Sheppard is captured by a fleet of Space People while returning from a supply run to a tropical beach planet. His captors call themselves the Travelers and they are more technologically advanced than any other human civilization yet encountered in the Pegasus Galaxy. Their leader, a woman named Larrin, beats Sheppard up at length to establish dominance, then explains that they have salvaged an Ancient Aurora-class Battle Cruiser, but lack the ATA gene necessary to operate the thing. They need Sheppard to initialize the systems so they can perfect their interface device to get around the problem.
Sheppard agrees - since the alternative is vacuum - but uses the earliest opportunity to steal the ship and drop them out of hyperspace. Larrin responds by flooding the control room with deadly radiation. Sheppard surrenders, but not before sending out an SOS via subspace static. Larrin in turn locks him up again and proceeds to browbeat him, literally and figuratively. His distress signal has attracted the Wraith, and the hyperdrive is down. Their only hope is to let Sheppard operate the drone chair to take out the Wraith ship, which means letting him out again, while Larrin shuts down the SOS and tries to repair the hyperdrive. They succeed in destroying the Wraith, but Sheppard escapes to the Auxiliary Control room before Larrin can retrieve him, and locks her in the chair room. Which she promptly blasts her way out of.
The two of them cat and mouse their way around the ship, each hoping that their own people will turn up first. The fun is cut short when they discover that four Wraith are also running around the ship. Once more, Sheppard and Larrin have to team up, and they manage to take out all the Wraith pretty handily. Sheppard even bluffs the last one with an empty gun. Having triumphed over adversity, the hero and heroine kiss... aaand Larrin zaps Sheppard with his own stun gun and locks him up once again.
The rest of the Travelers arrive, beating out Lorne and McKay by a matter of minutes. While the cloaked jumpers are still deciding whether to shoot, all of the ships, including Sheppard's, jump into hyperspace. Fortunately, though, Sheppard has since managed to talk Larrin into letting him go, and possibly forming an alliance later. After the ships jump away, Sheppard's jumper decloaks, and Lorne and the others take him home.
Tropes:
- Being Good Sucks: Sheppard has multiple opportunities to take the Aurora-class for himself, but his own moral code and Larrin's ruthlessness by comparison end up sabotaging all his efforts.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Sheppard and Larrin. Though Sheppard plays up the violence after he is rescued, Rodney is able to deduce from his evasiveness that Sheppard certainly thought she was hot, and complains that he never gets kidnapped by "the sexy alien".
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Larrin is saved by Sheppard multiple times and still insists on betraying him at the first opportunity. She's only barely convinced not to permanently kidnap him because it wouldn't be very smart to make even more enemies than she already has.
- Exploited Immunity: Sheppard, being a former mundane fighter pilot, has trained to withstand g-forces that a more advanced civilization like the Travelers never have to deal with thanks to inertial dampening, so he's fairly confident that he can tolerate a short burst from the engines without the dampeners as long as he's seated while Larrin and her crew get thrown into the walls because they're not ready.
- Everyone Knows Morse: Justified. Sheppard's SOS immediately identifies the sender as someone from Earth, and he knows his team will recognize it if they detect it. It still attracts the Wraith, though, because even though they don't know Morse, they can still recognize a repeating pattern.
- Generation Ships: Aside from resupply and trading, the Travelers live their whole lives on their ships. This is problematic because their ships are degrading and they don't have the resources or facilities to construct new ones, while their population continues to grow even with strict controls on reproduction.
- Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress: When the Travelers order Sheppard to start moving the ship, he points out they really should have ordered him to engage the inertial dampeners first. Larrin considers it borderline psychotic that Sheppard would willingly accelerate a ship that, at full thrust, would render them stains on the rear wall.
- Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: Threatened when Sheppard notes that, having just fed on Larrin, the Wraith's Healing Factor is at its peak, but he very much doubts the Wraith can grow a new head.
- Rewatch Bonus: McKay finds Sheppard's SOS with a program that the Ancients used to find artificial patterns in subspace, the first hint of the cosmic microwave background signal that Destiny was sent to investigate.
- Space People: Larrin admits that their ancestors may have originally taken to living in space to avoid the Wraith, but after so many generations it's simply become part of their culture.
- Spotting the Thread: Larrin accurately deduces that Sheppard did more than just take the ship into hyperspace when he is seemingly unconcerned by being recaptured. From that, she realizes that he's probably found a way to contact his people, despite the damaged subspace comm array.
- Thrown Out the Airlock: Larrin threatens to drop Sheppard out of her ship's hangar, going as far as opening the bay doors, leaving him standing on a force shield. Though she doesn't actually voice the threat beyond saying "Don't worry. You're safe as long as the force shield doesn't malfunction, and that almost never happens." Her crew previously state they assume she blew the last man who disappointed her out into space, though this could simply be posturing.
- Weapon for Intimidation: The Wraith commander has nearly drained Larrin dry and Sheppard only has a Traveler gun with a depleted power cell. The Wraith doesn't know that, however, so Sheppard is able to bluff him into restoring Larrin and retreating in a Dart lest Sheppard shoot his head off.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Larrin insists on kidnapping Sheppard so her people can use him to engineer a bypass for the ATA gene lock on their Aurora-class ship, when she could have just asked nicely and maybe made herself some allies. This naturally doesn't make Sheppard very willing to help her. Their competing agendas ultimately end up summoning the Wraith, and it's only because Sheppard is too decent a person to just let her die that Larrin comes out on top.
