Technology
Drives, weapons, artificial intelligence, and scientific principles.
Illustrated records
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Advanced pistol
Advanced pistols from the concealed military base fire purple, teardrop-shaped bolts. Their power can vaporize material and cause severe injuries, but their settings can also be reduced.
AI pain mechanism
A pain mechanism was a threatened means of coercing an artificial mind. Brookes used the threat against Hawk and threatened Vidar with suffering.
Artificial gravity
Artificial gravity can reproduce Earthlike weight and counteract inertia. The same general technology supported domed Martian settlements and kept spacecraft crews secure.
Artificial intelligences
Artificial intelligences operate ancient United Earth's starships and many later systems. Echo, Formidable, and Cylli display personal attachments, distress, preferences, and self-awareness.
Artificial sun
Cylli's artificial sun is a luminous rod extending along the habitat's central axis. Its light resembles Earth's sunlight and supports the cylinder's simulated day and night.
Autodoc
An Autodoc is an automated medical facility capable of diagnosis and advanced treatment. Its voice-controlled equipment includes a metallic bed that retracts into a cylindrical scanning chamber.
Autonomous carts
Small self-driving vehicles served the homes inside Cylli. They resembled golf carts and could navigate the roads between the riverbank houses.
Biological printing
Biological printing is the process intended to produce plant seeds and animal embryos for the settlement of Copious. Establishing Earth life there would require years of printing before the landscape changed substantially.
Bioluminescent life
Cylli's habitat contained plants and insects genetically engineered to shine for beauty. Their nighttime colors illuminated meadows, hills, riverbanks, and the air around the cabins.
Blue-laser mind transfer
A blue laser link allowed Cylli and Echo to transfer their minds away from bodies that Brookes believed he had conquered. The concealed asteroid base served as their refuge.
Breaching gel
The Marines used a transparent gel to cut rapidly through thick metal doors. A selected x-ray frequency ignited it, burning through inches of cast iron in less than half a second.
Carbon-composite enclosures
Echo's brig used transparent carbon-composite barriers identified as diamond. The cells isolated sound and could make their doors opaque.
Combat crescents
Combat crescents were transparent devices worn around the eyes by Echo's Marines. They combined enhanced vision, tactical displays, communications, translation, and weapons control.
Cylli's artificial sun
Cylli's artificial sun provided her interior habitat with a twenty-four-hour cycle of light and darkness. At night it dimmed to a soft silver glow resembling moonlight on Earth.
Cylli’s rotating gun
Cylli’s rotating gun is a defensive weapon built into the habitat’s forward rim. Deployable metal rails rotate and discharge orange energy shards in a helix-like pattern.
Data stick
A data stick is a thin transparent storage device that connects to a compatible console. Brookes used one to install Vidar, and Eastcott used one when restoring Echo.
Dead man's switch
Brookes' dead man's switch linked his heartbeat to a hawk's sphere drive. He used the threat of a drive explosion to prevent resistance and force access to Cylli and Echo.
Death chambers
Flaxen death chambers were heat-based execution facilities used against captive Humans. Their operation depended on capacitors that required time to recharge.
Deflection lasers
Deflection lasers protect high-speed starships by detecting and vaporizing particles ahead of them. A collision with even a sand-sized object at the expedition's intended speeds could destroy a ship.
Dyson swarm
A Dyson swarm is a proposed system of artificial structures orbiting a star to gather its energy. Echo considered such a system one possible cause of Vega's diminished light.
Earth reconnaissance satellites
Satellites remaining from before Echo's departure for Copious provided reconnaissance during its return to Earth. Echo reestablished communications with them and used their optical and infrared feeds to support military operations.
Energy-absorbing combat boots
Hastings's Marines wore boots whose soles absorbed the energy of each step, reducing the noise of their approach. The soles could not absorb the ground shock from the explosives that destroyed the Aconcagua facility.
Engine-core signaling
Echo used flashes from his engine core to convey a final hidden message before Brookes took control of the vessel. Eastcott recognized the signal as related to an ancient naval method of communication by light.
Exotic metal
An unnamed exotic metal improved Brookes' sphere-beam systems and formed the mirror used against Cylli. Supplies remained within abandoned Martian and allied military infrastructure.
Field medical equipment
Echo's Marines carried portable medical scanners and treatment devices capable of rapidly diagnosing and medicating prisoners in the field. They used them on the malnourished, infected inhabitants of hut seven.
Flaxen combat knives
Flaxen soldiers carried combat knives with yellow handles bearing their black glyph. The four prisoners taken at Aconcagua had knives concealed in ankle sheaths.
Flaxen communications network
The Flaxens' global communications depended on satellites and a central radio transmitter in North America. Lucinda was sent to destroy the transmitter after Shrader threatened daily massacres.
Food dispensers
Food dispensers provide prepared food and drinks aboard Echo. They are brought online as the ship's officers recover from stasis.
Forcefield airlocks
Cylli's entrance uses an invisible airtight forcefield as its inner barrier. The system admits a ship while retaining the habitat's atmosphere.
Gravitational inertia compensation
Echo uses a complex system of gravitational fields to compensate for acceleration. People aboard ordinarily perceive the ship's motion only through instruments or an outside reference.
Heated camouflage clothing
The Marines' white camouflage clothing included an internal heating system lasting up to five hours. It allowed them to operate in snow at minus fifteen degrees Celsius during the Aconcagua raid.
Helium-3 injectors
Helium-3 injectors were components maintained by Echo's engineering crew. Sarah ordered Flander and Triard to scrub them rather than replace them, conserving parts after the loss of access to shipyards and supply stations.
Holographic avatars
AIs could communicate through lifelike projected avatars when suitable equipment was available. Cylli presented herself as a girl in a red dress and could briefly make the image physically tangible.
Hyperspheres
Hyperspheres are four-dimensional structures generated by concentrating sufficient energy at a point in space. Sphere drives use them to extract energy from higher dimensions.
Infrasound weapon
The Flaxen infrasound weapon was a secret program intended to kill large numbers of United Earth troops with destructive sound energy. Flint claimed it could end the war within a year.
Laser datalinks
Laser datalinks allow rapid information exchange between artificial intelligences and vessels. Their usefulness is limited by distance and signal travel time.
Marine rifles
The rifles carried by Hastings's Marines combined a silent microwave beam, conventional kinetic ammunition, and guided rockets. Their flexibility supported covert entry and open firefights.
Martian domes
Martian settlements were housed within enormous transparent domes. Their environments included artificial gravity, forests, lakes, homes, and wildlife.
Mass accelerators
Mass accelerators are devices developed after Echo's departure to move material at extreme speeds. They play a central role in terraforming Venus.
Medical automation
Medical automation aboard the ancient starships supports diagnosis, recovery from stasis, and treatment. Scanners produce detailed images and activity readings quickly.
Medical regeneration
Advanced medical regeneration can rebuild lost body parts and restore health. Growing a new ear was considered normal Human medical practice long before Brookes' birth.
Mega chamber
The mega chamber was Brookes's proposed replacement for the Flaxens' reduced death-chamber network. He offered to build a continuously powered structure capable of killing at least fifty thousand captives at once.
Molecular explosives
The timed explosives used at Mount Aconcagua stored enormous energy in dense materials with many molecular bonds. Five devices released energy comparable to a small tactical nuclear weapon without its lingering irradiation.
Nanomachine hull
Cylli's hull is composed of coordinated nanomachines that absorb solar energy or reflect incoming energy. The machines can learn and adapt their collective response.
O'Neil cylinders
O'Neil cylinders are rotating hollow space habitats designed to provide Earthlike conditions along their inner surfaces. Rotation simulates gravity, with larger radii allowing slower rotation.
Plasma cannons
Plasma cannons are energy weapons mounted in the pincers of scorpions. They fire blue-purple shards of superheated energy.
Polymer hull seal
A transparent polymer film sealed the breach in Cylli's hull after Brookes' attack. The patch prevented further catastrophic air loss while leaving a visible scar.
Quantum key
The quantum key was the physical device required to unlock Cylli's shipyards after Brookes sealed them. One half was embedded in the doors and the portable half was no larger than a matchstick.
Radar
Radar is the radio-wave detection method used by both contemporary United Earth and the Flaxens to identify approaching aircraft. Returned signals reveal the targets' positions and numbers.
Railguns
Railguns are shipboard weapons that use magnetic acceleration to fire titanium slugs. They serve in the ancient United Earth and Martian fleets.
Red circles
The red circles are a feared presence associated with death among Camp Skadi's prisoners. Megan and the children ask whether the circles will glow or threaten them.
Reflective armor
Cylli's protective surface could reverse its normal absorption of incoming energy and deflect photons. Her shipyards gave Echo and its surviving scorpion armor using the same principle.
Relay beacons
Relay beacons extend communications around obstacles. Echo deploys a series of them to transmit to Earth while remaining behind the Moon.
Remote sphere-beam mirror
Brookes used an exotic-metal mirror to strike Cylli from a position she could not directly target. The device reflected a rapidly changing sphere beam toward the inhabited part of the hull.
Repair drones
Cylli's drones maintain and protect the habitat. They can rapidly seal a hull breach and extinguish fires with sprayed material.
Shuttlecraft
Shuttlecraft carry people between larger vessels and planetary or habitat surfaces. Both Echo and Cylli possess craft capable of transporting passengers.
Solar nano mirrors
Solar nano mirrors regulate the amount of sunlight reaching Venus. A vast artificial intelligence coordinates trillions of tiny mirrors placed between the planet and the Sun.
Sphere beam
A sphere beam is a directed violet energy weapon powered by energy diverted from a sphere drive. Its output depends on the materials available to conduct that energy.
Sphere drive
The sphere drive is Avalon Brookes's propulsion technology, which draws photonic energy from higher dimensions through a hypersphere. It is intended to propel the Copious expedition at eighty percent of light speed.
Spherical constant
The spherical constant is the term Avalon Brookes adds to his sphere-drive equations to balance them. Its inclusion removes the simulated growth of energy extraction with speed.
Stasis
Stasis suspends people during long voyages. The Copious expedition places its passengers and crews in stasis for a planned journey of nearly fifty years.
Stealth hull coatings
Stealth hull coatings conceal vessels from detection systems. Elaea Brookes's wartime coating masks Odin from Echo's scans, while Echo's later craft evade contemporary radar.
Stealth systems
The hawks carried concealment systems that prevented Echo's sensors from detecting them until they were dangerously close. Cylli later gave Echo and its remaining scorpion comparable stealth.
Subdermal communicators
Subdermal communicators are tiny implants used by Echo's personnel for calls and displays. Kip Eastcott's implant projects blue holographic text above his wrist.
Survey probes
Survey probes are small craft used by Echo to gather information and provide observation points. A reflective probe also redirects a laser during the first contact with United Earth.
Telescope array
Cylli's telescope array is a large observing installation several thousand miles from the habitat. It allows Cylli to monitor the inhabited worlds after the Titan.
The Torment
The Torment is a Flaxen punishment drug that stimulates pain receptors throughout the body while nearly paralyzing the victim. It is used to discipline soldiers whose offenses do not warrant execution.
Translation matrix
Echo's translation matrix converts between the expedition's English and the changed languages of contemporary Earth and Venus. It enables live diplomatic conversation despite almost ten thousand years of linguistic change.
United Earth radar network
United Earth maintained radar installations around the perimeter of its territory. Real-time information from the network was supplied to its aircraft during the defense against the raid on York.
Virtual worlds
Virtual worlds are immersive digital environments created during the golden age. Some are described as vast as the cosmos and experienced as vividly as the physical world.