Morren’s Gauntlet

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.