Watching the attack from a Medina bar, Salis fears the frightening physics of rail-gun fire and helps realize the glorious defense may be a deadly feint.
Salis is a cautious Medina construction worker who helped install the rail guns and has taken pride in the station becoming a durable Belter home. With war approaching, however, he drinks more, comes to shifts angry or hungover, and clings to the company of Roberts and Vandercaust rather than face the danger alone.
As the Giambattista's swarm reaches the slow zone, Salis watches Medina's weapons kill the incoming craft from a crowded bar. He is relieved by the apparent success but disturbed by the gunfire's stranger consequence: rail-gun rounds passing the gates seem to vanish beyond the slow zone, and he cannot stop wondering what the station is sending away into a place no one understands. He also identifies the fast-moving incoming weapons as torpedoes and helps track the damage from debris.
When the attackers begin to drift out of their safe corridor, Salis briefly joins the celebration that the defense has won. Vandercaust's analysis and Roberts's dawning fear reveal that the display has distracted the rail guns from a smaller craft heading for Ring Station. The moment turns Salis's beloved fortification from proof of safety into evidence of how easily fear can be directed.
A Belter construction worker whose detailed bodily features are not given; he wears practical station work clothes, is frequently hungover, and shows his dread and relief plainly at a public battle feed.
Salis gives the battle its civilian human scale: pride in Medina's defenses cannot erase his fear of what their use means.