“Piper Maru” is episode fifteen of season three of The X-Files.
The episode begins aboard a ship, French by the sounds of it, in the Pacific Ocean. A man is being fitted into a diving suit then lowered into the water. The instruments detect radiation and those on the ship wonder if they’ve finally found it after searching for 3 months. The diver, Gauthier, has found a plane; he thinks it’s one of the squadron. He hears a banging noise then the surface loses the audio and video. Gauthier himself sees the plane’s cockpit; the banging is coming from there. Inside, someone is in the water, banging to get out. Black oil passes across his eyes.
It’s now night and the diving suit is winched back onboard. One of the crew feels some sort of residue on the outside of the suit. Gauthier, when spoken to, says he’s alright and doesn’t know what happened. Black oil passes across his eyes.
Scully is passing Skinner’s office when he asks to speak to her. A memo passed his desk last night, and he debated whether to call her at home. It’s been five months since her sister’s murder and, with no new leads, the case has been made inactive until further notice. Skinner is going to go through the case himself. Scully is not happy. They can link bombers to destroyed buildings they were nowhere near but can’t find a killer who murdered her sister in a brightly-lit building. She suspects someone doesn’t want the case investigating, by the sounds of it. She’s probably right.
In Mulder’s office, he tells her that something interesting came to his attention. A French salvage ship, the Piper Maru, limped into San Diego. Mulder tracked the course and its original position was where the Talapus pulled up what Mulder believes was a UFO and Scully a Russian sub in “Nisei”. The entire crew is being treated for radiation burns. Scully finds it a bit amusing, how relentless Mulder is. She says they are afraid of him, that if he was dropped into the middle of a desert and told the truth was out there, he’d ask for a shovel. On Mulder questioning this, Scully corrects herself. Probably a backhoe, not a shovel. Mulder already has tickets to San Diego.
At the naval hospital, Dr Seizer says the sailors are in poor shape. Without knowing what happened to them, it’s hard to treat them. Following a question from Scully, the doctor says how much radiation they were exposed to. Verging on Hiroshima levels. It must be manmade because it doesn’t appear on nature. Not on this planet, according to Mulder. One man was unaffected and he piloted the boat in. He discharged himself. His name is Gauthier and he lives in San Francisco.
Gauthier is entering what appears to be his home when his phone rings. Mulder and Scully are arriving at the naval station; it seems Scully is trying to get hold of Gauthier. Wayne Morgan of the Navy Investigative Services Unit hasn’t found anything, but they aren’t sure what they are searching for. They didn’t find any radiation onboard the ship. Mulder examines the dive suit and finds an oily residue. Scully finds a chart with ‘Zeus Faber’ written on it. Morgan restarts the generators and Mulder arrives, looking for a VCR. He saw the cameras on the suit. They find the video, and the fuselage of a plane, which Scully identifies as a P-51 Mustang. She says it’s just a fighter and wouldn’t have anything radioactive on it. She knows someone who might know more.
Gauthier is looking through some papers when his wife arrives. His behaviour scares her and she runs, but he catches her. When the woman leaves the house, black oil passes across her eyes.
Scully is heading to Miramar Naval Station, which sparks some memories, to speak to a Commander Johansen, who used to be friends with her father, Mulder goes looking for Gauthier and finds the papers Gauthier had been searching, which included the plane’s number and a reference to a salvage breakers. Then he finds Gauthier himself. Gauthier has an oily residue on him and the last thing he remembers was being on the boat. He denies knowing who the salvage brokers are.
Scully finds out more information which may or may not be true. The salvage company, when Mulder goes to see it, doesn’t appear to be an ordinary one. And it seems likely that Melissa’s murder investigation wasn’t abandoned through lack of leads, but through a lack of desire to solve it, going by Skinner’s encounters.
The story continues in the next episode, “Apocrypha”.