Katherine MacFarlane

Personnel File
Name:	Katherine Anita MacFarlane
Rank:	Lieutenant
Position:	Assistant Chief Tactical Officer
Callsign:	Valkyrie
Species:	Human
Age:	35
Gender:	Female
Orientation:	Pansexual
Birthplace:	Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Earth
Height:	5ft 7in / 1.7m
Weight:	146lbs / 66kg
Hair:	Dark Brown
Eye color:	Dark Brown
Played by:	Cote de Pablo
Writer:	JacenSoloDjo
Interests
Martial Arts Cryptography Antique books
Education
2362: Starfleet Academy Preparatory Program 2362-2366: Starfleet Academy 2367: Advanced Tactical Training
Service Record
2365 Cadet, Security Officer, USS Republic 2366- 2370 Ensign, Security Officer, USS Augusta 2370-2373: Lieutenant JG, Spec Ops/Analyst (Starfleet Intelligence), Deep Space 18 2373-2377: Lieutenant JG, Security Officer, USS Hamburg 2377-2381 Lieutenant, Tactical Officer, Starbase 36 2381-Present: Lieutenant, Assistant Chief Tactical Officer, USS Theurgy
Decorations
2365: Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon 2366: Order of Tactics (Minor) Ribbon 2366: Federation Purple Heart 2367: Federation-Cardassian War Campaign Medal 2368: Advanced Tactical Training Completion Ribbon 2374: Federation Purple Heart w/ Clusters 2376: Dominion War Campaign Medal 2376: Starfleet Extended Service Medal

Character Draft Awaiting Approval

Lt. Katherine MacFarlane was as close to hand-picked as possible to join the Theurgy, her skills as a former Starfleet Intelligence officer and security/tactics/recon in general were considered by Admiral Anderson to be of maximum importance in the fight against the Infested. And so she did what she loved best: taking care of the defensive and offensive systems of a starship and fighting for the sake of the galaxy, her home.

Biography

In 2346 on a lovely spring day, Katherine was born on Earth to a father (Alec) who was a Starfleet ‘lifer’ (in that he would be in it until he was forced to retire), and a mother (Anita) who was a stay-at-home parent until Katherine left home and then went to become a professor at a local college. Katherine was born specifically on the island of Oahu in Hawaii but grew up in San Francisco where her father was posted as the adjutant to an Admiral Pavlichenko at Starfleet Headquarters.

She was an only child but when she became ten years old, her first cousin (eight years old) came to live with her family after his parents-- Kath’s paternal aunt and uncle-- suddenly died. Charlie was often called her little brother despite the fact everyone knew they were only cousins. She was very close to him and they did a lot together up until the point that she joined Starfleet.

Kath’s schooling as she grew up for the most part saw her as being interested in history more than science and math. This meant her civilian schooling was about average and she did not see any academic honors in civilian life.

As an extrovert and with growing up around Starfleet, she had numerous friends who were also Starfleet brats. One by one her circle of friends joined Starfleet and she watched with envy until she was old enough. She was a proud Starfleet brat. And not only was her father in Starfleet, but his father had been so before him, and his father’s father before him. Back and back to the creation of Starfleet in the first place. Her whole life she knew that she wanted to be a part of Starfleet and continue the family tradition. Her first step, of course, was the preparatory program which she nearly aced, the science tripping her up just a little. This was completed in the first few months of the year she would turn sixteen. Then, literally the day when she became sixteen she applied to Starfleet Academy. She did well on her entrance exams, stumbling only a bit on warp theory and temporal mechanics, as she had expected despite devoting even more study to it after the prep program.

This stumbling on the science was not actually the reason she went into the Security and Tactical track, but rather it was because she had always been good with weapons, weapons systems, and had learned from every book on tactics that her father possessed. She also had a knack for languages and encryption, which would be remembered years down the line. (She was officially listed as a polyglot on her dossier before she even graduated which got many asking her why she wasn’t a comms officer. Instead she would use her affinity for encryption/decryption.)

Her career at Starfleet Academy included multiple citations for exemplary work outside of the sciences. As well as coming in the top 20 of the annual sharpshooter competition every year she was in the Academy, and her very last one before graduating she came in first. She received her first Marksmanship ribbon because of it. Her grades she felt were lower than she wanted and yet she was in the 89th percentile consistently and Kath was given an invitation to join an elite squadron (Theta Squadron) in her second year. She of course accepted the invitation and she went home to her father throwing her a party in celebration of her accomplishments academically. She was known to still keep in contact with members of Theta Squadron even more than a decade later, finding her friendships with them to be lifelong.

She was considered a competent engineer, as well. At least when it came to actually fixing the systems devoted to defense and offense on a ship or space station.

Instead of joining her in Starfleet, Charlie went to school to become a nurse. He worked at a civilian hospital in San Francisco so he could be close to his aunt and uncle and be in the area for when Kath would return home. He did not get out of Kath’s shadow until he became a nurse.

Kath was posted on the USS Republic for her training cruise (aka cadet cruise). It was there that she demonstrated her competence with the weapons systems on a real starship and even managed to improve the targeting system even though that was completely out of the scope of why she was there. It did however contribute to awarding her the Order of Tactics (Minor) ribbon, the cadet specific version of the Order of Tactics and Grankite Order of Tactics.

Upon graduation she was given the assignment to join the USS Augusta as Security just months before the end of the Federation-Cardassian War. The war gave her badly needed real life experience that her cadet cruise had not. It also gave Kath her first wounds from battle, including phaser burns on her hip and thigh. It was thanks to trying to save the life of one of her best friends on the Augusta, Sandra Morales. Sandra eventually lost her leg up to her hip but she would have lost far more if Kath had not intervened. This gave Kath the Federation Purple Heart. And her overall service in the war granted her the Federation-Cardassian War Campaign medal.

She was known to keep in contact with Sandra long after they served together, and the woman was the first person that Kath came out to about being pansexual (during the shuttle ride back to safety to get Sandra to a medical bay). Kath had other friends on the Augusta but none of them as close as Sandra. When Sandra was sent to Earth to go through physical therapy for her new prosthetic leg, Kath asked her cousin, Charlie to help. Although he wasn’t a physical therapist, he was there to help Sandra care for her prosthetic leg, help her around the house, do errands like grocery shopping, and to keep her doing the physical therapy she was required to keep up with at home. Kath was known to constantly send messages back home thanking Charlie for his help with her friend. He always cited that it was the right thing to do regardless of their familial connection.

Sandra would eventually return to active duty, as there was no reason a woman with a prosthetic leg could not serve in Starfleet. But she did not serve with Kath again. But Kath still kept in contact with her best friend, of course.

Kath was also sent to Advanced Tactical Training by the Captain of the Augusta. It was during that training that she received the largest wound on her back from shoulder to shoulder, something she found ironic. Even though the safeties had been on during the holodeck training portion, burns were still a danger and she learned that quickly. (She kept the medical teams from healing her burn, finding it to be a good reminder of her mistakes during the training.) Other than the wound, she performed well for the ATT and graduated where half the people who start it do not, receiving the completion ribbon for her efforts. Once her ATT was finished she returned to the Augusta to finish out her tour.

Being part of an elite squadron at the Academy, a veteran of the F-C War, and her specific track (Security & Tactical), found Kath being handpicked for service in Starfleet Intelligence after the stint on the USS Augusta. This new post came with a promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade but the promotion mainly was in recognition of her tour on the Augusta and being a veteran of the F-C War who had gone above and beyond to help a crewmate.

Once her time on the Augusta ended, instead of being posted to a ship while working as a Spec Ops specializing in intelligence gathering and recon, her home was Deep Space 18, sister station to Deep Space 9, on the outskirts of Federation space and straddling the line where Romulan space (or at least where the Neutral Zone) began. Her job entirely was to be on the lookout for any bad actors, and essentially guard the border that Deep Space 18 represented. She did gain some training on further self-defense and covering her tracks. As well as learned new encryption methods (see special notes).

It was during her time as an agent of Starfleet Intelligence that she gained the nickname ‘Valkyrie’ from her peers. The name that she actually used in her correspondence with the ones she was gathering the intel for in the first place was actually ‘DarkStar Foxtrot’ which she was given by her superiors (sometimes she would jokingly say that the ‘Uniform’ was silent. A bad joke on ‘DarkStar fuck you’. And a veiled joke about her job as she would have to remain silent on all she had seen and done while wearing the SFI ‘uniform’.)

When the Dominion War broke out, Kath was sent to join the crew of the USS Hamburg even though she had been applying to join the Enterprise-E for the last three years and was turned down every time.

She also found out that the Captain of the Hamburg actually knew her father and so for her entire tour wondered if that was the whole reason she had been sent to that ship as opposed to the ship she had been applying for years to join.

It was during the Dominion War on the Hamburg that she received her second combat injury thanks to an exploding terminal while the ship was under attack, receiving burns covering her hands and making it near impossible for her to do much of anything requiring a terminal. The only reason she had taken over the station was she was assigned there for her experience and skill in preparation for a possible lateral move to Tactics as opposed to Security. Thanks to that happening, she was sent back to Earth to recover as her injuries were too severe for a dermal regenerator and the Hamburg still had to fight but her hands were too damaged to continue as the Tactical officer or go back to Security. She received clusters to her Federation Purple Heart for her injury.

Sandra did not serve in the Dominion War, she was sent to the other side of the Beta Quadrant before the war broke out and was never sent back to Bajoran Space when the war did start. Kath was secretly grateful for it. She did however test her friend once in a while to make sure she wasn’t a Changeling. She would continue to test friends and family for quite a while after the war.

On Earth, Kath caught up with her father, who was still in Starfleet though he had changed jobs from being an adjutant for Rear Admiral Pavlichenko to working under a Vice Admiral Dagmar, also at Starfleet Headquarters, as her adjutant instead. The lateral move was almost actually a promotion of job, given Dagmar’s rank being higher than Pavlichenko’s. This afforded Alec higher pay and more prestige. Kath also made sure to have lunches with her mother when she could and in an effort to keep up her physical therapy for the injuries she had sustained. Kath enjoyed visiting Anita at Golden Gate University where she worked as a professor. Kath also made sure to visit Sandra and Charlie as often as she could. She felt guilty that she had gotten minor wounds whereas Sandra had still lost her leg despite Kath’s best efforts to get her out of danger. Sandra did her best to assure Kath there were no hard feelings and in fact she was grateful for Kath putting herself in danger to help.

By the time Kath had healed, the Dominion War was half over. She returned to the Hamburg to finish up her rotation there rather than be sent to a different posting right away to go with the promotion to Lieutenant. The Hamburg was part of a few skirmishes but Kath received no further injuries besides some bumps and bruises. It was in 2376 that she was rewarded for her first 10 years of service while serving on the Hamburg (Extended Service Medal).

Once healed and the war ended, she was given a promotion to Lieutenant for her work during the Dominion War. She also received the Dominion War Campaign medal. Between the Dominion War and the Infested crisis, Kath was sent to Starbase 36 to join the tactics department, her skills considered to be useful for the starbase deep in the Beta Quadrant and she could also recuperate from the Dominion War in a way.

It was there she received new orders from Admiral Anderson to join up with the Theurgy thanks to her experience in Starfleet Intelligence and overall dossier bringing her to his attention as being the optimum choice. Of course, she was not actually cognizant of the exact identity of who had contacted her but she did know it was legitimate and was more than used to superiors being behind proxies and VPNs. Anderson had used an up-to-date and official encryption method, with clear Federation code phrases on a secured Starfleet channel used by SFI so she knew he was the real deal.

She took a runabout to Starbase 343 thanks to Starbase 36 being a bit too far, where she was picked up by the IKS Vask’at to rendezvous with the Theurgy. It was on the Theurgy that she would have her first official posting as Tactical on a starship as opposed to a starbase (having had some experience back during the Dominion War).

Personality Profile

Kath was an extrovert and often enjoyed being the center of attention (so long as she was not working a cover in her job as a spook). She was a very loyal kind of person but was somewhat slow to trust and it therefore could often take quite a lot for her to lose her respect for someone and end her loyalty streak with them simply because it took so long for them to earn her trust.

She was also relatively slow to anger, and if she did get angry it was a quiet kind of anger. When she shouted, it wasn’t necessarily out of anger and most of the time she only did yell when she really wanted to make a point or it was required she raise her voice. She was almost scarily calm in the field.

She wasn’t someone who would carry a grudge but she would get revenge if the slight was strong enough. Once her revenge was done, then she moved on and thought no further on the issue. She also had a mind like a steel trap, she remembered things that the average person wouldn’t really consider worth it. She remembered every slight and also every time someone had helped her. She wouldn’t carry a grudge, but she would remember the time she had been betrayed and her trust was hard to rekindle.

Many people would note that she had a very intense kind of personality. She would often treat everything with the same amount of seriousness, including her friendships. She also would treat her relationships like another mission. Once getting picked up by SFI she could never ‘turn off’ having her head on a swivel.

Despite the ‘intense’ personality, she did have a sense of humor that endeared her to her crewmates. Depending on audience, she could get very raunchy with her jokes. But she always knew how to read a room and know when to speak and what jokes she could use.

She was very driven, very ambitious. She also did not make a move until she was certain it was the right one. In her line of work, that was considered a very good thing. Sort of like the idea of measure twice, cut once. She was far more spontaneous off the field, however. Sometimes this got her in trouble because she would act without thinking on shore leave but never to a point where she got into legal trouble or trouble with her superiors. She got better at this as she got older, but still sometimes was capable of darting off somewhere at a moment’s notice.

Although she would often claim she ‘loves this shit’, she did want to go beyond basically being a soldier some day. She wanted her own command, needed her own command at some point in the near-ish future. Kath was found to be a capable leader during her time in the Academy and at ATT, one of those commanders who was ‘tough but fair’. And she actually honestly, legitimately cared about those she was put in command of which gave her a reputation very quickly.

Thanks to her ambition and desire to never get complacent, she enjoyed learning more and more martial arts, one of which being Suus Mahna. She already knew SFMAP (training in ATT) and Mok’Bara (had a half-Klingon friend on the Hamburg teach her). She was capable in Suus Mahna by the time she made it to the Theurgy but nowhere close to the level she wanted. In SFMAP she was the equivalent of a black belt, and in Mok’Bara she was the equivalent of a red belt (one step below black).

One could be forgiven for thinking she was inordinately cocky but for one she felt she had earned her confidence and for two it stopped just before actually being cocky. She knew to pull back when necessary, to bug out when things turned against her. A cocky person would just keep going, believing themselves nigh-immortal.

Because of her dossier, she could fall into bouts of paranoia. But that never interfered in her work.

She was known to have her own code of honor, though a lot of her code lined up with Starfleet’s expectations out of its officers.

One of her favorite things to do was pick up new cryptography techniques and even use old ones from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It helped a lot in her work in Starfleet Intelligence. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

In addition to her love of old cryptography, she also had a collection of antique books that was started by her father. Generally if someone wanted to give her a gift, a book was the right decision. Either that or a new knife, as she also collected those.

Physical Profile

Kath was an olive skinned woman of mixed white and Latina background. Her hair and eyes were almost the exact same shade of brown, which happened to be so dark as to look black most of the time. Her hair, when allowed to get past a military high and tight (which it almost always was after leaving the Academy), was extremely curly almost to the point of ringlets. Her body was that of a lifetime soldier, her limbs were muscular without looking too bulky and she had very little body fat on her. Her body, therefore, was sometimes susceptible to the cold more quickly than others.

She was known to have broken almost every bone in her body throughout her life and the images of her skeleton showed evidence of this. Luckily none had ever actually ruptured through her skin so there were no accompanying scars.

Her hands were the witness to her hard life as a security then tactics officer, her fingers and palms were calloused to say nothing of the burns from her terminal exploding during the Dominion War so she had been known to update her hand prints in the Starfleet database for biometrics. Her feet were similarly calloused from constant life in boots giving her blisters which turned into callouses.

She had a scar that started below the left armpit and terminated slightly above her navel on the same side from a knife fight she nearly lost and almost died from during a mission also on the Hamburg. She possessed a couple random burns on her right calf and left wrist from a plasma leak for the former while on the Augusta and an explosion that came from her tactical station on her latest ship posting on the Hamburg, during the Dominion War. She also had a phaser wound scar in her right hip and another on the thigh of the left leg from the Federation-Cardassian War. There was another phaser wound on her back, a line that went from her right shoulder blade to the left thanks to having been turned to the side and the phaser fire basically scraping across her back from ATT. All of these wounds could have been healed just fine with a dermal regenerator, but as a proud soldier, as it were, she decided to heal from them naturally.

Kath’s face was devoid of scars, however, and not through lack of trying. She simply got very lucky that any wounds she sustained left no scar when she let them heal naturally. Any deep scan of her body, however, would show that she had broken her jaw before.

She also had a number of tattoos: 1) Ex Astris, Scientia (From the Stars, Knowledge) aka the motto of Starfleet in scroll lettering on her left calf with her date of enlistment; 2) a splotch of red, blue, green, and yellow color on her right shoulder blade and wraps around half of her bicep that looks like it is actually watercolor; 3) she had tiny dates inked along the scars of her phaser shot, burns, and knife wounds.

Reference Images

1 2, 3, 4, 5

Special Notes (Optional)

Kath always seemed capable of startling people as she walked so quietly, even before her training.

She was a polyglot (see bio) and therefore knew German, Hebrew, Spanish, Ukrainian, Arabic (Modern Standard), Klingonese, Bajoran, and conversational Ferengi in addition to Federation Standard. And it wasn’t a spoken language but she also knew Federation Standard Sign Language (little to no Signs were the same as for ASL/BSL).

Some of the known classical cryptography systems/ciphers and computer encryption she had used in the past included: Twofish, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (aka ECC), Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (aka RSA), Null Cipher (aka Concealment Cipher), Vigenère cipher, and Rijndael (aka Advanced Encryption Standard). Most of her work with SFI used FDE (aka Full Disk Encryption which is encryption at the hardware level) and E2EE (End to End Encryption).