Overview
Bowry Champlain is a charter pilot in Scenebux who transports Ben Etxina to Little Saint Demeter. He is associated with Max Pacifica and the island’s small aviation route from Guam.
Ben sees Bowry as a sun-spotted, leathery Afrikaner pilot in a patched jacket, comparing him to the drug-addled front man of a 2000s soft-rock band.
Role
Bowry accepts cash in Guam, flies Ben to Little Saint Demeter, and walks him to Max’s house. At dinner, he drinks with Easton Cannonade and sells him drugs.
Bowry also gives Ben his own fragments of background. He says he is Afrikaner, describes the practical advantages of cash work around Guam, and at dinner tells a violent “bush songs” story about shooting a rapist with a Belgian FN FAL rifle.
After Max dies, Jacaranda Rosenbaum-Josselewicz arranges for Bowry to return and fly her and Ben off the island.
Work in Somaliland
Ben hires Bowry again in Homonoid to reach a mine linked to the theft of a conversational AI. Bowry is then in Hong Kong, where he says he is working for Marines who are slow to pay. He agrees on a $12,000 fee to arrange the journey through Nairobi and Berbera. Ben describes him on this trip as an Afrikaner in his thirties with somewhat long hair, brown scruff and a tough jaw.
Bowry supplies documents, bush clothes and matching backpacks embroidered with Horn Dogs patches. The name is a cover for the two men, intended to suggest connections and discourage trouble. His friend Andraž Dalić, a charter pilot Ben identifies as Croatian, flies them from Nairobi to Berbera. Bowry then obtains a Land Cruiser and guides the drive to the Simodi mine, carrying a chrome 1911 pistol.
At the compound, cigarettes from Hong Kong help him secure admission from the robotics engineer Fengying Ho. Bowry and Ben stay at The Tribe, a hostel above the mine, until Ho is found dead and a robot carrying an experimental energy weapon escapes. Bowry translates a shepherd’s account of the machine passing at dawn and drives toward its last reported location in Djibouti.
The rental vehicle cannot cross the border because its papers and insurance do not cover Djibouti. Bowry refuses to continue, accepts another $3,000 from Ben and a promise of the remaining balance by August, then drives back toward Somaliland. Ben continues alone.