Grav-spheres

They were weapons once.   Super dense spheres of matter, mined and shaped by Kean technologies long lost, and better forgotten. The Kean's could move stars around - perhaps they could also delve deep into the dark wells that haunt the universe to extract their fundamental matter and use it to shatter worlds, - or to chain the three Galaxies together.   Whatever their origin, they can be found and salvaged from wrecks in a drift. If you're careful. If you have also found the right shielding materials to counter their irresistible pull. They're the pins that keep wrecks from drifting apart, the hidden magnets that hold entire drifts together - and a gift to the modern star vessel, giving it the illusion of gravity and helping it to manoeuvre within systems , or locking it to stations and platforms without the need for cables or physical linkages.   The Kean's didn't need them for that. They had mastered uni-directional gravity, generating it across plates so thin it could be worn on the soles of your shoes. But grav-plates need power to sustain them, and when one fails ... well, they might plaster you to the ceiling, paint you across their entire length in a layer less than a thumb's depth thick - or just - let you go, drifting and falling along with everyone else.   A Grav-sphere's nothing like that.   You generally find them mounted into tiny pits on the surface of old warships, ready to be extended on delicate spires. They'll be sat in secondary shielding spheres,. If your lucky those outer layers will still be working, keeping the attraction of their gathered mass cancelled and concealed in layers of equally dense and dark materials.   If you're unlucky, they might snatch hold of you - your suit, your vessel, the drift wreck you've been exploring - and slam you into their embrace.   A powerful sphere can pull over ten G standard if it's not contained safely. That can be difficult to get away from. But you don't want to get away. You want to detach it. Contain it. Wrap it in a mass dampener and take ut to market. A half dozen of them - standard fitting on a third Empire Starchaser - will pay off all your salvage loans and leave you with a heap of credit afterwards. They pay extra for working mass shields, so be very careful when your harvesting them.   Back in the old days, they were less 'Grav' spheres and more 'Grab' spheres. Weapons, like I said. Swung out to capture an enemy ship and pull it into range of your guns. Or just pull it apart if it's small enough. Being caught between two spheres spaced some distance across the hull of an Imperial Dreadnaught would have been no picnic, believe me. Worse, if you were using a gravitic motor to manoeuvre in system. The conflicting gravity wells would simply shudder your ship, and you, into itty bitty pieces.   So why salvage them?   Why not just cut them lose and let them fall into the local sun?   Well, for one thing, dropping dense matter into a solar furnace is probably not the best of ideas, and for another, as I said - in good condition they are worth a fortune.   Most modern ships, whether new shells, or salvaged ones. use Grav-spheres for their internal gravity. Properly installed, one sphere at the lowest 'level' of a small ship can create the equivalent of 1 standard G throughout the entire vessel - and some distance above it, so you need a good deflection system to keep debric from tumbling into you. Counter shielding below prevents a sphere from dragging you planet-side when in orbit - although the best systems can enable a pilot to employ it in a controlled descent.   You need good jets - and quick reflexes - to counter that kind of rapid arrival though. I've seen it used in military deploy and its not the softest of landings - just a very efficient one.   They space them out under cruise liners, using layers of counter shielding to lower the G in the higher decks. They say the really rich float to bed at night, but I don't think that's right. You can work that kind of magic with powered grave plates, but spheres just - pull. Or don't.   Weapons of mass deflection don't need that kind of fine tuning, do they?