Zik wraps up his story about chasing off the Jairian thugs who tried to steal Baker Mine! After rescuing the miner stuck under the elevator, Zik runs back out to help fight off the remaining Jairians.

After the Jairians leave, one of the mercenaries, a man named Clint Donovan, steps out and reveals that he had been helping defeat the them! Clint had recognized Zik from the news after the asteroid incident and decided he wasn’t going to kill the man who had saved an entire planet.

Zik goes over some of the major changes that Zoz went through after the Jairian uprising. People everywhere started carrying weapons to protect themselves. Zik became known as Defender Zik in the media, and he became the new head of Delta Mines! He built a stronger security station and renamed Baker Mine to the Frank Cooper Memorial Mine, in honor of poor Frank who was murdered by the Jairians in cold blood. Zik Enterprises went on to become a pivotal company in the progress of the Zozian civilization!

Thinking fast, Zik turns and fires his shotgun, hitting the adult of the two Jairians chasing him! The kid stops in his tracks, afraid that he’ll be next, but Zik just stares him down. He drops the shotgun and turns to fight the fire, hoping that the kid has gotten the message: you’re too young to die, so leave off!

Meanwhile, the Jairian is dying a messy death. He asks the kid to avenge him before praising the Jairian revolution. Then he bleeds out messily, and young Ryan turns his head in disgust. War ain’t pretty, lad!

While Zik hammers away with his shotgun, Arata sees the damage the rocket has done on his security monitors. As it turns out, the main elevator for the mine was damaged! It fell all the way to the bottom, bouncing out of its shaft and crushing the legs of one of the miners at the bottom!

Zik hurries over to get a look at what’s going on. He sees right away that the miners are going to need help to free the poor man. He grabs a fire extinguisher and charges out of a side door, heading for the burning elevator building!

But Morren has spotted Zik and sends three of the Jairians after him! One gets stopped cold by the digger drones, but two more make it past! Worse, one of them is the kid, and Zik certainly doesn’t want to hurt him! What will he do?!

The drones are activated by Arata and sent into battle! Three were in a hangar, while the fourth is visible on this page dealing with the ore that Zik brought for processing. On their way to the action, the drones are instructed to pick up some rubble to use as a projectile!

Meanwhile, Morren and the Jairians are pinned down by Zik and Tanaka’s relentless barrage. Morren says something that’s offensive to one of the other Jairians, and is quickly chastised for his indiscretion. But the correction turns out to be that guy’s last words; a pile of rubble lands squarely on him, crushing him!

Morren switches tactics: these drones present an even bigger threat to his attack than Tanaka does! He orders them to be taken out. A rocket is launched, but the guy launching it accidentally leans into Tanaka’s sight and gets smoked! The rocket misses its target drone – and hits an important building behind it!

The shotgun Zik is using has the desired effect as the Jairians scramble for cover.  Zik, Tanaka and Arata seize the opportunity to get into the security building, where they know they’ll be safer.

No sooner do the doors close, however, than the Jairans begin shooting again! Zik tells Tanaka to go to the third floor and fight back, which he does gleefully! He grabs a machine gun and a belt full of ammo and heads up the ladder.

The fierce Tanaka doesn’t even bother to break the window first, he just starts shooting! With a battle cry he begins filling the air with bullets, trying to fight off the intruders!

Meanwhile, Zik patches up Arata. He’s in no condition to fight, but being a Chadee, he doesn’t want to be left out of the action! Zik suggests that perhaps the digger drones that are used to move dirt around the mine can be used to open a new front on the Jairans. Arata eagerly agrees to try it!

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!

Zik gets into an argument with the Jairian who’s demanding they surrender the mine. The man won’t back down! He refuses to leave and start his own mine elsewhere, he’s here for the resources available at this mine!

Frank interrupts the discussion and asks the Jairians to leave, or he will have to declare them trespassers.

The unhinged Jairian has had enough! He shoots Frank dead! A shocked Zik watches as his friend collapses in front of him!

A whole bunch of Jairians armed to the teeth have emerged from the cargo hauler! Zik notices that the thugs are partly made up of trained mercenaries, and there’s a teenager among them! One of the Jairians, presumably the leader of this gang, demands to know who is in charge.

Frank informs them of his role as head of security and general operations, and guardedly welcomes them to Baker Mine.

The lead Jairian demands the surrender of the mining facility, proclaiming it and the employees free of what he calls the corporate slavery of the mining company, Delta Mining Systems.

Zik and Tanaka blurt out their incredulity at this statement. As Zik explains to Amelia, he’s never been scared of anything, and sometimes it leads him into trouble!

Captain James Anchor is on his way back to the bridge of the Kodiak with a fresh coffee. On his way, he stops by the medical bay to check up on Vera. Fiona has stabilized the sleeping Vera, and is confident that her lung cancer can be cured. James also asks for a status update on the blood tests that Fiona has done on all three of the Zernabian passengers. Sure enough, the divergence of the Zozians from the rest of the human species over the last thousand years has resulted in some new pathogens and viruses for which the Zozians have no immunity.  Fiona is working on it, though, and it won’t be long before she can create a vaccine!

Next, James Anchor stops by the hangar bay, where an off-duty Jason is teaching Trent more about how to use firearms. This time he’s holding it safely! Not with his finger on the trigger like before! Although, in Trent’s defense, he had never held a gun before and there wasn’t time during the riot to teach him properly. But that’s being remedied by Jason now! Jason is just as impressed at Trent’s innate shooting accuracy as Zik was.

Meanwhile, Emma is busy sifting through the battle data from their encounter with Queen Elcyra. She seems to be onto something unusual, but what could it be?

So ends Part 1 of Forging The Defender! We’ll dive straight into part 2 next week! See you then!

Amelia hits the Emergency Open button on the tank control panel, opening the top of the tanks! But now she notices that Zik has gotten hurt! The Clonoid supersoldier is busy inspecting his badly singed hand as Zik falls back. Meanwhile, the Clonoid drone has picked up a blaster and zaps Trent right in the chest! A double whammy of deep trouble for our heroes!