Kendra Shaw: Cain's executive officer aboard Pegasus

Major Kendra Shaw was an officer of the Colonial Fleet who survived the Fall of the Twelve Colonies aboard the battlestar Pegasus. She reported aboard the Mercury-class warship as Rear Admiral Helena Cain's new aide while it lay at the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards for an overhaul, and her first days of service coincided with the annihilation of the Colonies. Under Cain she unmasked the Cylon agent Gina Inviere and took part in the stripping of a civilian flotilla that ended in murder. She became the ship's executive officer under Commander Lee Adama, and was killed destroying the Guardian basestar. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

A commission timed to the end of the world#

Shaw came to Pegasus from the Ministry of Defense, and Cain suspected the posting owed something to her mother, the late Quorum delegate Marta Shaw. Shaw saw it as a step towards Fleet Command. She had never served on a battlestar, and on her first day she reported late because she couldn't find her way to the Combat Information Center. The ship was not on a war footing: Pegasus had docked at the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards for an extensive overhaul, and its Command Navigation Program had been taken offline as part of the work. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

The refit saved the ship and doomed almost everything around it. Cylon forces struck the shipyards with nuclear weapons, destroying the vessels docked there. Cain reached the Combat Information Center, ordered the ship cut loose and made a blind jump, and Pegasus escaped with heavy losses in crew and fighters. Shaw had been aboard for a matter of days. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

The backdoor in the Command Navigation Program#

The ship had survived because the Command Navigation Program, the networked system developed with Gaius Baltar's help and installed across Colonial military craft, had been offline. The program contained a backdoor that let the Cylons shut down any ship running it. Cylon penetration of networked Colonial computers had been a feature of the Cylon War, which was why the oldest battlestars had avoided networks in the first place. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor; Battlestar Galactica (2003 miniseries))

Cain committed the battlestar to a campaign of hit and run strikes against the Cylons, and Shaw quickly became one of her most trusted officers, the kind of person Cain believed she could shape into a razor. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

Gina Inviere and the relay#

Gina Inviere had worked on the overhaul of Pegasus for a defence contractor, and she had grown close to Cain in the process. After the attack she stayed aboard, helping with the ship's computers. Shaw, a lapsed Classics major, noticed that Inviere's surname was old Gemenese for resurrection. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

Cain had gone after a target she believed was a lightly defended Cylon communications relay. When Pegasus jumped in and launched its Vipers, a large Raider force jumped into range and the installation revealed itself as a staging area. Colonel Belzen urged recovery and withdrawal. Cain instead ordered the remaining Vipers launched, and when Belzen refused she took his sidearm and shot him with it. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

With the battle under way, Cylon Heavy Raiders put a Centurion boarding party aboard. Shaw saw a Number Six moving with the boarders, shot it dead, and returned to the Combat Information Center, where she used the security camera feed of the body to name Inviere as an enemy agent. Inviere attacked the guards and took a sidearm, then hesitated with the weapon trained on Cain. Shaw knocked her unconscious. Pegasus won the battle at a heavy cost. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

The flotilla#

Not long after, Pegasus found a group of civilian ships that had escaped the Colonies on their own. Cain ordered them stripped of useful components and skilled personnel, and told the boarding party to shoot the family of anyone who refused. Shaw and Colonel Jack Fisk led the Marines aboard the Scylla. When the angry passengers pressed forward and the Marines began to falter, Shaw shot a woman in the head, setting off gunfire that killed nine more. The stripped ships and the civilians judged of no use were left behind. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

Executive officer#

Cain's confidence in Shaw got her promoted to captain. Pegasus made contact with Galactica and its civilian convoy, feuded with it, fought beside it against a Resurrection Ship, and lost Cain, Commander Fisk and Commander Barry Garner in the space of a few months. Neither Fisk nor Garner liked her, and Garner demoted her to kitchen duty. When Lee Adama took command of the battlestar, he made Shaw a major and his executive officer, wanting someone who carried Cain's legacy with the crew. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

The Guardian basestar#

Pegasus was sent to recover a missing Raptor science team and came under attack from fighters of Cylon War vintage, flown by old Centurions the Colonials came to know as the Guardians. Their basestar was an older design, home to the First Hybrid. Admiral William Adama joined Pegasus for the rescue operation. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

The boarding action, led by Shaw, recovered the captured Raptor crew from a laboratory aboard the basestar. In the firefight with Guardian Centurions that followed, Shaw was badly wounded. She stayed behind, took the nuclear device from Kara Thrace at gunpoint, and found the First Hybrid, who called her by name and warned her about Thrace before she detonated the bomb. The Guardian basestar and the First Hybrid were destroyed, and Major Kendra Shaw died with them. Her story is told in the TV film Razor, which slots into the episode order late in season 2. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)