Karsha Writ-Mane

Karsha Writ-Mane has the look of somebody who has already counted the minutes you spent finding the door. As republic salvage advocate, Karsha booked the Writ Across the Water Road run and knows exactly why the packet cannot ride an ordinary mail queue. The clothes are practical, the personal marks culturally exact, and the eyes keep returning to the sealed object rather than the weapons on anybody's belt.

Karsha Writ-Mane speaks in short working sentences. No grand speech, no mysterious nonsense. The job is a Republic salvage-court writ on etched flexible plate; the deadline is before the heavy crawler crosses grid line twelve and makes the seizure a physical fact. Payment is clean, but the explanation has one carefully sanded edge. A cup nearby has gone cold. That is usually a better measure of the pressure than the posted fee.

The useful thing about Karsha is competence. The dangerous thing is the same competence pointed at the wrong assumption. The client wants delivery badly enough to understate this truth: The crawler crew holds a plausible rival mark, but its backers buried the Republic's earlier survey claim. The writ is lawful and politically explosive. Zatheeri transit officials have no claim to the destination, though one broker offers to 'correct' the packet in Harbor-Call. Treat that as stubbornness if you like. The clock won't care.