Louanne Katraine

Captain Louanne "Kat" Katraine was the assumed name of Sasha, a drug runner who escaped the Fall of the Twelve Colonies. Taking the name of a dead woman to start a new life aboard Galactica as a trainee pilot, she rose to become a Colonial officer and Viper squadron leader under the call sign Kat. She later died of radiation poisoning after escorting the civilian ship Faru Sadin through a dense and highly active star cluster.

A rookie of rare talent#

Kat first appeared as a rookie Viper pilot aboard Galactica, one of a group trained by then-Lieutenant Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. Though a rookie, she was sharp and talented, quickly becoming a hot-shot pilot and taking part in a vital operation against a Cylon tylium refinery base. As the fatigue and stress of continuous duty mounted, she turned to stimulants to keep her senses sharp. She ultimately overdosed, became hysterical, and found herself unable to land her Viper safely. Starbuck, her former instructor, talked her down into a near crash-landing, and she was temporarily hospitalized.

Rivalry with Starbuck#

After Captain Lee "Apollo" Adama and Starbuck were transferred to Pegasus by Admiral Helena Cain, Kat became Galactica's senior pilot, leading the air wing in what amounted to a game of chicken with the Pegasus air wing. The rivalry between Kat and Starbuck, arguably the two best pilots aboard Galactica, intensified over time. Kat came to disdain her former instructor for her drunken, irresponsible behavior, while Starbuck regarded Kat as an upstart with too high an opinion of herself.

Circumstances led the two to fly together on a combat air patrol during which they encountered the ace Cylon Raider nicknamed Scar. Starbuck spotted Scar first and nearly made a suicidal head-on pass, but broke away at the last moment and lured Scar into Kat's line of fire. As Kat fired the killing shots, she earned the title of Galactica's Top Gun and won a personal bet against Starbuck.

Command and the truth about Sasha#

During the settlement of New Caprica, with Commander Lee Adama in command of Pegasus and Starbuck on the ground, Kat became Galactica's CAG, leading the decoy attacks that lured the Cylons away and cleared the way for Galactica to jump in and deploy the real strike force. After the recovery of the colonists and the destruction of Pegasus, Lee Adama resumed his old post of CAG, but Kat remained a senior member of the air wing as a squadron leader.

As Galactica and its Raptors guided the civilian fleet in relays through a treacherous stellar cluster, it was revealed that the real Louanne Katraine had died two days before the Cylon attack on Caprica, and that a drug runner named Sasha had taken her identity to change her life. After Starbuck discovered this, Kat begged her not to inform Admiral William Adama, but to let her do so herself.

The final relay#

On the fourth and penultimate relay through the cluster, Kat received a dose of radiation severe enough to remove her from flight status, and she began losing her hair. She chose to accept her past and her present life. She had a final encounter with her former associate Enzo, swapped her radiation badge for that of Captain Karl "Helo" Agathon, and boarded her Raptor one last time. She stayed in the cluster after Adama issued the jump order to see her assigned ship, the Faru Sadin, safely through, and in doing so received a fatal dose of radiation.

Admiral Adama visited her deathbed and later promoted her posthumously to CAG for her bravery. When Kat tried to tell him the truth about her past, Adama, perhaps suspecting what she meant to reveal, told her not to, saying that what had brought her to that point did not matter, only what she had done.