In a distant system, Defender Zik stands by in the Temerity as Ramesh and his crew finish shoring up the heavily damaged Vigilant Gaddi. It was a narrow escape, but the jumps they’ve made thus far have proven to be effective at throwing the Clonoids off their trail. But hyperspace has been hard on the broken hull of the Gaddi, and they’ve stopped within the ring system of an icy world to patch what they can before continuing.
In due course, Ramesh radios over to say that they’re ready to go. Zik asks how the refugees are holding up, to which Ramesh reports that they’re furious enough to have nearly staged a mutiny. Only being reminded that they would be stranded in space without a pilot calmed them down. The two old pals then review the battle; Zik tries to keep positive about it, but Ramesh is more of a realist than an optimist, and points out that a 60 percent survival rate isn’t exactly a victory. Conceding the point, Zik admits that Elcyra seems to have duped the Zozians into attacking, before springing the trap with her insanely powerful capital ship. The Zozians have achieved a pyrrhic victory, and have gotten a rude awakening about how far the rest of humanity have advanced technologically in the past thousand years!
Ramesh declares that he’s not confident the Gaddi can withstand more than one more jump without undergoing catastrophic hull failure, so the two decide to head straight back to Zoz from here. As they leap into hyperspace, however, a drone tucked away on one of the larger ring rocks begins broadcasting a report back to its operators…

Zik wraps up the story of the attack of the space commies! Amelia has decided to make herself comfortable, pulling her chair right up to Zik’s and using your favorite space hero as a couch. He doesn’t seem to mind too much.

Meanwhile, over on the Kodiak, James has brought Trent Quickdraw onto the bridge to show him some of the features of Trent’s new battle armor. The visor has a bunch of cameras on it, one of which will allow Trent to see through walls! There’s a limited range, and he can’t see too much detail, but he can see enough… Enough to see that Zik and Amelia are a little closer than he’s comfortable with! While Jason may be jealous of the cool view settings in Trent’s armor, Trent is preoccupied with what he sees on board Zik’s ship!

So ends part two of Forging The Defender! There’s one more part to go, where Zik describes where the “Gallant” part of his name comes from. Tune in next week for that!