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.
We Cowboys were working with the aliens when Kathleen Reynolds joined the Cowboys. I was happy to work with them because they were helping us take the fight to our enemies. Katy wanted to work with them because she had always wanted to meet them. She had spent most of her adult life getting into places where she could meet them. All those parties? The decades of time in the Space Force on the outer reaches of human space? She wanted to meet aliens. And when given the chance, she jumped at the opportunity to join a fighter squadron that was actively working with them. There are so many layers to that girl. I absolutely love her. And I have never regretted fighting at her side. Well. Almost never. I mean… there’s been some crazy times. And Katy sure does love her some good crazy times. But I guess I do too.
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.
Girls are complicated. I know that, but Kathleen Reynolds took complications to a whole extra level. There was always the bouncing cheerleader in her. And there was the hard-bitten starfighter pilot and squadron commander as well. But there was something else she buried real deep and it was the real reason she joined us at Alpha Centauri. She didn’t tell me for years, but when she did it brought so much of her into sense. She had a dark secret, you see, one that had haunted her childhood until she buried it deep in a closet for no one to see. Looking back on it, it explains why we got along together so well, right from the start. I guess she felt safe with me. She thought I would accept her for who she really was. I guess I did, and when she told me, I found out why. We were interested in the same things, you see, even if our reasons were different.
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.