Hello Sci-fi fans and writers, I hope that this here is the correct spot to ask this question regarding a conundrum I have come about during my work on a sci-fi short Story.
Outline
In said Short Story, I have some people (Agents) chasing after some other people (Heroes). The heroes stumbled upon some critical information that could damage the faction (Bad Guy) that employs the chasing party. The information got intercepted in time, but to make sure that the information wouldn’t be leaked again, they would need to silence the heroes.
Technology
In space there are two modes of flight: conventional reaction based propulsion and a higher speed propulsion which uses a so-called jump drive which flings the spaceship along a predetermined trajectory at high sub-light speeds (max speeds would be 0.5c). There is near instantaneous communications, but you would need to be in coverage of the network itself, which is flaky at best.
Conundrum
So how would agents be able to intercept / interdict the heroes in a plausible fashion? Would it be reasonable to have a micro wormhole generator or some other way to deploy gravimetric wells, which would destabilize the entire star system? Would it be anticlimactic to just have the agents wait for the heroes to finish their jump, as they would know where they would drop out?
I would love to hear opinions and suggestions from you.
Not directly related, but .5c is going to be slooooooooooow for interstellar travel. Proxima Centauri is roughly 268,770 AU away, and 1 AU is about 8.3 light-minutes. That works out to be 2.23M light minutes, or 4.2 light years. If someone is traveling at .5c, that’s 8.4 years to get from our solar system to the very closest star system. And of course it’s all at relativistic speeds, so while it may not feel long to the people on the ship, it’s still the better part of a decade.
Right now, the closest earth-like planet we know of (similar size, similar star, similar orbital period) is Kepler-452b. Kepler-452b is 1800 light years away, or 3200 years for the people observing the craft that was traveling there. This is getting solidly into Joel Haldeman’s “The Forever War” territory.
IMO, unless you want to do a lot of math to figure out the effects of time dilation, you might want to have some kind of science-magic that allows your characters to sidestep relativity.
(I believe it was Charles Stross that worked relativity into a galactic cryptocurrency economic system. He got around relativity by assuming that almost all people were inorganic, and able to copy and back up their consciousness, or sleep through the decades that interstellar travel required.)
Perhaps I should have given a bit more context about the setting as you said that 0.5c is pretty slow.
The empire is local to one single star system and the scene in question happens at an equal distance between Mars and Neptune.
Ah, got it. So you’re still going to have to worry about relativity, but to a much lesser extent.