"Relay Wash" is a rare, often fatal consequence of Faster than Light travel. Since the Epostile created their first prototypes of the dark matter manipulating space-compression methodology, it's been well understoid that frequent travel generates a well-ploughed "lane". Visible roughly for 1 to 8 seconds after a Relay's Impulse closes, this subtle ripple in spacetime bends light at the scale of gravitational influence normal mass behaves within. Undocumented for many centuries of theoretical physics research was the physical displacement of the "weave" of Dark Matter dotted gingerly through reality, so accidents in early Faster than Light travel experiments were numerous.
These are things Relay Officer Ilix knew as a matter of surface considerations when decrypting black box or SOS data, but closer inspection of the crew metrics of the derelict vessel drifting 180km from his Relay satellite called into question just what happened to a crew in a sustained Wash Cycle.