Crichton does his best to
defuse the situation, but has little success. Zhaan cannot forgive Aeryn
for helping kill a peaceful and defenseless creature, while Rygel calls
her a "Peacekeeper murderer" and leaves.
Chiana is a little more understanding
- or at least more critical of the others' reactions, asking them just
what they thought Aeryn was doing before she came aboard Moya. "She was
a Peacekeeper," she reminds them.
"Yes," Aeryn says, " I was
a Peacekeeper, and things were very different then."
Secret origin of Pilot
Lt. Sun watches a Prowler
land. Velorek notes her interest, correctly guessing that she'd rather
be flying the fighters than his transport.
He's impressed that she
has never asked about their top-secret cargo, but Aeryn tells him she simply
wasn't interested. Besides, Peacekeeper regulations don't encourage asking
questions.
Their conversation is
interrupted as the cargo is off-loaded. It's a Pilot
- the one we know.
Ms. Popularity
As Aeryn finishes telling
the others of her involvement in bringing Pilot aboard, they quickly find
reasons to be elsewhere. The one thing everyone can agree on is that Pilot
should never see the tape.
Only Crichton remains behind,
and Aeryn tells him that Velorek's job was to help the new Pilot bond with
Moya.
In a strangely gentle
manner, Velorek tries to calm Pilot down. As Crais arrives, however, he
disciplines the alien with a shock stick.
Crichton does his best to
get Aeryn to talk about her experiences, but she refuses.
Crais orders Velorek to
install the new Pilot in just 60 hours. As Aeryn follows behind Crais and
Velorek, she passes a Delvian - Zhaan - being led through the corridors.
In her training room, Aeryn
strikes furiously at her punching dummy. She knocks the dummy over, then
collapses to the floor in tears, her knuckles bloody.
Crichton approaches her again,
and tries to console her. "Talk to me," he says, "What happened back then?"
Love among the Peacekeepers
Aeryn explains that - contrary
to Peacekeeper practice, which encourages sex but forbids love - she had
not only become physically involved with Velorek but emotionally intimate
with him.
"Did you love him?" Crichton
asks.
"I felt something for him
that I never felt with any of the other men I recreated with," Aeryn replies.
"I didn't know what it was. I guess now I'd say that it was love."
"From the way you tell the
story he sounded kind of sadistic," Crichton says.
"No," Aeryn says. "The opposite.
That was the problem."
They are interrupted by Pilot
- he has the tape, and from the angry tone in his voice he has seen it.
"Officer Sun," he says. "We must talk."
Never anger anyone with
claws the size of your head
Aeryn goes to Pilot's chamber.
He studiously ignores her as she enters.
She tries to express her
sorrow at what she has done, but her words send Pilot into a rage. He grabs
her by the throat with a claw and begins to choke her.
Pilot is lowered into position
in what will become his chamber. He is frightened, but excited to be aboard
the ship.
Pilot continues to strangle
Aeryn. Hearing them both screaming, Crichton and D'argo rush to Pilot's
chamber.
Velorek explains to Pilot
that Moya has been sent to sleep, and that she will be reawakened when
he is bonded to her. Normally, the bonding would take one to two years,
but they don't have time for that.
Fear my puppet wrath!
Crichton and D'argo try to
help Aeryn, but Pilot tosses them aside like dolls. He begins to vent the
air out of his chamber.
Pilot worries that Moya
will be surprised to find her Pilot replaced, but Velorek tells him that
the bonding will be completed by then. With no time to waste, the Peacekeeper
begins the process, pulling nerves from Pilot's carapace so that he can
connect them to the ship.
Remembering the pain brings
Pilot back to his senses. He drops Aeryn, and restores air to the chamber.
He shouts at Aeryn, "You
killed this ship's first Pilot, the Pilot that belonged here! I will not
have you defiling her with your presence!"
"Until Aeryn leaves this
vessel," he announces, "Moya will not move another metrock."
With that, he shuts down
the ship.
Adrift
As D'argo struggles with
Moya's controls, Chiana extracts a confession from Rygel: he showed the
tape to Pilot. Rygel claims Pilot deserved to know, but Chiana thinks he
just wanted Pilot to owe him a favor.
D'argo has concluded that
Moya isn't going anywhere unless Pilot wants her to. Crichton has decided
that Pilot's extreme reaction suggests there's more to the story than the
tape presents.
Zhaan tends Aeryn's wounds
- none too gently. Stung by her lack of sympathy, Aeryn agrees that her
presence "defiles" Moya, and announces that she will leave within the hour.
Zhaan belatedly tries to
make Aeryn feel better, telling her that she had no real choice in her
actions. "In that world," Zhaan says, "that was the only kind of Peacekeeper
you could be."
Stolen moments, few tears
Aeryn and Velorek make
love in a cabin. She tries to pull away from him afterwards - trying to
keep herself from feeling too much when their assignment together can only
be temporary - but he suggests he can make it permanent.
He asks, "Can you honestly
tell me all you want out of life is to fly Prowlers like a thousand others
- and serve a madman like Captain Crais?"
She's shocked, but he
insists that the Peacekeeper captain is a maniac and that the secret project
involving Moya is an abomination. Velorek is determined to stop the project,
and when he leaves Moya, he wants Aeryn to come with him.
"You can be so much more,"
he tells her.
The Lucy Van Pelt school
of psychiatry
Crichton stops in to check
on Aeryn, and Zhaan tells him that she and leaving Moya. He goes to make
Pilot see reason.
"Let's hash this out right
here, right now," he says. "Five cents, the doctor is in."
Velorek completes the
major systems grafts. Pilot is in considerable pain - something Velorek
tells him he'll have to get used to, as it is a permanent effect of the
rushed bonding process.
Velorek reawakens Moya,
and Pilot gasps in wonder as he begins sharing senses and thoughts with
the Leviathan. When Moya realizes Pilot is a replacement, though, she becomes
recalcitrant.
"Moya only accepted me because
she was tortured into it," Pilot tells Crichton. With that, he tears at
his body, pulling out the tentacles that connect him to Moya.
"Moya is free of me," he
says.
Without Pilot's control,
Moya begins to swerve about. Life support and gravity quickly become irregular.
Looking at the damage Pilot
as done to himself, Crichton cries, "No, no, no, this is not good!"
Pilot seems to be in shock
- for the first time in years, the pain is gone.
The truth emerges
Moya swiftly drifts further
out of control. Without Pilot to moderate the systems, there isn't a thing
Crichton, D'argo or Aeryn can do about it.
Aeryn watches Velorek
hook Pilot up to Moya's systems. She also hears him reassure Pilot that
Crais' secret project will never threaten him or Moya again.
Aeryn goes to Pilot. "It's
all my fault," she says.
"I don't buy that," Crichton
says, "unless more happened back then. So what happened back then?"
"I have to talk to him,"
Aeryn insists. She runs down the corridor to Pilot's chamber.
Crichton and D'argo argue
briefly over who is going to follow her. As in "Mind
the Baby", they settle the matter with a quick game of rock-paper-scissors,
which Crichton wins.
Pilot has used voice commands
to order the DRDs to guard his chamber, and Crichton and Aeryn are forced
to carefully sneak past them to enter through an air vent.
Aeryn hopes that because
she was there, Pilot will be able to talk to her and let his feelings go.
But if she thinks talking will help Pilot, Crichton asks, "why won't you
talk to me?"
Velorek has finished his
assignment on Moya, and once again invites Aeryn to accompany him on his
next assignment. She tells him she wants to go with him - but then Crais
and his soldiers burst in on them.
Aeryn informed on Velorek,
and Crais tells her to report to Lt. Teeg, who will reward her with the
Prowler assignment she requested.
Velorek never revealed what
he'd done to Crais' project, and died under interrogation. In retrospect,
though, Aeryn is certain that the contraceptive shield that D'argo breached
to cause Moya's pregnancy was Velorek's work.
Shoot first, ask questions
later
Aeryn and Crais drop through
the air vent into Pilot's chamber. The DRDs try to scare them off, but
they come in shooting and make their way to Pilot.
Pilot orders them to leave,
but they refuse to go until he talks with them. Aeryn's minimal diplomacy
skills fail her, and she begins threatening Pilot, telling him to "talk
to her right now" or else.
Crichton tries to calm them
both down, telling Pilot "we're just here to help." Pilot will starve without
his connection to Moya - and has Pilot points out, Crichton and the others
will die if Moya's life support continues to fail.
"Doesn't matter," Pilot says.
"She'll be better off without me."
Aeryn throws her gun to the
floor.
"That recording brought back
memories from a time none of us wants to remember," she says. "Based on
my actions back then I deserve to die, and if you wish to kill me right
now I'm not going to stop you. Please, spare the others and yourself."
Pilot replies, "It is not
you that deserves death. It is I."
The last truths
On his homeworld, Pilot
meets with Lt. Velorek. The elders of his species have judged him, and
do not think he is worthy yet to go into space.
Velorek has a ship for
him, though - Moya. Pilot has reservations about replacing another Pilot,
but they are overcome when Velorek tells him that if he refuses, the other
Pilot will still die and Velorek will simply find someone else to take
her place.
"The fate of Moya's true
pilot was sealed at that moment . . ." Pilot says. "If I hadn't agreed
to come, Velorek may never have found a replacement Pilot, but I just wanted
so desperately to see the stars."
Aeryn reminds Pilot of how
Velorek stroked his cheek when he was brought aboard Moya. She tells him,
"I couldn't fathom why he'd do a thing like that, but now I can't fathom
not doing it."
"We've come a long way since
then Pilot, and we've still got a long way to go. Take the journey with
me."
Pilot reaches out a claw
to her and touches her cheek. He knows a procedure, a way to regain control
of Moya's systems . . .
"Okay," Crichton says. "Let's
get started."
New connections
The temporary connections
are quickly finished. It will take a year or more for Pilot to bond naturally
with Moya, and he warns that his control of her will be incomplete during
this time.
"I'm finished," D'argo says.
"How does it feel?"
Pilot replies, "There's no
pain. No longer any pain." He is surprised, almost filled with wonder.
On the bridge, Crichton and
Aeryn talk about Velorek. She remembers that he said, "in the right new
place, I'd thrive."
"He was right," Crichton
says.
Aeryn also remembers that
both Crichton and Velorek have told her the same thing: "You could be so
much more." Crichton told her that the
day they met.
With a note of hope in his
voice, Crichton asks, "And you say you think you loved this man?"
Her only answer is to exchange
glances with him.
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