Wormhole Relays

Wormhole relays are the primary method of faster-than-light communication used within Human space. They consist of a series of automated spaceborne vessels, colloquially referred to as "probes", which are stationed at Wormhole Gateways. These probes receive data from the star system in which they are located, before travelling through the gateway to which they are assigned, and transmitting data to a receiver in the new star system. Such receivers may be the final destination of the data for shorter-distance communication, but in the case of data being transmitted greater distances, they may be relay probes themselves. In such cases, the next probe in line, after receiving the data, will travel through its gateway before transmitting the data to the next destination. In this way, data is able to be sent over great distances in a relatively short time.
In Earth Space, wormhole relays are ubiquitious, with dozens of relay probes stationed at every gateway. As gateways in Earth Space are generally active at all times, this means that messages can be easily sent across the entirety of Earth Space in a matter of hours. in the Outer Systems, however, gateways are generally only active for short periods of time in a given day, week, or month, depending on the availability of Antimatter. As such, data sent by wormhole relay in the Outer Systems generally travels much slower than in Earth Space, and in some cases travels no faster than regular spaceships. Wormhole relays are not used in the Lost Systems, due to the lack of active gateways and absence of stellar governments.