“I am happy to be your friend,” Par-Cell 77 said. “But I cannot take you to Rycoia.”
Sarah had been in the city of the Ascendant in the South Pole for few weeks when she told Par-Cell 77 her plan to see her father again. She knew that Crone, the old woman who had brought her to the South Pole, would be busy with the mysterious Ogi, like she had been since they arrived to the South Pole, and they could fly to and from Rycoia with one of the advanced Ascendant space vessels that scouters of the galaxy used to monitor for treats before Crone or anyone else became aware that they had left.
Even if Sarah had learned to operate the controls of the Ascendant ships, she wasn’t tall enough to monitor everything that a pilot of those ships needs to monitor on her own. She’d convinced Par-Cell to take her to the airfield where the ships are kept, and even annoyed a pilot to take her up in the air.
She didn’t want to involve Par-Cell in her plan, she wasn’t even sure if Par-Cell could operate a ship. The Ascendant all seemed to be of genius level intellect, but their areas of expertise were highly specialized. Par-Cell was a master mathematician and engineer, she designed the ships, she didn’t fly them. But Sarah was desperate when she learned that her father was still alive, a prisoner on a different planet that she didn’t even know existed. She begged her one afternoon they enjoyed lunch outside.
“Please Par-Cell. I lost my entire family and this whole time I thought my father was dead. Just take me to the planet and we can hover over the prison, and with the technology in the ships, I can see him from a distance and no one will even know that we are there.”
“By that logic,” Par-Cell said, ”I could just send a drone to the planet and get video footage of your father.”
“Good!” Sarah said enthusiastically. “That’s a much better plan. That’ll be much easier to keep from Crone and anyone else that’s keeping an eye on me for her. Oh, Par-Cell, you’re the best. Do you already have a drone, or will you have to build it? I think we have plenty of time, Crone and Ogi have been talking for weeks now and I don’t think they’ll be done for a while. I’ll be happy to help you build it, if I can be helpful without getting in your way.”
Par-Cell looked pained. Her friendship with Sarah meant a lot to her, and she was sad to disappoint her.
“I cannot send an aircraft to Rycoian airspace without permission from the military leaders. If the Rycoians were to discover an Ascendant drone, it could cause an interplanetary incident that could result in all out war. Rycoia is very aggressive to threats to discourage any possibility of an attack on their world.”
“But if we’re careful…” Sarah said, and she looked so hopeful that Par-Cell easily folded.
Par-Cell had many drone devices that she could use to create something stealthy enough to travel to Rycoia undetected, and she was happy to make her new friend so happy. Par-Cell didn’t really have friends. The Ascendant mostly interacted as colleagues who lived and worked together, but Par-Cell usually spent time alone when she wasn’t working. Since Sarah had arrived to the South Pole, the two have been practically inseparable. Par-Cell would do anything to make her friend happy, even risk causing an incident with the Rycoians. But she really was a great engineer, creating the drone to get video footage of Sarah’s father took less than a day and it arrived to the planet within a week.
Par-Cell controlled it from her apartment in one of the skyscrapers of the Ascendant city, and Sarah watched the video feed on the monitor in the large living space of the apartment. She watched as the planet Rycoia came into view; it looked a lot like Earth but the waters were tinted green, but a lighter color green than the land masses. She watched as the drone entered the planet’s atmosphere and was awed by the landscape that was familiar but very new. There were random sparks of electricity that brightened the view on the monitor and it reminded Sarah of lightning on Earth.
“This is what I was most worried about,” Par-Cell explained as she manned the drone’s controls. “Rycoians are able to call lightning from their atmosphere, so the sky is usually full of electricity that threatens aircraft. I insulated as best I could from lightning damage, but who knows if it is enough. I’ll try to get to the prison as quickly as possible and use the DNA information we have on file for your father to pinpoint his location. It shouldn’t take too long.”
The Rycoian prison was massive, like the Rycoian’s had converted a large mountain. Sarah was sure that her father was being kept in very primitive conditions and she imagined him chained up in a dungeon with wild hair. But when the view of the prison changed to show the inside, she was shocked that the prison looked more like a fancy church and the prisoners looked like monks in simple robes.
“That is him,” Par-Cell said, and the monitor showed a bald man in his sixties in the simple brown robe. He stood at a podium before other people, male and female, human and alien to Sarah, but all dressed in the same simple robes, and he seemed to be giving a lecture. “He is employed as a minister, in charge of leading the daily information sessions for prisoners. The ministers mostly recount Rycoian history, so that prisoners can gain a better comprehension of the consequences of their transgressions.”
“It’s not as bad as I thought,” Sarah said. Just seeing her father brought tears to her eyes and she was relieved that his fate was not as bad as she had imagined. “Good,” she said resolutely. “That means I can take my time figuring out how to get him off Rycoia. Thank you Par-Cell.”
The tearful smile and hug from her tiny friend filled Par-Cell with warmth and she knew that sending the drone was worth the risk. She downloaded the recording of the footage of Sarah’s father in case she wanted to review it later. She turned the drone around to fly it back to Earth, but before it departed the Rycoian atmosphere, the video feed cut out suddenly.
“Did you turn it off?” Sarah asked.
Par-Cell shook her head and her dark, furry face was stuck in a look of panic. “The drone has been destroyed. The Rycoians will recover it and they will track it back to Earth. I must contact the military leaders. They can’t learn about this from the Rycoians.”
Par-Cell left her own apartment before Sarah could follow. Sarah stood in the apartment alone, guilt building inside of her.
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