Gravy

Gravitics and controlled gravitation, known by the slang term gravy, are found everywhere in the galaxy. They are used in everything from ship drives to gravy-guns, from battleplates to hover-trays. There seems to be no technology anywhere that does not use gravy somewhere.

Annie-plants use gravy systems to keep their neutronium fuel under enough pressure to keep it stable. They also use an esoteric variant of it to annihilate the fuel for energy without needing to use antineutronium. Gravy is even used to compress ordinary matter into neutronium, thus fueling the entire galactic civilization. Annie-plant gravitics, and the neutronium inside, generate noticeable tide forces, so ships with large annie-plants tend to be built with the decks wrapped around them like peelifruit layers.

Gravy-guns emit sharp, carefully modulated gravitic pulses designed to cause shear forces and tear the target apart. It is said that someone standing near a gravy-gun strike or badly-damped gravy-gun emplacement, who has eaten recently, will find out exactly where the term gravy came from.

Gravy tractors have a wide variety of uses, since they can move, manipulate, confine, and even crush tractored objects. Battleplates are famed and feared for the power and fine control of their tractors and gravy-guns. Unifield shields use a variant of tractor technology to keep debris and weapons fire away from the shielded object, and breacher munitions do the same to penetrate unifields.

Virtually all ship drives use gravy instead of propellants, which is why very few ships have visible engines. This provides the advantage of producing no dangerous emissions and causing no g-forces, since a gravy drive affects every part of the ship and cargo evenly. As a result, a gravy drive can develop thousands of gees of acceleration with no danger to the ship or crew. Some ships do have reaction drives as backup, though. Tanks, civilian skycars, and even hover-trays use gravy drives.

Deck gravity aboard ships and space stations uses, you guessed it, gravy. In addition to the obvious, deck gravity can be used to immobilize intruders, move heavy things around, and even wake heavy sleepers.