"...better?" Not that he's ever going to be happy about Kyna seeing him a mess, but. If she's accustomed to cleaning up her friends' vomit it's not as embarrassing somehow. As for the teleportation question, his brow furrows beneath the washcloth.
"So, it kind of depends on what tech you're using. Aliens have it down a little better, I feel like, since the Covenant had a long time to study Forerunner technology. I've heard they could actually manipulate time, or stop it from passing entirely within a field. But all teleportation is based on accessing slipstream space. I'm not a physicist, but I know we discovered it when we were trying to crack faster than light travel like... 350 years ago. The drive all human ships are outfitted with now is basically a particle accelerator that creates a bunch of tiny black holes, and there's enough radiation energy in those to tear into slip-space. It's harmless if you're in a ship, they're shielded."
He pauses to cough here, before getting to the actual explanation. "Anyway, human teleporters access slipstream space, except because the person traveling doesn't have an accelerator you need to link up with another device wherever it is you're trying to go. Alien tech doesn't need a portal on the other side, they can just use coordinates -- I'm not sure how. Charon seems to have figured it out, sort of? Back on Chorus we got ahold of some of their teleportation grenades, and you can program those to either hold objects in slipspace for later retrieval or transport everything in the blast to coordinates. They're only good for one use. That tech feels... so much worse. A normal teleporter trip is painful, maybe a little nauseating, but the physical strain probably won't kill you unless you're barely holding on already. Those grenades are awful. We never had to use two back to back, but the vitals after a single trip go off the charts. The time we had to take one to a fight we planned in recoup. I don't think it's more radiation than usual, but it's instantaneous. Maybe that's why it's rougher."
no subject
"So, it kind of depends on what tech you're using. Aliens have it down a little better, I feel like, since the Covenant had a long time to study Forerunner technology. I've heard they could actually manipulate time, or stop it from passing entirely within a field. But all teleportation is based on accessing slipstream space. I'm not a physicist, but I know we discovered it when we were trying to crack faster than light travel like... 350 years ago. The drive all human ships are outfitted with now is basically a particle accelerator that creates a bunch of tiny black holes, and there's enough radiation energy in those to tear into slip-space. It's harmless if you're in a ship, they're shielded."
He pauses to cough here, before getting to the actual explanation. "Anyway, human teleporters access slipstream space, except because the person traveling doesn't have an accelerator you need to link up with another device wherever it is you're trying to go. Alien tech doesn't need a portal on the other side, they can just use coordinates -- I'm not sure how. Charon seems to have figured it out, sort of? Back on Chorus we got ahold of some of their teleportation grenades, and you can program those to either hold objects in slipspace for later retrieval or transport everything in the blast to coordinates. They're only good for one use. That tech feels... so much worse. A normal teleporter trip is painful, maybe a little nauseating, but the physical strain probably won't kill you unless you're barely holding on already. Those grenades are awful. We never had to use two back to back, but the vitals after a single trip go off the charts. The time we had to take one to a fight we planned in recoup. I don't think it's more radiation than usual, but it's instantaneous. Maybe that's why it's rougher."