Kara's History
Canon: Battlestar Galactica, AU from "Guess What's Coming to Dinner?"
Name: Kara Thrace
Call Sign: Starbuck
Rank: Commander
Serial Number: 462753
Race: Human
Age: Thirty-one
Date of Birth: 4 Mounichion (~4 April)
Education: Graduated from Colonial Flight School and Officer Academy on Caprica and United States Naval Academy on Earth; comprehensive SEAL training
Occupation: Former pilot, presently a government agent with the Office of The Special Commission on Mutant/Special American Relations, Bureau of Research and Investigation New York Division (COMSAR)
Special Abilities: Ace pilot, fantastic Triad player, Pyramid almost-pro, interrogator extraordinaire, "the best shot in the Fleet," and she's got one hell of a right hook.
Personality: Kara is, in a word, brash. She's a smart-ass with a foul mouth and a quick temper. To back all her talk up, she is the best pilot in the Fleet - except for when she's being completely self-destructive and wakes up with a hangover. She tends to try to heal her wounds (or at least hide them) in drinking, fighting, and promiscuity. Even while she often scoffs in the face of authority (and/or punches authority in that face), she takes her duty to her fellow pilots and to the Fleet very seriously. For all her bad habits, Kara is privately an artist and a poet who is deeply religious, believing in the Gods of Kobol in a literal enough sense she doggedly sought out both the Arrow of Apollo and the Tomb of Athena for the President's cause.
History: Kara was born on the cosmopolitan capital planet, Caprica, to an abusive mother, Socrata, and absent pianist father, Dreilide. She was going to be a professional Pyramid ball player, but her knee gave out, so she joined the military, ultimately rising to rank of Captain (and occasionally serving as CAG, or Captain of the Air Group), through her tenure as Lieutenant and Captain. She was posted aboard the Battlestar Triton where she had court martial proceedings brought against her by her Commander. After the court martial was dropped, she left Triton to become a flight instructor. During her tenure, Kara met and became engaged to one of her students, Zak Adama. Though he failed three maneuvers, she passed him though his Flight program, a decision that eventually led to his death. She resigned as a flight instructor following Zak's death and took a post under his father, Bill Adama, aboard the Battlestar Galactica. There, she grew close to Commander Adama, earning his respect for her as a pilot and his love for her as a surrogate daughter. She served two years as a pilot aboard Galactica before the Cylon attack on the Colonies.
Kara regularly proves her worth as a soldier in and out of the cockpit after the attack. After she crash lands on a moon and is injured, she rigs a Cylon Heavy Raider to fly for her and plans a tactical mission. During her recovery, she's charged with interrogating the Fleet's first Cylon prisoner, Leoben Conoy. Conoy tells her her specific role will be to deliver his soul unto (the Cylon's singular) God. Later when she has recovered and returned to flight status, she takes the Raider to Caprica against orders, intent on retrieving the Arrow of Apollo from Delphi. While on Caprica, Kara is wounded and captured by Cylons and taken to a Farm where they mend her wound but harvest her ovaries in an attempt to breed a Cylon/human hybrid.
Later, when Galactica finds another Battlestar, Pegasus, Kara takes the stealth Blackbird against orders to take important reconnaissance photographs of a Cylon Resurrection Ship. Though she acted against the CAG's orders, Pegasus' Admiral, Helena Cain, is impressed and she promotes her to Captain and CAG aboard Pegasus. She then plans the successful destruction of the Resurrection Ship, even as William Adama asks her to assassinate Cain. Adama recalls his request, but Cain is killed anyway by a copy of another Cylon. Later, when Lee Adama becomes Commander of Pegasus, she takes his position as CAG aboard Galactica.
On a personal level, Kara finds herself embroiled in a few relationships. Even while she's engaged to Zak, she and Lee Adama nearly kiss, something that leaves them both feeling guilty and makes them keep their distance from one another, even after Zak's death. They meet again when Lee comes to Galactica for the decommissioning ceremony, and have several heated exchanges, clashing often. When Kara returns with the Arrow of Apollo, Lee impulsively kisses her, later letting it slip he loves her. Later, when she's feeling conflicted over not being able to return to Caprica for Sam (see below) and all the pilots they've lost since the attack, they nearly sleep together. After the Fleet discovers New Caprica, Kara and Lee finally do sleep together, and Kara confesses her love for Lee in return. However, when she marries Sam Anders the next morning, it drives a wedge between them.
She also allows Gaius Baltar to flirt shamelessly with her, letting him be an easy, attractive distraction. Later, after the Colonial Day celebration and Laura Roslin appoints him as Vice President, they end up in bed together. Kara ruins the mood, however, when she cries out Lee's name in throes of passion. Later, she refuses to acknowledge anything happened at all.
While she's on Caprica to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo, she meets Samuel Anders and a small resistance. She and Sam bond over their prowess at Pyramid (he's a pro, she almost went pro) and become lovers. When she and Karl Agathon are about to leave, she tearfully promises him she'll return to rescue him and the others, and when she can't convince the President or Adama to let her lead an SAR, she is consumed with guilt over what she sees as another failure. Finally, Adama allows the SAR, and Kara brings the survivors to Galactica where Kara and Sam eagerly rekindle the relationship they began months before. After she impulsively sleeps with Lee, after which they both shout their love for one another into the sky, she goes to Anders and asks him to marry her. They live together in a tent on New Caprica as husband and wife for a year.
In the year spent on New Caprica, Kara becomes a somewhat doting wife. We see her fetching Sam away from a Pyramid game when he's to stubborn to stay in bed with pneumonia, and she goes as far as to approach her one-time nemesis, Galactica's executive officer Saul Tigh, for help finding medicine, even embracing him in greeting. When that doesn't pan out, she lays aside her pride and calls Lee, the Commander of Pegasus.
Later, after the Cylons find New Caprica and Galactica jumps away, Kara is kidnapped by Leoben Conoy and held by him in an apartment for four months. In that time, she murdered him over and over again, only to have each version she killed be replaced by another copy until one showed up with a young blonde child he claimed was theirs. Kara was tempted to suicide after Kacey's arrival, but when Kacey falls and hurts herself, Kara holds herself responsible. Once the child pulls through, Kara begins treating Kacey as a daughter, and very nearly lets Leoben seduce her into bed as he's been trying for months. Luckily, the Resistance movement, owed in large part to Sam, is finally successful and Galactica returns to rescue the colonists. Sam saves Kara and Kacey from captivity, but upon their return to Galactica, Kara finds out Kacey has a real mother, and that she too was kidnapped by Leoben.
After this, Kara descends into a pit of self-loathing, falling in with Tigh and his Circle of self-appointed executioners, culling members of the Fleet they consider collaborators with the Cylons and killing them as well as sowing seeds of discord throughout the Fleet. Bill Adama puts a stop to both, and Kara straightens up, only to have her ship explode during a normal CAP.
Kara returns to Fleet weeks later, alive and well, and flying a pristine Viper. Her humanity is called into question by the Fleet, and her grip on sanity dwindles as Galactica moves farther from her recovery point. At her wit's end, she holds Laura Roslin at gunpoint, demanding they return to the nebula she returned in. After being confined to the brig, Adama eventually releases her and gives her command of the Demetrius, a sewage ship, ordering her to find Earth as only she can.
Aboard Demetrius, Kara looses the faith of her alienated crew - included Sam Anders and her longtime friend, Karl Agathon - because she holes up in her quarters, painting star systems on the walls, and changing course many times without explanation. After two months of this, the ship encounters a Leoben copy who convinces Kara to find a Basestar for guidance, and she complies, despite the objection of her crew.
For the purposes of the Brave New World 'Verse, this is where Kara's canon diverges. Instead of rejoining Galactica and going on, she takes three Raptors on a secondary scouting mission to find Earth. Only her Raptor makes it to present-day Earth, but she and two crew are stranded with no way back. For six months, Kara and the Raptor pilot and ECO work together to try to find a way back to Galactica, but it's no good, and the three part ways.
Kara begs, borrows, and steals to become a United States citizen, eventually enlisting in the US Navy and attending the Naval Academy. She completes her training admirably and is invited to join the Sea, Air, and Land Team because of her uncommon skill and tactical knowledge. Two months into her first overseas operation, she broke her commanding officer's hand, and was pulled off the operation she planned.
Because of the nature of the incident and the fact the CO was found in possession of a controlled substance, Kara's options included a desk job or a desk job, until she was approached by retired Admiral Albert Calavicci and offered a unique position with a new office opening in New York. She accepted and resigned from the Navy, joining him New York.
For more information, please see Battlestar Wiki or ask.