Jack of Harts

Kathleen Reynolds started flying back when the Blackhawk was still a frontline starfighter, and gained promotion after promotion over time until the brass gave her the Spittin’ Kittens. They were a Hellcat squadron often sent out to protect high-value colonies, and she found her niche. The brass left her in command of that squadron for decades, shuffling them from planet to planet as the needs of the service commanded. That wasn’t the career death sentence it was before Contact by the way. The increased lifespans filtering through the military and other parts of society back then meant that commanders weren’t aging out and retiring anymore. The only way to get a command was to build something new, or inherit the spot of a dead man or someone who fraked up badly enough to get themselves cashiered. That made command positions rather more stable than they had been, and Katy proved that she could do stable if she meant to.