The Three Synthetic Cores were powerful hyperspace artifacts created by the Hiigarans. They were meant as replacements for the Three Hyperspace Cores, created by Sajuuk of the Progenitors. The loss of the Three in the 5th Expeditionary Fleet required the commissioning of replacements. The creation of the Synthetic Cores was a startling moment in galactic history, as even the Bentusi had failed to build such drives.
Preamble[]
The original Three Hyperspace Cores were created over 100,000 years ago by the Progenitors and mounted on the starship Sajuuk. The Three were incredibly powerful, allowing hyperspace jumps of tremendous range. Initially the Three may have been used to allow Sajuuk to cross the Galaxy at will. It was believed that the technology of the Three was used to build the Great Network of Hyperspace Gates, a galaxy-spanning transit network, since the Three could be used to unlock the Network.
During the collapse of the Progenitor Empire, Sajuuk was anchored at Balcora Gate and the Three were separated, cast adrift in interstellar space. Tens of thousands of years later, the First Core was found by the Bentusi, marking the beginning of contemporary galactic civilisation. Several millennia later, the Second Core was found by the ancient Hiigaran Empire and used to make war on their sworn enemies, the Taiidan. The Second Core was presumed destroyed in this conflict, but in reality it was hidden and smuggled by the Hiigarans into exile with them on the remote planet Kharak. Three thousand years later, the Second Core was recovered and used to power the Mothership on its return trip to Hiigara in the Homeworld War[1]. A century after that, the Third Core was recovered by the Vaygr warlord Makaan. Makaan was defeated in the Vaygr War, but the Bentusi flagship Bentus was also lost in the conflict. Karan S'jet recovered the other two cores, united the Three, opened Balcora Gate and reactivated the Sajuuk.[2]
Subsequently Karan was able to reactivate the Gate Network via the Progenitor Overseer System, the control network located at the Eye of Aarran. For a century the galaxy benefited from rapid transit from one side of the galaxy to the other, a golden age of trade, diplomacy and peace known as the Age of S'jet.
Ninety-five years after this event, malfunctions and shutdowns in the Gate Network had reached alarming levels and a sizeable chunk of the network was effectively restricted to prevent ship losses. This area became known as the Anomaly. Karan S'jet took her new flagship, the Khar-Sajuuk, which now carried the Three Cores, on a close recon of the Anomaly but was unable to learn its nature. Five years later, in 215 AH (9725 GSY), an expansion of the Anomaly killed over 20,000 Hiigarans on a colony ship. The New Daiamid ordered the Khar-Sajuuk into the Anomaly to neutralise the threat by any means necessary. Eighty-one days later, all contact with the Khar-Sajuuk was lost, and the ship and the Cores were declared missing.
Project Akkad[]
Even before the loss of the Khar-Sajuuk, the overreliance of the Hiigarans on ancient alien technology of unknown origin had become a concern to the New Daiamid and many Hiigaran scientists. The perceived galactic wisdom that Progenitor technology was unfathomable and incomprehensible was rejected, and Hiigaran scientists and engineers bent their minds to not just understanding Progenitor technology but even being able to replicate it. The link between Karan S'jet and the Progenitor technology of the Cores, which had already seemingly rendered her immortal, may have helped in allowing intuitive leaps in understanding Progenitor science, not to mention the Hiigarans having both the Sajuuk and a Progenitor Dreadnaught to study at their leisure, as well as the many dozens of gates in the network.
With the loss of the Khar-Sajuuk and the 5th Expeditionary Fleet, Project Akkad was initiated to replicate the Three Hyperspace Cores with Hiigaran-built replacements. The Project called upon a vast swathe of experience from experts in hyperspace theory and dynamics, computation abstracts and theoretical mathematics. A key member of the project was Imogen S'jet, the protégé of Karan, who joined the team at the age of just 18 in 226 AHL (9736 GSY). She had already earned Teaching Privileges in Physics, Hyperspace Dynamics and Computation Abstracts as well as Advisor Status in Chemistry, Biology and Theoretical Mathematics.
Three years later, Imogen was promoted to team leader. Over the next four years her team made several major breakthroughs, leading to the successful construction and testing of what became known as the Three Synthetic Cores in 233 AHL (9743 GSY). The new Hiigaran flagship Khar-Kushan was completed two years later, with a planned shakedown cruise and candidacy period to pick the new Fleet Command. However, the sudden onset of the Incarnate War caused the launch of the Khar-Kushan with Imogen promoted to Fleet Command and merged with the ship's central processing core.
Capabilities and Limitations of the Cores[]
Imogen S'jet was interviewed by host Klee Manaan for the popular science and culture broadcast, Facets of Hiigara, appearing in episode 18,273. During the interview Imogen confirmed the principles under which the Synthetic Cores had been created.
Standard, Short Jump hyperdrives work on the principle of creating a quantum wavefront that remaps the ship to a new set of coordinates. The hyperdrive must generate a set of transitional equations for both where the ship is and where it wants to go. A challenge is caused by simple physical data storage, with the problem that the range coefficient creates exponential growth in the waveform equations. Even the most efficient and powerful capital ship hyperdrive computer can only store coordinates for about 5 light years. To generate a jump of 30 light years would take the entire processing power of the Hiigaran Hegemony. At 100 light years, the processing power required would exceed that of the entire galaxy. Yet the Three Cores individually could deliver ships across many thousands of light-years, and the three combined could deliver a ship from any point in the galaxy to almost any other point.
Imogen investigated the possibility that the Three had a multidimensional capacity and could tap into infinite versions of themselves in other universes/timelines to generate the waveform equations almost instantly. However, this turned out to be, in her words, "a rabid riiti hunt." Her next thought was to slowly generate the waveform for a Far Jump over a significant period of time instead, but this would result in a hyperdrive that would take years to create a jump that would only work for one location, and would then more years to repeat the feat. This was not useful for a multidirectional, mobile drive, although it did provide insight into how the Gate Network functioned. Ultimately, she concluded the Cores were mathematical waveforms frozen in time as solid objects.[3]
Karan's assessment was that the Progenitors had solidified quantum waveforms as solid-state storage devices, where the computational functions had already been completed before the coordinates had been entered; entering the coordinates resulted in the Core having already been computing those coordinates all along, effectively making the computational time meaningless.
The Three Progenitor Cores, combined, could resolve such computations on a galactic scale, but the Three Synthetic Cores could only do the same for a distance of about 5,000 light years, with a brief recharge period between each jump.[4] Although limited compared to the power of the Three, this distance was still twice the distance the old Mothership was capable of jumping with one core attached.[5]
Fate of the Cores[]
Two of the three Synthetic Cores took heavy damage when the Khar-Kushan collided with a derelict freighter at Kala Terminus and were rendered inoperable, whilst the remaining core took heavy damage. The ship limped to Naraka Gate for repairs, and from there was able to eventually help in the rescue of the Khar-Sajuuk.
During the final battle of the Incarnate War, at Noctuaa-27, Karan and Imogen combined the power of the Three Progenitor Cores and the Three Synthetic Cores. This transported the Incarnate Queen to an unknown fate but removed her threat from the galaxy, as well as neutralising the Anomaly. Karan and the Khar-Sajuuk also vanished during this event, and were presumed destroyed alongside the original Three Cores.
The Synthetic Cores were rendered non-functional by these events, potentially burned out. The fate of the Khar-Kushan and its fleet was unclear, but presumably individual ships could eventually short jump all the way back to Hiigara.
Knowledge of how to build new Synthetic Cores remained on Hiigara, so presumably new cores could be constructed at need.[6]