Beam Weapons

Beam weapons are weapons which deal damage using high-energy streams of particles such as electrons, neutrons, or antimatter atoms. A properly-tuned particle beam can have an effective range of over a light-second, making them formidable weapons in space combat.

Particle beams are generally not usable as ground weapons, the backscatter they cause when passing through air will irradiate the user as well as the target.

Beam Types

Electron Beams

Chief among particle weapons is the ultrarelativistic electron beam (UREB), a fearsome weapon which fires a stream of electrons at a hair under lightspeed, preventing the beam from diverging due to electrons' mutual repulsion before reaching its target. These e-beams have much higher ranges than lasers since their intensity does not fall off with the square of the distance, and at high powers can melt through multiple meters of spacecraft armor. Anything not directly killed by the beam's effects will receive a massive dose of radiation as electrons tear through nearby matter.

Antimatter Beam

More expensive than an e-beam, but more effective still, is a particle cannon which shoots small amounts of antimatter. By varying the speed of the beam in relation to the target's size, it can be tuned so its Bragg peak occurs after the beam has passed through its armor, dumping most of its energy into the unshielded interior. Because of this, antimatter beams have commonly been used to attack heavily-armored structures such as asteroid forts.

The antimatter for these beams is expensive to acquire and requires a complex containment system to keep it safe aboard a ship. Ships with antimatter weapons are not usually allowed to land on planets.

Neutron Beam

With the advent of neutron deflector technology came the ability to capture neutrons from a radioactive source and channel them into a focused beam. Unlike electrons, neutrons have no charge and so will not repel each other if concentrated together, preventing the beam from diverging after it is fired. However, the same neutron deflector technology used to generate these beams can also be harnessed to deflect them, making neutron beam projectors rarely seen as weapons.