Into the Fire

^{CHAPTER FOURTEEN}

Stella was still limping when she appeared downstairs again in soft loose slacks and a fuzzy sweater with a cowl neck that made her look fragile. A bandage around her left ankle just showed at the top of a thick sock; her other foot was in a slender felt house shoe. She’d taken the lift instead of the stairs, another sign that the ankle really hurt. Under one arm she carried two puffy bed pillows.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Stella said. “Stage dressing mostly, though it is sore, and there’s a big purple bruise.”

“Nothing worse? You don’t need to see a doctor?”

“No.” That was a very final No. Stella looked around the entrance hall. “Sera Lane?”

“She went to the kitchen to fetch the tea when she heard the lift motor.”

“Ah. Good.”

The living room glowed like a stage set now, pools of light under each lamp, or directed onto the paintings on the wall. Gentle landscapes with quiet streams or lakes in the distance, soft colors, suggested peace and comfort. Stella switched on the emotional tonality her mother used most often, a combination of subtle scents and barely perceptible musical tones, all designed to put visitors in a calm, cooperative emotional state.

Stella piled the couch’s pillows against the end farthest from the front door, added one of the bed pillows, then lay back against them, sat up again, and positioned the second bed pillow under her bandaged ankle.

“All you need is a knit throw,” Ky said, grinning.

“The ground-floor linen closet,” Stella said. “Green or brown.”

Ky shook her head, amused at the color specification, but fetched a green throw with a brown border and laid it over Stella, with the bandaged ankle peeking out. “Like that?”

“Perfect.”

Just then Sera Lane arrived with a tray, Allie behind her with a folding tray table. Allie and Ky moved one of the armchairs near the couch.

“Thank you, Allie,” Stella said. “And you, Ky. We will need Rodney on the door, not Teague.”

Ky looked at the arrangement: the injured party reclining on the couch, and the injured party’s friend-or-attorney, depending on the way Stella wanted to play it, graciously pouring tea for them both.

By the time she’d found Rodney, and he’d put on the jacket he wore for his butler persona, she heard the doorbell ring and hurried upstairs as Rodney moved with butlerly dignity toward the front door. In Stella’s office, she turned on the video feed from the living room. Rodney opened the door at Stella’s order to admit a police officer. Stella, seen from above, looked like an injured heroine in the kind of vid show Ky didn’t like. Sera Lane looked appropriately older and respectable. The policeman looked slightly anxious.

Ky had seen Stella maneuvering people before, but never from such a safe distance or in this exact situation. She had changed some of her tactics. This time there was no overt sexuality to her calm, gentle voice; her beauty was still there, of course—it was in her bones, gene-deep, not to be lost—but the slight muting of it by her immobility, her overlarge sweater, the knitted throw over her clothes and the effect of its color, actually made her more attractive to someone whose occupation was protecting those who needed it.

Not until Stella had given her account of the attack, and handed over the duplicate recording from her vehicle, did the officer bring up any of the other things he might have brought up. “Those men who struck your vehicle—they claim to be working for Customs & Immigration.”

“Do they?” Stella toyed with the border of the throw. “What does Customs & Immigration say?”

“They say there’s an open case involving your cousin and her fiancé, but they deny that their people would intentionally ram your vehicle or draw weapons unless threatened. The person I spoke to—”

“Do you have a name?” Stella asked.

“Yes… it’s a Ser Matson. His contact number is 46-7833-5.”

“Thank you,” Stella said. “I’m certain Vatta’s legal team will want to contact him and ascertain the exact orders they were given.”

“They—he—said if I could gain entrance to your house, I should search for the… the fugitives and take them into custody.”

“They aren’t fugitives,” Stella said. “They live here.”

“But he said they hadn’t been able to gain entrance—”

Sera Lane spoke up. “Officer, their situation is being addressed by legal counsel. I am an attorney with Vatta Enterprises; my name is Lane. Excuse me for interrupting, Sera Vatta, but I believe the officer needs to know more of what’s been going on. You do know that Sera Stella’s cousin Ky was in a shuttle crash before she even arrived, do you not?”

“Yes, Sera. It was on all the newsvids.”

“And that later it was found that she and some of the other passengers had survived in life rafts, and with difficulty made their way to shore on Miksland, and then into a formerly unknown underground base?”

“I’m not clear on all that, Sera. Isn’t it just all bare rock and ice?”

“No,” Sera Lane said. “It is not entirely barren. And the underground base was stocked with supplies.”

Ky listened, fascinated, as Lane and Stella laid out what she had done, and how she had had no chance to follow the new procedures that had first stripped her of citizenship and then set requirements she could not meet to regain it.

“Why didn’t you tell her, though, Sera?” the officer asked. “You could have prevented this problem, couldn’t you?”

Ky wondered the same thing. What Stella had said didn’t quite make sense; her implant should have reminded her, if nothing else. Now Stella was elaborating on what she’d told Ky.

“Frankly, I could not imagine they would apply the rule to her—it was so obvious that she couldn’t have known about it, and she’d been through all that—saving those people, and before that saving all of us from that sociopath Turek. She’s a hero. It just didn’t occur to me. And they didn’t tell me until my most recent arrival.”

“But—the law was passed last year or the year before. They didn’t send word to you? No one in your family here did?”

“When did you find out about it?”

“Notification to local law enforcement… maybe a half year ago. I mean, it wasn’t a law that affected anyone I knew.”

“What’s happening?” Rafe appeared in the doorway of Stella’s office.

“She’s talking to the police guy. Gave him the tape, then he started probing about us—the ones Immigration is interested in. She’s telling him she didn’t know about the change in law when she first came back.”

“Hmm. Why didn’t Vatta Legal warn her?”

Ky blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Don’t they keep up with all the laws? They’re an interstellar business; their legal team should be alert to any changes in customs, immigration, and tax law in every jurisdiction where they operate.”

“Does ISC?”

“Yup. Of course, we used to write some of the laws, but certainly our legal team was aware of the different laws in different jurisdictions. ISC’s legal department’s huge. I wonder if Vatta’s been running too lean in that regard since the attack that blew up their headquarters.”

“I’ll ask Stella when this is over. And of course Sera Lane.”

“Didn’t she say their other specialist in immigration law was in court today? That’s a sign they’re too lean, in my opinion. Our legal staff’s divided into the experts and the litigators, the ones who actually take a matter to court.”

“Thank you, Officer—” Stella’s words caught Ky’s attention; she’d missed several exchanges. “I appreciate your time and your courtesy—if you’ll forgive me I won’t see you out—”

“No, that’s fine, Sera.” He looked around once more. “If your cousin’s not available I’m certain you can pass on what Immigration told me to tell her.”

“Of course. I’ll be glad to.” Sera Lane stood up then and let the officer out while Stella watched with a smile. Once the door was closed and locked, Sera Lane came back and sat down again. “Does Sera Ky know that you didn’t know about this until your last trip here?”

“I think I told her. Why?”

“Because she’s likely to wonder why you took care of your own citizenship and didn’t warn her about hers.”

“What I said was the truth. I did not think they’d go after her, because she’s a hero—the whole planet was excited she was coming last year, desolate when the search was called off, and excited again to find out she survived.” The defensive edge in Stella’s voice was clear to Ky. She expected Lane to pick up on it, too.

“But nothing much in the media.”

“She didn’t want a big fuss, she told me.” Stella pushed her hair back and clenched her fingers in it. “Such a mess—you can fix it, can’t you? It’s ridiculous that they’re treating her as a common criminal—”

“Not quite that,” Sera Lane said, “or she’d be in prison by now, awaiting deportation. Or she might well be drugged into apparent brain damage. She’s getting special treatment only because they haven’t broken into the house.”

“They would’ve tried that, if my security team hadn’t shown up.”

“True. I sense desperation. But you did very well; that officer was attempting surveillance, of course, but he’s not the most skilled. I need to contact my office now and let the morning shift know I will be late or absent, depending on your needs. Do you think you could find out what time dinner is?”

Upstairs, Ky shut off the video feed. “Do you believe Stella really didn’t think about my citizenship status?”

Rafe tipped his head to one side. “Certainly possible. She knew you were being treated as a celebrity, a hero, before you arrived. She would assume special allowances would be made, and if someone did make a fuss about it, at a level where it mattered, you would be told. She traveled back and forth several times in that half year, as you know, and it was only on the most recent arrival that Immigration tagged her. The news that you had survived, that you had led other survivors to safety—that was loud, the first days while you and she were busy with the Vatta turnover. You were ducking interviews, and the news began to die down faster than I’d have thought. We know now that someone was behind that, and the news media had already lost contact with the other survivors.”

“Why, though?”

“Maybe the media were told about a possible contagion or toxin, told not to scare the population. Slotter Key’s media’s a lot more controlled than ours on Nexus.”

“So someone set it up that way.”

“Looks like. Probably not Immigration, though they might’ve had a mole in the hole. Or someone suddenly noticed that you weren’t a great public figure anymore, and decided it was time to check into your citizenship status. And someone else said, ‘Sure, go ahead, we don’t need her on this planet anyway if she’s not going to be a hero anymore.’”

Ky’s skullphone pinged. “Yes?”

“Dinner in forty minutes. I’m lying down, downstairs. My ankle isn’t broken, just bruised. Sera Lane’s staying.”

“I’m coming down,” Ky said. She found Stella alone in the living room and told her about the man across the street.

Stella grimaced. “Oh, him. Cecil Robertson Prescott, self-appointed neighborhood watchdog, though he’s really interested only in finding things to complain about. He acts like he’s lived there forever, but it’s really only ten or twelve years. Father used to wonder where he got the money for it.”

“Why?”

“Ah. Well, according to Father, the Prescotts were one of the Founders, and chose one of the smaller land grants because of its location and the scenery. They wanted an isolated island all to themselves, because they planned to make a mint by picking up contract workers and then not paying them.”

“But that’s against the Founding Contract!”

“Yes, and presumably that’s why they picked a remote island, and why—after a lot of stuff Father told me that I don’t remember—they went broke and came straggling back to Port Landing and Port Major. This branch of the family had to do actual work up around Grinock Bay, but then Cecil managed to cobble together enough to buy that house and he’s been the neighborhood grouch ever since.”

“How did he get the money?”

“Father never figured out, or if he did, he didn’t tell me. I was tempted to infiltrate their house and record them, but Father said let it go.”

“What did Aunt Grace say?”

“I think she dug around a little, but she had other, more urgent concerns. And then the attack came.”

“And this house was spared,” Ky said. “I wonder why.”

Stella looked at her, wide-eyed. “You don’t think—”

“I know Aunt Helen thinks it’s because it was a Stamarkos house to begin with. But think, Stella—how easy it is for him to keep an eye on this place.”

“But why would the Prescotts want to attack Vatta? The Quindlans—”

“He could be working with them. For them. Or someone else. Aunt Grace was getting close to finding out how things connected—”

Over the course of the evening, Sera Lane interviewed all three fugitives from the military, Ky with her combination of pending murder charges and citizenship issues, and—briefly—Rafe and Teague with their visa problems. She stopped shortly before midnight. “I’ve got as much as I can get my head around, and I definitely need help. Sera Stella, I’d like you to assign two more attorneys and at least three more assistants to these cases—they’re complicated and though I’m willing to lead, there’s simply too much to do and too little time.”

“I’ll speak to Legal first thing tomorrow,” Stella said.

“We may have to go outside Vatta,” Sera Lane said. “We do not have a great deal of depth in immigration issues. It would be best to use Vatta’s people on these cases, and hire outsiders for the more routine issues the company usually faces. Employees wanting to take citizenship here, for instance. I will write up my recommendations tonight—”

“Would you like to stay over?” Stella asked. “My mother’s suite is unoccupied.”

“No thank you. I want my own desk and my own bed; I hope that doesn’t sound ungracious, but at home I have everything I need.”

“You’ll need an escort,” Rafe said. “That police officer will have reported you’re here, and someone might wish you ill. Where do you live?”

“Cantabile Gardens; I have a very pleasant unit in Section One.”

“Stella?” Rafe looked at her.

“I’ll call—who, though? Vatta Security?”

“I would.”

Sera Lane left with a Vatta Security team driving her car, and her riding in the following car with two more. She checked in later to report that nothing untoward had happened, and she had agreed to have an escort the next morning as well.