Always the man of action, your favorite space hero Zik charges at the shark! His hope is to get close to it before it expects him and inflate the balloon in its mouth. His ploy works, and the mighty shark chomps the inflating rescue balloon with such force that it bursts. A mass of bubbles to sprays out, confusing and disorienting the great white. Zik seizes the opportunity to escape, grabbing Haven and inflating her rescue balloon!
Back in space, Amelia notices something wrong with what Zik has just told her. Haven’s comment belies the fact that she hadn’t heard of the “famous” Zik! But Zik explains that Haven gets so absorbed with her work underwater that she barely notices that the rest of the universe exists. She was only barely aware that Zik had saved her life once before during the incident with the asteroid!
Zik continues his story. The underwater lab is starting to buckle under the weight of all the rocks that have fallen on it. Haven wants to leave using the submersible she usually uses to get to the lab, but Zik informs her that the bay doors are blocked by debris! There isn’t time to clear it all away before the lab collapses!
A frustrated Haven begins stripping off her clothes in preparation to swim to the surface. She gathers some necessities: a waterproof bag filled with her all-important research data, some emergency balloons designed to allow someone to be lifted rapidly to the surface, and a device that emits EM waves designed to repel sharks. Zik is a little surprised to hear about the sharks!
Outside the lab, Haven starts to play with the EM shark repeller, but she can’t remember how to activate it. Zik notices that it’s too late to get it going; a shark has arrived, and it’s noticed them! Uh oh!
Just as Zik dives into the ocean, Todd sees something on the underwater scanner that terrifies him: the sharks! He tries to warn Zik, but he’s too late!
Zik is already diving down to Haven’s lab quickly with the help of one of the dolphins. When he gets there, he finds the main airlock entrance is unobstructed and easy to get through, but the door to Haven’s lab is jammed shut!
He hauls on the stuck door with all his considerable might and finally gets it open. A grateful Haven thanks your favorite space hero and introduces herself.
But they still have to escape the damaged lab, and those sharks are still out there!
Zik, his brother Todd, and Ramesh follow the panicked dolphins in their boat. On the way, Ramesh comments that Zik’s father seems to have aged since Ramesh visited last. Zik explains that it’s because his father has been suffering since the loss of Zik’s mother in a mountain climbing incident.
Soon they approach an island, the one next to Haven’s lab. Todd notices signs that part of the island seems to be freshly missing. They check the underwater scanner, and sure enough, they see the rubble from the island and the lab underneath. Todd points out that there’s someone trapped inside!
That’s all your favorite space hero needs to hear to spring into action! Zik instructs Todd to call for help, and asks Ramesh to find the underwater breathing unit stowed below-deck. He strips down and dives in, unaware of the danger that lurks in the cloudy water!
Zik’s mother Zorah died several months before the Jairian attack on Baker Mine. She was mountain climbing, a sport she was passionate about and taught to Zik. She was with several of of her climbing friends, scaling a large rounded cliff known as the Walrus Belly. There was no indication that the unusual formation was unstable, but there was a huge collapse of the face they were climbing on, and all three climbers disappeared in the rubble. What was left was a huge hole, as if there had been an enormous cavern underneath.
Shortly before the collapse, a meteorite was seen streaking through the sky and was captured on several skycar dashcams. This was unusual as it had not been detected before and dealt with before impacting the planet. Researchers backtracked its trajectory and amazingly, it arced way up over the solar system and would have been very near the same gravitational anomaly as from the spinning asteroid that Zik had just saved the planet from.
Haven is stranded in her underwater lab after the avalanche! Her communications are knocked out and she can’t last forever locked in her lab. She has the bright idea to ask the dolphins for help, and gets them to race off to the nearest inhabited island for help. They swim to Talia Island, where Zik lives with his father and brother.
Ramesh happens to be visiting, helping Zik with his plans for the newly formed Zik Enterprises. Everyone is out on the beach chatting, when Ramesh sees the dolphins leaping about out in the bay. The dolphins chatter and squeak wildly as they try to get their attention. Finally, the humans clue in that something is up, and Zik, his brother Todd, and Ramesh pile into their boat and race off after the dolphins!
After Haven’s incredible discovery of how to communicate with dolphins, she learns that they’re usually thinking about food and fun! She plays the dolphins and humpbacks near her underwater lab some Beethoven music, as a way of introducing them to human entertainment. Haven and the dolphins get so absorbed in their newfound ability to interact that they don’t notice that all the music and commotion has attracted a couple of curious great white sharks! Once the sharks arrive, the dolphins panic, knocking over Haven’s communications antenna! Worse, a humpback whale gets crowded into the cliff of a nearby island, causing an underwater avalanche! The rubble falls onto the living quarters module of the lab, crushing it! Haven is in mortal danger!
Amelia is curious about the type of girl Zik likes to date, so Zik starts telling his next tale! The last lady he dated was Haven LeClaire, a marine biologist. She had an underwater lab near Zik’s island home on Zoz, where she was researching dolphin and whale communications. On the day they met, Haven had just made a breakthrough: she had learned how to communicate with dolphins! She was also close to discovering how to communicate with humpback whales, and there was a lot of activity around her lab. The ocean was crowded!
Welcome to the third and final part of Forging The Defender, the second Defender Zik episode! We’ve been learning about how humble asteroid miner Zik came to be known as Defender Zik on his home planet of Zoz. In this part, we will learn how he got the last part of his nickname: Zik the Gallant Defender of Zoz!
It all starts with Amelia asking if Zik’s fame has extended to a lot of attention from the ladies of Zoz. He admits that it has, although he’s single right now. Could Amelia have a motive beyond curiosity for wanting to know that?
Zik wraps up the story of the attack of the space commies! Amelia has decided to make herself comfortable, pulling her chair right up to Zik’s and using your favorite space hero as a couch. He doesn’t seem to mind too much.
Meanwhile, over on the Kodiak, James has brought Trent Quickdraw onto the bridge to show him some of the features of Trent’s new battle armor. The visor has a bunch of cameras on it, one of which will allow Trent to see through walls! There’s a limited range, and he can’t see too much detail, but he can see enough… Enough to see that Zik and Amelia are a little closer than he’s comfortable with! While Jason may be jealous of the cool view settings in Trent’s armor, Trent is preoccupied with what he sees on board Zik’s ship!
So ends part two of Forging The Defender! There’s one more part to go, where Zik describes where the “Gallant” part of his name comes from. Tune in next week for that!
Zik wraps up his story about chasing off the Jairian thugs who tried to steal Baker Mine! After rescuing the miner stuck under the elevator, Zik runs back out to help fight off the remaining Jairians.
After the Jairians leave, one of the mercenaries, a man named Clint Donovan, steps out and reveals that he had been helping defeat the them! Clint had recognized Zik from the news after the asteroid incident and decided he wasn’t going to kill the man who had saved an entire planet.
Zik goes over some of the major changes that Zoz went through after the Jairian uprising. People everywhere started carrying weapons to protect themselves. Zik became known as Defender Zik in the media, and he became the new head of Delta Mines! He built a stronger security station and renamed Baker Mine to the Frank Cooper Memorial Mine, in honor of poor Frank who was murdered by the Jairians in cold blood. Zik Enterprises went on to become a pivotal company in the progress of the Zozian civilization!
