Jack of Harts

Kathleen Reynolds fought under me throughout The War. I walked with her on more planets than I count with my boots on, and we brought law and justice to millions of people. Maybe billions. We fought in space, we fought in the skies, we fought on the ground, and we fought the law when the law was wrong. And let me tell you, those Chinese had a lot of wrong laws they enforced on the Hyades colonists. Katy was right there with me as we bulldozed those laws, and the unspoken laws behind them. She brought books to children, and constitutions to adults. She fought the battle of ideas and brought light to people that didn’t even realize there was a light out there. And she braved the people who wanted her burned at the stake for bringing those forbidden ideas to their worlds. She was fearless, and she never stopped.

Kathleen Reynolds hid a dark secret her entire high school life. She wanted to be a cool kid, so she buried it down deep so no one could see it. But I’ve seen the pictures, and they are amazing. She actually wore glasses as a kid. Honest-to-God reading glasses. Her eyes didn’t accept the corrective treatments back then. And she used them to read actual paperbound books. Here’s the kicker. They weren’t romances. She thought those were stupid. What she loved to read were tales of daring and adventure in the outer reaches of space. With big A Aliens. She even had an “I Want To Believe” t-shirt. No joke. I’ve seen the picture. Glasses. Book. And t-shirt. She was a real science fiction geek, in an age where most people had stopped believing we were ever going to find anyone out there. She believed there was someone out there and she wanted to meet them.

The Marines would have been happy to shift Kathleen Reynolds over to us at her full rank so she could take over, but the President wanted us as we were, so she asked Katy to take a courtesy demotion to the rank of captain. Katy agreed, because when the President asks you for a favor, you do that thing she wants and get a card you can turn in in the future. Katy then proceeded to give us five decades worth of tips and training to help us bone up on starfighter tactics. It was veterans like Katy who honed us into the superior combat unit that everybody recognizes as the Cowboys. We were good before we got her, you understand. She and the others just made us far greater, and I was happy to fly with her on my wing. I used to say we were lucky to have gotten her, but I realized later that luck had nothing to do with it in time. Katy picked us for her own reasons. She kept those reasons to herself for a long time.