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. (Battlestar Galactica, "Act of Contrition"; "The Passage")

A rookie of rare talent#

Kat first appeared as a rookie Viper pilot aboard Galactica, one of a group of trainees under then-Lieutenant Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. Though a rookie, she was sharp and talented, and she flew in the raid to seize a tylium mine from the Cylons, coming home a hero. As the fatigue and stress of continuous duty mounted, she came to depend on stims to stay sharp. They left her emotionally unstable, and she eventually crashed her Viper into the landing bay and was pulled from flight status for a time. (Battlestar Galactica, "Act of Contrition"; "The Hand of God"; "Final Cut"; "Flight of the Phoenix")

Rivalry with Starbuck#

With Captain Lee "Apollo" Adama and Starbuck transferred to Pegasus under Admiral Helena Cain, Kat led Galactica's Viper wing in its stand-off with the Pegasus Vipers, a deadly game of chicken in which she kept things from becoming a firefight. The rivalry between Kat and Starbuck, the two best pilots aboard Galactica by most reckonings, intensified over time. Kat came to disdain her former instructor's drinking and bragging, while Starbuck regarded Kat as an upstart with too high an opinion of herself. (Battlestar Galactica, "Scar"; "Resurrection Ship, Part I")

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. (Battlestar Galactica, "Scar")

Command and the truth about Sasha#

By the time of the Cylon occupation of New Caprica, with Commander Lee Adama in command of Pegasus and Starbuck on the ground, Kat had become Galactica's CAG, and in the rescue she led the Vipers escorting the decoy Raptors that drew the Cylons away. 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. (Battlestar Galactica, "Exodus, Part I"; "Exodus, Part II"; "The Passage")

As Galactica's pilots guided the civilian fleet in relays through a treacherous radioactive star cluster, Kat ran into Enzo, a man from her past who called her Sasha. Thrace confronted him and learned that the real Louanne Katraine had died two days before the Cylon attack, and that Kat was a drug runner named Sasha who had taken her identity. Kat begged Thrace not to tell Admiral William Adama, saying she wanted to tell him herself. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Passage")

The final relay#

By the final trip through the cluster, Kat had already passed her safe radiation limit. She swapped her radiation badge with that of Captain Karl "Helo" Agathon and boarded her Raptor one last time. During the run she lost track of her assigned ship, the Faru Sadin, but stayed in the cluster until she found it and brought it through, and in doing so received a fatal dose of radiation. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Passage")

Admiral Adama visited her deathbed and told her she had been promoted to CAG. When Kat tried to tell him the truth about her past, Adama cut her off, saying he did not need to know any more than what she had done for the Fleet. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Passage")