Into the Fire

^{CHAPTER NINE}

Ky kept an eye on the security videos while Rafe and Teague ate breakfast. Very little traffic on this street in the mornings. When a dark-green van slowed down, and then stopped in front of the house, she used the zoom lens function Rafe had installed to read the lettering on the side. SLOTTER KEY CUSTOMS & IMMIGRATION DEPARTMENT. ENFORCEMENT DIVISION. What now? Four men in uniform got out of the van. She touched the house com. “Rafe! Teague! Would Immigration have any reason to come after you?”

“I don’t think so,” Rafe said. “Well—I was using an alias, but it passed.”

“And later they knew you were here as Rafe Dunbarger—did you have a visa in that name?”

“Yes, and Grace arranged a visa extension for both of us. It might be getting close to running out. But nobody’s said anything.”

Ky remembered her own summons, with the notation that she was considered a foreigner. She still hadn’t called Vatta’s legal office again. The men from the van were coming up the walk now.

“Get in Stella’s office; get the women into the closet.”

“You—”

“I’ll be fine; I’m a Slotter Key citizen, even if they don’t think so. Send Rodney to the front, with a jacket.”

The door buzzed. All four men wore uniforms like those she’d seen at the Customs & Immigration booths. Name tags displayed: COSSEY, MIRBAN, HALAK, and TALLIN. Rodney came out of the lift, up from the basement, wearing a respectable gray jacket.

“Customs & Immigration,” Ky said. “My guess is they’re going to claim Rafe’s and Teague’s visas are out of date.”

Rodney nodded. “I’m the new butler?”

“Acting, for the moment. You’re a Vatta employee, doing electronics installation here.”

“Got it.” The door buzzed again, longer. Rodney tapped the inside speaker.

“Vatta residence. May I help you?”

“Slotter Key Customs & Immigration; we have information that illegal aliens are residing at this house.”

“Please show your identification to the reader,” Rodney said.

“You need to open this door. Are you the one called Teague?”

“Teague? No. I am Rodney Vatta-Stevens, a Vatta employee temporarily assigned to this house.”

The IDs came through, showing on Ky’s tab. She put in a call to Customs & Immigration and linked it to a second call to Vatta Enterprises’ legal department. She had just heard one of the Vatta legal staff introduce herself as Deirdre Monteith, legal assistant, when the Customs & Immigration call came through. She spoke first to Immigration, knowing that Monteith would hear the conversation. “This is Ky Vatta; I am sending you imaged IDs claiming to be from Customs & Immigration. Are these valid IDs, and if so, why are they here?” She was aware of Rodney talking to the men outside, but as long as they didn’t try to break the door down, she would let him handle it.

“Those are indeed valid IDs, Sera, and the team has come to collect persons who are illegally within Slotter Key jurisdiction,” the Customs clerk said.

“What persons?”

“Rafe Dunbarger and Edvard Teague have overstayed their visas and made no effort to renew them. They were given an extension at the request of Rector Vatta, on the grounds of essential work for the Defense Department, but as she was told when she applied, such visas cannot be extended again without the persons appearing at the local Immigration Control office.”

“You do know that Rector Vatta was hospitalized three days ago, don’t you? She may not have turned in the papers before—”

“According to regulations, the responsibility for applying for a visa extension rests on the individuals themselves; they are in violation of Section Eleven, paragraph 3f of the Code. And there is another issue, Admiral.”

“Yes?”

“There is no record of your having a visa at all.”

Ky sighed. “I’m a Slotter Key citizen; I don’t need a visa, and no visa was requested at entry.”

“Actually, Sera, we know you received a summons explaining that your citizenship has lapsed. Unless you reapply for a half-year visa, and then, in that time, apply and qualify for rehoming, your presence here without a visa is also illegal—you are not a citizen. You left Slotter Key eight local years ago, never returned, never filed any financials, never voted, have not paid any taxes, and appear more recently to have become a citizen of the Moscoe Confederation as commander of… uh… Space Defense Force.” The tone was accusatory. “Your cousin, Sera Stella Vatta, when informed that her extended absence and apparent principal residence in the Moscoe Confederation put her citizenship at risk, despite her holding shares in a local business—”

“I hold—held—shares in the same business until recently.” Ky was finding it hard to breathe. She had been so sure the summons resulted from a clerical error, something easy to fix. But a new law—when had that come about, and why hadn’t she heard about it?

“Yes, but now you don’t. And the purpose of your visit here, on our records, was to divest yourself of any claim to the Vatta Transport / Vatta Enterprises stock in order for Stella Vatta to become CEO, with joint headquarters here and in the Moscoe Confederation.”

“Yes—” Ky’s mouth had gone dry.

“Whereas you yourself showed no further link whatsoever to Slotter Key indicating that you would be a participating citizen. Now, Stella Vatta, as I said, applied for renewal of her citizenship and showed cause why she should be accepted. She is due in court this morning—in fact, she is overdue for check-in, I see here, and if she misses this appointment may also be subject to arrest and fines for failing to appear—”

A gasp from someone on the Vatta line.

“Excuse me?” from the Immigration office line.

“Someone listening in,” Ky said. “Not Stella; she left for the court an hour ago.” A lie to cover her cousin’s forgetfulness was not a lie at all. She was sure Stella was at Vatta headquarters and someone from Legal would be telling her to get herself down to court. Which left the fix she herself was in, and which the Immigration officer continued to tell her about.

“You were supposed to appear at the Immigration office within three days of landing—”

“Nobody told me that when I went through Customs up on the station,” Ky said. “And then the shuttle crashed in the Southern Ocean off Miksland; I couldn’t appear anywhere but in a life raft.”

“That is not the point. You could have contacted this office—”

“Surely you know about this from the newsvids,” Ky said. “None of the communications devices worked. We could not contact anyone.”

Silence. “Then you should have reported in as soon as you were once again in contact. As it is, I have no option but to inform you that you also are in violation of Immigration law. In fact, since you have not responded to the summons—”

“But the court date hasn’t come yet—”

“You had three business days to respond in writing that you intended to appear; we have received no such notice. If you intend to respond, the written response must be in this office by 1700 today. Otherwise you are subject to seizure and detention.”

You’ll have to catch me first was Ky’s thought. “Thank you for your very helpful advice,” she said instead, and closed the contact. “Don’t open the door,” she said to Rodney. “Not for any reason.” And then, “Sera Monteith? Are you still there?”

“Yes, Sera,” said Monteith. “You will need to file that intention to appear—and you need to speak with someone senior to me. If you’ll come to this office immediately, we can make that deadline—”

“I can’t leave the house. Those Immigration agents on the front porch will arrest me,” Ky said, trying for a calm tone. “The order’s already gone out.”

“Well… if you’ll hold, I’ll try to find someone. Or we can call you back.”

She bolted up the stairs and down the passage to Stella’s office. Rafe sat behind the desk; Teague stood beside it.

“I gather we have a problem?” Rafe said.

“We do. We’re all illegals.”

“Excuse me?”

“You and Teague for overstaying your visas. They needed renewal; you didn’t. I thought that summons thing was based on a clerical error, but apparently I lost my citizenship because I stayed away too long.”

“So they’ll deport you, too? That gets past the ‘no exit visa,’ doesn’t it?” Rafe leered at her. “Now we can go off and be naughty together.”

“No again. I’m to be detained for up to thirty days until an Immigration judge hears the case. You two at least have valid papers.”

“So do you,” Rafe said. Then his expression changed. “Don’t you?”

“Not… exactly. I mean, I can prove I was born here, and am who I say I am, if I can get access to the vital records department and also to the Academy database: they stored my DNA, of course. But the papers I had when I left here were lost when Vanguard blew up. Nobody worried about it when I was commanding the fleet, but in this mess—I’m sure it will make things worse.”

Her skullphone pinged: Vatta’s legal department again. “Sorry, Sera Ky,” Monteith said. “We have two who handle immigration or customs issues for personnel, Ser Ventoven or Sera Lane. I understood Immigration was explaining why your citizenship lapsed?”

“Yes. When did that start?”

“I believe the first legislation was proposed shortly after the Battle of Nexus, Sera. Finally passed last year. Now there’s a stiff residency requirement—maintain a local legal residence, be here one year out of five, and file all paperwork required of constantly resident citizens. Failure to comply creates an assumption of renunciation of citizenship. And it is retroactive.”

“And nobody thought to inform citizens who had left before this took effect to let them know?”

“No. There is an automatic grace period for those not resident when it passed; they would be informed when they returned, and if they filed the requisite paperwork they would be automatically reinstated and given new certifications. The grace period varied for those who had maintained a residence through the period and those who had not.”

“I wasn’t informed when I returned,” Ky said. “Customs & Immigration just waved me through; they said nothing about it.”

“Can you prove that?”

Of course she couldn’t. The Commandant and his aide who had been with her were now dead; unless whoever was on duty remembered… Ky tried to think of what to say, but too many conflicting thoughts kept her quiet.

“I believe, Sera, that our legal team should be able to eliminate, or at least shorten, the detention period in your case, because your circumstances are unique: it is not by any act of yours that your residence of record no longer exists. But as you are a citizen of the Moscoe Confederation—”

“I’m not,” Ky said, more loudly than necessary.

“Sera, in their complaint against you and their lien on your funds there, they claim you are.”

“I made it clear I was from Slotter Key, and commanding a multisystem military force, which—yes—they ended up joining, and helping to support. But I have never claimed to be a Moscoe Confederation citizen, and they never told me they considered me so. My bank accounts always listed Slotter Key citizenship.”

“Do you have any ID from them?”

“Yes, with my name and Space Defense Force on it.”

“And your original Slotter Key papers?”

“Destroyed in the war,” Ky said. She fought the urge to get up from the desk and stride around.

“I see.” The silence stretched. Ky said nothing, feeling her teeth grating on one another. Then, “Well. I will have a senior partner contact you very shortly. Do you prefer Ser Ventoven or Sera Lane?”

“I have no preference,” Ky said. “But I would like the Customs & Immigration team off our front steps as soon as possible.” She ended the call.

“From the look on your face,” Rafe said, “that was not good news.”

“No.” Ky pulled out the desk drawer and slammed it in. That did little to relieve her feelings. “It was not. Let’s get our guests out here so we can discuss it. Rodney’s guarding the door.”