Jump Gate Technology / Hell Gates

Jump Gates and Jump Engines of Hellfire

Jump Gate technology wasn’t invented by any race, we as Humans known. The technology was found hundreds of years before the events of Darkness Falls. Back in the year of 2112 Earth calendar. At this time space exploration was very slow and time consuming. Ship of this time relied on cryogenic hibernation chambers to keep the ships crews alive over the long journeys. But this all changed when an exploration ship called Intrepid stumbled upon an unknown planet with a dying sun.

There is still very little known about the planet. Other than the small amount of information gathered over the few days before the Intrepid was forced to leave so it could make safe minimum distance from the dying sun before it went supernova. From the information and artefacts extracted from the planet. We do know that the world was subjected to a planetary scale war which left the whole planet dead and lifeless. Other than this a hand full of artefacts were salvaged from the world and taken back to Earth. Amongst these items was a small but damaged piece of technology. No one knew what it was at the time but it was a mere 65 years before the technology made it back to Earth to be examined by the military. Two years on the military recreated a very large and primitive copy of the device. This copy was built into Earths united Military Empire Flagship so it could be tested at a safe distance from our planet.

The testing of the equipment was first done on the date 27.01.2179 and was overseen by Captain Tallos of the Empires lead battleship Excalibur. The military still didn’t know what they were testing and presumed it was some sort of weapon. The Excalibur moved to just outside Earth’s solar system to avoid any unforeseen accidents from being tracked and the first trail went well. The first activation of the strange technology created a hole in space. A gateway from our space to an alternate realm of space was now opened. This space looked Blood red in colouration and was seemingly void of anything other than dangerous energy spikes. The Excalibur took its first brave steps into the unknown void closing their gateway behind them. The ship records showed that it only spent a total of 15 minutes in the void for it first Jump before it reopened the gateway and returned to normal space. The Excalibur was recorded to have been travelling at one quarter thrust while it was in the void. But when it emerged back into normal space the Captain realised that the ship had travelled four light years away from our own solar system. With the technology of that time the journey back would have taken them four years at maximum thrust to return them to the point of origin.

Captain Tallos decided to reactivate the device to reopen the gateway after plotting a course back to earth. He then ordered the ship to travel at one quarter thrust for the same 15 minutes before opening a gateway back into normal space again. Once the ship had returned back into normal space Captain Tallos found the Excalibur was right back to where it had started from. This gateway was tested for another year before it came into full operation. Ships using the gateways couldn’t be tracked while they were in warped space and seemed to Jump from one point to another on shorter journeys. This is where the name Jump gate technology seemed to come from. While the void was now commonly being referred to by people as warp space.

This technology revolutionised space travel and saw the end to hibernation chambers. Earths Empire rapidly spread outwards and across the galaxy while it laid claim to many planets and colonised many other remote areas of space.