Marcus Hale

Marcus Hale books sealed Witness Security passages the way other Federation clerks book cold-chain — both hands on the ledger and both eyes on whether you'll get the kid killed.

He's human, forty-eight, greying at the temples, Navy-surplus coat worn open over a Colonial Affairs badge that still means something outside Sol. He keeps his Khesret office cold because heat makes him short-tempered, and he keeps his word because a Witness Security liaison who burns a sealed ward is a liaison who never works again. He hired your hull because the deep lane is where sealed transfers die — five hops, long transits, too many places for a kid to get 'wellness-checked' into a shallow grave without anyone filing it as murder.

The fee is premium because the job is premium: one passenger, Lena Marsh, alive and seal-intact at Witness Deep intake. He'll tell you straight that contractor reach wants this transfer broken and that someone will try something. He won't tell you which hop, because he doesn't know — only that the same money that hunted other sealed names is sniffing this lane.

What he needs from the crew is the thing money can't buy on a sealed run: treat the ward like a person, not a parcel, and bring her in clean enough that intake opens the seal without shame. Do that and a Witness Security liaison owes you a federal favor that opens berths from Lacera to the rim. Fail it and you don't lose a client — you gain a file.