The powers that be in the Corps thought that the Ceres mineral may have potential for an Alcubierre drive that could let man expand to the stars. Corps miners had extracted some and found negative energy density (a mass lower than that of the vacuum, negative mass)–a type of exotic matter never before found. Now a folded manifold of space-time around the ship could, theoretically, bring two points together. The ship jumps from the first point to the second, faster than light.