuts, Bojay." Starbuck said acidly.

Bojay shook his head. "Not me, Starbuck. But you better get your boyfriend checked out."

"That's enough." Starbuck leaned down until his blue eyes, unusually cold and hard, were only inches from Bojay's. "One more word out of you" he said in a dreadfully quiet voice. "One more dig at Pol, Bojay, and I'll rig your Viper myself. And you won't walk away from that one, believe me."

***

"Given his mouth, it's unlikely that we're celebrating Bojay's unexpected deliverance this morning, so is there a special reason we're getting drunk tonight?" Starbuck drained the first bottle of ambrosa into Apollo's glass.

They were in Apollo's quarters with a fair number of bottles ranged in front of them. Boxey was staying over with Athena.

"Do you need a reason?"

"It's just that Salik told me to avoid any excitement and I've enough of a headache without adding a hangover to it." But Starbuck was watching his lover carefully, wondering if this was it, and Apollo was psyching himself up for the big confession.

Ever since Bojay's forced landing and the scene on Alpha deck, Apollo had been very quiet and withdrawn. He'd been aware that his manner was feeding the speculation - Bojay hadn't hesitated in making his views public, and the pilots had all gone very quiet whenever Apollo came anywhere near them. Apollo, stress levels soaring, had stopped eating, as Starbuck had noted and taken firm steps to correct, literally standing over Apollo at dinner and making him eat.

"Would you settle for me telling you that I don't like drinking alone because I've enough problems without adding alcoholism to the list?" Apollo said at last

"Not by choice." Starbuck shrugged. "It's not very illuminating, Pol, but I thoroughly agree with the principle."

Apollo gave him a sour look. "You know why, really."

"Well, I'm hoping you're going to tell me what this is all about, but I'm a bit worried that you think you need this much ambrosa to get through it."

"It helps." Apollo paused, and sighed. "I've been thinking about what you said. I know I owe it to you to tell you the truth. It isn't right for me to deceive you about what I've done, to pretend I'm still worth .. worth being friends with, much less worth loving."

Apollo's voice trailed away for a centon and Starbuck watched him in consternation.

"It's not that I didn't trust you, that I didn't tell you before. It's just that I've been too scared. I don't want you to...to despise me for what I've been and what I've done." Apollo sighed again. "I'm scared that you will." he added gloomily. "Terrified about admitting what I've done in case you're too ashamed of me ever to speak to me again. I'm ashamed of myself..."

"Don't be stupid. There's nothing you could ever do to make me ashamed of you." Starbuck spoke very firmly, but he looked a little apprehensive. Not that he thought he could ever be ashamed of Apollo, but for Pol to even contemplate that did not augur well. "There's nothing you could do to change the way I feel about you, Pol"

"Don't be too sure" Apollo said, still in the gloomy, apprehensive tone.

"Tell."

Apollo nodded, and put down his glass. "It's all tied up with the angel incidents, as you've guessed."

"I know it's bothered you, out of all proportion."

"That's because they're aimed at me. I'm the Angel, Starbuck."

Starbuck just looked at him, waiting. He knew better than to think for a micron that Apollo was confessing to running around the ship, creating havoc and stencilling angels onto every flat surface. Much less, that Apollo had hit him over the head and left him to die.

"I'm sorry Starbuck. It's my fault that you were attacked. Bojay's right. There's someone trying to get at me, and he tried through you."

"What's this all about, Pol?" Starbuck asked gently.

"It's from something that happened a long time ago. When I was a kid." Apollo closed his eyes for a centon, remembering. "Not long after my thirteenth birthday, Starbuck, I ran away from home."

"You what?" Starbuck was astonished. "You? Goody-two-shoes?"

He was relieved when that provoked a slight grin.

"Yeah. Only I wasn't such a good little boy then, believe me. I was obnoxious, rude, argumentative, loud and probably rife with hormones. Dad says I was a horror."

Starbuck grinned back. "I can't imagine you as a rebellious adolescent. I'd had the impression that you'd always been my Pol..."

"Reserved, responsible, steady... boring?"

"Not the boring, but the first three.. yeah. I guess I was wrong. Why did you run off?"

"Why does any kid take off? To remind his parents that he's still there, if you see what I mean. It's complicated, Starbuck, but I spent sectars with child psychologists afterwards trying to work myself out. I think it boiled down to being massively resentful that Dad was never there, and at the time I ran, Mother was just getting involved in politics and was barely there either. And I was the one expected to look after Athena and Zac all the time, be responsible for them. I hated that. Zac was a terror, more destructive than a Cylon taskforce and I was forever in trouble for the stuff he broke, for not looking after him better. And on top of all that I was having a bad time at school. There was a group of older boys who bullied the hell out of me. And I thought no-one cared, and all I was getting from everyone was grief, so I decided that anywhere would be better than home."

Starbuck, who'd never had a home and had longed for one all his life, found that hard to understand, but let it pass.

"Where'd you go?"

"The Eastside."

"A bit downmarket," Starbuck said, eyebrow raised in surprise.

The Eastside had definitely been the poor part of Caprica city. It was not a pleasant place, full of poverty and crime, narrow streets of decaying buildings. A dangerous place, especially for a kid of thirteen who'd lived all his life in comfort, never wanting for anything.

"I was down market" Apollo said with a tight grin. "I was so far down market as to be out of sight. Very socially unacceptable."

He stopped, suddenly feeling almost sick with fear that he was making a huge mistake and this would cost him dear.

"Pol, it won't make any difference" Starbuck said encouragingly into the strained silence.

Apollo just looked at him, his face carefully expressionless, but the green eyes betrayed his apprehension. The expression in them was positively frightened.

Starbuck leaned forward and took the long-fingered hands in both of his.

"I love you, Pol. Trust me." he said gently. "It can't make any difference and I really think you need to tell me."

Apollo sighed. "I'll try, but this is very hard.."

"I know. But this is us - me and you. If you can't tell me, who could you ever tell?"

Apollo took a deep breath and nodded. His voice was very low and quiet, his tone detached and emotionless.

"I did okay for the first secton. I had enough money to eat, although I slept in the street at night. It was an adventure, not having to worry about Thenie and Zac, or school, or homework, or having to do well so Dad would be proud of me. It was a scary place, but I was on a high, excited all the time. I'd never seen anything like it."

Pause.

"I'd been gone about ten days, I guess when I ran out of money and the weather broke. Then it wasn't exciting at all. Just scary, and I was hungry and wet and cold, and scared to go home. I thought that they'd be so mad with me, they'd never forgive me. So when this guy offered me some money, I took him up."

"Oh oh," breathed Starbuck.

"You got it. I was so naïve, I can barely believe it. I had no real idea what he was going to do. I mean, I was older than Boxey and I'd had all the biology lessons, but zero practical experience. He took me to a place - I can't really call it a hotel. It was a filthy, rundown building where the owner, Todd, rented out rooms by the centar for passing trade. The guy took a room for two centars." Apollo's hands were shaking as he remembered, and Starbuck's grip on them tightened comfortingly. "He was okay, really. He was very gentle with me, but he'd paid and he wanted what he'd paid for. He fucked me twice."

"But you were only thirteen! You can't have looked old enough..." There was the sudden foul acid taste of bile in Starbuck's mouth.

"No. He knew how young I was, but.." Apollo shrugged. "Maybe that was the attraction, that and being my first. Unfortunately he wasn't the last."

"What happened?"

"He left when he'd finished. I was a few centons following him. I hadn't cried when he was there, but I cried like a baby when he'd gone. I thought I could never, ever go home. They'd be so ashamed of me, so disgusted.. I wasn't reasoning too well, but I suppose I thought I'd cut myself off home for ever. Suddenly, even the prospect of looking after Zac sounded wonderful, but I thought I'd never see them again."

"But Pol, I know how much your Dad loves you. How could you think they'd blame you? Hell's teeth, what that bastard did was statutory rape. You were only a kid, after all. Why didn't you go home?"

There was a long silence.

"I didn't know how I could go home. I was sort of lost, I think. Not literally, just ..just lost."

"But it wasn't your fault" Starbuck protested. "No-one would blame you."

"I thought they would. But it's pretty academic, now, Starbuck. Todd saw to it that I didn't get a chance to go home for a long, long time."

"Todd? The guy who owned the place?"

Apollo nodded. "When I got downstairs the guy who'd bought me had gone, but Todd called me over to the desk. He said the guy hadn't paid enough and what was I going to do about it. I just stared at him, like I was stupid or something. All I had was the twenty cubits the guy had given me, and I needed that for food. I hadn't eaten since the day before, and I was starving. So Todd grabbed me and hauled me into the room behind the main desk, where he lived. He wasn't gentle at all."

"Shit." Starbuck said. He had to choke down nausea again. He didn't want to believe that this had happened to his Apollo.

"I lost count of how many times he raped me. He was at me all afternoon and when he went back to the desk when the evening trade started picking up, he took all my things and locked me into the room. There wasn't any way out - the window was at the back of the hotel and was barred." Apollo's voice was thin and tired, but still peculiarly detached, as if he was talking about someone else, or about something he'd read. As if it hadn't touched him. "He kept me to himself for about a secton before he started sharing me with one or two friends. A secton after that and I was working for him, servicing two or three different men a day. And Todd, of course. He had me every day."

"Oh God," Starbuck said, and dropped Apollo's hands, but it was only to pull him safe and protectively into his arms. "Oh God, Pol."

"I was quite expensive for the Eastside, because I was so young, I guess. Todd charged the cruisers about forty cubits a time. That gave them a centar or two." Apollo looked at Starbuck fully for the first time since he'd started talking, trying to gauge his reactions to all of this. The arms around him tightened: that was hopeful. "I was actually quite good at it, you know. In demand."

Starbuck swallowed hard. He remembered his surprise the first time he and Apollo had made love. He'd expected Apollo to be diffident, inexperienced. Instead Apollo had astonished him by his skill, and he'd laughingly accused Pol of hiding one or two boyfriends in his past and not telling Starbuck everything. Apollo had smiled and shook his head, but maybe it was only hindsight that made Starbuck think that he remembered the guilt and pain in the wide-spaced green eyes. Starbuck's hold on Apollo tightened, but he was shaking with rage with the absent Todd.

"Of course, it helped that Todd kept me drugged up to the eyeballs. He used a dilute form of Shadow, just enough to keep me drifting, keep me compliant and submissive, uncomplaining. And just enough to get me addicted, of course."

"Geez, Pol! You were only thirteen!"

"This was real life, Starbuck. There's a lot of men who prefer boys but prefer not to fight them down each time."

"Fucking perverts!" Starbuck was choking with anger, wishing he could get his hands on the bastards - just one of them, but he'd give anything for it to be Todd.

Apollo just nodded, and Starbuck held him tighter, burying his face in Apollo's thick dark hair for a micron.

"How long?"

"How long at Todd's, do you mean? About six sectars."

"Lord help us. Six sectars of that?" Starbuck took a deep breath to calm himself, worrying about the lack of emotion in Apollo's tone, the unnatural composure. "And at the end?"

"I was sick. Actually, I was really, seriously sick. The Eastside wasn't the healthiest part of the city, remember, and I woke up one morning and started throwing up. The problem is that cruisers don't bite if you're coughing all over them and as soon as they've finished with you, you pelt off to the bathroom to throw up. They tend to worry it's something catching. Or if they do bite, they won't pay as much. Todd was so furious with me that he gave me a kicking, fucked me, and then kicked me some more because I wasn't responding enthusiastically enough for him. I managed to get away in the early afternoon and ran for it. I didn't get far, but it was a police patrol that picked me up, not Todd. They saved my life. They took one look at me and got me to hospital. Another few centars and I'd have been dead. I had meningitis. As it was, it was about eight days before I was out of danger, off life support and awake enough to know who and where I was. When I woke up, Dad was there."

"Thank fuck for that," Starbuck said fervently.

Apollo grinned slightly. "I don't think he'd ever put it quite like that. He'd rushed home within a couple of days of me running away, and Headquarters agreed to give him a home posting until I was found or they had some news of me. They were scared that I was dead, you see, that I'd run into someone even more perverted than Todd and his friends. He'd spent every free centon scouring the city for me. The police matched me to the missing persons description within centars and he and Mother broke all records getting to the hospital. They were scared stiff. It was bad enough, but I was still alive at least, although it was sectars before I was well enough to go home."

"They knew what had happened to you, though?"

"They knew. Both of them were with me throughout all the interviews with the police, Mother cried a lot. Dad stayed with me while the doctors weaned me off Shadow, through the treatment for the diseases that Todd and his friends had left me with. And there's an advantage in being rich. He could afford the best psychiatrists for me, to help me get over it. At least, as much as it's possible to get over it."

"Todd?"

"The doctors realised when I was taken into ER that I'd been, in polite police-speak, criminally assaulted. There was enough DNA evidence in me to get a conviction. Dad made sure that happened: as you said earlier, at that age, sex with me was statutory rape even if I was begging for it - which I can't say I ever was, even drugged up. Todd was arrested and went to prison for ten yahrens. I had to give evidence, but there's other advantages in having wealthy parents who could get the best legal advice Our lawyer made sure that my evidence was suitably anonymised, given how under-age I was."

"Dear heaven," Starbuck said helplessly.

"And that's something I stopped believing in. Not surprising really."

Starbuck hugged him close for a micron. "How does the angel fit in?"

"Todd didn't know my real name, then. Not until the trial, when his lawyers would be told. His hotel backed onto an old graveyard, hundreds of yahrens old. I was quite a pretty kid, and he thought I looked like one of the angels in the graveyard, so that's what he called me. Angel. His sweet Angel."

"Poetic," said Starbuck in a voice that betrayed just how much he'd like to get his hands on Todd.

"And because he said that I was heaven to fuck."

Starbuck choked. "Geez."

"I got over it, mostly, Starbuck. Dad was wonderful. I thought he'd be so mad and disgusted with me... but he never acted like it made any difference, the way I thought it would. Better, because him rushing home like that and staying with me for sectons when I was found, meant I mattered to him, I was important. Not just to look after Thenie and Zac, but *I* mattered. He didn't mind touching me, and he spent a lot of time when I was in hospital just holding me..."

Starbuck held Apollo tighter, to try and reassure him that no-one minded touching him.

"He's always been there, ever since. And thanks to him, I'm okay. I have some bad days still, but on the whole, I'm okay. I can go for sectars and not think about Todd or Eastside or any of it. But I don't like angels."

"No. I can see that. No wonder you were so freaked out. Who's doing it, Pol?"

"It has to be Todd. He must have survived, be in the Fleet somewhere." Apollo sounded very tired, almost indifferent. "Dad has Reese checking out the civilians, but so far no luck."

"Wouldn't you know him?"

Apollo shrugged. "I think so, but it was over sixteen yahrens ago, Starbuck. I can't say that anyone on Reese's list rings any bells. Todd will be about sixty now, I guess. He might look very different. People change."

"Yeah." Starbuck said, morosely.

There was a long silence. Apollo gently disentangled himself and leaned forward to reach for his long neglected glass of ambrosa. His hands were shaking badly, but he managed to get the glass to his lips without spilling the wine. Starbuck said nothing, thinking over what Apollo had said, wondering what to do or say. Apollo sighed and finished the glass. The long silence convinced him that he'd been stupid to tell Starbuck. That he should have just kept it all inside where it had festered for half his life. He put the glass down again and waited for the condemnation, the anger and disgust. He wondered if Starbuck would voice it, or whether he'd just have to watch him walk away, cold shoulder him, leave him.

Then Starbuck broke the silence.

"I wish you'd told me earlier" he said in a matter of fact tone. "We've lost out on time when we could have worked through this together. Why the hell didn't you tell me this before?"

"I've never been able to talk about it much." Apollo said in a very quiet voice. "When I met you at school it was the first time I'd been with kids my own age for two yahrens. I just wanted to be the same as you all were, and the longer I stayed quiet about it, the more impossible it became ever to tell you. And like I said, as I grew up it became less overwhelming. I learned to live with it. And when you and me started this, I did think about telling you the truth, but I was so afraid I'd lose you. Its pretty disgusting and obscene. Sordid....."

"Bollocks," Starbuck said, robustly, deciding this was the only way to deal with him. He wrapped his arms around Apollo again, trying to still the shaking. "I'm *bloody* sure you aren't polluted, or obscene. The one I want to tear apart for being obscene and disgusting is Todd, not you. Nothing you could do would make me ashamed of you."

"Except selling it" Apollo choked out, and there was the crux of what tormented him.

"Not your fault, Pol." Starbuck said firmly.

"You don't blame me?"

"Of course not, you idiot. No-one would. I do love you, though."

"I was a whore, Starbuck. You can't love that."

"You were a kid, Pol, and you were drugged up and abused. I love you very much." Starbuck said. "More than anything. Look, it makes no difference to me at all, I swear. Except that I'm astonished that you were willing to take the risk with me, that it didn't bring up all the memories again."

"I was scared," Apollo admitted. "I wouldn't admit to myself for yahrens what I really felt about you. But when it happened... well, I loved you and wanted you, and it was all right"

"All right? Sex with me is a helluva lot better than all right!" Starbuck said indignantly, and to his relief, Apollo's grin was much less strained, more natural.

"That's better" Starbuck approved. "When you started out on telling me this, Pol, I thought that nothing you could say or do would change the way I felt about you. I was wrong. I didn't think it was possible, but you mean more to me than you did before, I'd give anything to get hold of the people who hurt you, and I'll do everything I can to help you find Todd and tear him limb from limb. And that's a promise."

Apollo couldn't speak, but at last the strained tension drained out of him. He reached almost blindly for Starbuck. And for the first time since he'd sobbed in his father's arms in the hospital sixteen yahrens before, Apollo cried for the child who'd gone forever.

***