Neutrino Reactor

A Neutrino Reactor is a Byssian invention allowing a ship to instantaneously accelerate to many times faster than the speed of light, thereby never entering the near-light-speed zone where relativistic mass gain and time dilation occur. They are very rare, very expensive, and of course only the Byssians know how to make them, so the only way to get a ship fitted with one is to be friends with the Byssians or to steal a ship made by the Byssians. The only known ship equipped with a Neutrino Reactor that is not flown by Byssians and was not stolen from them is Pyros' Mark II starfighter.

Neutrino Reactors can power a ship at any speed, but they must be at a minimum of just under 0.01 c (30,000 m/s) for the hyperspeed jump to engage, at which point they instantaneously accelerate to around 500 c. This allows ships to make the 5 light-year average distance between stars in roughly 70 to 100 hours.