Spike Drives and The Mictlan

Spike Drives are used to allow ships to achieve “faster than light” travel. Instead of true FTL, the drive punctures a hole in space and time to a place most people call The Mictlan which is, in essence, another dimension that connects to ours at various points. Travelling through The Mictlan can make incredibly far away planets, months, weeks, or even days away, as opposed to hundreds or even thousands of lightyears. Planets near enough to each other through The Mictlan form a Sector and travelling outside of the Sector (especially after the Scream) is incredibly difficult, or even impossible due to interference.

Interference can usually be navigated around but it often makes travelling to certain locations, even within the Sector, impossible. Interference functions as physical tubes, spheres or even walls. Some sections can be accessed with proper navigation around or through the interference, others are completely impossible to access. Interference is not stationary and is constantly in flux, without constant courses being charted, pilots may find an old route that was once clear of interference now incredibly dangerous to navigate, or completely cut off. Luckily, especially within well travelled routes, this change is rarely rapid enough to cause more than slight delays while pilots update charts and find cleaner routes.