“Those phase torpedoes seem rather powerful,” commented one of the twins.

Arlie sighed, “They had their uses, but they had their problems. Honestly we never solved all the problems with hyperspace phasing technology. We abandoned that line of research in the year 93 SDE.”

One of them leaned forward, and said, “Abandoned! Why?”

Arlie was silent for a moment, and then she replied, “Hyperspace phasing technology has a fundamental level flaw that greatly limits its usefulness. In simple terms, the technology functions by deliberately holding an object in a transitional state between normal space, and hyperspace. Since the object is only partially in hyperspace it is out of phase with objects in normal space. This allows it to pass through objects and pass through unphased shields. That transitional state however is also where the problem lies. The universe does not like it when an object is stuck in this transitional state, and it constantly tries to force the object out of the transitional state. This force puts a massive strain on the phase generators and is why they burn out. We were never able to produce a generator that could keep an object phased longer than 38 seconds. At least with Hyperspace phasing, we discovered a different method of phasing objects. Although not during the Cylovan conflict.”

A twin leaned forward with her face scrunched, “38 seconds seems like plenty of time to me. The burning out bit might be a problem, but it sounds useful. So why was it abandoned a little over a decade after its discovery?”

“Well I told you the flaws, but that was not all. The generators were a bit bulky, burned out after a single-use, and the Cylovans did learn to jam them. After the Cylovans learned to counter them, they lost their only edge. Our resources were also limited so the technology was abandoned and other projects were pursued. We did however revisit the subject after the conflict. Ultimately we determined that hyperspace phasing was a technological dead-end.”

“A dead-end?”

She nodded, “Yes a dead-end. While being able to move objects through objects has its uses, we came to the conclusion that hyperspace phasing was not the way to do it. The materials needed to produce a generator that would not burn-out after a single-use, one that would last longer than half a minute were beyond our abilities of the time. We started looking into other ideas for phasing physical objects.”

Suddenly someone asked, “How did you discover this tech when the Cylovan’s did not?”

Arlie giggled, “Oh, that? Easy, we have a leg up on them. When it comes to hyperspace we simply have more data. Those years of being trapped in hyperspace gave us a lot of information on the realm, and well we also had quite a bit of idle time to study that data. Hyperspace phasing was just one of many hyperspace applications we learned. Also while our hyperwarp drives were inferior due to our power generation tech being behind theirs, our advantage led us to surpass the Cylovans. We developed intergalactic ability whereas they never did. This happened because we found ways to optimize the hyperwarp engine and store vast amounts of power. We could not generate energy as quickly, but our ships could store far more than Cylovan vessels of the same size. That is what gave us the range for intergalactic jumps, but it did not prevent them from following us down conduits we had already made. Although during the war we did learn how to destroy conduits.”

“Out of curiosity what kinds of applications did you develop for hyperspace?”

Arlie leaned forward, “We learned quite a few things and while there were dead-ends, we did develop a few useful ones. Not all during the conflict. Take power generation for example, we learned how to draw energy from the deeper layers of subspace, in other words, hyperspace. Subspace Energy Wells were not developed during that war, but many centuries after. A very inefficient precursor called a Subspace Energy Extractor was worked on, but never entered widespread use, at least during the conflict. The device was bulky and barely provided enough energy to run the backup systems on most ships. The layers it could access were just not energy-rich enough to justify the device as anything other than an emergency system. Although we did come up with a couple of creative uses for it. Energy extractors were not the only concept for hyperspace power generation we had. So while that was one of the stellar successes given time, we certainly had our failures. The biggest one came after our success in subspace compression cells, we tried to apply the concept to a reactor. Let’s just say, I’m glad the test ship was nowhere near the fleet at the time.”

“What happened?” asked the twins leaning forward brimming with curiosity.

Arlie gave an awkward smile, and leaned back, “That would be a story for later. I don’t want to spoil anything.”