In A Starship's Wake

Chapter 12: Outside Interest

Tyrone was doing pull-ups in the small corner of the cargo bay carved out to house their exercise equipment when a console near him started beeping, indicating an incoming message for him. He did one more, then dropped to the floor and frowned at it. He recognized the sender as Gary, their Immigration case officer. Had something gone wrong?

He grabbed a towel and wiped some of the sweat off his face, then mashed the accept icon. "Good morning Gary. Should I go find the others?"

"I don't think it's necessary. I'll send all three of you the same information in text after we're done, and they can call me back with any questions." The case officer looked at what he could of the cargo bay. The camera angle from the console Tyrone had picked showed the vast garden of potted plants they had on board, but Gary didn't comment on them. "I actually expected to find them with you."

"Joseph doesn't work out the way I do," Tyrone said with a grin. "I do it for fun, he does it to keep from getting flabby. No idea whether Allison does it at all. We weren't expecting a call from you yet. Did we overlook something?"

"No, not at all." Gary shook his head, speaking in a reassuring tone. "The opposite. Among other things, I was actually calling to tell you Allison has been granted refugee status."

"Oh. That was fast." Tyrone raised his eyebrows in a questioning look. Immigration procedures weren't something he'd dealt with before, but he knew this kind of speed wasn't standard.

"I don't know how long it takes elsewhere, but at the Couradeen office we don't mess around." Gary drew himself up in mock-pomposity as he made the statement. "Also, we bumped her case up the queue a little," he admitted, dropping the superior attitude. "It did include a wealth of information about a potential security threat to the station after all. The police force appreciates it when we take time to look into that and pass it along."

"It would be directed at her primarily, possibly exclusively." Tyrone was uncertain it was really that helpful to station security. Especially considering it was a threat that wouldn't exist if they hadn't been bringing Allison to the station. He carefully didn't mention that.

"Maybe, but gangsters and organized crime can cause plenty of incidental problems." He awarded a dark glower to a file on his desk. "It isn't as though they're well-behaved outside the specific crime they show up to commit. It's best to know when they're coming."

"Well, thank you. We aren't trying to kick her off the ship at Couradeen Station, but we wanted her to have the option of staying there."

"You're welcome. Even without a security threat, when there's a good reason for haste we try to make the time." Gary gave him a heartening smile. "Forgetting to file your application until the last minute doesn't earn much sympathy from us. When someone's suddenly forced from their home with a criminal enterprise after them, we try to give them a little victory. As long as their story checks out."

"You were able to verify some of ours I take it?"

"More than enough." The case officer made a disgusted face. "All of Allison's personal information that we needed, eventually. The pertinent details of that little altercation on the docks."

"How did that go? You almost make it sound like a bad thing." Tyrone would have expected a more positive reaction to being able to confirm the most important details of their story.

"It was interesting, to say the least. I usually expect personal information to be easy to verify and particular events more difficult. The first is largely public information and most planets centralize it all somewhere, and the latter relies on talking to the right person. Someone who was there or the law enforcement agency that wrote a police report, and those may or may not match what I was told. This case was the opposite."