Story so far
Alex Kamal gets the call that ends the crisis: Holden, rough-voiced from the alien plant, tells him to turn on the reactor because 'we killed the defense grid… we killed everything.' Alex, his gallows humor falling away into raw hope, shifts a medical-bay console to engine control and finds power flowing — diagnostics throwing shake-up errors but the Rocinante alive again. He promises to bring the ship down in a couple of days to get the wounded Amos to the med bay, to warn the Barbapiccola survivors and the Edward Israel to restart their own reactors, and to drop food once the galley's up. He lands the Roci on Ilus where the landing pad used to be, and with Basia and Amos plans the battle-damage repairs in a mud-bound dry dock.
When Holden anxiously asks after Naomi and the others, Alex gives him the answer the whole book has been driving toward: 'Everybody's all right. We're all going to be fine.'
Appearance
A dark-skinned Martian man of middle age with thinning black hair and a soft belly, a broad face; here the fear-masking humor dropping into open, sober hope as the reactor lights.
Role
The Rocinante's pilot; the crewman who restarts the reactor, lands the ship, and coordinates the recovery once the defenses fall.
Relationships
Holden — His captain whose order restarts the reactor and whom he reassures that everyone survived.
Amos Burton — The wounded crewman he means to bring down to the med bay and whose repairs he plans.
Naomi Nagata — His XO, safe, directing the surface unloading in a lift suit.
Basia Merton — The welder he works the Roci's hull repairs alongside on the surface.
Earlier in this series
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:
Sources — 11 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 6
- The [[Rocinante]]'s Martian pilot, threading the ship through the gates and musing on how a ship's changing names remake what it is.
Chapter 24
- Alex flies the prisoner transport off Ilus at full combat speed, tracks the Israel's suspicious shuttle, and offers to gut it with a rail-gun shot.
Chapter 27
- Alex breaks the news of Naomi's capture to Holden, then trains a constant rail-gun lock on the Israel's reactor to guarantee her safety.
Chapter 29
- Guarding the captured Naomi with a rail-gun lock, Alex confesses to Basia how his need to fly cost him his wife Talissa — and vows never to let his people down again.
Chapter 32
- Keeping the rail-gun lock and babysitting Basia's spacewalk, Alex watches Ilus erupt in a planet-cracking blast and, dazed, has no idea how to warn the colony.
Chapter 37
- Alex diagnoses the dead reactors, keeps a panicking Basia grounded with a family vow, and needles Havelock to free Naomi — the one engineer who might save them all.
Chapter 44
- Alex breaks the news that the Barb has under five days, keeps his family vow, then arms and trains Basia and jams the Israel's sensors to slip a welder aboard to free Naomi.
Chapter 48
- Sick with worry, Alex remote-flies the escapees home, itches to cannon the pursuing militia but defers to Havelock, and hugs Naomi back aboard — then lays out how thoroughly doomed they still are.
Chapter 51
- Alex flies the crippled tow through a resonance scream, intercepts the shuttle-torpedo with PDCs — only to be shredded by its shrapnel — and coolly reports the wreck of the Roci's port side.
Chapter 53
- Alex flies the rail-gun-as-thruster sequence — tipping the Roci to fire slugs the moons try to shoot down — clawing back orbit five minutes at a time, then spots the Israel dropping a boarding party.
Chapter 62
- On Holden's word that the defenses are dead, Alex restarts the Roci's reactor, lands the ship to repair and resupply, and gently reassures the captain that everyone made it: 'We're all going to be fine.'