On The Mechanics of Slipspace and the Nature of Slipstream Travel

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==On The Mechanics of Slipspace and the Nature of Slipstream Travel==
===By Dr Attica Layne, Sc.D, ===
====INTRODUCTION====
The invention of the Slipspace Drive in the 23rd century (2291) marked a turning point for Human civilisation. Up until then, Mankind had languished in the Sol System, constructing, colonising, and settling wherever there was free space to do so, and making free space where there was not. 
Suitable planets close to the Sun were terraformed. Mercury became a proof-of-concept colony, proving that Mankind could live anywhere. Luna, the Martian Moons, the Lagrange points of every world were settled by waystations, supply depots, and rest stops—even Gas Giants were not spared the march of Mankind’s machinery and ingenuity, becoming host to recreational habitats, cruise industries, and refineries drinking deep of the residual plasma and hydrogen fuel.
Space itself, the uncaring and inhospitable void, was colonised. Deep Space Arcologies and Asteroid Mining complexes with populations millions strong.
Even the deep sea was settled and exploited to feed the sprawling masses.
The invention of FTL travel by Tobias Fleming Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa was mired in political turmoil, sabotage, and social debate. Many believed that a human population with access to FTL would quickly grow beyond their means. Others believed that Humanity could subsist off of the resources within Sol for the next million years, thus eliminating the need for extrasolar colonisation and settlement entirely. 
But the belief of Tobias Fleming Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa was that a complacent populace would continue to grow, and eventually destroy itself. No matter how widespread they were, ever-increasingly destructive conflict would follow. The colonisation of star systems outside of Sol would lead to a civilisation ever-striving to expand the frontiers of Human knowledge, and should the worst occur, each colonised System represented a chance for Humanity to persist.
The first Slipspace journey, undertaken by the newly-created UEG Survey Corps, was a disaster. Knowing nothing of the inner workings of Slipspace, the vessel and its inhabitants were woefully unprepared for the non-euclidean dimensions.
The vessel was considered lost with all hands, but the data it gathered proved instrumental to the UEG and Humanity’s understanding of Slipspace mechanics.
Over the centuries, Humanity’s knowledge of Slipspace has grown from these humble beginnings into a comprehensive understanding—if not comprehension—of the antediluvian expanse. 
Now, Tobias Fleming Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa can rest eternally bound, in death as they were in life, knowing that their invention allowed Mankind to prevent its own extinction, a thousand thousand times over.
====Lagrange Points====
Lagrange Points are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two body system, like the Sun and the Earth, produce enhanced equal regions of attraction and repulsion. At these points in Space, the gravitational pull of two large masses precisely equals the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them. A ship, satellite, or asteroid can sit here quite comfortably, and the gravity of the two body system will not affect the object
These gravitational balance points, and areas of equilibrium within a Star System, are typically located some distance away and between two sources of gravity, typically containing Trojan or Greek Asteroids trailing or preceding the orbits, respectively (mass depending).
This gravitational equilibrium makes Lagrange points suitable vectors for the plotting of slipspace travel, and the entering/exiting of Slipspace routes. Exceedingly large Lagrange points, particularly stable points preceding and trailing Gas Giants, are also useful for in-system jumps between points within a Star System.
In essence, this means that Lagrange Points are entrance and exit vectors for Slip-capable vessels. As such, these areas are patrolled heavily by both the UNSC and the CMA, if not settled outright by deep-space Arcologies and Waystations.
Trojan and Greek asteroids around Gas Giant Lagrange points are suitable for colonisation and exploitation, either within suitably-sized asteroid habitats or orbital arcologies. This provides a convenient rest stop for crews exiting Slipspace after long-haul flights, refuelling stops for civilian and military flotillas, and preliminary trade between crews and pilots to stimulate local asteroid colonies and commerce. 
This, naturally, means that suitably large Lagrange points become hubs for illicit activities as well as official and legal business, including but not limited to Black or Grey Market trading, Piracy, Pilotage, and trafficking. Lower-stability Lagrange points are often utilised by Pirates and smugglers to enter and exit systems undiscovered, at the risk of significant Subspace disturbances while entering and exiting from these unstable points, and stresses on the hull integrity of vessels due to this.
Some smaller Lagrange points can often have entire Pirate or Insurrectionist holdouts located in their stable zones, and often avoid detection due to their nature as small utility stations or lightly-manned coordination centres. Diligent patrols are required to discover them, as they hold no resources on-site and maintain comms silence, relying on cells and couriers to send and deliver messages to other holdouts within the same system.
Similar to ONI Prowlers, Insurrectionist or Pirate redoubts can vent their excess heat energy into Wavespace. Wavespace monitoring stations must be deployed relatively close by, which in and of itself presents a problem. Deployment of bases at Lagrange points necessitates either a towing vessel of some kind, deploying the base from hangar bays, or construction on-site.
If the Pirate or Insurrectionist base detects an ONI or UEG or UNSC or CMA monitoring station nearby via its own Wavespace emissions, the base will be abandoned.
Lagrange-Point Transitions are not to be confused with Covenant in-system Slipspace Jumps, which can be executed regardless of proximity to Gravity Wells—a feat far beyond that of all but the most advanced UEG and UNSC Drives.
In-System Jumps specifically eschew all known laws of Slipspace Transitioning. They represented an unknown, hitherto never-before seen property of Subspace; the ability for short, controlled jumps mere millions of kilometres long.
====Wavespace====
Wavespace is a component dimension of Slipspace, and like Slipspace, it is inhospitable to matter at large. It is a realm composed entirely of energy, where gravity cannot bind matter together. It ‘undercuts’ Slipspace in a way that many other dimensional components do not. While tangible realspace objects may pass into Slipspace unaffected, they can only do so when remaining unobserved in the Slipstream.
For example, an asteroid or debris field that is pulled into Slipspace will remain whole in the Slipstream until it is observed by an outsider. At which point, the object(s) will transition back to realspace, as Slipspace essentially ‘rejects’ the corporeal matter being observed, and the rules of the universe re-assert themselves. This is why relay and monitoring stations continuously scan local Slipspace fields for anomalous variables, such as debris fields or asteroids.
A transitioning asteroid will always emerge at the speed in which it entered, creating a potential source of danger, as it will transition near the observer, and the transition will occur at a random vector. Patterns or methods of predicting what the transition vector may be have proven ineffective, and so station defenses are always on alert.
This re-assertion of the rules of reality is why Slipspace Drives must remain active during the entirety of a journey through Slipspace. Slipspace Drives do more than merely rip open the fabric of realspace to allow transition, they also ‘shroud’ the object passing through in a ‘web’ of quantum filaments, retaining a bubble of realspace around the object as it passes through the alien dimension.
This field is maintained by the particle accelerators, which continuously generate the exotic particles needed to sustain the field. A similar process is utilised in UEG Fusion Reactors to ensure total magnetic containment, and is one of the reasons why Fuel Dump-type cascade failures and self-destruct measures are so dangerous, as the containment field is total. This lasts until such a time that the contained plasmic energy exceeds containable limits, at which point, it explodes violently.
In Wavespace, however, matter that enters it cannot hold itself together, even with an active quantum field and so ‘dissolves’ into pieces, then molecules, then individual particles, then down into subatomic particles. Until all that passes into Wavespace becomes pure energy.
This does not, however, mean that Wavespace is a useless component. Indeed, as an energy transfer and storage medium, it is exceedingly efficient at absorbing energy, excited particles, and relaying energetic streams of radiation.
In this it has become the backbone of the Office of Naval Intelligence’s Prowler Corps, and the UEG Colonial Waypoint Network—the interstellar network that serves as a form of FTL Communications.
ONI Prowlers and other stealth vessels and stations come with a layer of piezoelectric crystals sandwiched between hull layers. This allows heat produced by the station to be absorbed, and transferred along this crystalline layer without showing up on exterior heat sensors. The heat then passes into internal heat sinks located in the Engineering bays, where particle accelerators open periodic bridges to Wavespace. The Cherenkov Radiation produced by this reaction is itself absorbed by the Wavespace portals immediately.
Heat then passes from the Heat Sinks through a series of cooling channels, where Wavespace leeches the heat remarkably efficiently, so much so that such a cooling method is only employed periodically so as to eliminate risks of the cooling channels being damaged by the temperature differentials created by such rapid cooling.
While the quantum field protects objects that enter Slipspace from dissolving or being rejected by the non-euclidean dimension, a similar field may be employed to protect messages passing through Wavespace.
This allowed the UEG to establish an interstellar communications network with solar and extra-solar colonies, removing the issue of distance and travel times when it came to communications. While interplanetary voice-and-video is somewhat accessible, the interstellar messaging service is limited, and oftentimes reliant on text exclusively. Video files and streamed content is expensive, both to send and receive, and so official broadcasts, news footage, and approved content receive priority over general traffic.
Many colonies download data in the form of decoded text strings from the UEG Capital to have access to the sum total of human knowledge in ‘online’ repositories. The text strings are then re-compiled into component images, videos, and data, so as to offer the illusion of an instantaneous network. A colonist on Tribute may request a video file from Earth, and what gets relayed is instead a file located within their Colony’s internal databases.
While this is not a perfect system, and access to the Waypoint network is still crucial for access to information not kept on local servers, it mitigates request numbers for the most popular of media.
However, this means that any update to central hubs on Earth or the Sol Colonies must then be disseminated across the entirety of the Colonial network, which takes time. Depending on how large the updated video file or image or text string may be, months may pass before Outer Colonies receive these updated files. In rare cases, even years.
Oftentimes, courier vessels are employed to pass along these updated data packets to far-flung reaches of Human space. This leaves them at the mercy of Slipspace topography, most notably, the Lane network.
====Lanes====
Slipspace is an omnidirectional travel medium, much like realspace, though with significantly less ‘distance’ between destinations. This distance is not linear, like it is in realspace. It is, for lack of a better term, compartmentalised. From the perspective of a crew within a ship or a monitoring station, the ship may appear to be travelling in a straight line.
But if one were to be within the slipstream in another vessel, monitoring the first via purely visual mediums, the ship would appear to ‘phase’ into and out of the Slipstream, even ‘skipping’ ahead or lagging behind in the stream.
It is important for monitoring stations to be properly calibrated in accordance with local Slipstream ‘topography’. Relay and comms stations may monitor changes to the local Slipstream fields, and send data to Slipspace monitoring stations to update their topography projections. In this way, monitoring stations can more accurately detect ‘silhouettes’ of travelling objects within Slipspace.
This means that conventional ‘lanes’ do not technically exist. However, certain pathways between stars are more hospitable to travelling ships than others. For example, it is theoretically possible for a vessel to jump from Sol to Epsilon Indi—a journey of six months via other means—and make it to the destination unharmed.
But, to do so, the ship will need to pass through several ‘problem areas’ mapped out and monitored by stations across Human space. These problem areas are composed of Eddies, Dead Zones, Storms, and can induce temporal anomalies, STP Events, Cascade Failures, or even in the worst-case scenario, Fractalline Events.
Lanes were mapped out as Humanity explored, learned how to monitor the Slipstream, and established monitoring stations to then map further safe passages through the stars from where the stations were established.
These stations then served the dual purpose of monitoring a system’s local Slipstream for disturbances, such as those caused by asteroids or vessels.
While unsanctioned vessels may attempt to brave the untamed Slipstream for glory or fame, this is considered an illegal and unsupported activity. The inherent dangers of plunging into Slipspace ‘blind’ are well documented.
Lanes are essentially areas or regions of Slipspace where travel is the safest it can be, and is generally undisturbed by Eddies, Storms, Anomalies, or other such esoteric vagaries of the medium. In fact, it has been put forth that official terminology should recognise them not as Lanes or Highways, but as Rivers. This has been widely debated among the scientific community.
Sol supports three major Lanes. These Lanes lead directly to Epsilon Eridani, Alpha Centauri, and Paris, among others. Indirectly, they can be used to travel to other stars utilised as transit points to alternative 'Lanes'. Other stars are ‘shrouded’ by anomalous Slipstream events, and are therefore avoided. Of course, dissident elements and outcasts such as pirates will often dare to brave the streams, seeking to evade pursuers or slip into systems unnoticed, as their signatures will often ‘fade’ into the Subspace background, especially if their vessels are minimally-powered, or light-tonnage.
The dangers of such illicit transit are not to be understated. The briefest contact of a vessel with a Slipstream Eddy, Dead Zone, Storm, or Temporal Anomaly can have dire consequences for the ship and its crew.
====Eddies====
Eddies were first observed in 2338 by the UEG Sojourner, a Survey Vessel tasked with exploring then-frontier space. While en-route between Sol and Farwatch, it was caught in an Eddy. A Monitoring station had marked a safe vector to breach Slipspace and journey to the neighbouring star. When the Sojourner made the jump, it was caught in a hitherto-unknown anomaly class that the monitoring station flagged as a software glitch.
The vessel emerged from Slipspace during an STP event, between the two star systems, and limped back to Sol via short burst-jumps back towards the system they left. When they arrived, they found that they were declared missing after weeks had elapsed past their estimated arrival time. On their own mission clocks, merely three days had passed.
While Eddies do not always cause STP events or Temporal Anomalies, these are the most common consequences of being caught in a Slipstream Eddy.
Officially classified as ‘Stagnant Slipstream Zones’, Eddies can cause a ship to be waylaid for hours or even days, or in severe cases weeks to months. In rare cases, ships may not ever emerge from an Eddy.
It is theorised that the ever-shifting nature of Slipspace, and the ‘phase’ effect that vessels naturally experience when they breach the Slipstream to travel causes the ship itself to generate ‘currents’ as they pass. These currents of energy can then cause a feedback loop, or one may exist already from other matter passing through, and the ship gets caught in the subspace equivalent of a whirlpool.
In extreme cases, a Fleet or Battlegroup making an insertion into Slipspace will cause an Eddy or group of Eddies coalesced into a Storm, to be left behind, essentially cutting the Battlegroup or Fleet off from the lane they used to make the journey, and forcing them to take other, longer routes back. Commanders and Admirals must keep this in mind when planning journeys of many ships, lest they cut off their means of escape, retreat, or return.
This is one reason why it became so popular for many Admirals to assign mobile Cradles to their fleets to make the journey with them.
====Dead Zone====
As the name suggests, ‘Dead Zones’ or ‘Subspace Cutoff Points’, are zones of space where Slipspace Drives are rendered inert, or ‘dead’. The reasons for this are unknown, and Dead Zone diameters can fluctuate wildly from day to day, though rarely do they ever recede from or pass into a Star System. 
If a ship passes into a Dead Zone while in Slipspace, nebulous though the definition may be, the vessel will immediately suffer a negative slipspace-related event, be it an STP, Cascade Failure, or Fractalline Event.
Ships and Fleets will rarely pass through the outer edges of a Dead Zone when transitioning between star systems on either side of the zone. As the diameter of the Zone fluctuates, this typically results in the temporary stranding of the ship between Star Systems for a day or two until the Zone retreats, and Slipspace Drives can again be spun up.
The most severe Dead Zones are permanent, prevent exploration into star systems, or block transit between star systems at certain vectors.
Milder forms of Dead Zones may manifest in the wake of or preceding a Subspace Storm. 
 
====Storms==== 
Storms, or ‘Significant Subspace Disturbances’ are regions of Slipspace where multiple Eddies have converged into a ‘Maelstrom’, though this is not an accepted term like Eddies. Maelstroms or Storms can waylay entire Fleets for months of transit time, the effects of which on Realspace temporal mechanics are unknown and poorly documented.
As vessels cause ‘wakes’ behind them when they travel through Slipspace, significant fleet movements can cause minor eddies or severe maelstroms. At their most severe Storms, Maelstroms, or SSDs can cause STP events.
Almost invariably, Storms will cause Temporal Anomalies to ships passing through, though curiously, they have no effect on Wavespace, whose messages pass through such storms undisturbed.
A storm can even focus around a central ‘eye’, in which a ship may be stranded or lost for a significant amount of time, though rarely forever. Many storms settle after a few days or months, diffusing into the standard Slipspace background.
 
====Temporal Anomalies====
A Temporal Anomaly is any time discrepancy between vessels in Slipspace and the passage of time in Realspace. Most notably observed when ships or Fleets have passed through Eddies Maelstroms, or been affected by Dead Zones.
Research and documented cases of Temporal Anomalies are often overlooked as ‘quirks’ of the medium, despite the potential of the occurrences. The most extreme of these 'quirks' can waylay a ship for days or weeks past their arrival date. Rarely, a vessel can be later by weeks on their internal clocks, while mere days have passed in Realspace.
More research is needed to study, and understand this phenomenon. As of now, despite the ubiquitous usage of Slipspace as humanity's sole means of FTL (and indeed, the only one thus far to be proven possible), the phenomenon is little more than an esoteric and unknowable phenomenon.
====Slip-Termination, Preventable====
A Slip Termination: Preventable is when a Slipspace Drive drops out of Slipspace for unknown reasons. Any fault within coolant housings, the particle accelerators, the quantum field, or even the moorings mounting a drive to the vessel may cause an STP event. 
If luck holds, the rules of reality shall re-assert themselves, and the dimensions of Slipspace will ‘reject’ the vessel, shunting them out of Slipspace in what is colloquially known as a ‘Bonebreaker’—a transition so sudden that it threatens the lives of those onboard and not secured in some manner. 
As the laws of reality re-assert themselves over the ship (thanks to the Slipspace Drive shutting down, thus removing the Quantum Field around the ship), the vessel transitions. While technically it was going FTL speeds in the dimensions of Slipspace without temporal relativity or energy concerns, this causes anomalies when transitioning in such a forceful manner.
Objects or individuals may be ‘shunted’ into other rooms or spaces aboard the ship, just as the ship was ‘shunted’ out of Slipspace. If not secured or tethered, this movement can be fatal, as the individual may find themselves locked within ducts or vents, trapped within coolant housings, or even within reactors.
====Cascade Failures====
A Cascade Failure is a much worse outcome of a malfunctioning Slipspace Drive..
The Particle Accelerators at the heart of the Drive start producing particle impact events, similar to what happens during the spin-up/wind-down segments. Except instead of being directed outside the ship towards a Slipspace Rupture, it instead produces microscopic Black Holes across the entire ship.
 
These black holes respond differently to Slipspace than Normal Space, refusing to close via Hawking Radiation. Instead, they give off a continuous stream of this radiation, similar to a Slipspace Rupture would in Realspace. However, unlike a slipspace rupture, this emission of radiation does not cause the black holes to close.
These black holes then absorb the Subspace equivalent of cosmic background radiation and/or dark matter, forming unstable spacetime bridges, similar to Slipspace Ruptures, though unstable.
The best case scenario in a Cascade Failure is that the Slipspace Drive is rendered inoperable by the microfissures torn by the microblack holes, which will stop manifesting once the Slipspace Drive ceases to function, and the ship suffers an STP Event.
The worst case scenario is the black holes continuing to manifest around the ship as 'shards'. These ‘shards’ of slipspace constitute a Fractalline Event Emergency, and a Slipspace Drive should immediately be powered down.
This worst-case scenario invariably leads to a Fractalline Event. A little understood phenomenon in which spacetime breaks down onboard the vessel, and can culminate in a loss of all hands.
====Fractalline Events====
Fractalline Events are a potential development of Cascade Failures. Shards of fractured space will appear around the ship, spurred by the runaway micro black hole development of a Slipspace Drive undergoing a Cascade Failure.
These ‘Shards’ are unresearched, transient phenomenon that invariably lead to the destruction of the ship and all aboard her if left unchecked, or if the vessels does not immediately transition back into realspace via an STP event—which is the only method of transitioning once a Fractalline Event occurs.
It is theorised that the ‘Shards’ of fractured space are actually miniature ‘Gateways’ to other places and times, though this is dismissed. In all likelihood the ‘’Shards’ are merely localised space/time ‘errors’ manifesting within the drive’s onboard computer, and then actualised via the quantum field. Essentially meaning that these areas of spacetime, being ‘broken’, are incredibly dangerous, have incredibly high localised gravity fields or temporal quirks, and should be avoided at all costs.
Anecdotal evidence of witnesses of such events describe staring into a ‘Shard’ as ‘disconcerting’, ‘dreadful’, ‘fear-inducing’, or ‘as though I were staring into something wrong’.
====Slipstream Exposure====
Exposure to Slipspace is fatal. As there is nothing in Slipspace besides energetic particles, exposure to ‘raw’ Slipstream incurs a significant risk of radiation poisoning. There is no air in Slipspace, no gravity, and no pressure, and so exposure without a suit is as fatal as exposure to vacuum. Loss of consciousness results in fifteen seconds, death or permanent brain injury in three minutes.
It is a popular saying that ‘There is nothing in Slipspace but what you bring with you’, and it holds true. The majority of the energy found within Slipspace is the result of prior incursions into the multi-dimensional realm. Energy in the form of cosmic background, sunlight, stellar radiation, heat energy, and quantum field fluctuations follows a ship into the ruptures. 
The quantum field generated by the Slipspace Drive keeps this energy inside a ‘bubble’ around the shp, giving both a slipspace rupture and a ship in-transit the iconic blue/white ‘glow’.
In rare cases, a slipspace drive may cease to generate a quantum field, but remain activated. In this event, the Slipstream will attempt to reject the matter and cause an STP event, though is unable to due to the Slipspace Drive remaining active. If this occurs, then the ship will begin rapidly cooling. It will lose the ‘bubble’ of Realspace energy surrounding it, and be unable to exit Slipspace entirely.
Exposure in this instance is mitigated by the titanium hull of the vessel, and interior radiation shielding, though the radiation dosage can still exceed annual safe limits for Naval or freight crew.
In this instance, ships have been known to drift for days or even months at a time, with varying effects on the passage of time in real space.
The psychological effects of this exposure are varied and minimally-studied, though it is possible that vivid hallucinations occur as energetic particles and isolation cause rapid deterioration of the psyche.
Paranoia, insomnia, heightened aggression, headaches, nosebleeds, general malaise and irritability can all manifest during prolonged Slipspace journeys, and are exacerbated when the quantum field collapses while in-transit. 
====Emergency FTL Transitions====
Emergency FTL Transitions, or ‘Blind Jumps’, are a form of Slipspace travel in which the vessel initiates a jump without plotting a vector. It was historically utilised to save critically-damaged ships from combat, and later to prevent The Covenant from tracking Subspace Vectors of retreating ships and fleets back towards Human colony worlds.
The Covenant, however, demonstrated a knack for tracking vessels while within Subspace, regardless of exit vectors plotted. It is thought that they could somehow observe the filaments of Subspace, and plot out the most-likely automated transition point within local Slipstream topography, and therefore either ambush fleeing starships, track them for a nearby patrol, or otherwise harass them despite their vectorless travel.
Vectorless travel did have one advantage over Covenant instruments, however—if an exit vector was plotted while in-flight, the Slipstream would ‘allow’ the vessel to phase transition at this exit vector, and the Covenant would be unable to track it. 
Regardless, Blind Jumps were always a gamble, as vessels couldn’t know if they would have enough time to plot an exit vector within the realm of Subspace, or be at the mercy of a premature phase transition.
====CONCLUSION====
Slipspace is a little-understood non-euclidean realm, and its dangers cannot be overstated. Empty, devoid of life or matter, and intent on rejecting any matter that passes through it—including us. It however remains mankind’s only pathway between the Stars, and should be respected as much as the oceans of any world.
More so, perhaps, as while the oceans command respect, they are confined to terrestrial metrics. They must obey physics as we know them, they are at the mercy of stars and space as much as we are, and they are finite.
Slipspace is none of these things. It is unconfined, unshackled, unbound by physics, and at the mercy of nothing. It holds the universe hostage, by permeating it, interacting with it, and fundamentally breaking it in many ways.
That we can even utilise it for travel without risking the fabric of reality itself is a miracle.
Every journey incurs a cost, whether it be to ships, crew, physical or mental health, it is all accounted for in the end. And everyone must pay their dues.
Category:Lore
Category:Worldbuilding
Category:Essays