Blood Impulse

Part 31.3 - FTL FATIGUE

15 hours later, Tulope Sector, Battleship Singularity

With a terrible groan and rather severe shake, the Singularity descended from hyperspace. The sound permeated the entire ship, a noise of utter exhaustion. The shudder, more concerningly, could be felt through Zarrey's entire skeleton, and more importantly, was magnified like a hammer pounding his aching head. "Uggh," he cradled his skull, "the painkillers aren't even helping anymore."

Admiral Gives rode it out with a considerable amount more grace. He was feeling the side effects of prolonged FTL travel too, but it was not his main concern. Without a word, he checked the structural integrity diagram mounted on the wall. Reflecting the ship's suffering, a few more indicators had gone yellow, but none had dipped into an unhealthy orange tint. "Begin maneuvers," he ordered Jazmine.

"Aye," the helmsman acknowledged, and throttled up the main engines. Under thrust, the ship creaked a little more, but the noise was considerably quieter this time.

"Dammit," Zarrey cursed, "any more of that, and I think I'm going to vomit." The first two-thirds of their trek had been quiet and smooth, but the duration of this trip was starting to push what even the Singularity was capable of. The last few hours had been rough. After the first few trips, FTL tended not to make anyone sick, but that mostly applied to one-off maneuvers. Pulling maneuvers back-to-back for twenty-four or more hours turned grueling.

"You have twenty-seven minutes to regain your stomach, Colonel," the Admiral reminded. "Then we begin jump prep."

Jumping. The thought of it was enough to make Zarrey nauseous. Carefully, he pushed his coffee a little further away on the console. Drinking any of it would be a mistake. "I can't believe the spooks at Command thought this shit wasn't harmful."

"Other than physical discomfort, mental disorientation, and nausea, FTL travel has never been linked to any harmful conditions on the human body," Galhino informed him without turning from the sensor readouts. "Command has conducted extensive studies on prolonged FTL exposure using the scout fleet's ships and personnel."

Zarrey groaned on their behalf. "Oh, those poor bastards." Those experiments must have been torture. He'd never been fond of the scout fleet. He always found them to be naïve explorers or disturbing clandestine types, but he wouldn't wish this aching nausea upon anyone.

"In the process of that research, they discovered that no forces or radiation are found within hyperspace. If there is any emitted by intention or otherwise, our instruments cannot detect it. Of course, to the contrary, the environment of subspace is so violently destructive, our instruments can't survive to take measurements." Galhino found the topic of FTL rather fascinating. It was rare to see something so poorly understood utilized so freely.

On the other hand, Zarrey had never really considered the details of FTL. He had a rudimentary grasp on it in the sense that the process temporarily removed a ship from the galaxy – taking it to some other plane or dimension. Of course, he only knew that because a ship couldn't be shot, caught or boarded at FTL, and that knowledge had a direct, practical application. The science of it had never been important to him, unless there was some way to make it stop hurting his head, but he didn't like that description of subspace. "Violently destructive?" he echoed. "How does the ship survive that, then?"

"Well," Galhino answered, continuing to study the sensor readouts, "FTL jumping is significantly less understood than warping through hyperspace. We do know that any transition to subspace lasts only a small fraction of a second. It's near infinitesimal. It feels longer to us, but that is the limitation of how quickly humans can process something so severe." Their brains required more time to process the change than the point-to-point transition took. "As to the physics of it, jumping worsens damage significantly, so it's believed that there is a property in the sealed hull of a ship that rejects the forces of subspace. But, really, very little is known about it. The environment of subspace is simply too hostile to conduct experiments in. We only know, designing ships a certain way, that they can survive subspace. New ship designs are thoroughly tested in FTL maneuvering before they go to mass manufacture."