“Divided Loyalties” is episode nineteen of season two of Babylon 5.
Delenn bumps into Sheridan and he comments that he didn’t know she read Universe Today; Delenn has a copy under her arm and Sheridan is standing by the recycler where old copies are exchanged for new ones. Delenn says that, after her last encounter with reporters (in “And Now For a Word”; it did not go well) she has decided to be more prepared for the future. Delenn finds the concept of the press a fascinating and sometimes troubling concept. Back home, Minbari are told just what they need to know, and no more. Minbari find the idea of prying into the affairs of others wrong. At this point the machine, which Delenn has deposited her old paper in, tells her that it cannot print the ‘Eye on Minbari’ section. Which kind of makes her previous statement look a little… inaccurate. Delenn tells Sheridan that it is good to know what humans think of Minbari – and that she finds things out about her own world before she is told what she needs to know, and no more. Sheridan and Delenn’s relationship appears to be… evolving.
At Syria Planum, Mars Colony, an injured man is stumbling through a corridor. He sees another man, and tells the second he has got the information. He hands the second man a data crystal, before collapsing, and pursuers can be heard coming.
Garibaldi and Sheridan are in a restroom and Sheridan is saying how he misses trees. An alien leaves and Garibaldi says that they have fruit trees, but the captain says they are not the same. The chief was actually scanning the area to check that it was safe to talk. Garibaldi asks Sheridan if he has given any more though about what they mentioned last night – namely recruiting Talia Winters. She will be a help exposing the coup back home.
Elsewhere, Talia is eating with Ivanova, and says that it took them a long time to get to this point. Ivanova says that Talia has not been easy – all she had to do was admit she was wrong and Ivanova was right and they would have sorted things out much earlier. Ivanova then gets a call from C&C, telling her that a ship came through the jump gate but is now just sitting there. Talia tells the commander that she needs to find somewhere to stay tonight, for there’s a problem in her quarters and everywhere is full. So Ivanova offers her own place.
The ship mentioned is drifting near the station and bears carbon scoring, apparently from being attacked. One lifeform is detected in it. The ship is brought in and Garibaldi is talking to Dr Franklin in the docking bay. The ship’s serial number appears to be bogus. Garibaldi isn’t going to report it until he finds who’s onboard. There’s a single human female, injured but alive, and as she is wheeled out, the chief recognises her. For it is Lyta Alexander.
Garibaldi briefs Sheridan on the matter, for, of Garibaldi, Ivanova and Franklin, Garibaldi is the only member of the senior staff who knew Lyta still on the station. He tells the captain that Lyta was the station’s first commercial telepath. He says that Lyta scanned Ambassador Kosh after the latter was attacked (during “The Gathering”) the first human to scan a Vorlon – and live. Lyta left shortly afterwards, as did the doctor who treated Kosh, and nothing has been heard from her since. Garibaldi says that Lyta was never quite right after the scan.
When Lyta comes to in Medlab, she appears a bit unbalanced. She demands to see Sheridan, and in fact all the senior staff. Together. She doesn’t want to be left alone with any of them. For there’s a traitor on Babylon 5 and she can prove it.
Lyta tells Sheridan, Ivanova, Franklin and Garibaldi that she has come back to warn them. When she returned home, the Psi Corps wanted to know what she saw in Kosh. They didn’t believe her when she told them she had seen no more than she reported. Six months ago, Lyta escaped from Psi Corps and has been trying to get into Vorlon space. Which nobody does – or at least not and return alive. Since scanning Kosh, Lyta has felt drawn there.
After Lyta escaped she became involved with the Mars revolutionary movement. Seven days ago, a member of the movement was murdered after an intelligence gathering mission. He had found details of a Psi Corps sleeper programme. This works by creating a new personality in a person, then submerging it so deeply it doesn’t show up in scans. Even the person so programmed doesn’t know about the second personality. The personality can be permanently activated using a word that is sent telepathically. At which point the implanted personality takes over permanently, and the original one is destroyed.
Lyta says that Psi Corps has placed moles in several government agencies, and on Babylon 5. She believes that the one on the station is in the command staff, or close to it. Lyta doesn’t know the mole’s identity, just its code name – Control. Who appeared, as an electronically modified voice, in “A Spider in the Web”. Lyta knows the password to activate the mole.
She wants to telepathically send it to anyone on Babylon 5 that it could be. Even when the implanted personality is not fully active, it will respond to threats and defend itself against them. Lyta is currently a threat, which is why she doesn’t want to be alone with anyone.
No-one is particularly happy about having Lyta send the password to them – Ivanova especially, and there’s a reason for that which she hasn’t disclosed before – but there’s the problem of what to do otherwise. If Lyta is telling the truth, they need to know who the mole is, and paranoia starts rearing its head. Oddly, no-one points out that sending the password will effectively kill the real personality of the mole.