Kairos is the U-wing pilot of Alphabet Squadron in Alexander Freed’s trilogy, beginning with Alphabet Squadron (Del Rey, 2019). She is described in the publisher’s own copy as a silent U-wing pilot clad all in black, with a mask that hides her every expression.
The species field on this entry reads “Unknown” deliberately. Kairos’s identity is withheld from her own squadron for most of the trilogy — she does not speak, does not unmask, and is accepted on the basis of what she does rather than what she is. Filling the field in would be a spoiler and, more to the point, would misrepresent how the books actually present her.
Her craft is the giveaway that this is a different kind of squadron. A U-wing is a troop transport and gunship, not a fighter; putting one in a five-ship line-up signals that Alphabet Squadron exists to insert people and retrieve them as much as to shoot things down. Freed matches ship to pilot throughout, and the U-wing is the one that carries other people’s lives in the back.
She is current canon, and the most formally daring character in a trilogy that is already the most formally daring military fiction on the modern shelf.
