Inertia-suppression

In Redemption Ark, Skade and Clavain independently encounter technology captured by the Mademoiselle, that permits the alteration of a ship's inertial mass in order to permit high-g acceleration for interstellar travel. It works by suppressing fluctuations and turmoil in quantum foam that supposedly causes momentum and inertia (similar to the concept of Higgs Bosons). It is also mentioned in that the technology may have been linked to the alien tower (in Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days) Skade tries to modify the technology with the help of Exordium to allow faster than light travel, via a state transition from tardyonic to tachyonic: however, her efforts are spectacularly unsuccessful, and the technology itself has the side effect of removing individuals caught in the transition bubbles from all recent history, as well as crippling her ship. Only those very close to the area of effect remember a person who is erased or unravelled backwards in time and recorded history indicates a much earlier death of that person. Because the victims (the deleted and nearby observers) are the only thing that remain from the time line where the victims began, people suddenly panicking and searching for a 'colleague' who died years before (in the new timeframe) can be the only sign of an accident. This happens at least twice in the novels. The inhibitors make reference to a similar effect erasing entire species from history. As such, neither they nor any other species in the galaxy with the technology to build inertia suppressing drives ever use them to travel faster than light.