The core artificial intelligence (AI) technology used by the Interstellar Compact military. ANNs, sometimes colloquially referred to as “simulated intelligences,” are not truly unshackled artificial general intelligences (AGI), in that they do not possess true sapience or self awareness. Instead, ANNs possess all the other capabilities of a sapient being, with reaction times, data storage and information process capabilities orders of magnitude beyond even the most heavily augmented biological mind.
ANNs are indispensable to the cyberwarfare operations of naval ships; only they posses the processing power, speed, and adaptability necessary to go toe-to-toe with Cipher cyberwarfare systems, including managing the adjustments necessary to maintain a ship’s stealth screen. They are also the only systems capable of making the constant picosecond-scale calculations required by the Stardrive.
In addition, with the help of drones ANNs handle the majority of the basic functions of running a starship or military installation which would once have required human crew, such as routine maintenance and communications. This results in the crews of modern warships being a fraction the size of vessels in earlier eras, even when of comparable or greater size and mission capability.
Modern naval vessels require enormous amounts of power to function; in the case of larger vessels, their power requirements exceed the output of the entire planet Earth in the early 20th century. Most larger vessels employ a number of high-efficiency antimatter catalyzed fusion reactors to generate power for everyday operation and basic systems.
However, only matter-antimatter reactions can provide the titanic power necessary to operate a naval vessel’s two primary combat systems: the UMAX particle weapon, and the magnetoplasma shield system. A ship’s matter-antimatter reactor powers only these systems, in order to preserve precious antimatter fuel and generation capability for combat.
Matter-antimatter reactions approach 100% efficiency and are extraordinarily stable once begin, provided they remain within a powerful magnetic bottle to ensure a matter annihilation cascade does not occur. However, the catastrophic potential of such a cascade means that M-A reactor operations are highly delicate, and require a reliable secondary power source, usually provided by fusion reactors, to function.
The potential for catastrophic failure also makes significant safety measures necessary. For instance, Compact and Cipher M-A reactors employ a similar failsafe which, in the event of shutdown, shunts all antimatter into magnetic vaults with their own internal nuclear power supplies. The design of the reactors will physically prevent the antimatter being removed from these vaults until the main reactor reaches a certain minimum power level, making it necessary for the supporting fusion reactors to come online before the antimatter reactor can be activated.
Kyran reactors rarely employ such a failsafe, making catastrophic failure a near-certainty in the event of a ship being disabled; this also makes it easier for Kyran crews to self-destruct their vessels to avoid capture, or strike a final blow against their enemies.
An experimental form of quantum radar using entangled neutrino pairs, rather than photons as in traditional quantum radar (see “Lidar,” below). An ENDAR set generates and sends out waves of sensor neutrinos; when these neutrinos interact with an object, their minute disturbances are instantaneously reflected in the entangled idler neutrinos contained within the ENDAR set. Since neutrino interactions are incredibly weak, the detectors assigned to observe the idler neutrinos must be extremely sensitive.
These weak interactions also mean that unlike with traditional lidar or radar, there is no data collection from a bounce-back or return of the sensor beams. Data can only be collected from the entanglement effect, making ENDAR scans substantially lower resolution than those possible with traditional quantum radar. Other major limitations of ENDAR in its current form are the high energy requirement and the rapid expending of source material for neutron generation, meaning sets can only be operated for a short time before needing to be recharged.
However, the great advantage of ENDAR is that neutrinos are able to pass through almost all matter. This allows an ENDAR set to generate a complete, if low-resolution, scan of an entire area and all the objects within it, regardless of any intervening terrain or other obstructions. This capability is extraordinarily valuable in a military context, particularly in ground or boarding operations—for example, by mapping the entire interior of a vessel or building and all the hostiles moving within it.
Neutrinos’ weak interactions also make it much more difficult for the subject of the scan to detect its source, potentially making it more useful as an active scan option during stealth combat situations. Currently, the technology remains in the field testing stage, in which capacity it has reportedly been deployed by some special forces units.
The basis of mass neutralization, HGEF technology was independently invented several times in known galactic history, the most notable being by the joint human-virgonid Project Stardrive in TSY 2095. Virgonids had invented generators capable of producing the anti-Higgs boson centuries earlier, allowing them to significantly reduce the mass of their ships and enable relatively practical sublight interstellar travel. After the project’s discovery of the graviton in TSY 2090, it was a relatively simple matter to adapt these generators to produce anti-gravitons as well.
This combined anti-Higgs/anti-graviton field was able to effectively neutralize the mass of an object and isolate it from the effects of gravity. Scaling this technology up eventually allowed faster-than-light travel using the Stardrive system (see below), but the HGEF served and continues to serve numerous more mundane functions as well, from increasing carrying capacity at the personal and industrial level, to reducing thrust requirements for take-off and landing vehicles.
The ability of an HGEF to neutralize an object’s mass scales with that mass, and its ability to nullify the effects of gravity scales logarithmically with the strength of the gravity currently acting upon the object. This means that an HGEF generator on, say, a human-sized object in 1g of gravity, is able to operate at only 20% of capacity. The HGEF on a cruiser-sized vessel in close orbit of an Earth-gravity planet is able to operate at only 0.5% capacity, and so on.
This effectively limits the ability of HGEFs to operate inside gravity wells, whether natural or artificially generated. Practically, this means that significant thrust is still required to escape gravity wells, that Stardrives cannot be operated too deep inside gravity wells, and so on. This creates opportunities for interdiction of Stardrive-capable vessels, for example, and also provides a simple defense against HGEF-equipped projectiles or suicide vehicles; an HGEF generator operating at or near full capacity that runs into a more powerful gravity source will invariably either shut down or overload. In the case of superluminal or near-superluminal projectiles and vehicles, even a controlled, sudden shutdown can be catastrophic.
An innovative technology originating in the UCC which interfaces ultra-high resolution holographic projections with neural implants to create holograms which can be physically interacted with. Holosomatic systems transmit information in real-time directly to the subject’s brain, creating near-perfect impressions of sensory experiences such as smell, taste, and touch.
Commercial holosomatic systems are designed not to create perfect representations of sensory experiences to avoid abuse. However, many people who have tested unrestricted holosomatics still report an indefinable sensation that the projections are not “real,” even in double-blind experiments; the mechanism behind this sensation is not currently understood.
Traditional quantum radar (colloquially known as lidar, or “light detection and ranging,”) is a sensor technology which relies on entangled pairs of photons to make detections. The lidar set generates and sends out sensor photons; when these interact with an object, the lidar set is able to determine physical information about the object, such as size, shape, and distance, using data both from the bounce-back or return of the photon beams/waves, and the minute disturbance of the sensor particles themselves, which is instantaneously reflected in the entangled idler photons contained in the detector itself.
The latter form of quantum detection occurs the moment the sensor photons interact with the object, regardless of distance, in some cases greatly reducing the time lag of a detection by the operator of the lidar set. However, the resolution of scans combining both return (which propagates back at the speed of light) and quantum detection data is greater.
Lidar scans can be mitigated or even defeated by advanced visual camouflage systems. Since lidar is also a form of active scanning, which may reveal the location of the sensor and its operator, it is rarely used in stealth-based combat situations.
Every naval ship’s last, most powerful, and most desperate line of defense. A ship’s drone screen serves as a conducting medium and generation network for a dual-layered high-energy plasma and magnetic field which can be used to vaporize incoming projectiles, absorb relatively low-energy maser and laser weaponry, and its primary purpose: deflect ultra-relativistic particle beam weapons.
Given the enormous destructive potential of UMAX-style weapons, a ship’s first and best defense is not to be detected at all, then to avoid being targeted. If these lines of defense fail, surviving a UMAX shot becomes extremely difficult. There is no known artificial force powerful enough to absorb such a shot; a ship’s only hope at survival is to deflect it.
Given the unique nature of UMAX shots, even this proves difficult. A UMAX particle beam is neutralized before it leaves the weapon, meaning it cannot be deflected by even the most powerful magnetic field. As such, any defense must first impart a charge to the shot before it can be deflected. This is where the dual nature of the magnetoplasma shield comes in. The primary purpose of the plasma field generated by the drone network is to impart a charge to the incoming beam so that the magnetic field can deflect it.
The deflection itself, however, presents a problem given the extreme power of a UMAX shot. An even greater degree of power is required to deflect it, which even a massive drone network is not capable of producing. Instead, the drones serve as a conducting network for the energy output of the ship’s main matter-antimatter reactors, which, by adding the drones’ own internal nuclear power generation, are the only source capable of exceeding the power of the shot and deflecting it. Doing so, however, invariably burns out the drone network, rendering it useless after a single deployment of the shield. This makes the decision of when to activate the shield one of the most vital choices a commander must make in the heat of combat; the survival of their ship often depends upon it.
Only larger ships such as ICN battle carriers have backup drone networks that can be deployed, allowing for additional uses of the shield; even in these cases, several minutes are usually required, at minimum, to deploy the shield, resulting in a window of vulnerability after it is initially deployed. The relative power output of the two ships in combat also determines a shield’s deflection potential: for example, a destroyer-class vessel’s shield simply cannot produce enough power to deflect a full-power shot from a battle carrier’s UMAX.
Directed energy weapons based on electromagnetic waves at the microwave frequency or below. Modern masers employ a combination of multiple energy frequencies to increase effect on target. Handheld masers are typically employed as sidearms by ICDF personnel due to ease of use, high capacity, and high accuracy, even though their effectiveness does not compare to superfluid-based weaponry.
Similarly, naval vessels tend to employ masers as point defense and close-in weapons, primarily for the purpose of shooting down incoming projectiles, drones, and fighter craft. Higher-output masers are also employed in Orbital Fire Support roles by dedicated OFS platforms such as refurbished Pinatubo II-class battleships, and OFS mission-typed ships like Darius Benson-class destroyers.
Networks of cybernetic implants designed to interface directly with the subject’s brain and nervous system. While neural implants of varying sophistication are fairly common in the Compact civilian market, extensive neural systems are standard-issue for all ICDF military personnel.
Military-grade neural implants serve a number of critical functions, including interpersonal communication, interfacing with AI-powered systems—such as a ship’s ANN, or a marine squad’s automated weapon platforms—and enhanced data storage and information processing. Implants also perform passive functions, such as improving reaction times and fine motor skills.
While some higher-end civilian implants can be controlled by thought alone, military-grade neural implants are typically controlled by voice commands and gestures. This is a security restriction, designed to prevent a hostile actor from gaining remote control of a neural implant, or worse, reversing its thought-control mechanism to influence the operator’s subconscious mind. Military neural implants’ control mechanisms rely on physical connection to the operator’s relevant brain areas and neuronal pathways, making them much more difficult to spoof.
This security comes at only a minimal cost in operating efficiency; for example, the verbal commands do not need to be spoken aloud to be interpreted. With practice, an operator can form the words in their verbal cortex but not express them physically or audibly, so that the implant will receive the command without the operator presenting any outward indication of having given it. Similarly, physical gestures do not actually require the full movement of the limb or digit to transmit, only a minimal activation of the associated neurons in the predetermined pattern.
Artificially grown humanoids of Cipher design, simulants are outwardly indistinguishable from human beings. Only a detailed molecular or genetic analysis is capable of identifying a simulant by certain hallmarks of artificiality, or by known simulant genetic lineages.
Simulants first began to appear in the latter half of the Galactic War, serving as spies, disinformation agents, and leave-behind operatives in Cipher-occupied Compact territory, later on appearing as infiltrators in free Compact systems. The first simulants were exact copies of humans captured by the Ciphers, in some cases centuries earlier; later ‘models’ are typically unique individuals, though many appear to be iterations based on combinations of the genetic material of previously abducted individuals, like future generations of natural human breeding pairings.
Despite advanced modern methods for detecting simulants, they remain a significant threat to Compact security, as they too continue to increase in sophistication. Certain theories persist that simulants are, in effect, a distraction; the real Cipher infiltrators are naturally-bred humans derived from entire captured populations and brainwashed by a lifetime under machine control. To date, however, no such individuals have been positively identified.
The system that allows FTL travel through a combination of HGEF technology (see above), advanced AI processing, and ultra-long range, ultra-high-resolution sensors. Only the combination of all three of these elements allows safe and effective faster-than-light, interstellar travel.
Like the HGEF, Stardrive seems to have been independently arrived at at least three times in galactic history. The Ciphers and the ara’ each invented a Stardrive analogue at some unknown point in the last several thousand years, if not earlier. The Yu-Nee Consortium invented a less-efficient, lightspeed capable Stardrive analogue circa TSY 2250, subsequently sharing it with the other members of the future Association of Non-Aligned Worlds. Other than these, the only known invention of the Stardrive occurred in the late 21st century in the Sol system, product of a joint human-virgonid engineering project. The first superluminal Stardrive test occurred in TSY 2100.Other species and factions now possessing the Stardrive—the melakeen, the xirān, the uthal, and the Kyrans—all acquired it by various means from virgonids or humans.
The first component of the Stardrive is the HGEF, which effectively reduces the mass of the ship to near-zero, and prevents gravity from acting upon it. This allows sufficiently powerful engines to propel the ship at, and eventually exceeding, the speed of light. Navigation is extremely important; as discussed in the relevant entry, even scraping too close to a powerful enough gravity well could cause catastrophic HGEF failure, and the likely disabling or destruction of the ship.
However the problem, as early Project Stardrive engineers quickly discovered, is much more acute than that. At such incredible velocities, gravity wells are not the only threat to a ship. While a ship’s navigational magnetic shields are capable of deflecting microscopic and sub-microscopic particles, something as small as a pebble-sized piece of space dust at relative superluminal velocities is imparted with titanic destructive force, while its inherent gravity is nowhere near strong enough to cause HGEF shutdown or collapse. A ship impacting such a pebble while under Stardrive is likely to be destroyed instantly.
The only way to prevent such a catastrophic collision is to sweep the ship’s path with ultra-high resolution sensors and make course corrections to avoid even small particles of dust. As such, a ship under Stardrive does not constantly travel at superluminal velocities; instead, it makes dozens of superluminal microjumps every second, each time dropping to sublight to scan the path ahead to the maximum range its sensors can achieve the required resolution, and making any required course corrections before jumping forward again.
This means that the effective velocity of a Stardrive-capable ship is limited not by the power of its engines or HGEF generators, but by the resolution of its sensors and the processing speed of its navigational AIs, the only systems fast enough to process the vast sensor data and make the necessary calculations without sacrificing any speed advantage the microjumps confer. On average, a ship at Stardrive spends 50% of each second FTL-jumping, and 50% scanning ahead. This also has the effect of halving the time dilation effects of long-range FTL travel.
An array of interlinked active and passive stealth systems are the first line of defense for Compact space and ground forces. These include AI-managed adaptive visual camouflage, heat and other emissions management systems, electromagnetic interference, physical and signals-based decoys, and extensive cyberwarfare suites. These systems combine to make Compact vessels, vehicles, and personnel extremely difficult to detect, and challenging to effectively target even once detected.
The high kill-potential of weaponry in the early 26th century makes effective stealth systems essential for survival in a combat environment, be it a fleet level space battle or a squad-level infantry engagement. The invention of QEC (see below) in the late 24th century eventually allowed for a quantum leap in the practical and widespread use of stealth in combat. QEC allows Compact units to maintain constant, untraceable, uninterruptible communications and positioning with one another without breaching stealth, drastically reducing the possibility of friendly fire incidents and lack of cohesion that in previous eras might have resulted from such extensive, individual level use of stealth systems.
The standard primary infantry weapon of the ICDF. Repeaters are essentially an ultra-high tech iteration on old chemical-reaction based projectile weapons, which for all their advanced capabilities are mechanically simpler than the firearms of the 20th and 21st centuries.For ammunition, repeaters use a solid block of a tungsten-derived metamaterial, loaded into the weapon much as magazines were in earlier firearms. The operator can program the weapon to fire shots of varying caliber at rates ranging from single fire to one hundred plus rounds per second. The magnetic extractor is paired with a laser, which shaves each programmed mass from the solid block before feeding it into the preparation chamber, where it is flash heated into a superfluid state.
This superfluid is a highly programmable metastate, allowing the firing chamber to imbue each round with set characteristics, from the shape of the round to the depth and density of material it should penetrate before expanding and stopping. This makes the SRR an ideal multi-purpose infantry weapon, equally effective at engaging single or area targets, armored or unarmored infantry, or light armored vehicles, and for engagements in high-collateral damage potential environments, such as in civilian areas or aboard light-skinned space vessels.
Special forces variants of the SRR may be fitted with additional modules, such as DEW (maser or plasma), missile, and anti-stealth.
The foundation of modern Compact civil and military communications and interstellar coordination, quantum entanglement communications were pioneered by scientists in the United Citizens’ Councils, based on technology recovered from the Ciphers during the Second Cipher War (2374 – 2379). Prior to the advent of QEC, practical interstellar communications were only possible through the use of Stardrive-equipped courier ships and drones, meaning messages might take weeks or months to travel from one end of human-and-allied space to the other.
Once perfected and disseminated, QEC technology allowed for instantaneous, uninterruptible and un-interceptable communications across any distance. This vastly increased the potential for interstellar coordination, and was one of the crucial developments which made the foundation of the Interstellar Compact possible.
Each QEC unit contains a core of compressed hydrogen separated into compartments. Each compartment represents a quantum bit. Each hydrogen atom in this core is paired with an atom in the corresponding qubit compartment of a twin core, entangled together during construction of the units. When one of these atoms—say, representing the number ‘1’—is activated by observation by the originating QEC unit, the spin of the entangled particle in the receiving unit is instantaneously resolved. This resolution is detected by the receiving unit, and interpreted as the number ‘1.’ Detecting this resolution without first observing the particle in the receiving unit is achieved by use of a Discrete Eigenstate Filter, which maintains the integrity of each particle’s superposition until it is intentionally observed. The DEF was the missing piece of the puzzle which captured Cipher technology revealed, finally allowing existing theoretical models for QECs to be put to the test in the late 24th century.
Communications between two entangled units can be carried on until the paired cores are exhausted of unobserved atoms. At this point, the cores must be exchanged for fresh entangled pairs. This makes quantum bandwidth an important factor in interstellar communications. Text-only comms consume less bandwidth than audio, which consumes less than visual, which consumes less than full holographic.
Most QEC units are not directly linked to one another, however. Facilitating practical, widespread interstellar communications requires the use of several QEC hubs spread throughout Compact space. A typical QEC unit’s entangled pair is located at one of these hubs. When a transmission is sent from an originating unit, it is received by the hub-pair; the AI managing the hub then locates the hub-pair of the transmission’s intended recipient, and relay the messages back and forth by this method.
While direct-entangled comms cannot be intercepted or jammed in any way, hub-based comms could be, in theory, if the hub itself were physically or digitally compromised. This makes QEC hubs among the most closely guarded sites in the galaxy, with physical access strictly controlled, no connection to non-QEC networks of any kind, and numerous safeguards set up to prevent the introduction of Trojan programs via authorized entangled communications.
The primary armament of most ICN vessels, the UMAX is a weapon of unparalleled destructive power. Derived from earlier Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam (UREB) weapons, which are still employed by many Kyran ships, the UMAX makes use of advanced Compact HGEF-based mass neutralization technology to create an even more devastating and effective weapon.
Capital-class UMAXes employ a two-stage system. The preparation stage is a cyclotron particle accelerator, which draws power directly from the ship’s matter-antimatter reactor to generate and repeatedly accelerate a beam of high-energy protons along a circular path until they reach a significant fraction of the speed of light, usually 0.6-0.75c.
The terminal stage is a linear accelerator (linac) with a built-in HGEF generator. The HGEF neutralizes the mass of the proton beam, allowing the linac to accelerate it up slightly above the speed of light. Once the proton beam leaves the linac and the effect of the HGEF, it regains its mass, but loses only a fraction of its velocity, resulting in a full-mass proton beam propagating at the speed of light.
At this velocity, relativistic effects act upon the beam, vastly increasing its effective range by slowing the rate at which bloom occurs from an outside perspective. The beam imparts titanic levels of thermal and kinetic energy, rendering conventional armor effectively useless. The beam also generates enough X-ray radiation when striking its target to create a braking radiation cascade; this typically results in massive casualties among the crew of a ship, even if the beam strike itself is not sufficient to destroy the vessel.
Other than not being shot at, the only known defense against a UMAX is a magnetoplasma shield of sufficient power to charge and then deflect the beam, though this approach carries significant limitations with current technology (see “Magnetoplasma Shield” above).
UMAX weapons are most commonly employed in space combat; while highly effective at saturation bombardment of ground targets from orbit, their use in this role is heavily restricted by the Interstellar Code of Armed Conflict, originally an internal Compact legal code to which the Association of Non-Aligned Worlds are now signatory. The ICAC prohibits the use of UMAX weapons against targets in or near biological population centers in all but the most exigent circumstances, due to the massive potential for collateral damage. Typically, the ICDF only employs UMAX weapons in orbital bombardment of Cipher worlds and installations. Notable exceptions include the bombardment campaign against the Kyran clan homeworlds from 2482 – 2484, which remains controversial to this day.
