In his eagerness to reunite with his daughter, Gordon Mises gets ahead of the rest of the crew of the Temerity. Defender Zik urges caution, because this scenario seems too much like an….
AMBUSH!
From hiding, Morren fires at the person who looks most like how he remembers Zik from their last encounter. But that person is the unfortunate Gordon, whose arm is blown clear off from Morren’s shot!
Gordon falls out of the sky, and while Zik scrambles to catch him, everyone scatters. Bullets are zipping in from all around the crater, and there’s a mad dash for cover while Sten, Tanaka and Trent Quickdraw give covering fire.
They reach the crater floor after some near-misses, and Zik calls out to the Temerity for support – Amelia, come back!
Defender Zik and the intrepid crew of the Temerity arrives at Gamma Apodis 3 and scans its second moon for the crew of the captured ZEMM cargo vessel. But the evil Jairians have destroyed the ship! Trent asks why they keep doing that, when they could be salvaging the ships they capture. Defender Zik explains that the Jairians are obsessive about hiding themselves and striking from the shadows, and keeping the ships intact would allow the Zik to track them to their elusive base of operations.
As they approach the landing zone, Zik asks Francisco if there are any traces of the Jairians indicating where they might have gone, such as an ion trail. Francisco replies that yes, an ion trail exists, and it’s fresh enough to identify the type of vessel they used! Zik decides to let him and Amelia investigate the trail further, because it’s imperative that the Jairians are located in order to negotiate some kind of peace. The rest of the crew disembarks and examines the wreck of the transport vessel.
A sharp-eyed Trent Quickdraw spots the crew of the transport in the distance, at the central peak of a nearby crater. Defender Zik tries to call out to them, but receives no response. This whole thing isn’t adding up, but since the Jairians seem to have left, Zik calls for the team to head over to the crew to see if they’re all right. Be he warns them to be cautious, because his instincts are telling him something’s not right!
The infirmary celebrations are interrupted by an urgent call for Defender Zik to come to the bridge of Bastion Station. Zik gives the Zernabian siblings a congratulations and hurried off to see what the problem is. On the bridge, he finds Gordon Mises, head of the Zik Enterprises Merchant Marine division, with a worried look on his face. One of their light transports has been hijacked, and Gordon’s daughter is among its crew!
Taking stock of the situation, Zik asks if Jolene has sent for Kodiak Search And Rescue. She replies that she has, but that all the Kodiak ships are otherwise engaged in a large fleet exercise to test their integration as a planetary defense force. Zik decides that they won’t pull any of James Anchor’s ships from that effort, and that they can handle it themselves in the Temerity. Gordon insists on coming along to help his daughter, and the crew of the Temerity is scrambled to their ship!
In the hangar control room for Bastion Station, Defender Zik and Dakaasin go over the characteristics of the shuttle prototype while they wait for Tanaka. It’s a candidate for an upgraded shuttle for both Kodiak Planetary Security and Zik Enterprises Merchant Marines (ZEMM), and it’s been created to be heavily modular at the request of James Anchor. The ship can be quickly converted to serve many functions, from cargo and crew transport, to search and rescue, and can even be outfitted for combat situations.
Tanaka arrives and wants to know if this is a live fire exercise. Dakaasin lets him know that they’re only doing an atmospheric flight test, with the modular repulsor wing arrays attached. As they enter the hangar, she explains that the extra-large repulsors are for rescue or escort missions where a larger bubble of debris repulsion is required. When a ship is in trouble in space, there’s often a lot of debris zipping around that needs to be brushed away!
They arrive at the shuttle to find Miki, Ryan and Sten, who’s doing some calibrations. Mikigaazo, as an alien new to the human world, has more questions than can be handled by an exacerbated Sten. Everything’s ready to go, so it’s time to get this test underway!
A week after the dramatic rescue of the living crystal from planet Hypnos, a lot has transpired! News of the newly discovered alien species has Zozian society awestruck. The people on the planet have prepared their immune systems, and it’s now safe for the Zernabians to come out of quarantine, but the new debate is where to house this new alien… or is it even alive? As the debate rages as to whether a crystal can be alive, a decision is made to grant the crystal a local moon to call home. There is a moon of one of the local gas giants called Aletha which offers a very similar environment to what Hypnos was like before the cataclysm that made the crystal homeless, and the decision is made to allow it to call Aletha home.
Mizhakwan has been interacting with the crystal intensely during the week, and has helped it to pick out a name for itself. Mikigaazo, which means “he is found (by them)”, is the name it chooses, although everyone immediately shortens it to Miki. Todd has the bright idea that Miki should have a humanoid robot to control, so that it can more easily interact with humans, and he and Dakaasin whip up the Mikibot 1.0 platform for it to try out.
With all this out of the way, it’s finally time to introduce the Zernabians and Miki to the planet Zoz! Zik quickly organizes a big party at his father’s house on Talia Island, inviting Francisco’s band Anaconda to play. During the concert, Vera and Tanaka hang out by the fire with Dr. Taylor, as they’re still recovering from their medical ordeals. Tanaka, sporting a new cybernetic arm, strikes up a conversation with Windrunner, a champion Coup player. Another Coup player, Heavy Club, invites Vera to come to the potlatch he is holding soon to celebrate the wedding of his daughter.
Meanwhile, Zik is helping Miki calibrate the Mikibot by teaching him to dance, the awkwardness of which sends Amelia and Trent into gales of laughter. Seeing them laughing and enjoying themselves is a welcome relief for Dr. Taylor, who’s been worried about them. He remarks to Vera that the two Zernabians seem to have a good chemistry together, which reminds Vera to ask him a question…
That’s a wrap for Episode 4: The Hypnos Hiatus, my dear Defenders! I will be taking a small break as I prepare for Episode 5: Endarkenment! See you soon, and Happy New Year!!
Defender Zik checks on Trent as they recover from nearly getting crushed by the meteorite debris. Trent thanks Zik, who assures them they’re now even when it comes to cliff-related mishaps.
A worried Amelia checks in on them, and urges them to get on board the Temerity as quickly as possible, as more meteorites are falling nearby! Sten and Dakaasin call them into the top hatch, since the cargo hold is now too full to get on board that way.
Once on board, Zik lets Amelia know they’re ready to go! Dak and Sten hustle off to get the engines calibrated to compensate for the huge additional mass they’ve taken aboard. Amelia tells everyone to hold on, and gunning the engines, she launches the Temerity off planet Hypnos!
The crew hurries to get the last of the sentient crystal on board the Temerity, as the meteorite storm begins! Trent Quickdraw has moved farther from the ship to get to the last shards, which lie outside of the repulsor field the ship is generating as a protective umbrella.
At the last moment, Amelia shouts a warning over the radio – another meteorite is striking nearby! Sten sees that Trent is right below the strike and calls out a warning. But is he too late?!
No! The lower gravity of Hypnos causes the falling debris to tumble more slowly than it would in Earth gravity, so Zik has just enough time to zoom over with his jetpack and push a surprised Trent out of harm’s way! They slam into the cliff wall just in time!
Everyone scrambles for cover as an incoming meteorite interrupts their rescue operation! Hiding under the Temerity, the shocked away team watches as a meteorite impacts the cliff wall next to them.
Sten asks Francisco about his 45 minute estimate for the arrival of the meteorites, since it’s only been about 20 minutes since they got outside. It seems that everyone misinterpreted Francisco’s math; he meant that every minute they stay increases the chances that they’ll be hit during that minute! By this point, they have a 25% chance of getting hit right now!
Zik rallies his friends and gets them to really hustle to get the last of the crystal onboard the Temerity. They start tossing the crystal from one to another, which proves to be a completely new experience for the crystal! Despite the danger, they’ve shared the concept of fun, and let it experience flight (albeit briefly) for the first time.
Amelia, in the cockpit keeping the ship primed to skedaddle, sees another meteorite hit the next valley over on her sensor display. She urges everyone to really hurry, because they could get pulverized at any moment!
The alien crystal continues its story, revealing how the explosion of the gas giant tore the crust off this moon. Most of the crystal’s home was incinerated by the immense cataclysm, which completely destroyed the gas giant. The moon itself then flew right out of the solar system, and headed out of the galaxy as it cooled. The crystal was able to conceal itself from discovery by the aliens that tried to kill it.
Appalled, Defender Zik realizes that he’s hearing a story of attempted xenocide! As everyone continues to help move the crystal into the cargo hold of the Temerity, the crystal explains that it went into hibernation for tens of thousands of years until the moon was pulled back into the galactic rim by gravity.
Suddenly, Amelia interrupts to warn everyone that the leading edge of the meteorite storm is here! An early meteorite is about to hit nearby– take cover!!
Defender Zik and the crew of the Temerity have a short window of time to help the living crystal of Planet Hypnos escape the impending meteorite storm! The crew hustles outside, with the exception of Amelia, who remains in the cockpit to keep the ship ready to fly out of danger.
Outside, Dakaasin puzzles over how to cram all that mass of crystal into the hold. It doesn’t look like it will fit until the crystal offers to make itself denser, thereby cramming itself into a smaller volume.
It explains that it is a singular being, and its consciousness splits and merges as it fragments and recombines itself. When Zik organizes the crew into a human chain to relay the crystals into the ship, the crystal is confused by the term “human chain.” Zik explains that humans can’t split and combine the way the crystal can, but that they often work as a team to accomplish a common goal. Once again, the crystal brings up a mysterious other alien life form it has encountered, which was like humans in that each individual had its own consciousness.
While they work, Zik asks the crystal about these other aliens, wondering whether it was they who stranded the crystal on the rogue planet. As it turns out, Zik is partially correct. The aliens are the cause of the stranding of the crystals, but that Hypnos was actually once a moon orbiting a distant gas giant. However, in a stunning act of attempted xenocide, the aliens detonated the gas giant!
