Book featuring a specific method of FTL travel which involved tachyon pulses and made a lot of people sick

Question

I’m looking a for a book that I read that contained a specific type of FTL travel method. It involved tachyon pulses and when the transition was complete a lot of people would get sick. I can’t remember it for the life of me.

Answer 1

If it's relatively recent, I would suggest the Odyssey One series by Evan Currie, starting with Into the Black. The titular ship 'Odyssey' is the first interstellar ship built on Earth, and uses what they call a transition drive to achieve ftl travel.

The drive converts the ship and everyone on it to tachyons which travel a set distance and then spontaneously revert to the original state. It's not instantaneous, so the crew watch the ship dissolve in front of them causing some interesting psychological impacts:

“And we have at least one who we have to confine to the labs…Lieutenant Tearborn snapped, Captain. Security picked her up in Engineering. Apparently, she witnessed the reactor vaporize and she thought it was a breach.”

The majority of the crew have a physical reaction as well, to a greater or lesser extent:

“Nothing permanent or debilitating—not yet, at any rate,” Rame said. “But it has affected the eyesight of twenty-three crew members. Again, not permanent. But disturbing, just the same. Thirty crew members have developed a disturbing cellular degradation of the soft tissue of their noses, mouths, and throats. I’m not certain about the internal effects of these yet. I’ve scheduled a series of tests.”

The more serious effects are downplayed later in the series, although finding it unpleasant and a lot of vomiting after each transition remains a feature throughout.

The key plot points to try to jog your memory is this is the right one:

• The captain is Eric Weston, previously a marine air fighter pilot and commander of the 'Archangel' flight.
• After the first jump they pick up a distress signal and pick up an apparent human from a race called the 'Priminae'.
• There is a third race, the Drasin, which is trying to wipe out the Priminae.
• The Odyssey has a small fraction of the power of the other ships, but a combination of stealth, specific technological advances (tunable lasers and armour), and superior tactics allows the humans to have a significant impact in the battles.