The challenge is that within the format of the comic strip, some story elements are necessarily omitted for clarity.
Missing from the above strip is a thirty-two-panel sequence featuring Triniko. Without going into too much detail, I'll say that it involves a flashback to her prior military experience in Nejjatese internecine border disputes. One occasion in particular haunts her -- she correctly judged the moment at which an enemy was going to open fire, but was frozen with fear, and saw comrades perish as a result. While it may be difficult to imagine all this without actual pictures, per se, try to imagine how the panels build very climactically to the current moment when she realizes that Gav's plan to make himself safely redundant is doomed unless she can cut the filters back in line. The imagery as she throws the switch is powerfully symbolic (sadly, the feminists in the audience would likely offer a non-family-friendly interpretation of the symbolism implicit in a female grabbing an oblong, vertically-oriented switch in order to save the life of a male standing within an aperture from penetration by a missile fired from a rigid tube -- fortunately, there are no pictures, and said analysis will never get outside of these parentheses), and can even be said to be triumphant.
Since it would have been over twice as long as the panels currently in place, we've decided to give Triniko's flashback a wide miss, and just add this note to the bottom of the strip. Editor: cue the note now, please.
Megiddo's missile was not copied by the gate. We have Triniko's fast hands to thank for that.
