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.
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 next day, the Temerity arrives at lonely planet Hypnos, adrift in the galaxy without a star to orbit. Francisco reports that the trajectory of the small world takes it up out of the galactic plane, and it loops back down somewhere up the spiral arm. This planet has travelled a long way in the intergalactic void before its return near Zoz!
DEFENDER ZIK LORE BREAK!
Zoz is quite far away from Earth! And the Zozian colony ship went in a completely different direction than most of the other refugees that left Earth all those centuries ago. Back then, the first people after the Zozians realized that if they travelled within our spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, and towards the galactic core, the stars would be more numerous and closer together on average. This meant that as they established their new empires among the stars, they could get from system to system more quickly, which means resupply and defense is quicker and easier. The competition for habitable core-ward worlds was fierce, but the competition up and down was basically non-existent, because one runs out of star systems to go to in those directions.
But up is the direction the Zozian colony ship went. The priority for them was finding the exoplanet that was most like Earth in order to terraform it and establish an oasis of Earth-life in a place where it wouldn’t need to re-adapt to totally new conditions. The world they found happened to be towards the top of the galactic plane, which is why no one ever found them in all that time. Zoz is in a backwater area of the galaxy from the point of view of the other human civilizations!
Zik remarks that planet Hypnos has some incredibly huge canyons scarring its surface, but he gets distracted by the debris field they’re entering. It’s quite thick, and he needs all hands in the cockpit to help identify and eliminate the asteroid threats.
As they plow through the debris field, whatever the flotsam repulsors can’t push out of the way, Trent blasts with the point defense cannons! They finally make it through thanks to great teamwork and Zik’s piloting skills.
It’s time for a closer look at the remote and desolate planet Hypnos, and what they discover is a shattered world of craggy canyons and deep craters! What happened to this place?!
Zik checks to see how badly Frank is hurt, but the poor guy was dead before he hit the ground. The Jairians aren’t done with their aggression, and they open fire on your favorite space hero and his pals! Zik grabs Frank’s shotgun and dives out of the way of the incoming bullets, but poor Arata isn’t quite so lucky and gets hit in the shoulder.
From behind cover, Zik and Tanaka ascertain that Arata is just injured and isn’t in mortal danger. Zik tells the two Chadee to get ready to run inside the security office. He leans out and fires! Frank had loaded slugs in the shotgun, which are devastating at such a close range. Indeed, the round goes right through one of the Jairians and hits the assailant behind her!
Amelia sets the factory system to flood the big tanks under the catwalk that Zik and the Clonoid are fighting on. Then she shuts down the main power to the machinery. Meanwhile, Zik and the Clonoid square off, ready to fight! Amelia runs off, leaving Trent to guard the control panel, and ready to spring the last phase of their trap. But first, she has to take care of some cables! What are they up to? Zik dodges a mighty punch as the giant Clonoid super-soldier charges him.
Wow, this was a tough page to draw! Zik site members can see my first pass of pencils in the Progress Blog, where I talk a bit about how I lay out the page. Be sure to check it out!
Also, thank you to those who are voting for Zik on topwebcomics.com! I appreciate all the support. If you haven’t yet, you can vote once per day at this link! You can also find a Vote button at the very bottom of the page. The more people who visit the site, the better the comic will get for all of us, because it will enable me to add more and more content!
Zik is a man of action, and a gallant one at that! Even when dodging bullets from a hostile helicopter-thing, he’s all about the chivalry and Galactic Action Hero charisma.
