The Mech Touch

This was a day that would live on in history of the human race as well as all of the indigenous alien races of the displaced dwarf galaxy.

Anyone residing in a starship only had to look out a window to figure out that everything had changed!

For the first time since the Red Ocean's emergence, its characteristic red cast that inspired its human name had become overpowered by the dawn of an enormous galaxy!

It was like a distant but ever-present sun, one that one day suddenly decided to illuminate the entire Red Ocean!

However, it was not that the sun arrived next to the Red Ocean, but that the Red Ocean had suddenly been transported next to a galaxy that was unimaginably far away!

To the humans who immigrated to the new frontier in pursuit of new opportunities, what happened was nothing less than a calamity!

The galaxy-wide transition event may have only lasted an instant, but the consequences were nothing less than devastating!

As the news slowly spread across the slice of the dwarf galaxy that the human race managed to conquer, many colonists could not process the news.

The Larkinsons who had retreated into their vaults grew numb and silent as the event broke their cognition.

No matter how smart they were or how much they have experienced in their lives, a galactic displacement event was so massive that it was never even used as the basis of a plot in the incredibly diverse entertainment industry.

Not even the script writers were mad enough to come up with such a ludicrous idea!

"How are the phase whales able to teleport an entire galaxy, if only a small one, 50 million light-years away! This is impossible! The energy requirements are enormous and the quantity of phasewater that is needed to teleport every single asteroid, moon, planet, star and black hole should exceed the estimated quantity that is in the possession of the aliens! There is no way the indigenous aliens managed to transport every single particle of dust without breaking anything!"

"The galactic net is malfunctioning! I can't connect to my relatives back in the old galaxy anymore. The connections aren't going through!"

"It's not just the Milky Way that we have lost contact with. I can't call my cousin who is working in a colony in the Magair Middle Zone either!"

"Huh? The messages that I have sent to a supplier in the Torald Middle Zone are still going through. Hey, the Comm Consortium just sent us a notification."

"What did they say?"

"The quantum communication nodes connected to the Milky Way are no longer working, but the ones that are connected to other nodes in the Red Ocean are still doing fine. The consortium's engineers are working as quickly as possible to reconfigure the networks so that we can form a fully working network across the new frontier."

The implications of losing direct communications with the Milky Way were serious and profound.

Ever since humanity first set foot in the Red Ocean, many people had gotten used to the notion that their home galaxy was not as far away as it appeared on the maps.

Sure, the Red Ocean orbited the Milky Way at a distance of several hundred thousand light-years, but with the addition of an easily accessible communications network that could establish instant communications between the two, it was easy for the colonists to remain in touch with the people who stayed behind in the old galaxy!

That illusion broke with the breaking of all quantum communication nodes that were connected to paired nodes located in another galaxy.

Perhaps the humans of the Milky Way came to the conclusion that the phase whales had wiped out the Red Ocean in its entirety!

If no form of communications could be established between the humans spread across the two galaxies, then they would no longer be able to maintain a single unified civilization!

The humans of the Milky Way were probably not that greatly affected by the galactic displacement event.

They may have lost a lot of their best and brightest with the disappearance of the Red Ocean, but their core strength and foundation still remained enough to maintain their dominion over their home galaxy!

As for the humans of the Red Ocean, their situation had become a lot more dire!

Many people on Davute and beyond already began to panic now that they had lost the 'big brother' that they could always turn to if they ever- needed help in solving their problems in the Red Ocean!

"Damnit, this is a disaster!" Ves uttered as soon as he thought of this specific scenario.

"Waaaaaaaaa!" Marvaine cried as he became affected by unfolding panic and confusion.

"Meeeeoooow." Lucky tried his best to console the little boy, but even his cutest act failed to make the young Larkinson feel reassured!

Even Andraste devolved into a scared little girl in these uncertain times!

"Mama, I'm scared! People are saying that we are left all alone. Is that true?!"

Gloriana had already bent down to embrace Aurelia. She reached out and hugged her second daughter as well.

"Shhh. It's okay, my babies. Nothing will happen. So what if our galaxy has moved to another cosmic neighborhood? We didn't need the Milky Way anyway. The foundation of the Larkinsons and the Hexers is based entirely in our current galaxy. The Fridaymen might have reason to be scared of losing their old galaxy backers, but we will remain as strong as ever before!"

The Larkinsons might actually be able to make it through this unprecedented crisis without suffering much actual damage, but the same could not be said for many other parties!

For example, within a fortress built inside the secure Davute Pocket Space that thankfully remained unchanged, a certain federal president was trying his best to maintain his composure!

Yenames Clive was one of the smartest and well-educated member of the Clive Consortium of his generation. He had not only beaten many of his fellow Clives into securing the presidency of an entire colonial state, but also managed to outmaneuver numerous excellent candidates put forth by the other founders of Davute!

Yet as the truth slowly began to dawn on his administration, he realized that nothing could have prepared him to confront a crisis of this magnitude!

Slam!

His chief of staff forcibly smacked a desk with her palm!

"Sir! This is no time for you to lose control over yourself!" Reina Kernsk shouted at him. "The consequences are massive, and our state has most definitely lost our greatest backing, but this is not the time to address these affairs. We need you to take charge and keep our citizens from making our situation worse!"

The president quickly pulled his mind out of all of the disastrous consequences to his state as well as his own personal condition. Kernsk was right. The last thing that anyone could afford was people going crazy due to the events that had just taken place!

"Activate the most appropriate emergency response plan." The president instructed as he forcibly maintained a state of cold rationality. "Instruct the Planetary Guard to go out at full force. Mobilize our military forces as well and make sure they reassure our citizens that we still possess the might to see through the coming dangers."

"Good idea, sir. A show of strength is the crudest but also the most straightforward method of assuring the concerns of our people. Not everyone will respond well to them, however. The reactions of the citizens are bound to be unpredictable."

President Yenames Clive finally regained his demeanor as the head of his government. "Then tell the Planetary Guard to do their work and pacify any uncontrolled elements. We are still in the highest state of emergency."

"The Big Two will probably lower it within the next 48 hours. Our displaced and isolated society cannot remain frozen for too long." The chief of staff predicted.

"Stability is more important than prosperity, at least for the time being. We should gradually return to a state of normalcy, but it is critical to keep our citizens preoccupied and our mechs out in force."

The Colonial Federation of Davute moved quickly to control its own territories.

Several hours after the native aliens had successfully managed to teleport the Red Ocean to the vicinity of Messier 87, millions if not billions of humans spread across the new frontier gave in to their panic!

"We're doomed! We are all going to die!" A security officer yelled as he stepped out of the armory and promptly began to open fire at any crew members who were in the vicinity! "Humanity in this galaxy will go extinct! If the local aliens won't wipe us all out, then the ones from M87 will come and finish the job! We can't fight against an entire super-galaxy!"

Although the average quality of humans in the Red Ocean was a bit higher than average, there were plenty of unstable and weak-willed individuals who broke down and started to behave irrationally in the face of the overpowering pressure of the truth!

·ƈθm More and more alarming information had begun to proliferate across the fractured galactic net.

The Great Severing affected more than just the intergalactic quantum communication node connections between the two galaxies.

A more alarming piece of news had filtered through!

The greater beyonder gate located in the Bridgehead One System could no longer establish a connection with its corresponding copy located in the Maryun Ultima System!

In other words, the only known gate that could lead the humans of the Red Ocean back to their old and familiar home galaxy became inoperable! The galactic displacement event had turned one of the most powerful devices of human civilization into a gigantic and exorbitant piece of space junk!

So long as this orphaned gate could not generate a wormhole with a comparable ring-shaped construct, it would always serve as a reminder to the displaced humans that they had become lost and abandoned sons!

This explosive revelation was the final confirmation that a certain group of people needed to go bonkers!

"Have you gone crazy, captain!? Open up this hatch!"

The deranged starship captain that had forcibly taken over the helm of his own ship refused to listen to his crew!

"It's pointless, Harry! We're all doomed! We are all going to die!"

"What are you talking about?! We're humans! We rose up from humble beginnings on Old Earth and managed to conquer half of the Milky Way by the time we took a break!"

"That's different! I studied our civilization's history as well as you, and the only reason why we managed to win over the aliens back then was because they all underestimated us weak humans. This won't happen again! The natives of the Red Ocean have all learned of our might, so they conspired to cut us off from our home galaxy before they start an offensive that will make us extinct!"

"Then we will die trying, sir! Don't be a pussy! If you want to be a coward and leave this fight early, then at least give us the courtesy of letting us choose our own way out. You don't have to drag us all down with your ship!"

"I AM SAVING YOU ALL, HARRY! BETTER TO DIE A CLEAN DEATH THAN TO BECOME THE PLAYTHINGS OF VENGEFUL ALIENS! FOR HUMANITY!"

The cargo vessel continued to fall from orbit before crashing straight into a colony settlement!

Only a fraction of the 200,000 recently migrated humans survived this act of madness!

The small colony was still too poor and underdeveloped to afford greater protection, and its shelters were way too inadequate to protect the sheltering colonists from a kinetic strike of this magnitude!

Similar events happened in many other star systems. From the lower zones and all the way into the upper zones, many people with poor psychological qualities acted as if they were crown terrorists who had been activated a few years too late!

The forces of the Big Two as well as the many established powers that found themselves stuck in this isolated dwarf galaxy struggled to maintain order in this new and horrific reality.

The new dawn of Messier 87 continued to cast an ominous light across the humans who had all found themselves cut off from the greater human civilization.

Although opinions about the immediate consequences of this event remained mixed on this chaotic first day, a lot of humans managed to come to a consensus on one particular matter.

The Age of Mechs had come to an abrupt and catastrophic end!