Slipspace flake

A slipspace flake or slipstream crystal was a central component of a Forerunner slipspace drive. They were quantum-engineered crystalline devices, and were used aboard Forerunner spacecraft to modulate the ship's passage through the higher dimensions, being a major contributor to their markedly stable slipspace transitions due to how they mediated temporal and spatial anomalies inherent to many slipspace interactions. This reduced travel times by orders of magnitude over the crude alternatives used by less advanced species. All slipspace flakes were chipped from a central "core" crystal, the location of which was known only to the Master Builder. The exotic composition and slipspace interactions of the crystal were incomprehensible to even the Forerunners, and never replicated.

The Forerunner capital had an entire hallway located near the Council chamber decorated with millions of spent slipspace flakes, some adorning the walls and others built into rotating sculptures.

Trivia
The crystal found by Dr. Halsey in the ruins beneath CASTLE Base on Reach may have been a slipspace flake, though it possessed time/space-bending properties beyond simply enabling faster slipspace travel.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Cryptum
 * Halo: Silentium
 * Halo: Fractures
 * Promises to Keep
 * Halo: Warfleet