Vortex Drive

This is the technology used to travel faster than the speed of light in order to travel between solar systems quickly.
The Vortex Drive allows a ship to enter the Hyper-Vortex safely. A ship's computer is required to plot a course through the Hyper Vortex before activating the Vortex Drive.
It is possible to activate a Vortex Drive without plotting a course, however, this would cause the ship to go in a random direction and it could end up anywhere once dropping out of the Hyper Vortex.
The Vortex Drive cannot be used when near massive objects, such as planets, moons, or large asteroids. Due to this restriction, there is technically a limit to a ship's size before a Vortex Drive will actually work with that ship. Some scientists have theorized it would be possible to get past this limitation, although none have found a way to overcome it.
While using the Vortex Drive, it not possible to track the ship until it leaves the Hyper Vortex. Although, it does take time for the Vortex Drive to activate and there are indicators that a ship's Vortex Drive is about to activate. As such, it is possible to attempt to disable a ship before the ship is ready to use its Vortex Drive with proper navigational directions.
After the ship has left the Hyper Vortex however, it is possible to determine the ending location of a ship and then follow the ship, potentially with a faster ship to catch up more quickly.
A Vortex Drive is also only able to travel a maximum distance of 9 light years before needing to stop, exit the Hyper Vortex, and then continue on the navigation. This leaving and reentering of the Hyper Vortex is automatically achieved by a ship's computer in most scenarios and generally takes only a few minutes at most, sometimes only a few seconds. This process though does cause a ship to be potentially vulnerable to another ship's attack or disruption before the ship is able to re-enter the Hyper Vortex.
The larger the ship is, the larger Vortex Drive is needed in order to allow it to enter into the Hyper Vortex.
The average speed of a Vortex Drive is 500 times the speed of light.