The Wormhole Drive

[Werner]

This works like a jump drive, only it jumps between universes, this one in particular was installed in place of a jump drive of a free trade that was purchased by the Imperial Research facility on Luna in the Terran system, in involves an Ancient artifact found on Luna containing a wormhole mouth, the other mouth of the wormhole is located in a parallel universe. The free trader was stolen in 1080 Imperial by a Solomani agent who thought it was a time machine, he attempted to tamper with history in a way that would eliminate the Third Imperium from existance which would favor Terran independence. What the agent failed to realize was that he was actually operating in a parallel timeline with some resemblance to Terra's past history, he forgot to look at the planet's Venus and Mars, he just assumed they were dead worlds and focused on events in the American Civil War instead. Being somewhat of a racist, he helped the CSA win its war of independence, and with advanced tech he was importing from the OTU, he hoped to facilitate an early breakout into space by the Terrans, learning some some lessons from the past, his plan was to take over the CSA and then conquer the World, and then breakout into space catching the First Imperium unawares and by using superior tech conquer the First Imperium and move their capital to Terra.

Unfortunately for the Solomani agent, the Confederate government got wind of his plan and made one minor alteration to it by arresting him and squeezing him for information on how to operate the ship. The Confederate government took control of the ship, and has been using it to import parts for other starships, mainly scout ships, free traders and far traders, the parts had to fit within the cargo bay of the free trade with wormhole drive, so each ship was carefully disassembled into parts and then reassembled when brought over to the 1889 universe, nearby stars were thereby explored by that means, as the wormhole Starship has some important limitations:

1) A jump drive cannot jump carrying a wormhole drive within its jump bubble, normally the wormhole is in its contracted state, nothing can pass through it without the help of the wormhole drive. The wormhole drive contains a "closed" wormhole mouth, technically it is open but the throat is so constricted that only subatomic particles can pass through. When in such a closed state, which is most of the time, the gravitational gradient makes it impossible for a jump drive to operate near it, which prevents said jump drive from carrying the wormhole drive to another system, both ends are stuck in their respective Terran systems. A maneuver drive can move each end around within the system, but the only way to go to another system is by going STL.

2) When one end of the wormhole is moved around, the other end stays put, usually in orbit at the jump radius of a planet. When traveling through its wormhole, its jump bubble props open the throat of the wormhole so the Starship can pass through, this takes the same amount of Jump fuel as a Jump-1 drive that this drive replaces in the free trade Starship.

3) A jump through a wormhole is instantaneous as seen from the outside but takes about a week as experienced by the Ship's crew and passengers as the ship is moving sideways in time.

 

[aramis]

3) A jump through a wormhole is instantaneous as seen from the outside but takes about a week as experienced by the Ship's crew and passengers as the ship is moving sideways in time.

This has some knock on effects that would be major game changers in the OTU...

1. News - News travels by XBoat still, but the news of someone wanted can fill the sector in a day... it potentially makes typical PC plotlines a problem.
2. Military Action -
   • with this drive, a military can have a 2j2 or even 3j2 scout perform the same role as a J6 scout. The only difference is crew aging.
   • A scout can report to fleet and the fleet can get there before the scout's entry flash is detected (assuming it still causes flash), and the fleet drop in seconds later. Cost? 3 weeks age on the scouts, 1 week on the fleet.
3. Trade - instant communications means being able to respond to demand in hours or days, not the 2 weeks mininum of the OTU. This means, much like the telegraph did, trade shifts from speculation to demand flow. You won't see the wide variation in prices, either, as you have everyone within the scope of the networked worlds information as soon as the hops on the news net. THe cost of hourly departures can be eaten, so figure an hour per 3 pc...

 

[Werner]

This has some knock on effects that would be major game changers in the OTU...

1. News - News travels by XBoat still, but the news of someone wanted can fill the sector in a day... it potentially makes typical PC plotlines a problem.
2. Military Action -
   • with this drive, a military can have a 2j2 or even 3j2 scout perform the same role as a J6 scout. The only difference is crew aging.
   • A scout can report to fleet and the fleet can get there before the scout's entry flash is detected (assuming it still causes flash), and the fleet drop in seconds later. Cost? 3 weeks age on the scouts, 1 week on the fleet.
3. Trade - instant communications means being able to respond to demand in hours or days, not the 2 weeks mininum of the OTU. This means, much like the telegraph did, trade shifts from speculation to demand flow. You won't see the wide variation in prices, either, as you have everyone within the scope of the networked worlds information as soon as the hops on the news net. THe cost of hourly departures can be eaten, so figure an hour per 3 pc...

Except the wormhole drive can't be transported by jump drive, as it contains a tiny microscopic wormhole within that interferes with the jump drives performance as wormholes are made out of gravity, and the technology to create a wormhole is beyond the capabilities of the Imperium, though the capability to use one is not, the tech is similar enough to a jump drive such that jump drive parts can be used to repair a wormhole drive, and there is the fact that the wormholes were created by the Ancients and each wormhole connects to a different parallel universe, that means all travel between two universes as yo be done with that one wormhole drive that connects those two particular universes, one of which is the OTU, and none other, this creates a bottleneck problem.

If anyone wants to colonize a planet in another universe, they will have to depend on one ship to maintain all contact with the OTU, if that ship gets destroyed they are cut off, so as far as the Imperium is concerned, wormhole drives are a laboratory curiosity with little practical application, but research continues, some scientists think there might be a way to clone a wormhole so that more than one wormhole drive might connect to the same universe, so far no breakthroughs but research efforts are ongoing, the Imperium Scout Service has visited many parallel Earths, some are time lagged, some don't have humans on it, some have dinosaurs, but only one ship per universe can visit each one, there is ongoing research in parallel universes, but the Imperium doesn't see much point in making contact until they can have more than one starship visit each one, because of the one ship bottleneck problem.

 

[Werner]

Here are a few parallel universes the Imperial Scout Service could be investigating, one is called Niven One, the other is Niven Two.

Niven One is a ringworld one astronomical unit in radius and 1.6 million kilometers wide, it rotates once around the Sun every nine days, and there are eight shadow squares is a separate orbit at about one third of an au from the Sun, all the planets are missing from this Solar System. Further investigation by the scouts has revealed the presence of humans and other sophonts on the surface.

Niven Two is a Universe that is 5 billion years older than the OTU, there the Sun has swollen to a red giant, the Earth has been moved into an orbit around Saturn, as Saturn is now in the habitable zone of this star.

Romulus One has been time lagged to 1282 AD, the Roman Empire in this timeline has not fallen, it still dominates Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, the tech level is Early TL3, there is gunpowder technology.

Another parallel universe being investigated is one called Tatooine, a desert planet with about 1% free standing water orbits a close binary pair of G type main sequence stars, a scout officer landed his vessel on the outskirts of a settlement of moisture farmers - farmers that irrigate their crops using water that is condensed out of the atmosphere, after being injured in a hostile encounter with heavily bandaged nomadic tribesmen, he was rescued by a young woman named Rey Skywalker, she was an individual with incredible psionic talent, as the scout lost consciousness during the encounter, he was uunable to determine how she drove the hostile nomads away, she did display the unusual talent of being able to heal others using her psionic talent she called "the force" whatever that was.

After a brief conversation with the help of her gold-plated robot translator, it was explained that the Galaxy, which was not our own Milky Way, was governed or at least this part of it was governed by something called "the New Republic". Because of the presense of high psionic talented individuals such as Rey, the scout officer was sworn to secrecy upon return to Luna base when he filed his report.

Another parallel universe the Scout service investigated is Twilight, this time lagged parallel takes its name from the recent World War which took place on Terra involving the exchange of nuclear weapons, the Scout officer landed in Europe and was attacked by a band of Russian speaking soldiers wielding automatic rifles. Apparently this parallel took a divergence from OTU on the Solomani-Terran date of 1990 AD, when a military coup succeeded in extending the existance of the Soviet Union for another ten years, the current date in this time lagged parallel is 2000 AD, the Scout officer involved was able to fight off the Soviet soldiers and with the help of some Polish civilians, was able to return to his vessel, he returned with a few refugees to the Luna base, and some aid packages were sent back to the Polish villagers who helped the scout officer.

 

[Werner]

The Imperium has wormholes to all the parallel universes listed in GURPS Alternate Earths I and II, the Imperium is limited by the fact that it has only one Starship for each parallel it can reach, the Luna Base has requested funds for the purchase of a capital ship from the Third Imperium Navy, that way it can transport subordinate craft with jump drives to a parallel universe and explore other systems in that parallel universe other than the mainworld which is often but not always a parallel Terra.

Over the years Scout officers have encountered paratime agents from other timelines the Imperium doesn't have access to, one is called Homeline, the other is Centrum, these appear to be from timelagged parallels as their technology is not quite as advanced as the Third Imperium. They tend to rely on slugthrower rifles and do not possess gravity technology, their parachronic technology seems to be different from the Imperium's Wormhole Drives. Homeline has not been very communicative with the Imperium, and Centrum has on many occasions been outright hostile, often trying to steal Third Imperium Scout Ships, but thus far not succeeding.