Martin Cole

Martin Cole meets your upload queue the way a decon officer meets a suit seal — unhurried, exact, and already knowing whether you're about to waste his morning.

He's human, forty-four, broad-shouldered from years on narrow station decks, close-cropped dark hair, grey-green eyes, and the flat calm of a Colonial Affairs hazard clerk who's voided two outsider chains this season because someone thought hazard chemistry belonged on the open board where Thomas Reed buys coffee and pretends he's not listening.

So Cole asks one question before he accepts a scout chain: public chart and sealed appendix — or one file for everyone? He'll walk the dual forms with a crew that asks — slow, patient, pointing at which fields stay public and which breach profiles belong in the sealed sleeve until Colonial Affairs clears them. He'll void the whole chain for a crew that pastes corrosive data where claim-jumpers can read it. He tells himself that's not cruelty; it's classification law on a spur the Registry almost lost because outsiders treated breach profiles like bulletin-board content.

Treat the dual filing honestly and he'll stamp your file clean, nod toward the decon slot, and tell Karen Webb you're worth a second call. Treat sealed appendices like optional paperwork and he'll thank you with perfect calm, void your upload, and make sure the hazard station remembers what kind of scout you are.