Mark Baum was born on one of the Core worlds, but he didn't stay there. He entered the Alliance military when he turned eighteen and soon found himself headhunted by the Alliance Intelligence Service thanks to his mental acuity and skill with a gun when things went south. He was stationed out in the Border as tensions between the Alliance and the Independent worlds worsened.
The years he spent in the Border knocked much of the Alliance propaganda about the outer worlds out of him. He learned to appreciate the people and their customs. His cover was as a cargo broker, and he often had long conversations with people from off world, learning about their homes, their customs, and how to get what you wanted.
In between his occasional side missions and his cover, Mark managed to find love. His wife, a beautiful woman named Felicia, was better than he believed he deserved. They had two daughters and were planning on more children when war broke out between the Alliance and the Independents. Mark's skills were put to use behind enemy lines, where he disrupted supply lines and command and control networks. It was during the conflict that Mark learned how uncaring the Alliance truly was. While he was away on a mission, another Alliance operative lead a raid on his home, killing his wife in the process. His daughters survived to be put into the Alliance orphanage system, and Mark spent two years without knowing anything.
When he found out at the end of the war, he was furious. He had been decorated for his service, and he leveraged that to pry his daughters free and see the operative who planned the hit on his home and the officer who had authorized it court marshaled and sentenced to decades of hard labor. Having seen the ugly side of the Alliance far too closely and personally, Mark resigned in a letter that was a scathing indictment of the Alliance High Command and especially the AIS. He took his daughters and his severance pay out of the Core and onto a ship.
He's done his best over the past five years to raise his daughters right. He left his ties to the Alliance behind him, but his past still causes him trouble. Independents that learn of his origins are quick to hate him. Then there's the crimelords he pissed off in some of his operations. Those guys and gals put out bounties on his head, making his life so very interesting whenever coming into port.