Freehold's sharp-featured interim governor sacrifices Houston to preserve trade while immediately lodging a protest against outside coercion.
Semple Marks becomes interim governor of Freehold after the colony accepts James Holden's improvised ultimatum. She leads a crowd to the grounded Rocinante with Payne Houston bound in a wheelbarrow and formally accedes to the demand that he be taken for trial.
Marks makes clear that surrender is not consent. She lodges a formal complaint with the Transport Union, insists the matter should have been handled internally, and meets Holden's relief with silent suspicion. Her government bends far enough to avoid a fatal quarantine while preserving Freehold's claim that the union infringed its sovereignty.
A woman with sharp facial features and thick gray-black hair pulled back into a bun, carrying herself with controlled hostility as the colony's new interim governor.
Marks is Freehold's interim leader, executing the compromise that saves the colony without conceding the legitimacy of union coercion.