Space Jumping
Space Jumping
“The stars no longer hold us hostage. To voyage is our right, not our privilege.” – Dr. Darya Piona
Overview
The Space Jump is a revolutionary mechanism that reshaped interstellar travel, allowing ships to bend the fabric of space and instantaneously leap across vast lightyear distances. First engineered by the visionary scientist Dr. Darya Piona in Adam Steward's home galaxy (called the Origin Galaxy by many), the Space Jump transformed not only trade and exploration but the very structure of galactic politics.
Unlike conventional propulsion, which is constrained by relativistic limits, or hyperspeed (which moves space around the ship), the Space Jump folds spacetime itself, creating a temporary corridor between two points. This technique bypasses the need for the now antiquated hyperspeed technology or wormhole harnessing and has become the dominant method of long-distance travel in countless galaxies.
Origins
Inventor: Dr. Darya Piona, regarded as one of the greatest minds of her era (Pioneer, or Great Expansion era).
First Jumps: Conducted in isolated test regions far from populated systems due to the risks of spacetime collapse.
Proliferation: Dr. Piona partnered with Adam Steward, whose charisma and influence carried the schematics across galaxies. Together, along with The Universal Archivist (Rose Steward), they ensured the technology spread beyond single-world monopolies, preventing it from becoming the sole property of empires or corporations.
This act — considered either visionary generosity or dangerous recklessness — seeded the second known era of the Mirror-Universe now known as the Great Expansion or Pioneer Era, when civilizations that once looked inward began leaping into the stars.
Mechanics of the Space Jump
Charging: A Space Jump requires time to charge, with the duration proportional to the distance being crossed.
Example: For standard issue Space Jump Drive (SJD) schematics, A 10-lightyear jump may take up to a minute, while a 1,000-lightyear leap could require several days of charge time.
Ship Variability: Not all vessels are equal.
Faction Flagships or interplanetary grade ships in general have highly efficient cores, drastically reducing charge times.
Civilian or smuggler vessels often rely on older or salvaged drives, increasing the risk of misjump or extended preparation.
Navigation: Precision is crucial. Poorly calculated jumps can leave a ship stranded in deep voids or destabilize the spacetime corridor, causing catastrophic collapse. Since Space jumping is moving space itself, it is playing with spatial and gravitational energy, so poorly crafted SJDs have a high risk of creating temporary gram sized black holes (lasting for less than a millisecond on average).
Energy Cost: Jumping drains massive amounts of power, often requiring specialized reactors or fuel sources. This limitation has given rise to sprawling refuelling stations and jump-docks across the galaxies.
Risks and Dangers
Overextension: Attempting a jump beyond a ship’s rated capacity can rupture the jump core, collapsing the corridor mid-transit and resulting in forceful ejection. Space Jumping is bending space itself, forceful ejection (if not destroying the ship completely) could land you anywhere and likely, in pieces. Survivors are unheard of.
Spatial Drift: Inaccurate calibrations can deposit a ship lightyears off-course, the longer you charge for a space jump (in regards to the propensity of the ship's SJD), the more precise the transportation will be. The SJD works by connecting the specific location of the ship to the destination inputted by bending space. So that process of bending space hones in destination; therefore inaccurate calibrations (such as charging time being lower than needed) will result in being jumped to a general radius of a few lightyears around the specific destination. The SJD will automatically release and jump when the charging time is fully complete and accurate, so there is no such thing as charging for too long (in terms of safety with the SJD).
Jump Echoes: Some claim repeated jumps through the same route leave behind faint, unstable “echo corridors” — ghost paths in space, unpredictable and dangerous. This is vastly ruled as a superstition, although use of the SJD does leave tiny scars on the universe that take some time to heal.
Psychological Strain: While instantaneous to outside observers, some jumpers describe fleeting visions, distortions, or even a sense of something watching. These reports remain unverified but persist across galaxies.
Impact on the Universe
The Space Jump fundamentally altered the trajectory of civilizations:
Trade: Markets once confined to systems expanded galactically. Exotic goods, materials, and knowledge travel faster than ever.
Warfare: Armies and fleets can now cross lightyears overnight, shifting the balance of power. Wars of attrition gave way to rapid strike campaigns.
Exploration: Worlds thought unreachable became accessible. Entire new civilizations were encountered within a single generation.
Culture: The psychological horizon of sentient beings expanded. The stars became less distant, less divine, more human.
Confinement: Yet despite all of this, you'd be hard pressed to find many people travelling between galaxies (intergalactically). The time it'd take to jump out of a galaxy, let alone jump into another one, would be so astronomically long for 99% of people (ranging on multiple decades) that no one sees the worth of doing it. That is unless they have a ship specifically built for that purpose and with that level of technology, (like the Salem Fleet's Melchizedek which can travel between galaxies in mere days); however that kind of money and resource is transgenerational, to amass that kind of wealth and expertise you would need to be a universal entity or figure over the course of atleast one complete era.
Legacy of Dr. Piona
Dr. Darya Piona’s name is spoken with reverence, fear, or disdain, depending on the speaker. Some hail her as the liberator of countless natives; others condemn her for destabilizing galactic structures by introducing dangerous technology freely.
Her partnership with Adam Steward ensured the Space Jump was not controlled by a single empire, but this very freedom also sowed chaos: piracy, smuggling networks, and shadow wars thrive thanks to Jump-enabled mobility. Such an Empire like the Archi Empire were only possible due to this technology.
Even so, her invention remains the single most important leap in Universal history.
Current Use
Today, the Space Jump is as common as sails on ancient seas. Fleets, merchants, explorers, and outlaws alike rely on its corridors. But with every leap across the abyss, one silent truth remains: space itself remembers, and bending it always leaves scars.