In the hangar control room for Bastion Station, Defender Zik and Dakaasin go over the characteristics of the shuttle prototype while they wait for Tanaka. It’s a candidate for an upgraded shuttle for both Kodiak Planetary Security  and Zik Enterprises Merchant Marines (ZEMM), and it’s been created to be heavily modular at the request of James Anchor. The ship can be quickly converted to serve many functions, from cargo and crew transport, to search and rescue, and can even be outfitted for combat situations.

Tanaka arrives and wants to know if this is a live fire exercise. Dakaasin lets him know that they’re only doing an atmospheric flight test, with the modular repulsor wing arrays attached. As they enter the hangar, she explains that the extra-large repulsors are for rescue or escort missions where a larger bubble of debris repulsion is required. When a ship is in trouble in space, there’s often a lot of debris zipping around that needs to be brushed away!

They arrive at the shuttle to find Miki, Ryan and Sten, who’s doing some calibrations. Mikigaazo, as an alien new to the human world, has more questions than can be handled by an exacerbated Sten. Everything’s ready to go, so it’s time to get this test underway!

Welcome back Defenders, to Episode 4: The Hypnos Hiatus! After a brief interlude to get the first two Defender Zik books printed, we’re back!

Our story opens with your favorite galactic hero trying out his new space suit outside Bastion Station.  The research station orbiting Zoz is administrated by Zik’s brother Todd, who is monitoring the flight. Zik reports that all its systems are nominal, and Todd replies that Chief Engineer Dakaasin will be happy that her new suit design is working well.

Zik enters the station’s hangar to let Dak know personally. She and her assistant Sten are getting the final tuning done on the Temerity, Zik’s new space cruiser! They’ve been working hard on it while Zik and everyone who went to Zernabia is in quarantine on the station, and the results are beyond Zik’s wildest dreams!

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!