The Temporal Lance is an ability exclusive to the Lorean Class Temporal Lance.
The Temporal Lance ability allows the starship to transport itself, and all ships traveling with it (see Warp Chunnel for details), to a location that doesn't have a valid Chunnel Target. The destination will be in-line with, but beyond, a Chunnel Target. This consumes 50KT of fuel.
The Temporal Lance mission is used to activate this ability.
While starships are in a Temporal Lance, they are temporarily suspended from the game (they're still counted in the scores). This could cause the number of starships in the game to be lower than the ship limit, possibly allowing new starships to be built without use of Priority Build Points or Priority Points.
As the starships travel towards their emergence location, the space-time continuum at the destination begins to warp. Shortly before the starships emerge, the warping is severe enough that the automatic scanners of all races can notice the event.
As with a chunnel, starships emerging from a Temporal Lance will have their shields down, and launching a Temporal Lance from or into a debris disk will destroy all the starships traversing the Temporal Lance.