Slave Shield

A slave shield is one of the most significant and recognizable technologies in the galaxy. Developed after the Ur-Quan Slave Revolt by the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za, it is a highly robust, self-maintaining force field implanted around a planet's atmosphere that blocks the passage of all physical objects. It also filters and scatters all radiation that passes through it, causing a visual red halo effect around the planet and causing sunlight from the surface to appear reddened and take on a pulsating appearance, and more importantly scrambling all electromagnetic and even HyperWave communications to and from the surface. The ultimate symbol of cultural dominance from a Kzer-Za point of view, it is their universal device for humanely confining other species to prevent their ever becoming a threat to the Kzer-Za's survival and freedom. The Kzer-Za dream appears to be to keep all sentient species other than themselves bottled up like this, allowing only Ur-Quan to have the exalted freedom to travel the stars. However, the constant emergence of new technological races necessitates constant vigilance to keep new races slave-shielded, and the immense logistical drain of conquering and slave-shielding other species without using genocidal methods of war has required the Kzer-Za to adopt the compromise of allowing a Hierarchy of un-slave-shielded Battle Thralls in contested regions of space.

Only the Ur-Quan themselves were capable of disabling slave shields; the Kzer-Za had some method for locally neutralizing a slave shield that they used for travel and communication with fallow slave worlds in the Hierarchy, and apparently were able to apply this method globally to un-slave-shield a world if they deemed the race on that world unsafe and necessary to pre-emptively destroy. The Kohr-Ah possessed a similar method; though the agreement between the two races during the Doctrinal Conflict prevents them from using it against worlds conquered by the Kzer-Za, intelligence indicates they are fully prepared to use it to destroy the populations of all slave-shielded worlds in what had been Kzer-Za territory should they be victorious in the conflict.

Unfortunately for the Kzer-Za, time has proven that their slave shields are not as perfect a solution to the problem of eternally preventing traffic and communication from a planet as they once thought. Very sensitive HyperWave receivers are able to pick up transmissions from across a slave shield, if the message is sent with enough power; the New Alliance of Free Stars is able to communicate with the slave-shielded Chenjesu this way, thanks to the Chenjesu's highly refined natural HyperWave-sensing anatomy. Moreover, the immense technological resources of the Chmmr that emerge after the Unification Process of the Chenjesu and Mmrnmhrm allow them to develop a method to "crack" slave shields, using a large grid of satellites to introduce disruptions across the slave-shield's surface until it dissipates.¹ After the Ur-Quan defeat during the Second Doctrinal Conflict, this method is used to free the Alliance races that had been slave-shielded in the aftermath of the Ur-Quan Slave War.

Moreover, it seems likely that over a very long period of time even Kzer-Za technology cannot be perfectly reliable, and slave shields must eventually decay, though it is probably unlikely that a technological culture could maintain itself on a planet's surface that long. This may have happened to the first race ever slave-shielded by the Kzer-Za, the Faz, if speculations of some connection between the Faz and the Utwig — specifically, an Utwig creation myth that might bear resemblance to a slave-shield collapse — are true.

The only species known to have duplicated the Kzer-Za slave shield technology is the Spathi, who had long been unsuccessfully researching similar technology, which they intended to apply as an ultimate protective technology to keep them safe from the Ultimate Evil on their homeworld. Their entrance into the New Alliance of Free Stars gives them the opportunity they need to study the slave shield around Earth and duplicate it, which they soon do, retreating to obscurity and safety trapped on the surface of Spathiwa.

Planets in the local quadrant of the galaxy that are slave-shielded at some point in time include:

• Spathiwa (shielded by the Spathi themselves)
• Gaia
• Earth
• Procyon II
• Unzervalt

Notes and references

¹This is only seen when Earth is freed in the ending cinematics of the 3DO version.