Going Dark

Going dark — moving past the last comm relay and the last charted system, where no signal will reach you and no rescue will find you in time — is what pathfinder work actually is, and the Rim treats the craft as a tradition. A pilot does not get a Pathfinder hull until a senior pathfinder agrees to put their name next to theirs on the certification, and a senior pathfinder does not sign until they have watched the candidate bring three ships back from drifts no instrument could have plotted for them. The hardware reflects the seriousness: a pathfinder drive next to an H2O2 refinery that drinks ice straight out of the harvester, a fuel tank big enough that an empty cargo bay still gets you home, and a survey scanner sharp enough that you know what you're looking at before it kills you. The first Rim pathfinder to fly one wrote the operations manual herself, in pencil, on the inside of the cockpit hatch. Subsequent pilots have added to it. None have erased anything.