Hey.
Just so you know, there will be a short delay
in getting to corboz.
You
missed a decision point in slipstream?
Don't rub it in.
All right, where did we end up?
Andromeda?
Baltria cluster.
Which,
if you think about it, isn't such a bad thing.
I mean, we had to refuel anyway.
So... i'll just go ahead
and tell rommie to arrange delivery?
Okay, then,
and once again, i apologize for the pointless detour.
I'll bet you say that to all the boys.
Ahem.
Captain,
i'm receiving an incoming message
from baltria,
something about a prison riot.
They're new Commonwealth.
Don't tell me. Let me guess.
We're on prison detail.
Mm-hmm.
Things are completely out of control.
They've been rioting four days.
The guards are afraid to go in.
We're not.
Just about done here, Dylan.
Hey.
Hey!
Hey.
Beka...
you've got to finish with style.
Style's not my style,
and that was too easy.
My kind of fight.
It's more convenient
when their spirit's already been broken.
Yeah, but don't you feel bad
locking them back up in this stink hole?
Sympathy for a derelict element?
Pointless, like indigestion.
Indigestion's not pointless.
A circle's pointless.
Now you sound like Harper.
You did it.
You stopped them from breaking out,
over-running the city.
It's what we do, patrius.
It's as simple as that.
When one calls for help,
one hardly expects
the top commander of the Commonwealth
to answer that call.
We were in the neighborhood.
Sure, sure.
A lucky coincidence.
Yeah... coincidence.
The universe is a dangerous place,
but in our future,
my crew and i fight to make it safe.
I am Dylan Hunt,
captain of the Andromeda ascendant,
and these are our adventures.
Most of these prisoners
are from a group that long ago renounced
their peaceful-loving ch'kadau heritage.
They were lured by greed
onto a path of destruction.
I know all about them.
My a.i. Has brought me
up to speed.
Then you must know that we've been battling them
for hundreds of years.
At best, we've only slowed their efforts.
Well, i can see that.
What you can see is nothing
compared to what they're planning.
They want nothing less
than total annihilation of the planet.
To do this...
Dylan, do you copy?
Excuse me.
Go ahead, rommie.
Dylan, we have a problem.
On my way.
Three of the prisoners are missing...
two males, one female.
They appear to have escaped the fortress.
Which ones are they?
According to your own records,
these two,
in for multiple homicide
with bodily degeneration weapons.
Shouldn't be too hard to pick them out of a crowd.
Yeah, faces only a mother could love.
You said three were gone.
Cell 90 was occupied,
but there is no information
on the prisoner.
Show me the monitoring footage.
Magnify.
Check the criminal database for a photo i.d.
There must be a record somewhere.
None. No name, no record of her crime.
She must be a mole.
Believe me, i'm not surprised.
What you have to remember about these...
well, i'm surprised.
I mean, isn't that quite a reach?
I mean, first, we're talking about a missing prisoner.
Now we're talking about a spy?
She's right.
This woman could be part
of the previously mentioned unsavory group
determined to trash the planet.
The Commonwealth has been well aware of them
since long before the nietzschean uprising.
And of how dangerous they are.
I imprison them as i find them, but there are always more.
They'll stop at nothing to get what they want.
Now, this woman could just be a common criminal
or, worse,
a bureaucratic oversight.
A holdover
from before baltria rejoined the Commonwealth.
One way to find out is ask her.
Let's go get her and the others
back here.
Shouldn't be too hard.
They're wearing ankle sensors.
I can log onto the grid,
see if they're still emitting,
but the maps for the territories outside the fortress
are confusing, even to me.
Hmm, the trick
is going to be trying to grab them
before they get too deep into that maze.
All right, Beka.
Rhade,
you work with rommie.
We'll let you know the second
their little adventure into freedom
is over.
Oh, and, rommie,
verify that the other prisoners
are being held
on Commonwealth-approved charges.
Standard procedure
with newly joined homeworlds.
No offense taken, captain.
Commonwealth membership's
already proven its value,
and i'm hoping
it's just the beginning.
When i saw that woman who had escaped,
my suspicions were confirmed.
I believe that woman was sent
to gather information about my fortress,
information they'll use
to wipe out
the last of us true ch'kadau.
How?
By destroying this...
the gol-rashen,
the energy source of the planet
and those trying to save it,
that still honor
and draw life energy.
Hey,
what's the little panel there, underneath the...
ow! Thanks for the warning.
Good security system.
Too good.
Though it was created over 300 years ago,
no one, in all of that time, has been able to deactivate it,
let alone
get past it.
It's impressive.
This system prevents theft.
It won't protect the gol-rashen
if this fortress is reduced to rubble.
You mean, the gem th...
the gol-rashen would just be destroyed?
You really think that's what they're planning?
Yes.
I want to rescue the gol-rashen.
I want to put it somewhere safe,
but the system protects it,
even from me.
So you want me to try to defeat it for you.
If anyone can, you can.
You're not only from the Commonwealth,
you, like this system, are from 300 years ago.
Are you not?
I do my homework, too, captain.
I challenge anyone to argue now that fate hasn't played a hand.
I take back what i said about the prison.
This place is just as bad.
Mm.
Rommie, are we getting close?
You are within 15 meters.
And you're picking up two signals, rommie?
Correct.
Because we don't see anything.
Cancel that.
Freeze, freeze!
Vicious killers, huh?
I've seen better fights
from purse snatchers.
Purse snatchers probably get better nutrition than these guys
and their prison food,
and incidentally, as a former purse snatcher,
i resent that comment.
You were a purse snatcher?
Well, actually,
the term we preferred
was "active second-hand salvage removers,"
but, yeah.
By the way, Beka, nice style.
Really?
I feel like i tore my pants.
Captain, i won't lie to you.
Hope that someone from the Commonwealth
might still know how to get past this system
is the reason i joined.
Well, we're glad to have you as a member
in spite of that.
Captain, please, don't take me wrong.
Dylan, good news.
Go ahead, Beka.
Two down, one to go.
The woman's going to be a little tougher.
Surely, they can handle this
on their own.
Bring your prisoners back to the fortress.
We'll go after the woman. Hunt out.
Captain, please, i beg you, please,
stay and deal with this problem first.
The gol-rashen isn't going anywhere.
The escaped prisoner is.
Harper, Trance, you're with me.
Boss,
maybe i should stay behind,
see if i can crack this system.
You're welcome to try, mr. Harper.
Good luck.
Oh, and... be careful.
Watch and learn.
Patrius
might have the planet's best interests at heart,
but that prison
could not have been farther from humane.
I'll address that issue with him
once we recover the escaped prisoner.
You feel that the situation is more difficult
than you first thought?
We'll find her.
That's why i have you along.
I appreciate the flattery, but i prefer honesty.
What's bothering you, Dylan?
I've been here before.
Well, surely, the place
has changed in the past 300 years.
Only for the worse.
Get down!
I had a chance to make a difference here.
Everything changes. Everything stays the same.
Dylan, there she is.
There she goes.
All right, look.
You've got no place to go,
so why don't you just come with us?
Did you feel her anger? The intensity?
Right now...
i'm feeling my own confusion
turning into my own anger.
This is going to be a lot more difficult
than you first thought.
Well, like i said before, Trance...
that's why you have me along.
That's right.
Any luck?
Yeah.
Well, we had her cornered here,
but she walked right through the wall.
She vanished.
People don't just vanish.
There's obviously some kind of...
secret enTrance.
What do you know? Holographic architecture.
Well, this is going to be interesting.
Which way did they go?
I can't tell.
I'm not sensing anything.
I am, unfortunately,
and cursing my nietzschean sense of smell.
That way's the sewer.
That must be the way to the fortress.
Maybe they went down that way.
All right, we'll split up.
Beka?
Mm-mm.
Trance?
I'll take one for the team.
That a girl.
Fair enough.
Another dark room.
Surprise, surprise.
The further we go, the older these chambers get.
Colonization run amok.
When they covered
every square inch of the planet,
they started building
on top of what they'd already built.
And buried these in the process.
Look.
Tetraglyphs.
Look at this one.
Looks like an old Commonwealth insignia...
lancer division.
Mm-hmm.
Do we know anything about these symbols?
Crystalline displacement dates the tetraglyphs
to cy 9773.
The language is consistent
with ancient ch'kadau.
Ancient.
Right, so these weren't made
by the ch'kadau we're after.
Correct, these were made
by the original ch'kadau.
Because baltria was a member of the old Commonwealth,
i was able to find translators in my database.
The tetraglyphs tell of a prophecy.
Please tell me what a bunch of primitive pictures
have to do with the prisoner.
Let's hear the story.
For generations, Baltria was beautiful,
populated by the peaceful, nature-loving ch'kadau.
The only artificial structure
on the planet
was a shrine,
built to house the gol-rashen,
or "life giver,"
the ch'kadau's energy source.
It's in the fortress now. Patrius showed it to us.
It was never moved.
The fortress was built around the shrine.
One of the first changes
the new group made
in their quest to build an industrial civilization.
And exploit baltria's resources.
That's not prophecy, it's history.
Anyone who's familiar
with cw records
knows the only reason
the ch'kadau joined the old Commonwealth
was to get help stopping this destructive trend.
Just like patrius rejoined
so that he could get help moving the gol-rashen.
The prophecy
foretells of an answer
to the ch'kadau's prayers...
in the form of a young girl,
a symbiant,
who upon coming of age,
would be united with the gol-rashen
by a man, a conduit.
This joining would empower it,
thus empowering
the still faithful ch'kadau
to take back their planet.
All right, that much i can see,
but what's with the wavy lines that look like a river?
Well, Harper, that's because they mean "flowing river,"
something which baltria no longer has any of.
No, but Trance and i found that it does have a sewer.
Try gpr,
see if it ties to an underground spring.
Performing scan.
I wonder if any ch'kadau still believe in this prophecy.
Everyone is entitled to hope.
Sub-structural
water source located.
A spring.
It's inside an abandoned settlement.
Would it be stating the obvious
to mention that we're wasting our time
on a prophecy that has nothing to do
with the people
that we're looking for?
Any place that was once sacred
is now probably
in the hands of the bad guys.
It's all we've got.
Well, that is stating the obvious.
Nietzscheans.
Let me get this straight.
The tetraglyphs say an unknown conduit is meant
to unite an unknown symbiant to the gol-rashen,
resulting
in this entire planet
being saved from eternal civil war?
Well, just goes to show you...
don't believe every tetraglyph you read.
So what do you think tipped the balance,
enabled these corrupt ch'kadau to take over the planet?
Probably their... corruptedness.
The ch'kadau
had never been exposed to greed
or savagery before.
They didn't know how to protect themselves.
I admire your assured observation.
Unfair advantage. I was around back then.
Get down!
[Explosion]
You were around back then.
Where were you just now?
Well, i was... right here.
It's him.
It's not him.
He wears the sign.
It could be a trick.
Yeah, it's a trick.
He's captain Dylan Hunt, commander for the Commonwealth.
The conduit was never named.
Conduit...
why would your kind be concerned with the prophecy?
They're not who we think they are.
They're true ch'kadau.
We're looking at the good guys.
These ch'kadau live in hiding.
That means patrius is filling his prison
with innocent people,
which makes him not so innocent.
So goes
the predictable universe.
Well, now, i really want
to talk with our mystery woman.
Look,
there was a woman
you helped escape from prison...
we will address such matters later.
First, we must confirm your identity.
I already told you.
We are not interested
in his rank and affiliation.
We are interested in his destiny.
The prophecy says the conduit shall be known
by the sign above his heart,
a sign we placed upon our staves
generations ago.
Wait here.
It's a weird coincidence,
isn't it?
Rhade, you are so skeptical.
My nature.
You had me going there, captain Hunt.
So you don't believe this stuff.
I don't believe in coincidence.
Choose one,
but choose carefully.
One of the four is poison.
You've got to be kidding.
She said choose carefully.
Stop!
They're all poison.
You are correct.
It was not a test of which to choose,
but of how much fear you have.
It could've been a lucky guess.
We must not collapse into hope until we are sure.
Come on,
i did not come here to play games.
[Screaming]
Apparently, i did.
Stand down, rhade!
[Moaning]
Hail the conduit,
who will unite the gol-rashen with its symbiant.
The conduit...
where is it?
Without the symbiant,
the gol-rashen isn't powerful enough.
Now, about that woman...
take us to her.
We believe she may have information
that can help us against patrius.
Forgive me.
I don't know who you're talking about.
The escaped prisoner,
the one you helped get away from us
in the street.
She is not one of us. We do not know who she is.
She's been kept for a very long time
in a cell far from the others,
indicating she is important to patrius.
We hope to use her as a bargaining chip,
to trade her for the release of our people.
What do you want with me?
I want to find out who you are.
Prisoner of cell 90.
You must have a name.
I've tried to remember it,
and just like everything else, it's long gone.
You're telling me
you don't remember anything about yourself?
I'm telling you i don't know the answers
to your questions.
I don't know who i am.
All i know is today was the first day
i've seen the sky
since i was very, very small.
I won't make you go back.
Promise?
Promise.
Captain Hunt was seen entering
a suspected safe house of the ch'kadau.
That means he's found her.
But will he still bring her back
once they've told him who we really are?
He'll bring her back no matter what.
Don't be frightened.
This will answer all your questions.
I don't know why it matters who she is
if we know she's not a mole.
Why does he care?
I think there's more to it
than we know.
I'll bet.
All right.
All strapped in and ready for takeoff?
Next stop,
the unconscious mind of our lovely guest.
Mr. Harper, today, please.
All right.
Here we go.
Inside a woman's mind,
one place i've never been.
Whoa.
Hey, boss, are you seeing what i'm seeing?
Her neural pathways don't look normal.
"Don't look normal"... that's putting it mildly.
She's got more holes in her head than...
than swiss cheese.
Her pathways aren't even complete.
They're complete enough
to still function.
Well, yeah, the obvious ones are,
her basic functions,
but look, here and here...
i don't even know
what these are supposed to connect to.
It's like half of her mind
hasn't even been constructed yet.
But ready to accept whatever's put there.
Boss, look at these synapses. They haven't been cut.
They're not torn. They're not frayed.
And whatever it is, it hooks right into these.
[Cries of distress]
It triggered a memory.
You killed him.
She witnessed a murder.
Hey, maybe that's why she was put away.
Whoa.
That is one hell of a neocortal.
Hey, boss, what's the maximum life span
of a nietzschean?
150 years.
I knew it.
What about a heavy worlder?
180.
Okay.
Then she's definitely neither.
Hang on, i'm just checking the neocortal branching
to determine her exact age.
I know everything i need to know.
Come on, boss,
we haven't even gotten to her id yet.
Whoa, you're not going to believe this,
but guess how old she is?
She's 314 years old.
How do you do that?
Take us out.
When she comes to, send her to my quarters.
[Door opening]
Your... your name is Siara.
Siara...
it's been locked away for so long.
You know, instead of asking you what you don't remember,
maybe i should ask you what you do.
I know it's been a long time.
The memory isn't a pleasant one.
It used to be so pretty.
Then there was fighting.
My parents were killed. I was alone, scared.
A soldier came and rescued me.
He promised he'd take care of me,
but then he changed his mind,
gave me away to strangers.
He said he'd come back, make sure i was okay.
I believed him.
As soon as he was gone,
one of the strangers turned bad.
He killed the others.
And he put you away.
Yes.
That was so long ago.
Siara, you've...
you were in prison for 307 years.
I'm sorry.
He locked you up...
because he feared you.
It's because you're the symbiant.
The gol-rashen is the other half.
That's what's been keeping you alive
all these years.
Gol-rashen.
The soldier...
the story of the gol-rashen and me.
The story
was a prophecy
that when you came of age, you would merge with it.
How?
I'll show you...
but i have to take you back to the fortress.
No.
You promised me you wouldn't send me back.
Siara, Siara, wait.
Siara, you have to trust me.
Trust you?
I've been lied to and promised things.
I had my life stolen.
Why should i trust anyone ever again?
Because i know what it feels like
to be robbed of a lifetime.
You can't, not like me. I lost 300 years.
So did i.
You're lying.
300 years that i'll never get back.
I never got the chance to say good-bye to friends
and family.
When i came back, they had been dead for so long,
it was like they never even existed.
You were in prison?
Yeah, in a way.
I was suspended in time.
At least you had family.
I had no one,
just... the hope someday, a promise would be fulfilled.
Then even that faded.
It's not too late.
Why should i care about some prophecy?
Because even though you're free now,
it won't make you complete.
You...
you're one of the lucky ones, Siara.
You can choose to never be alone again.
Okay...
we know what we need to do.
Showtime.
Go.
Hey.
Clear.
I'm in hyperdrive, boss.
Have you in there faster than you can say...
thank you, mr. Harper.
Thank you, mr. Harper.
So beautiful.
Not until i say.
Harper, jacket.
Hey, i liked that jacket,
you know.
Why don't we ever use your jacket?
Come.
Trust me.
Patrius, time's up.
When in rome...
why not?
Don't move.
No need to now.
It's all over, patrius.
Not quite, but soon.
Do you think what i'm thinking?
If you're thinking he's up to something,
yeah, i'm thinking that.
It's happening.
Move in.
Wait until she's done it, and then trap her.
Kill anyone who tries
to stop you.
Never mind.
They know what to do.
What are you smiling for, patrius?
When i first realized Dylan Hunt was the conduit,
i wasn't sure
if he was the answer to or the... the end of my plan.
Luckily, it turns out
even i have a destiny.
The kings of baltria have been tormented
by how to get past the system that protects the gol-rashen.
As brilliant as you think you are,
it never dawned on you to simply destroy it.
Because it wasn't about destroying the ch'kadau.
It was about empowering their gol-rashen,
then taking control of it.
My ancestor,
the first king of baltria,
locked that girl away 300 years ago.
Now the wait is finally over.
The wait will never be over. You're not the conduit.
It doesn't matter who the conduit is.
Who cares?
Only how the resulting power is controlled.
It should be big enough
to take over the entire Commonwealth.
Had enough?
Oh, yeah.
Let's go.
Dylan, it's a setup.
You're doing exactly what patrius wants.
I know, Beka.
It doesn't matter.
You know what to do.
Siara.
Siara is no more.
We're bound together now, bound for retribution.
Siara, wait!
Stop!
Nobody move!
Nobody move.
You are mine. You will do as i say.
Do as i say,
or everyone dies.
My patience has been rewarded,
all done through the heroic efforts
of Dylan Hunt.
What a lucky break you are,
captain.
A big, joyful thank-you
to you and the Commonwealth,
which, if things go right,
might someday worship me.
Bow down or die.
I will bow down to you.
You have no choice.
Pays to think ahead.
300 years and, i hope, still ticking.
If i can't have your power, no one will.
Spoken like a true lunatic.
Do not interfere.
Revenge is all i have left,
all i want now.
You have the power to restore your planet
and free your people.
If you ignore what you were created for,
your years in prison will be in vain.
Soon, there will be no years, no time on baltria,
no pain,
no regret,
nothing.
Except the prophecy.
Be better than those who tried to destroy it.
Enough words.
They're empty...
as empty as that promise.
A promise that's been kept.
He never came back.
The soldier never came back.
Yes, Siara... he did.
I am that soldier...
and i promised i'd take care of this.
I gave...
i gave this to you.
I was on my way back.
I was...
my path was altered.
How was i to know
that you'd still be here after all this time?
You came back.
I came back.
300 years.
Okay, so... i was a little late.
So... you designed that security system,
huh?
Is it so hard to believe?
No, no, in fact, i knew it all along.
I just...
it's pretty impressive.
Thank you.
Would you look at that, huh?
I guess we can say our work here is done.
Baltria has transformed.
It's beautiful.
Peace always is.
And lasting?
We have to hope it will be.
Did you know you were the conduit?
Yes.
Well, then, you must be very proud.
It's not proud.
No, it's...
well, lucky,
and honored.
And a little more peaceful?
Well, now that you mention it, yes,
a little more peaceful.