* * *
“An error message?” grumbled Dryer. “You couldn’t have noticed that before we travelled to God knows where?”
Sarah glared at him, pushing her blonde hair out of her face and behind her ear. “It didn’t occur until the N-wave engine was activated,” she shot back. “There was no time to account for it before the engine engaged.”
The command crew was huddled around Sarah’s station, trying to figure out what had happened. The fact that no star charts seemed to be recognized by the ship’s navigation computer suggested they were no longer in Earth’s solar system. The graveyard of spaceships they were floating among led them to conclude they were somewhere accessible by numerous alien races. And so far, all scans of the mysterious planet they were orbiting had come up inconclusive.
“What was the error message?” Jax asked.
“It was a computational error,” Sarah replied. “Our course coordinates were adjusted the moment the N-wave engine went live.”
“You mean the navigational computer malfunctioned?” Vance asked.
“The computer didn’t malfunction,” Sarah said. “It was reprogrammed.”
“By who?”
“No one, sir,” Sarah replied.
“Then how was our destination changed?”
“I don’t know.”
Jax’s head buzzed. Could this be what happened to his father as well? Had something reprogrammed his ship to travel somewhere he couldn’t escape from?
“If the nav computer was given new coordinates to go to,” Dryer said, “does that mean you can figure out where we are?”
“Not at the moment,” Sarah muttered. “The computational error occurred because wherever we are, the coordinates are completely unknown to us. Whatever hit our computer pulled us here like a fish on a line… wherever ‘here’ is. If I could find a frame of reference, I might be able to figure something out, but until we do that…”
“We’re stuck,” Jax said, finishing her thought.
“Yes,” said Sarah gravely. “And that’s assuming that whatever reprogrammed our nav system won’t do so again the minute we try to do another N-wave jump.”
Jax grimaced. He looked up at the viewscreen. The emerald planet lay before them, shimmering in the light of its red sun. The other starships floated around them, gently turning in space, like corpses in water.
“Get to work on those coordinates,” Vance ordered. “I’ll have some people start searching for whatever it was that reprogrammed our computer. With any luck, we may still be able to jump out of here.”
“I wonder how many of them thought the same thing,” Dryer grumbled, looking at the graveyard of spaceships outside.
Jax couldn’t help but wonder that as well. His father was the smartest man alive. If he hadn’t been able to figure a way out, what chance did they have?
Wait a minute… he thought. That might be the answer!
“The Thundercat,” Jax said. “We need to find it.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Pierson,” Vance replied. “I think figuring out how to get home takes priority.”
“Don’t you see?” Jax said. “My father would have tried to figure that out, too! If his ship is still out there somewhere, it might contain clues as to what happened—”
“And how to get back!” Sarah chimed in. She looked at Vance, excited. “Richard Pierson was the smartest man to ever live. Maybe he could give us a place to start?”
“Not the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” muttered Dryer. “But how are we going to find his ship? There must be thousands of them out there…”
“That might be easier than you think,” Li Ying said, holding a headphone to her ear at her station. She turned and smiled at the group.
“I’m picking up a distress signal.”