Apollo's Amulet

The Toba Advanced Exploration Technology Group has a starship research and design bureau (the same group that helped design and build the Toba flagship Leinhard that was later made famous by bringing the Rocket Dogs back to Quantum Prime.) The starship research group has a long-standing project investigating kinetic energy and thermal energy (really two names for the same thing, as thermal energy is just the disordered kinetic energy of lots of atoms.) One outcome of this research project was a technology that converted excess heat to useful momentum (yes, the Toba have somehow conquered Maxwell’s Demon!) The application of this to starship drives is obvious – the waste heat of the drive can be used to further accelerate the ship!

Perfectly miniaturizing the heat-to-momentum device isn’t possible (so there are no fuel-less Rocket Dog rockets, going ever faster as they heat up), but a partial shrinking and adaptation was achieved, giving rise to Apollo’s Amulet, which maintains a Rocket Dog’s speed when the Rocket Dog is at extreme heat, thus turning an otherwise liability into a tactical advantage!