The housings for the delicate and dangerous FTL jump drive along with a cluster of sensors
Tal-Seto (TS) is a technology which allows faster than light travel. Named after UNSEC scientists Sergei Tal and Midori Seto, the technology involves a natural 'network' of connected threads of spacetime deformation, linking together nodes, known as Tal-Seto jump points.
History[]
Russian and Japanese scientists did some research on this theory and a team of UNSEC scientists, led by Sergei Tal and Midori Seto, expanded on it around 2050. They formed a theory about a network of "threads" between anomalies in gravitational fields throughout the galaxy; and that a "field locus" of such network could exist in the Sol system. Tal and Seto presented to the United Nations Security Council their theory and postulated the possibility of a FTL propulsion system.
The UNSEC was given the new high-priority task, to find such a locus in the solar system in order to launch interstellar exploration, which was soon found near Jupiter, and the the Tal-Seto stardrive was discovered in 2055 allowing instantaneous travel along the threads between the jump points. Over the next 2 years, the UNSEC sent several robotic probes, which found 15 thred links to other stars and 2 habitable planets, named Erebus and Starhome.
The following years saw exploration in order to discover and map the existing jump points. The UNSEC was renamed to UNISEC and undertook an ambitious colonization program.
Ships were equipped with Tal-Seto Faster Than Light jump drives, usually located on the boom forward of the bow. Ships also had a "Panic Button" which manually aborts a computer-sequenced jump right up until the jump drive cores engage. A TS-related hazard is an unstable TS field locus.
Original timeline[]
After the Secession War and the victory of the UN over the Alliance of Free States, by 2250 the known network of TS jump points has been completely explored and mapped and was discovered to be finite. The only option was to send sublight probes to the nearest (unconnected) stars hoping to find a new network of stars and Tal-Seto junctions.
During the losing war with the Electronic Life Forms, the UN High Command detonated a reserved doomsday device: It worked as a logical extension of the theory that led to the discovery of the Tai-Seto jump drive. The weapon was arguably a large energy source coupled with a computer system, a graviton resonator, and an array of Tai-Seto cores, able to create a dynamically unstable reaction along the junctions's spacetime deformations. Once it detonated, it created resonances along the TS jump threads between stars, to rip apart the fabric of space-time. The resonances rendered the TS junctions dynamically unstable. All jump points disappeared along with interstellar travel and communications; humans and ELFs in the solar system were cut off.
The triumphant ELFs of the Sol system calculated that in 2297, a large section of the Milky Way would collapse, and each star along the junctions will be pulled into a massive black hole caused by the folding of space-time.
Alternate timeline[]
It is not known what happened in the alternate timeline where the Alliance of Free States won the war, other than the aftermath prevented the war with the ELFs and consequently the government had no reason to destroy the jump points as a desperate measure.
Presumably the finite network was still explored and mapped at some point.