Springing from cover, Defender Zik and Dakaasin leap forward for their mad dash to the central peak of the crater! Quickdraw lays down some heavy covering fire with his sniper rifle, causing the Jairian in his sights to leap back behind a boulder to avoid getting zorched! As bullets and plasma beams fill the sky, Zik and Dak fly full out, low to the ground to take advantage of any cover they can get! After a harrowing few moments that seem like hours, they arrive at the central peak! They made it in one piece!

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…

As Mikigaazo rushes out of hiding to try and rescue the hostages, the nearest Jairian takes the easy head shot right away.  Defender Zik and Dakaasin watch in horror as Miki’s head explodes in a shower of sparks. But Zik remembers that this is just a mech frame for the crystals inside, and calls out to see if Miki is okay.

Sure enough, the crystal pod located in the torso of the Mikibot platform is unharmed, and Miki is able to get back up, reassuring the humans looking on.

This apparent resurrection comes as a complete shock to the Jairian watching through his scope! He jumps up in surprise at his now headless yet animate target.  Unfortunately for this Jairian, Trent Quickdraw was watching him through his own sniper rifle’s scope, waiting for just such an opportunity! And unlike the crystalline Mikigaazo, head shots on humans are fatal!

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!

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!

Meanwhile, on distant moon Gamma Apodis 3B, the Jairian raiding party is busy transferring all the medkits from the ZEMM transport to their Hammerhead cruiser. There are only a few cases left, so Flynn, the Jairian commander on this raid, orders the rest of his comrades to prepare the explosives to destroy the transport.

From the Hammerhead cockpit comes an urgent alert: The Temerity is inbound! Flynn orders everyone to redouble their efforts, because they need every last case!  He then taunts Morren Mallor, who is holding his firearm to the head of one of the ZEMM pilots, with the approach of his old foe Zik. Morren vows to kill Zik the next time he meets him, so Flynn seizes the opportunity to rid himself of the burden of his company.  He gives Morren the chance to fulfill his vow by leaving him behind! But just to even the odds a bit, he offers to leave two Jairian thugs and the hostages for good measure.

Getting in Morren’s face, Flynn tells him to kill Zik or never return. It’s on!

After a few minutes, Defender Zik and the crew of the Temerity are on their way! Zik congratulates the team on an excellent scramble time, and lets them know that this time, it’s not a drill! There is a real mission afoot, with a good chance of combat! After months of playing cat-and-mouse with the elusive and violent communists, there’s finally an opportunity to confront them directly in an effort to foil their hijacking.  Francisco locks in the navigation to Gamma Apodis, and they hit the hyperdrive! It’s go time!