The Mech Touch novel Chapter 766

Nobody knew where the shimmering yellow-orange particles came from and how they managed to scramble their communications and sensors. Some of the geeky science officers posited that the particles consisted of a form of higher-dimensional energy that somehow spilled over into realspace.

While the particles blocked their sight and interrupted their transmissions, they didn’t do any further damage. They actually looped around solid objects as if they followed some kind of astral wind.

One good consequence of holding all of those meetings to discuss all kinds of contingency plans was that they already formed a plan for this sort of eventuality.

Each Vandal ship should be deploying all of their spaceborn mechs. They kept their heavier mechs on perimeter guard should any threats emergence from the astral winds. More importantly, they should be deploying their lighter mechs into expanding circles and spheres in order to reconnect with the rest of the fleet, should they be near.

Half an hour went by as the expanding chain of light mechs encountered their counterparts from a random selection of Vandal and Swordmaiden combat carriers and supply ships. It quickly became evident that the Flagrant Swordmaidens emerged out of FTL in a muddled soup that bore no resemblance to their previous formation.

What they feared the most right now was missing out on a couple of ships because they fell just outside the detection envelope of their search parties.

Right now, the Vandals prioritized the search for the Gorgon’s Gaze, the Beggar’s Bounty and the Linnever Swan.

It would hurt if they lost their other ships, but they couldn’t lose their expert pilot and their logistics ships!

Fortunately, it didn’t appear they landed in the vicinity of an enemy force that had arrived beforehand. The engineers and science officers slowly figured out what happened as the Flagrant Swordmaidens slowly converged together after coming across a friendly patrol.

"As best as we can tell, sir, is that we should have arrived in the Aeon Corona System sooner, but due to entering a field of distorted gravity, time and space appeared to have stretched out for a few days. This caused us to experience more time inside the region of affected than outside, essentially speeding up our perspective. This stretch in spacetime suddenly sprang back to normal, causing us to be gently thrown forward and into the Aeon Corona System ahead of schedule."

"What are the consequences?"

"Our transition coordinates may deviate depending on the strength of the push. Heavier ships are less affected than lighter vessels, so our lighter transports should be the farthest flung away while the heaviest logistics ships shouldn’t be too far away from our original formation. Once we find the logistics ships, we should be able to figure out the center of our spread-out emergency pattern, sir."

Major Verle furrowed his brows. He understood the implications. Find the logistics ships and they had the potential to gather everyone back together again. The problem was that half an hour had gone by and they still hadn’t found the big and lumbering vessels. It meant that their spread was wide enough that they stood a real chance of getting cut off from the rest.

"What can you tell about our emergence zone."

The science officer consulted a data pad. "According to Chief Avanaeon, we have emerged at a different angle than anticipated. The spacetime storm has flung us minutely off-course, but not to the extent of missing the Aeon Corona System entirely. He did state that any other fleet who jumped to the Aeon Corona System from the same dwarf system we departed earlier will likely be flung in an entirely different angle relative to the trinary stars. Chances are low that we will encounter ships that have jumped to the same System due to the constantly changing ripple effects of the spacetime storm."

"So in short, our own fleet may be scrambled across tens of thousands of kilometers while enemy fleets may have been flung several light-hours away, is that right?"

"Correct, but there’s more, sir. We have modeled the streams of particles and have discovered that they are being funneled into space from a central location in the star system. The source is situated at a large terrestrial planet that we have tentatively identified as Aeon Corona VII."

Aeon Corona VII! The source of all of these astral winds came from a single planet instead of one of the stars! What’s more, the science officer mentioned that the seventh planet from the trinary stars consisted of a terrestrial, rock-like planet!

"Does Aeon Corona VII match our expected parameters?"

"We are still unsure, sir. Several terrestrial planets that are distinguishable on our gravitic sensors may also be the Super Earth we are looking for. Due to the pervasive astral winds, every observation we make is distorted."

Their priorities were clear. Before they moved to investigate Aeon Corona VII, they first needed to gather their forces and regroup into a cohesive force. "Please send a coded message the Jaded Sword via our quantum entanglement node. Tell them we have reached the system and seek to rendez-vous."

"Uhm, sir, that won’t be possible." The communications officer replied.

"Explain."

"Our quantum entanglement node is permanently rendered inoperative. The entangled particles have lost their entanglement! All of them are decoupled!"

"Are you joking?!"

Upon further questioning, the communications officer and the specialists in charge of the quantum entanglement node concluded that the spacetime storm essentially isolated them from the rest of the galaxy at some fundamental level.

After a brief consultation with the science officer, they developed a theory. The head geek explained the situation to Major Verle in simple terms.

"Sir, imagine that before we jumped into the Aeon Corona System, our ships were located anchored in space and time. When we transitioned into FTL, our ships were lifted up in the higher dimensions where the laws of nature operate among slightly different principles. When we emerged into this star system, we haven’t actually returned to the familiar confines of realspace. Instead, this entire star system is enveloped in a bubble of spacetime that is neither realspace or higher dimensional space."