A device that allows the only known form of relative faster than light (FTL) travel, Breach drive is a relic technology whose invention and inventors have been lost to history.
Breach drives allow spacecraft to puncture conventional spacetime and enter Breachspace. Once the equipped craft reaches its predetermined destination point within Breachspace, the drive punches it back into normal space, simultaneously sending the craft back in time to the moment after its departure. From an outside frame of reference, such a craft will have traversed hundreds or thousands of light years in a matter of seconds. Due to the length of subjective time spent in Breachspace, and the dimension’s unique qualities, spacecraft crew must be kept in stasis for the duration of their journey.
The first recorded discovery of a relic Breach drive occurred in the thurgellian home system roughly three thousand years ago. Galactic civilization has long since reverse-engineered the Breach drive, allowing new units to be constructed and existing units maintained. However, the principles of physics which allow the drive to function are as yet undiscovered.
An alternate realm of spacetime, accessible using Breach drives, that allows relative FTL travel. The nature of Breachspace prevents its study beyond the most rudimentary data collectible by ships in transit; however, based on the data available, most physicists believe Breachspace to be a higher dimension of our own universe, rather than a parallel universe as some have suggested.
Spacetime in this dimension is contracted relative to normal spacetime. Craft traversing it can cover greater normal distances in less subjective time. For example, a distance of one thousand light years might be covered, at an average velocity of 0.3c, in 50–75 years of subjective time within Breachspace. It is not understood how the Breach drive is capable of navigating the temporal dimension of Breachspace in order to allow an equipped vessel to emerge mere seconds of outside frame time after its departure.
Certain exotic properties of Breachspace render the dimension inherently hostile to conventional processes of consciousness. As such, any conscious beings, artificial intelligences, or sufficiently advanced computer systems entering Breachspace will suffer catastrophic and irreversible psychosis or system failure. As such, stasis and shutdown, respectively, are required for any journey through Breachspace, no matter how short the duration. In rare cases where individuals have entered Breachspace conscious and emerged alive, subjects have displayed symptoms ranging from catatonia to violent frenzy. No such subjects have survived more than a few days.
Since Breach drive became ubiquitous, stories and myths have circulated galactic civilization regarding supernatural entities and properties existing within Breachspace, such as demons, parallel realities, and afterlives. Studies of the dimension, though limited, have revealed no evidence of any such phenomena.
The cannons fire projectiles consisting of fragments of a super-dense metamaterial manufactured from raw resources by Warden itself. The fragments are engineered to explode shortly after impact, adding to the kinetic energy imparted by the projectiles’ extreme velocity. The shards also have a property which makes them an efficient conductor of high-energy plasma. Each round is encased by a magnetoplasma field, which aids in melting through target armor. When the shards detonate, the field disperses, adding a thermal layer of destructive energy.
These properties combine in each round the accuracy and range of a conventional magnetic accelerator with the destructive potential of a much larger warhead, making Warden unmatched in combat at railgun range. Rumors persist that a miniaturized version of this technology is used in a sidearm-type weapon carried by one of the ship’s officers. Tolvaadus defense experts insist that such miniaturization would be impossible, and the rumors must be the result of exaggeration.
The primary weapon of the mercenary starship Warden. Although superficially similar to railguns and other magnetic accelerator weapons commonly employed by militaries throughout the galaxy, shard cannons are in fact much more powerful and versatile, and apparently unique to the warship, whose provenance is unknown.
