The Rocinante pilot who turns a silent drifting trap into a close-range attack, destroys the interceptor pair, and keeps the shattered ship alive through impossible evasive flight.
Alex Kamal flies the Rocinante dark and tumbling toward Thoth Station, keeping time with a mechanical watch because every powered system is shut down for stealth. At the planned instant he wakes the reactor and pulls a near-ten-g braking maneuver that lets the little gunship turn inside the station's defensive envelope. Once the apparent stealth frigate resolves into two fast interceptors, Alex fires to draw them away from the Guy Molinari and then guides the ship through Thoth's PDC fire as if threading a game of moving light.
Alex destroys the station's communications array with a close torpedo run, then chooses to conserve ammunition against one interceptor until Holden explicitly orders him to use the ship rather than save torpedoes. His launched torpedo and the enemy's missiles destroy one fighter in the same exchange, but a near miss cripples hull systems. With four maneuvering thrusters gone, he laboriously turns the Rocinante toward the remaining attacker and fires the final killing torpedo just before its cannon rounds punch through the ship. His calm reports crack only afterward, when it is clear how close everyone came to dying.
Alex is a Martian-raised man with thinning black hair, a round deep-brown face, and a slender frame softened at the waist. He wears a sealed pilot's environment suit, strapped into the cockpit during extreme acceleration and combat.
Alex's tactical flying transforms a doomed-looking approach into a successful defense, even as the ship pays a brutal price for every second he buys.