This short story originally appeared in the Galaxion Flip Book. The story takes place about two years before the start of the main story.
I posted the cover to this short story yesterday, so if you missed it, hop on back and have a look!
One of the nice things about this short story is it gave me a chance to play a little bit with what this mysterious organization “Interplanetary Patrol” was actually like. Also, I got to introduce Hettal (who is mentioned here, but he doesn’t put in an appearance until page 3). Hettal was the Contact Team member that Zandarin eventually replaced, as Aria briefly mentioned to Darvin.
I always assumed TerSA was the NASA equivalent while IP was USAF/USN/DoD. Civilian/scientific versus military. Hence why IP always has more money and better gear, assuming the same rough kind of political situation exists in the Galaxioverse as in the present-day USA, And presumably the ‘Myradi’ are the requisite Unknown Alien Threat requiring the existence of a big-budget space military.
Is that an accurate summation or are there deeper subtleties to it?
Well, TerSA is a big private sector corporation, with interests in exploration, colonization, and exploitation (mining planets for their raw materials). They are the major player in space travel, and consequently they have lots of money. IP is more like the Coast Guard. Military, yes, but they depend on government funding which, like with NASA, is never quite sufficient.
The Myradi are an alien race, but they aren’t the local answer to the Klingons/Cylons/Gamilons. We’ll find out more about them eventually. I suppose you could compare them to the Vulcans…?
Hmmm, this short story in particular may end up being a little misleading, in regards to the IP vs. TerSA rivalry, since a number of the finer details of their respective organizations were firmed up during that period of time after the print comics and before the webcomic. So it may not quite be canon, but… close enough.