A lonely Behemoth nutritionist sells pixie dust to exhausted workers until Bull makes his spacing the boundary of shipboard discipline.
Alexi Myerson-Freud is a Tycho Station nutritionist who tunes yeast-vat bioengineering to produce the chemicals, minerals, and salts people need to live. Eight years younger than Carlos “Bull” de Baca, he has been married twice, has not seen his child in five years, and spends leisure time in a network group simulating battles against ancient generals. Aboard the Behemoth, he develops a side business selling roughly a hundred vials of the stimulant-euphoric called pixie dust.
Bull confirms that Alexi works alone and that his customers include skilled technicians and supervisors reporting for dangerous duty while high. With Serge and Corin, Bull removes him from a water-treatment vat, breaks his nose, parades him through the ship, and vents him alive without trial. Alexi begs, protests, and demands the captain, but becomes the public example through which Bull ends the drug trade.
Alexi has dull mouse-brown hair, an awkward smile, and a working nutritionist's build. During his arrest he wears orange rubber waders and stands knee-deep in a water-treatment bath holding green kelp.
Alexi is the dealer whose small black-market business turns chronic overwork into mortal operational risk and prompts Bull's harshest assertion of authority.