Gateway

A gateway is one of the four known FTL technologies, the others being the hyperdrive, subspace traversal, and the jump drive. Like subspace traversal and the jump drive, gateways are used only by the Emorian Union.

Gateways are similar to the jump drive in that they utilize an artificial wormhole to permit instantaneous travel between two points in spacetime. Unlike the jump drive, however, the artificial wormholes generated by gateways are either permanent or sustained, though travel using gateways is possible only between already-constructed gateways.

Like the jump drive, the power requirements to operate a gateway are immense. As such, gateways tend to be constructed only at important sites, or in locations where the use of the jump drive is impractical or impossible. Most populated Emori systems have gateways, in order to facilitate the travel of large numbers of vessels without creating large numbers of small wormholes, which research indicates may have detrimental effects long-term.

Travel between gateways may also far outstrip the range of typical jump drives. In theory, travel between galaxies using a gateway may be instantaneous.

The Emori created the first gateways approximately 16,000 years ago, around the same time as they invented the jump drive. The last populated systems in the Emorian Union were linked to the gateway network approximately 14,000 years ago.

No other known species have developed gateway technology.