Herb, since KF theory is pretty much gone entirely, and even any KF core powered jumpships discovered by the Tetakuni are either completely wrecks from the wars, or so decrepit and patchwork kludges that give no real clue as to how they would work when fresh from the shipyard....
What will the birds think of the Jumpship that the human bunch arrived in? Outside of needing minor repairs, its a fairly new jumpship class, less than a century old if I remember my TRs right, and is only really in need of it's 'first' dose of major repairs due to having gone on the lamb. So its nowhere near as bad as SSW relic jumpships which are ramshackle, let alone what resulted after the Third League shattered and the long nightfall started.
In the fanfiction I recently concluded based on this adventure, the Tetakuni most certainly WERE interested in the JumpShip, and wanted to take it into the nearby human preservation with them. But a funny thing comes to mind here, in that the JumpShip's crew would need to go along with this, as the Tets have no idea how to drive a human KF JumpShip. In the adventure, they ended up agreeing to have the ship remain in service, within their "safe zone," as basically a living museum and touring craft.
Because it arguably gives them a means to, well, GTFO as you mentioned in the campaign setting. And its undeniably owned/created by humanity. So I can easily imagine something of a repeat to the 'chase' that a certain IE semi-rogue enhanced jumpship went through: The Tetakuni want it to keep humanity from exploding in size again + potentially threatening the Tetakuni, but also might really want to research the hell out of a fully intact KF jumpship to see what tricks it can do that they might be able to add/alter on their own warp-drives. Or in the reverse, if an intact KF jumpship can use some of the tricks of the warp drive.
If the human JumpShip somehow escapes from Tetakuni clutches, it IS possible to evade capture for a while, but the tetakuni warpships will be able to track them if they keep to habitable systems where they have a presence, and with no apparent need to stop and recharge, nor to keep too far from gravity wells, they can easily catch up to a human JumpShip once it stops to collect energy for another jump. (The warpship that shows up at the end of the story--
Northwind Legends, Last of their Like--was capable of about 11-LYph speeds, coming to Pleione from Arboris [as humans knew them] in a matter of hours, before landing on Pleione, and then getting back up and to the
Ghost's jump point in minutes.)
The drive tech between the Tets and humans are only distantly related. Though the birds' FTL science was inspired by the ancient wreck of the Raiden (which ended up in the planet's orbit for a few thousand years), their approach to hyperspace theory took a different enough route to result in a completely incompatible system. For humans to crack the Tet system, they'd need to be fully immersed in the foundations of Tetakuni math and science, and basically educated from the "ground up."
And of course, there's the fun fact that the
Ghost of Chuyo, as a
Chimeisho-class JumpShip, has both a KF drive and a LF battery, which the Word of Blake learned (back in the 3050s or so) how to turn into a super-jump system, for leaps up to 900 LY. But since that also costs you the drive, wherever you go had better be a habitable system AND you probably don't want to miss the jump point by too much....
Suffice to say, the odds are steeply stacked against humanity in the adventure and the setting.
But there is a chance, if your GM is generous enough and the players are smart enough, for the humans to escape the birds and maybe explore for other options that may or may not exist.
- Herb
