On Zoz, in the city of Edward’s Landing, a special gathering has been called at the Long House. In the newly renovated undersea auditorium, where the whales and dolphins can participate, a debate is being undertaken. At stake is the fate of the Zernabian slaves and the secret location of Zoz!

Red Wolf, a young Zozian brave, wants to show Onawa, the daughter of Heavy Club, that he’s worthy of marriage. To do this he’s hatched an audacious plan to conduct a rescue mission on the Zernabian prison planet. The idea is to go in, rescue as many Zernabian slaves as possible, and leave in a lightning raid.

But since the ramifications of this act would affect all of Zoz, especially if Queen Elcyra learns where the planet is, the Zozian elders have called Red Wolf to the Long House to see if this raid is a wise idea.

Welcome to Episode 7 of Zik The Gallant Defender Of Zoz! This one’s been a doozy to prepare for, but you’re in for a wild ride! Fasten your safety harness, we’re launching back into adventure!

Defender Zik flies with Lia back to the rill in the crater where the others are. As they approach, Lia catches the unexpected sight of her father lying unconscious, missing an arm. Understandably, she becomes very upset, and Mizhakwan, busy making a sling for Dak, reassures her that he’s just resting and will be OK. Zik asks Dak if she’s ok, and she reports that her dislocated shoulder is painful, but she’ll live. Mizhakwan reminds Zik that they need to get the injured to the Temerity’s infirmary as quickly as possible.

Depositing Lia in the rill, Zik takes off again, determined to shut down the jammer which is preventing them from contacting their ship. Reasoning that the jammer would’ve been crushed in the avalanche, he directs Sten and Tanaka to look for it at the far sniper position, while he and Trent Quickdraw will check the other one. He reminds his friends to be on the lookout for that final sniper, who is still alive and dangerous!

Trent is skeptical that the final combatant will keep fighting, and Zik agrees that if the Jairian is smart, he’ll be hiding somewhere, but you can never be sure what an extremist will do. Suddenly, Zik pulls up short, remembering that Chadee never take prisoners! If Tanaka happens to find that sniper, he’ll pull his trigger without pausing to consider how valuable a Jairian prisoner would be!

Just then, Sten finds the jammer, and asks Tanaka to cover him while he disables it.  Zik comments that the Jairian probably doesn’t know how lucky he is. Quickdraw counters with a bad pun about how Morren is flat out of luck, crushed as he is under tons of rock!

That brings our intense Episode 6 to a close, Defenders! Stay tuned, there’s an epilogue page coming soon!

Tanaka and Sten have started a much bigger avalanche than anticipated! A huge stream of rocks courses down the cliff, onto Morren’s head, and spills over into the crater basin below. The two of them have to engage their jets to avoid falling into the stream of stones themselves!

Elsewhere on the rim, the lone remaining Jairian sniper takes one looks and NOPES the heck out of there! It’s good to know when to retreat and fight another day!

On the central peak of the crater, as the ground continues to tremble, Defender Zik turns to the terrified Lia to see if she’s ok.  Suddenly, large cracks appear in the peak!

Defender Zik lands on the central peak of the crater again, debating internally how he should handle this trap of Morren’s. If he stays completely out of the line of fire, Morren will kill Lia, but if he stays in the open, it’s only a matter of time before Morren succeeds.

With very few options, Zik tries to goad Morren into making a mistake.  He begins to insult his foe, but just as Morren is about to hurl some invective right back, Sten and Tanaka’s efforts at the top of the crater rim succeed! A huge crack opens in the cliff face!

Defender Zik remembers just in time that he’s exposed himself to the other sniper! As Trent Quickdraw lays down a barrage of suppressing fire, he dives back under cover.

Morren takes advantage of the situation to launch another batch of grenades, laughing at his opponent’s error. But being distracted by his prey, Morren fails to notice that Tanaka and Sten have managed to sneak up on him, and are now on the rim of the crater right on top of him!  Keeping under cover so the other Jairian sniper doesn’t see him, Tanaka leans out to get a clear shot on his prey, but the boulders under his feet shift! This cliff face is dangerously unstable!

But that gives the ever-resourceful Sten an idea: If they can’t get a clean shot on Morren without exposing themselves, why not just drop the boulder on his head? Even in this lower gravity, the great rock must have enough mass to crush their foe! Tanaka gleefully agrees with the plan, and the two get ready to create an avalanche.

The newly headless Mikibot is helped back into the safety of the rill the team has taken shelter in.  Defender Zik congratulates the deadly accuracy of Trent’s sharpshooting as he regroups with his team. It’s time to form a proper plan of attack!

The plan Zik comes up with takes advantage of the new blind spot left by the absence of the sniper Trent eliminated.  Tanaka and Sten are sent back out of the crater, to circle around behind one of the other two shooters.  Zik and Dakaasin will fly as fast as they can to the base of the peak while Trent covers them with suppressing fire. Once at the top, Zik will distract the Jairians while Dak frees the hostages.

An embarrassed Mikigaazo apologizes for jumping in before everyone is ready. After millennia on his own, this crystalline alien isn’t used to working as part of a team! Defender Zik assures him that his action was brave, but hasty. They need to coordinate to fight this enemy! Miki promises to help Mizhakwan to stabilize Gordon’s condition.

Zik, Dak and Trent ready themselves for the dash to the peak! Three.. Two… One…

Defender Zik slides down from the rim of the crater to check on Gordon’s condition and formulate a plan.  Mizhakwan has applied a tourniquet to Gordon’s missing arm, but she insists that they need to get him to a proper infirmary as soon as possible. But they still can’t call the Temerity back because of the comms jamming!

To help get a strategy going, Zik asks Zoot to display a tactical map. Zoot creates a hologram showing the approximate location of the snipers and their firing arcs overlayed on the crater terrain.  The hostages are on the central peak of the crater, covered by all three Jairian snipers, whereas the Temerity team is in a hollow to one side.

Zik reasons that the best way to get to the hostages is to try to take out the nearest sniper first, so that they can approach the peak safely. He assigns that task to Trent Quickdraw who begins looking for his target immediately. Then, as Zik and Dak discuss what to do next, Mikigaazo sees an opportunity to pitch in!  His crystalline body inside the Miki-bot is immune to bullets, so he offers to fly up and rescue the hostages himself! Zik tries to stop him, but it’s too late!

Hey Defenders! I know the hologram in panel 2 is a bit tough to read, so here it is a bit larger.  It’ll look better when it gets printed in the third Defender Zik book, which will be made available after the next exciting episode! That’s right, book three will have four episodes in it!

Defender Zik calls for his crew to cease fire, recognizing Morren’s voice.  He asks how in the world Morren could have survived their last encounter, which ended with Morren getting spaced with a broken visor! As it turns out, Jairian trooper uniforms have redundant visors for just such an emergency.

Morren sets out the situation for the Temerity team: he intends to kill them all! But to make it interesting, he’s placed the ZEMM flight crew at the top of the crater’s central peak, and he challenges Zik to try and make it to the top. He promises to free the hostages if Zik makes it.

An understandably skeptical Tanaka objects, saying that they can’t trust Morren to keep his word. But Morren doesn’t care, he holds all the cards! The hostages can just be eliminated right away. Zik hastily agrees to play Morren’s game, if only to buy the hostages more time.

The Temerity crew scrambles for cover at the floor of a crater as bullets zing through the sky. Mizhakwan hurries over to help the maimed Gordon while Zik calls again for Amelia to come back with the ship. But Zoot interrupts to inform Zik that their communications are being jammed! They can reestablish local comms with the team via a tight-beam line-of-sight backup system, but comms to the Temerity are severed!

Assessing the situation, Zik asks how many enemies they face. Sten informs him that there are three adversaries, spread out around the rim of the crater.  In that case, it’s time to reply with extreme violence! Zik and the crew open up and send a hail of bullets back at the Jairians!

Taking cover, Morren taps into a local channel to interrupt Zik’s barrage…

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!