Black Gate
"W-wait just a second! we're going to be going through that thing, and, we're just going to end up in another part of the universe? How?!?"
"Did you think we were just going to fly there in a straight line? That would take thousands of years! Relax Sarah, you won't even notice when we pass through it!"
"That or Sharla gets the frequency wrong and we end up splattered around the event horizon!"
"Wait, what?!?"
The Black Gates
Around a hundred million years ago, several young civilizations started picking up strange signals in the outer reaches of their star systems. Upon further investigation, they found strange anomalies, holes in space-time about 50 kilometers across, contained by large metallic rings and powered by an unknown source. They were curiosities left behind from an unknown earlier civilization.
Some civilizations figured out how to communicate with these holes in space-time, by sending a radio signal at it. The gate will communicate back with the same radio signal. When a specific sequence of radio signals is played, the Gate will communicate with another Black Gate, and open a pathway between them.
These signals are discovered entirely by trial and error and some civilizations spend thousands of years trying every possible combination they can think of. The current iteration of the The Galactic Council has a database of roughly half a billion gates and the frequencies needed to connect to them. New frequencies are added all the time, but this is a tiny fraction of the half a trillion gates that are thought to exist in the galaxy, and the septillions that exist across the whole universe.
Multiple ships are able to pass through the gates to different systems at the same time, as long as they are each playing the specified signals. For the ones that don't have the proper signal, they are obliterated on contact with the gate and sucked into the singularity, so it's rather important that equipment is calibrated properly.
Most developed star systems have a set of dozens and dozens of lanes surrounding the gate on one side that take the signal from passing ships and communicate with the lanes on the other side, to clear ships and make sure passage is done in a mostly safe manner.
Digital Elya Sarlar1
Space folds over itself an infinite number of times inside a black gate and every single gate in the universe is linked together by this. The true nature of these gates, who built them, and how they were built are mysteries that no civilization has been able to solve for many millions of years. Current galactic powers like the Vusinor and Sseterri aren't capable of creating such a thing.
FTL Travel is Impossible
Faster than Light Travel is IMPOSSIBLE, despite the attempts of countless alien species across hundreds of thousands of years. It doesn't matter where the civilization originated, whether it was in the Milky Way Galaxy or elsewhere, none have been able to crack the physics required because in order to propel a massive object to speeds travel faster than light, an infinite amount of energy is required.
Above about 6% the speed of light, such large anti-matter fusion reactors are required that the engines quickly grow larger than the rest of the ship itself, and by the time a ship tries to go 10% the speed of light, the engines can be ten times larger than the rest of the ship. Going any faster requires an engine so large that it just isn't practical anymore. Traveling through the universe without using a black gate is impossible unless you want the journey to take thousands of years.
At speeds above 1% the speed of light, even the emptiness of space starts to require ships with shielding because the sparse gases and particles in the interstellar medium starts to act like an atmosphere. As the speed increases, the friction and heat generated increases. Above 10% the speed of light, ships can generate so much friction they burn up or must use progressivly larger amounts of energy for shielding purposes. For even the most advanced civilizations, 10% Light Speed is the upper limit of their capability, though most ships move at 3% or less light speed.
A Top view of the Starship Void Chaser. Its wings were designed for use in atmospheres but it can also fly in space. The wings can fold in towards the body at very fast speeds in space (>1% light speed) as some amount of drag is encountered. The Ship also has an energy shield to obliterate larger particles and reduce friction at high speeds.
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