Star System Travel Regulations

A Note Regarding Science. And Fiction.

Faster-than-light (FTL) travel, in some way, shape or form, is practically the bread and butter of science fiction stories that involve travel to other stars. In a simpler time, writers could get away with the notion of rocketships hurtling through the cosmos. Now, we know that even our closest stellar neighbors are incredibly distant. Enough so that when we look up at Proxima Centauri, our closest neighbor, we are not seeing it as it is, but as it was over four years ago. Since this sort of information has strolled more into the realm of common knowledge, it has long-since forced authors to address the issue and “mature” their notions of universal geography and travel, lest their works be looked upon as faire for the sci-fi kiddies’ table.

Plenty of hard-science and math types out there would likely scoff just as hard at the notion of a spaceship travelling at FTL speeds just as much as they would at the notion of a distant planet exploding and depositing any measurable quantity of kryptonite on our world (not just the one-in-a-gazillion odds of an errant chunk of the planet actually intercepting Earth, but the fact that it would also probably take millions or billions of years for it to get here). In short, plenty of people much smarter than we, the authors of this game, would likely conclude that FTL travel is comparable to the same kind of fantasy maguffins that furry-footed, medieval little people fling into the heart of Mount Doom.

That being said, we thumb our noses at such assertions. Why? Because it helps move the story. Hell, half the name of the entire genre is “fiction.” We’re gonna make stuff up here, people. The other part of the name, of course, is “science:”

“a: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method b: such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena.”

--The Merriam-Webster Dictionary

So, we subscribe to the notion that, for the purposes set forth in the Future Imperfect “universe” and the game in general, that FTL travel is not impossible. Furthermore, we endeavor to put forth some general “laws” regarding how FTL travel works and is implemented, and how it operates and interacts with other aspects of the real world as we know them. Thus we attempt to put some “science,” as defined above, to an arguably fantastic concept in an effort to make it feel more plausible and real as opposed to being arbitrary space-magic.

In this vein, we will illustrate how the “science” of FTL travel might affect any space travelers in one of the most universal procedures that any space traveler would face, namely that of space travel. Specifically, how one would get to or from one star system to another. As an added bonus, there is some added content within; insights as to how a technology such as FTL might inform the procedures of the Powers-That-Be in how they might attempt to regulate such a potent technology.

As with all things in these pages, use what you like and discard what you don’t. What is put forth here are merely our ideas. Your universe may be softer and more laissez-faire regarding space travel. Alternately, your stellar empires may take a polar opposite view and treat interstellar travel as some kind of state secret that is tightly controlled. What we put forth here is a kind of middle ground, where the cat of FTL travel is pretty much out of the bag, but governments attempt to control certain aspects of travel as best they can. Now, back to the thing I originally started talking about before I digressed…

Ahem. Star System Travel Regs, Take Two

In a similar way that the magnetosphere of Earth deflects the majority of harmful solar radiation (and has prevented our planet from being nothing more than a lifeless, irradiated rock), gravity protects the people of our solar system—and the people every other inhabited solar system with the means and will to defend themselves—from the predations of hostile, expansionist entities. The nature of this protection lies in the fact that significant gravity wells (such as those created by stellar masses) penetrate beyond the reach of the real universe and into the realm of the tachyon universe through which starships navigate when traveling between the stars.

These gravity wells are what force astrogators to do all the hard math for their pilots; with stars and nebulae and black holes causing the medium of the tachyon universe to swirl and twist, they must account for these factors in the courses they plot. If not for this interaction between the two universes, FTL pilots would have a much easier time of things, but the worlds upon which sentient beings live would be ripe for plunder, with no way to keep an enemy at arm’s length.

One might think of a gravity well as a sort of whirlpool that will pull a ship out of hyperspace and deposit it in the real world, or that perhaps intense gravity acts as a kind of morass that drastically slows matter within the tachyon universe to the point that the matter becomes sub-light once again, and drops away from the tachyons that carry it and into the real world again. Whichever flavor of analogy you choose, solar systems have a wide area all around them that prohibits FTL travel. How this protects the inhabited worlds themselves is in the fact that it allows for a healthy response time to any threats. If a star system was a castle, then the area around it, known as the “jump envelope” would be akin to a wide open field that stretched nearly to the horizon, and any aggressor (or any other miscreant or ne’er-do-well) would be spotted long before he plodded across the land to threaten the walls.

While this is a vital part of the defensibility of any world (lest all the populated systems be laid bare to the ravages of anyone who wants their stuff, which would, realistically, quickly devolve the entire setting into a crapsack universe), defense is not only seen as the ability of a group of people to prevent attack. It is not only martial, but economic, as well. It is how a government that possesses sufficient technology might exert control and enforce regulation. Even in terrestrial terms, forts and naval bases and airfields do not just project military power to protect cities near the water or coasts, they give way to ports and shipyards that regulate trade and immigration, all under the watchful eye of some flavor of authority.

With space travel and the sheer distances involved, the scale of everything is entirely different. The logic behind the operating procedures of defense must be altered somewhat. When looking across that wide-open field in the analogy above, we can see a soldier marching across. If he gets within range of our guns, we can fire on him, and rest assured that our bullets will hit where we aim, which is where he is (not accounting for having to lead the target or account for ballistics and all that). However, when it comes to looking across the field that is our solar system, the primary limitation is the speed of light itself. Consider the fact that it takes light from the Sun over eight minutes to reach the Earth. If you were to talk over the radio to a man on the moon, the latency involved means that it would take over a second just for your transmission to reach him, and just as long for his to get back to you. When one considers that starships are able to travel incredibly fast—their speed rated not in kilometers per hour but in sizable fractions of the speed of light--one can appreciate the notion that relying on what you can see is a poor method to determine where things are right now at these ranges.

As has been mentioned before, space is vast. Even within the environs of a solar system, the expanse between various planets, orbitals, the star itself and the edge of the jump envelope are immense distances. These distances, while trivial in scope compared to the span of light years between stars, are greatly expounded by the fact that everything save for the transmission of data within the jump envelope of a stellar mass must travel at sub light speeds. Even for a vessel travelling at just under the speed of light, it would take 6 hours to travel from one side of a main-sequence star’s jump envelope to the other! Even a vessel with FTL drives of unremarkable speed could travel from Sol to Alpha Centauri in as much time.

In short, travel within, approaching or departing a solar system is greatly slowed in scale compared to the great distances that can be covered by using FTL drives. Solar systems are where the planets of the universe are, and the vast majority of sentient beings in the universe reside on these planets. Habitable worlds provide the manpower and resources for spacefaring exploits. They are the economic centers of any stellar empire. They are also the thrones of power of those empires’ governments, and anyone who does not believe that a collective entity that is both clever enough to master interstellar travel and communication and powerful enough to create and maintain an interstellar government would not attempt to regulate and control access to their holdings is naïve, at best. We have doors on our houses and passwords to our Wi-Fi, for goodness’ sake. To think that a government would let strangers come and go as they please or access whatever they like without restriction—especially when technologies exist that allow them to monitor and deny access—is utter foolishness. That being said, some governments may be more open and lax while others may be xenophobic and despotic in regards to who comes and goes, but rest assured that any sufficiently advanced civilization, even the most welcoming of them, has the means and ability to monitor certain activities and close a noose around the neck of the unwary should the need arise.

The following is some information regarding the capabilities and procedures that may be encountered when ships travel within an established star system.

Passive Detection

Because of the aforementioned vastness of space, it is practically impossible to actively “scan” any great volume of space. In olden times, radio waves were swept through the skies from transmitters, and the reflections from things like aircraft, ships and weather systems were picked up by receivers and translated into images that informed the operators what was out there where their eyes couldn’t see. With the aforementioned lag due to the sheer distances involved in perceiving the space around us, data travelling at the speed of light is insufficient to resolve this task. Tachyon beam emitters replace the radio transmitters of old, and they can project beams thousands of light seconds out almost instantaneously. This does not mean, however, that we can simply project tachyon beams all around and maintain a sense of omniscience within a star system. To do this--even poorly--would require an immense amount of power. A tachyon pulse beam will give detail on a very small arc of the scanning area, basically a narrow cone of observation, like looking out at space through a drinking straw. Even at the edge of its detection range, the area scanned is relatively small. If a tight-beam tachyon pulse is raster-scanning all of space around it, like the electron beam of a picture tube, we are basically looking at scanning a given surface area. The surface area of a sphere increases rapidly as distance from the center grows (4πr2). Additionally, the inverse-square law states that energy from a source is diminished as the inverse square of the distance, so that if energy received at point A is half that emitted from the source at point B, then if point C is twice as far as the distance from A to B, then energy received will be one-quarter what is emitted. (For example, the magnitude of the Sun’s brightness as perceived from Jupiter is only about 1/25th that perceived on Earth; our planet is 500 light-seconds from the sun, while Jupiter is about 2500 LS, or 5 times as distant. Projecting the necessary energies into space in all directions with such intensity as to allow them to detect anything at any great distance would require immense amounts of energy. These energy requirements would only grow exponentially as the attempted range of detection increased.

Not only would the energy requirements be immense to project that much signal into space in every direction in any magnitude that could “bounce off” a contact and return to a detection array in a perceivable manner, there is the simple matter of processing the information, and the size and scale required of such a sensing device. An active detection range of even just one light second would require raster-scanning 1,130,400,000,000 square kilometers of space. For those who don’t like to read big numbers, that’s about one and one-seventh trillion square kilometers. If a tight-beam tachyon pulse was a cone with a base area of one kilometer, square, this would require the constant projection of over 1.13 trillion tachyon pulses. Even if computers exist that can process that many operations, it is only one light second; increase the distance to two light seconds and the scanned area increases to 4,521,600,000,000 square kilometers (over four and a half trillion km2). With the jump envelope of a main-sequence star extending out 10,000 LS in all directions (a sphere with a surface area of 1.1304x10^20 or 113,040,000,000,000,000,000 square kilometers), one can begin to see the impossibility of maintaining a continuous eye on every infinitesimal degree-arc of the cosmos beyond extremely close distances. As such, much of any solar system will be completely unobserved at any given time, unless there is something present that draws the attention of observers who are using various passive detection systems; electronic eyes that wait for specific stimuli to come to them, so that they may then focus more sensitive and active detection equipment.

Certain phenomena emit significant energies in their own right, enough to travel vast distances. Some of these emissions travel much faster than the speed of light because they are based on tachyon energy. These emissions are of particular interest to the sensor operators monitoring the passive detection systems based on starfortresses, sensor bouys, orbitals, picket vessels and planets and moons themselves. These passive sensors will alert observers to these bursts of energy and allow them to train narrow-beam active sensors at a very tiny slice of space and track targets. The most intensely monitored of these phenomena is the incoming FTL hyperspace distortion created shortly before a starship translates from tachyon hyperspace into real space. The next are ship’s beacons, directional tachyon pulse emitters that follow the local star system comm relay, maintaining constant real-time positioning of any vessel. A ship’s beacon will also transmit the vessel’s registry information, allowing the local government to identify the vessel. Most governments will require ships to activate their beacon upon approach toward, travel within or departure from a star system. Most governments will also strive to maintain safe, conflict-free space lanes, and will take a dim view of any unauthorized weapons fire; since novaguns (the standard armament of almost all spacecraft) utilize tachyon fields to project energy bolts at FTL velocities, the “report” of these weapons can be easily detected almost instantly by any nearby passive sensor arrays. Likewise, the use of startorps can be detected because of their own sensor packages and by the energy released upon detonation, however these emissions travel at light speed, so depending on the distance from a torpedo or its detonation, detection may take several minutes to several hours. Lastly, TISA anomaly fields radiate energy in the form of visible light and also in minute gravitational disruptions that can be detected by special sensory devices, but since gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, this method can only be relied upon to determine “where a target was” rather than “where a target is.” Sometimes, however, this may be enough to set active scanners on an area and begin narrowing down the search, though a skilled pilot can sometimes keep a sensor operator sweeping his tachyon beam for hours before he achieves lock-on, if he ever does.

Because of the gravitational disruptions caused by TISA drive operations, the anomaly field of a starship will attract the tight-beam tachyon pulses emitted by sensors in a similar way that a magnet will alter the path of a scanning electron beam (for an illustration of this in action, hold a magnet near a cathode ray tube). This means that a sensor operator actively scanning for a vessel operating TISA drives will not need to paint the vessel dead-on to achieve a lock; they need only get close, and the tachyon beam will be drawn to the gravitational anomaly. This, subsequently, is closely related to how Novaguns are able to target vessels at incredible ranges; the ships' own TISA drive acts as a beacon that draws the fire to the target, not entirely unlike the heat-seeking missiles used in the early days of aerial dog fighting on Earth when aircraft with jet engines became the standard unit of military air power.

Ingress and Egress

Every star system will have established jump zones and space lanes. The jump zones are designated areas outside the jump envelope where legitimate, incoming traffic are supposed to emerge from FTL. Errors do happen, of course, and any ship that emerges outside the jump zone is given a short window to activate their beacon and make contact with the local authorities. If the ship does not activate its beacon or contact starport traffic control, the IPA will be dispatched to investigate, as the ship may be carrying out illegal activities or may be part of a hostile force. There is also the possibility that the vessel may have suffered damage, in which case the IPA may be able to render assistance. If the vessel follows protocol, no harm is done, though some governments may levy small fines for sloppy FTL work, to discourage careless or unskilled pilots. Additionally, any path within a star system from one planet, moon or orbital to another has a designated lane of allowable travel. Any vessels caught outside the space lanes are subject to fines and possibly inspection by the IPA. The jump zone and space lanes drastically narrow the areas that must be closely monitored by sensor operators, and allows the authorities to assume that any vessels outside these areas are up to no good.

Anyone approaching a star system will have to warp in using FTL drives. Under normal circumstances, this will give away their location to the local authorities, who will begin actively tracking incoming contacts. Even if the number of vessels in the system numbers in the thousands, the banks upon banks of computers can easily track vast numbers of contacts. If a vessel wants to approach a system with greater anonymity, the astrogator can attempt to plot a course with a wide translation window. This will tend to deposit the ship well outside the jump envelope of a star system, sometimes beyond even the detection range of outlying starports and sensor bouys. Also, just as the FTL pilot can attempt to mask his signature when jumping into hyperspace, he can attempt to minimize his emergence signature when jumping out. This is akin to a diver trying to leave the tiniest splash when he hits the water. If the FTL signature is successfully reduced, passive sensors may not be able to detect the faint emissions. The ship’s FTL signature may still be detected by deep space sensors, but by the time these devices detect an FTL signature, the target vessel may be several minutes or hours away from their translation point. One should also note that while these cracks in the system do exist, they are really only viable for singular vessels, or perhaps even small groups. The procedures listed above can be tricky to pull off successfully, even by skilled pilots, and if any great military force were to attempt them, enough warships within the fleet would surely fail, and the advantage of a surprise attack would be blown.

Total stealth in regard to space travel is practically impossible. Under TISA drive, a ship generates a highly noticeable anomaly field. However, the emissions from the field, both in the form of EM radiation in the visible spectrum and gravitational disruption only travel at the speed of light. Hence, if an otherwise undetected vessel passed within 1000 LS of a passive sensor, it would take 1000 seconds (16 minutes and 40 seconds) for the sensor to pick up the vessel’s location, or more correctly, the sensor would show where the vessel was over 16 minutes ago. Since a ship traveling at only half the speed of light can cover a distance from the Earth to the Sun in that time, this method of detection is at best a means of narrowing down one’s search parameters. It should also be noted, that while passive sensors or anyone with eyes might be able to see a ship operating under TISA drive, a ship that is not broadcasting its presence or is otherwise undetected might simply go unnoticed among all the other traffic within the system; the intruder’s anomaly field looks just like all the others, and even if all the other ships have active beacons, the real-time locations of those beacons will not match up with the apparent locations of the anomaly fields by virtue of the fact that by the time any observer perceives the field, the ship has moved far away. A ship running dark may simply be lost in the noise unless a skilled and clever observer catches onto their ruse and manages to tag it with active tracking.

A sensor array achieves active tracking of a target by “painting” it with a tachyon-pulse beam. This beam travels at FTL speeds and will travel from the target back to the array almost instantaneously. Note the “almost.” Tachyons in this environment, and projected by these means are not infinitely fast. Even at the most extreme range of the best sensor arrays (reportedly 10,000 LS or more), a lag of up to a second or more may be noticed. If this doesn’t seem like a long time, remember that a vessel traveling at a fair cruising speed of 150 LS can cover 150,000 kilometers in that time frame. A targeted vessel may attempt to elude or shake off active tracking by the use of erratic maneuvers, ECM, or electronic countermeasures. This may allow the ship’s sensor operator to project interfering pulses to disrupt or spoof a sensor’s tachyon-pulse beam. In effect, successful ECM makes the target vessel appear to be where it actually is not, and if the tech aboard the ship is successful enough, he may be able to throw off the beam enough that it may scan the entirely wrong portion of space. Conversely, ECCM (electronic counter-countermeasures) boost the output from a sensor array in an attempt to either overpower the interference of the ECM or to saturate the area with pulses to re-establish contact and tracking. Use of ECCM requires significant power expenditure, and may also decrease the maintenance interval of the sensor systems (increased maintenance tokens), or in some cases may cause a system breakdown.

If a vessel approaches a planet, ground-based sensors will usually be able to pick up and track the target if it enters the atmosphere or approaches the surface (generally within 50-100km) using relatively low-tech systems akin to radar, lidar and magnetic anomaly detection sensors. Likewise, any vessel lifting off from a planet will trigger these planetary detection systems (the density of which may vary from one world to the next, with possible gaps in their surveillance windos), which would then feed this information to space-based active tracking systems.

Even if one is obeying all the local laws, one can readily assume that the local government(s) are always monitoring and tracking them, or at least attempting to. If one chooses to break spacefaring vessel regulations, some response from the local government should be expected if the activity in question is something that the government’s sensors have the ability to detect. In many ways, the rulers of a star system hold all the cards; if one opts not to play by their rules, their simplest response may be to “take their toys and go home,” which in this context, means denying a vessel permission to enter or do business within the system. If the vessel persists in defying the wishes of the local government, their response will generally grow more active and severe alarmingly quick. Remember, governments do not maintain power and authority by being nice and permissive. They do so by regulation and enforcement. They make people toe the line or go away. This may seem excessive or draconian, but when one considers how much havoc even a small cargo vessel could wreak on a civilian population center in any number of ways, it is not unreasonable to assume that a government would try to control any aspect of space travel they possibly can short of “federalizing” the whole endeavor.

Procedures

To best illustrate the procedures involved in travel about a star system, let us follow the experience of a hypothetical vessel through several of the steps involved.

The SS Merchant has set course for Sol carrying a cargo of precious and semi-precious metals bound for Earth and Mars. They also have a smaller amount of luxury goods for a private buyer on Earth’s orbital colony at L5. Several minutes before they arrive outside Sol’s jump envelope, their FTL signature would appear a minimum of 10,000 LS from the system center. In addition to being exceedingly difficult and hazardous, purposefully targeting a ship’s translation point within the jump envelope of a star system is strictly prohibited. Doing so would most definitely cause the IPA (who may also call upon the significant garrison of Starforce warships, if they deem it necessary) to respond by attempting to intercept the vessel upon translation.

With Sol being at the heart of the Terran Union, the incoming signature would be tracked not only by the IPA (Interstellar Police Agency), but by the TU Starforces (the Navy of this stellar empire), which, among other reasons, is why the ship’s captain is obeying the law and jumping to the system outside the jump envelope. When the Merchant translates into real space, active tracking by local star traffic control will begin, since the local sensors have detected the tachyon emissions of the ship’s FTL signature many minutes ahead of the ship’s translation. Active tracking systems wait on standby for the ship to appear. This tracking, once lock-on is achieved, is real-time, and will reveal the “actual” location (within a few tens of thousands of kilometers based on the ship's range from the sensors and its speed) of the vessel due to the tachyon-based nature of the tight-beam sensors.

At this point, the Merchant would be required to activate its ship’s beacon, which would transmit identification information to the authorities. If any warrants, detainers, fines or other notable information is attached to the ship’s registry, the authorities will be alerted at this point and they may take action, depending on the nature of the offense(s). The beacon also allows for passive tracking of a vessel, and coupled with continual active tracking while the ship is in-system, the authorities will also know if the vessel unlawfully deactivated its beacon or altered the data transmitted by it at any point. Attempting to travel in-system without activating the beacon (trying to operate anonymously) is strictly forbidden. The IPA and possibly the navy would attempt to intercept any such vessels. It may be possible for some pilots to sneak into a star system relatively unnoticed, but even if this is accomplished, if the vessel travels within the local space (atmospheric distances) of any orbital or planet or moon, short-range sensors stand a good chance of detecting the ship, and one can believe that an unidentified vessel suddenly appearing on the scopes will cause a rapid, unfriendly response!

Before being allowed in-system, the Merchant would be required to dock and register at one of several starports, massive space structures frequently located close to the jump envelope of a system. Several procedures take place at this point. Passengers often disembark and find other means of travelling to specific locations within the system. The ship’s manifest will be checked, and its cargo may be inspected at this point. Any taxes or tariffs may be levied based on the manifest, and if any discrepancies are noted during a physical inspection, fines or other penalties may be imposed. Depending on the government type and the law level of the system, these inspections may be relatively cursory, or could take hours or days to complete based on several different factors (such as the size of the cargo, the origin, the nature of the goods, the quality of tracking and record keeping of the goods the method and security levels of cargo storage or even the reputation of the buyer or seller). With Terra being at the heart of the Union, the captain expects regulations here will likely be tight and strictly enforced, and as such, hews close to the letter of the law to avoid any trouble.

To reduce interplanetary traffic, cargoes may be offloaded after inspection to third-party shipping companies. Typically, vessels in these fleets are sub-light tugs with no FTL capacity. The captain of the Merchant offloads his cargo of metals to be delivered via tug to the buyers on Earth and Mars. Most often, payment for goods will be made to the seller upon receipt of goods by the shipping company. In this case, the luxury goods must be hand-delivered to the buyer, however, so the Merchant must venture to Earth orbit.

There are no discrepancies with the Merchant’s registration, however two crewmembers have outstanding warrants for a barroom brawl at one of the starports at the Marathon system. These individuals do not have the liquid assets to pay their fines, so unless they are handed over to the IPA for detainment, the Merchant will be denied access to the inner system. Since both crewmembers are vital to ship operations, the captain pays their fines from the ship’s account and will recoup losses from his rowdy crew members later (with extra penalties, of course). With these formalities taken care of, the Merchant is granted permits to travel in-system, but must provide an itinerary to the IPA.

During travel in-system, there is typically a “speed limit” set. The purpose of this is to help differentiate lawful traffic from specific, unlawful activity. If any vessels violate the speed limit (typically 100-150 LS depending on the size of the jump envelope), it immediately draws the attention of the IPA, since one of the few reasons to travel faster than other traffic is to intercept another vessel. Additionally, even though the anomaly field of an otherwise undetected and untracked vessel may blend in with all the others, if that anomaly field begins moving much faster than all the others, it will garner attention quite rapidly, and IPA vessels monitoring the space lanes will investigate. Even at only 100 LS, the trip from the starport to Earth is less than four hours. No reason to hurry and incur the wrath and fines of the authorities. If a vessel maintains an unlawful speed for an extended period or closes on another vessel, IPA interceptors (Such as Nike-class FTL Scouts) will likely be sortied as a precautionary measure, though it may take minutes or hours for them to arrive on-scene, depending on the remoteness of the incident within the system.

While in-system, the IPA and the Starforces will maintain active tracking of the Merchant. Because the tracking arrays are targeting the ship with a tight-beam tachyon pulse, the tech aboard the ship manning the comms and sensors will easily be able to ascertain that their ship is being tracked by active sensors. Knowing that the watchful eye of the authorities is upon them, the pilot makes sure to obey all the local laws. The Merchant approaches Earth and docks at one of the planet’s several orbital fortresses (like the starports near the edge of the system, but these also fill the role of planetary defenses). From here, crew from the Merchant travel via ship’s boat the short distance to the L5 orbital colony, since the price to dock their vessel there directly would be too expensive. During this layover, several other members of the crew wish to travel planetside, but must use commercial transport from the fortress since the captain of the Merchant did not pay the planetary landing fees or even file that in his ship’s travel plan. These particular measures are in place to prevent travelers from flooding a planet with unwanted, unregulated traffic, and also to generate revenue. If the captain chose to break from his itinerary, ground-based short-range sensors would handily detect the vessel and warn it away (because their beacon is active). If they deactivated their beacon, the IPA and any other agencies tracking them would still be able to identify them based on recent beacon activity, and could still levy fines. At this point the PDF (Planetary Defense Force) would also likely scramble interceptors in an attempt to meet the ship before it reached the surface. If, in the event the vessel reached the surface and ground-based sensors lost contact, the ship would likely be spotted eventually by aerial or orbital reconnaissance, and stormed on the ground or spotted again and tracked when it lifted off.

Since the captain of the Merchant is attempting to follow all the local laws, these dire circumstances will not befall him or his ship. The luxury goods are delivered, payment is received, and the crew gets some R&R at the cradle of human civilization. After a 48-hour layover, enough time to pick up some passengers bound for their next destination, the Merchant departs the orbital fortress and makes way for one of the starports at the edge of the system. They must dock again, register their departure and undergo further inspections. Since they picked up no cargo on Earth, the inspections proceed quickly. While it is not mandatory, the captain can file an interstellar travel plan; this gives officials of the Terran Union more information about interstellar traffic, and can act as insurance of sorts. If commercial passengers are involved, an interstellar travel plan is logged and registered with the local authorities automatically. If one’s course has been filed and the ship fails to make it to the next stop, the IPA can better attempt search and rescue operations. Informing the local government of your travel plans can also have the added benefit of reducing or eliminating some registration fees upon arrival or return to a system.

Unlawful Activities

The measures and activities above do not ensure that the laws can never be broken. However, attempting to do so carries great risk, and a great possibility of curtailing any future legal travel and activities if the perpetrators are caught or even identified. Even if one evades capture or punishment for their transgressions, if they are positively identified, the authorities may very well be waiting for them at the next port of call; past illegal activity will certainly be tagged to the ship’s registry. Ship registrations will carry their own “rap sheet,” and much like how one is responsible for any contraband found on their person or in their personal conveyance or real estate, the captain and crew of a ship may be held accountable for misdeeds attached to a ship’s registration. These may be factors to consider when purchasing a vessel or when seeking work as a member of a ship’s crew. Even if laws were broken under a different crew’s ownership or while you were not a member of the crew, you may be held accountable, or at the very least, spend plenty of time trying to clear up the issue or be hassled mercilessly to provide the proper documentation.

All that being said, however, unlawful activities do take place occasionally. The systems the governments have in place are not completely fool-proof, but they do curtail plenty of criminal ventures. Those illegal activities that go on are largely undertaken by independent smugglers rather than organized criminal syndicates or out-and-out pirates who are the constant target of the authorities and tend to operate outside their jurisdiction. All the above measures adequately achieve the express goal of curtailing reliable, organized access by unauthorized parties, whether they are citizens looking to evade taxation or a hostile armada.

For the individual smuggler or blockade runner, probably the most reliable method of pulling off unlawful activities involves some method of “laundering” the registry of a wanted vessel, since many violations are pinned on the ship rather than its crew. If the connection between the ship and crew is unknown to the authorities, the crew may be able to enlist the skills of talented hackers to alter the vessel’s registry so that it will appear clean to the authorities. Failing that, they may be able to ditch or destroy the vessel and get away scot-free. This can be very expensive (as even small ships are not at all cheap), and requires a certain amount of wariness on the part of the crew; they must ensure that their identities are not positively linked to a ship, otherwise the next time they register at a starport—even if they come in on a ship with a clean registry—their identities may be flagged, and depending on the severity of crimes attributed to them, they may face penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment or even execution. As such, it also pays for a ship’s captain to thoroughly vet any potential crew or passengers by running their passports and travel visas for warrants and detainers. Ignorance is rarely a valid excuse in the eyes of most governments, and most law-abiding captains would rather not run the risk of unwittingly allowing a fugitive on board.