Ria Alleyne

2362 – 2375: Early Years

Ria Alleyne was born on Janoor III, a small colony on the edge of Breen space. From a young age, her parents modeled for her the importance of hard work as they toiled in the fields to eke out a modest existence. While kids growing up on more developed worlds could focus solely on their studies, when Alleyne would return from school in the evening, she’d head to the shop, helping her parents repair whatever had broken during the day. While it wasn’t glamorous, it gave her a lot of early experience fixing things, and to this day, Alleyne still remembers her early years fondly.

Unfortunately for Alleyne, these days didn’t last long. In 2375, the Dominion came for Janoor III. As Alleyne was getting ready for school on a brisk winter morning, the Jem’Hadar descended upon her world. As her father rushed to defend their colony with the local militia, her mother whisked her off to the spaceport and begged a freighter captain to ferry young Alleyne away. Thankfully for the thirteen year old, the freighter captain had a soft heart and managed to get her past the Dominion fleet overhead; unfortunately for her, that was the last time she ever saw her parents.

2375 – 2380: Adolescent Refugee

Having grown up on a backwater world in a remote sector on the edge of Federation space, Alleyne knew very little about the Federation besides what she’d read or watched on the net. However, as a refugee, she saw the Federation at its best. She was provided clothes and shelter, was offered therapy to process her trauma, and was enrolled in a school that, while seemingly so insignificant compared to the galactic conflict beyond, nonetheless offered a needed reprieve. When she’d return to her room each night though, she’d turn on the news, hoping for word of her parents or her planet. While none ever came, what she did see was story after story of Starfleet’s valiant struggle for the survival of the galaxy.

Almost a year after her flight from Janoor III, the Dominion War came to an end. A few weeks later, an officer from Starfleet Colonial Operations came to visit her. He informed her that they had identified the remains of her parents. While it hurt to hear, she’d already come to terms, as much as a fourteen year old could, with the fact they were dead. It was hard to have reached any other conclusion after staring at the news each night. The Starfleet officer also offered to relocate her back to Janoor, if she so chose, where the Federation was working to rebuild her homeworld. Much to his surprise, Alleyne declined the offer. When he asked her why, she said she had a new calling. When he asked her what, she replied with just three words: “To join Starfleet.” She’d seen the Federation’s soul in how it had taken her in, and she’d seen Starfleet’s courage in how it fought for all free peoples of the galaxy. She wanted to be a part of it.

From fourteen to eighteen, Alleyne threw herself into anything and everything that would prepare her for a career in Starfleet. She had learned the value of hard work early in her childhood, and now she dedicated herself to her studies and her physical fitness, filling what time was left with student internships and independent learning. She had no family life and no social life, but she had a mission, and in 2380, she applied to and was accepted as a Cadet at Starfleet Academy.

2380 – 2384: Starfleet Academy

At Starfleet Academy, Cadet Alleyne was known by her instructors as a highly motivated student with a fire inside her. She was a quick study, but there were many such cadets at the Academy. Where she distinguished herself was how hard she worked. She’d be the first one in the lab in the morning, the last one on the track in the evening, and then, instead of joining her classmates at social gatherings, she’d go home to study more.

Where Cadet Alleyne struggled was with her classmates. Many had reasons for attending the Academy that were foreign to her. Some seemed to have joined merely because they wanted to fly starfighters, publish papers, tinker with tech, or see strange new worlds, and others seemed only to be doing it only to prove something to their parents or flex on their friends. She struggled with the dissonance between their self-serving adolescent motivations and what she believed Starfleet’s great purpose was that they were meant to fulfill. She didn’t keep her opinions to herself either, and her outspoken criticisms of her peers netted her few friends.

2384 – 2385: Romulan Rescue Armada

With such a heavy course load at the Academy that she could have almost triple majored if she’d been more strategic about it, Ensign Alleyne had a wide range of options available to her after graduation; however, one spoke to her far above the rest. Starfleet had determined that the Romulan star would soon go supernova, and they were preparing a rescue armada to evacuate the populace. To support this, they had openings for Strategic Operations Officers to organize mission logistics and execution. A refugee herself, this was close to home for Ensign Alleyne, and while the gravity of the situation and the enormity of the task certainly meant long hours lay ahead, she was not afraid of those. She took the position without hesitation.

On April 5, 2385, a little over eight months into the job, while Ensign Alleyne sat at her desk working on deployment plans for the armada, tragedy struck the armada itself when the A500 androids at Utopia Planitia went rogue. Before Starfleet could muster a response, the Fleet Yards, the Mars Orbital Facility, and almost every settlement on the surface of Mars had been destroyed. Ensign Alleyne was heartbroken. Not only had she lost friends, people she’d been working with on the rescue armada project, but even more than that, the attack had destroyed the best hope the Romulan people, refugees not completely unlike herself, had at survival.

2385 – 2388: Enforcing the Synth Ban

Ensign Alleyne was driven into a furor by what had happened. Her logistics job evaporated when the armada went up in smoke, and she wanted to strike back at whomever or whatever it was that had destroyed the armada. As the details became clear, the Federation instituted a ban on synthetic life, and Starfleet Security was tasked with enforcing it. Abandoning her fledgling career in Strategic Operations, she transferred to the USS Jaan Tallin, a ship tasked with hunting down those who were sheltering synths or continuing research on synths in violation of the new policy.

For two years, Alleyne fought zealously to rid the Federation of synths, receiving a promotion to Lieutenant J.G. in 2386 and earning consistently high marks from her superiors for her aptitude and dedication to the cause. Then, in 2387, as the unit continued to make progress on ending synth ban violations, the Romulan star went supernova. The USS Jaan Tallin was over Tarod IX at the time, and it was sucked into relief efforts. Lieutenant J.G. Alleyne witnessed firsthand the chaos that unfolded in the months that followed. What bothered her the most was how criminal groups sought to use the catastrophe to their advantage at the expense of the refugees. She resolved to do something to protect them, and as the USS Jaan Tallin was reassigned, she transferred to the USS Eliot Ness, a patrol ship conducting investigations and interdictions along the troubled borderlands where the Romulan refugees were relocating and resettling.

2388 – 2395: Criminal Investigations and Medical Aid

For three years, Lieutenant J.G. Alleyne served as an Investigations Officer on the USS Eliot Ness. At first, she took pride in what they were doing, but over time, things began to change. As part of an isolation trend picking up strength within Starfleet, their missions slowly became less about helping the borderlands and more about containing them. When Alleyne received a promotion to full Lieutenant in 2389, this ultimately led her to seek out a new assignment, one that’d still give her a sense of fulfillment helping the displaced and the forgotten.

While there weren’t many vessels still tasked to the region, she found a new home aboard the USS Catena as Assistant Chief Security Officer. The USS Catena was an aging hospital ship tasked with providing medical relief to the fractured former Imperial territories. From a career growth perspective, it was a significant step down. Her former postings were on the frontlines of the fight on crime, whereas the USS Catena was, from Starfleet’s perspective, little more than lip service to humanitarianism, a checkbox on the list of things they were supposed to do while they kept the bulk of the fleet focused at home. For Lieutenant Alleyne, though, there was nothing more fulfilling than the work they were doing, and she threw herself into it wholeheartedly.

The role of Assistant Chief Security Officer aboard a hospital ship wasn’t exactly a full time affair. When they’d deploy to a civilian or Romulan world, she had her hands busy with security work, but the rest of the time, she found herself looking for something to do. This led her to get involved with more general command and operational planning, drawing on her past experience in Strategic Operations. Through this, she developed a friendship with the USS Catena’s Commanding Officer. He appreciated her commitment to their mission and wondered why she’d switched to his hospital ship after such an illustrious start to her career in Starfleet Security. She explained her motivations, which he connected with as a career healer himself, and when the USS Catena’s prior Executive Officer transferred off in 2393, he ended up promoting her to Lieutenant Commander and naming her as the ship’s new Executive Officer.

2395 – Early 2401: Internal Affairs

In 2395, Starfleet ordered the USS Catena away from the border to support core Federation worlds. Just as with the USS Eliot Ness, this took the wind out of Alleyne’s sails, and it was evident for all to see. Her Commanding Officer, who’d come to deeply respect her search for purpose, recognized that, for her to truly thrive, she needed to go. He helped her find a new posting, one where she could still make a difference the way she desired, and ultimately, Lieutenant Commander Alleyne settled on the USS Brammertz, a cruiser supporting internal affairs investigations by the Office of the Judge Advocate General.

What appealed to Lieutenant Commander Alleyne about the USS Brammertz was that its mission centered on combating malfeasance of Starfleet officers. Given the solemn duty she believed all Starfleet officers had to the sacred ideals of the Federation, she believed in the USS Brammertz’s mission, one of tracking down dirty, corrupt and profiteering officers who used their positions of power to exploit those less fortunate. First as its Second Officer and Chief Security Officer, and then, following a promotion to Commander in 2396, as its Executive Officer, she threw herself into the work, not just as an administrator of the vessel, but also as someone who at times, given her background with Starfleet Security, participated in investigations themselves.

Spring and Summer 2401: The Sack of Janoor

In March 2401, while she was still stationed aboard the USS Brammertz, rumors began to swirl that the Dominion had resurfaced and was laying waste to the Deneb Sector. While Commander Alleyne could find no information via official channels, she needed to know more. She’d grown up in the Deneb Sector, and more than that, she knew, at a very personal level, the hell the Dominion wrought. Unable to get answers from halfway across the quadrant, she took a leave of absence and booked passage across Federation space on civilian liners so she could see for herself.

By the time Commander Alleyne arrived in the Deneb Sector, the conflict with the Lost Fleet had already ended; however, the damage from the punctuated conflict was still fresh. She beelined it for Janoor III to find her homeworld in shambles. The Jem’Hadar had razed it to the ground, even crashing a battlecruiser into its capital. When her LOA came to an end, she wasn’t ready to go, and instead she gave up her position on the USS Brammertz. These people needed her more than a ship of JAG investigators did. They’d find another Executive Officer, but who would fight for the people of Janoor III? Most people couldn’t even identify it on a map.

For the better part of six months,  Alleyne committed herself to the cause of rebuilding the broken world, first as herself, an independent free citizen, and then as a part of a formal humanitarian operation organized by Starfleet Colonial Operations. During this time, she also became close, socially and then romantically, with a survivor of the occupation, a man by the name of Jayden Bryce, who was as dedicated to rebuilding the world as she was. 

Fall 2401: A Return to the Stars

When at last Janoor III began to stabilize, Alleyne wasn’t content to settle, even with her new love interest there. She knew that, for every Janoor III that was on the mend, there was another world in pain. Her time on Janoor III had also helped her realize that her previous jobs had been micro-strategies, none of which would ever address the macro-problems that plagued the galaxy. For example, they’d capture a criminal, but once they’d leave, another would just take their place. In order to change a place, you really needed to invest in it, and thus she reached out to Starfleet, seeking an opportunity to make a deep impact on society itself.

When Commander Alleyne spoke with Starfleet Operations, not only were they willing to look past the fact she’d abandoned her role on the USS Brammertz in order to help Janoor III, but she was also informed that she was eligible for a captaincy of her own. This surprised her, but Starfleet was reeling after its losses on Frontier Day, and the reality was that they’d take any qualified commander at this point. While she was offered a range of options from Inquiries class explorers to Echelons class cruisers, Commaner Alleyne ultimately settled on the USS Kennedy, a Norway class escort being used as a courier by the Archanis Diplomatic Mission as it worked to rebuild relations in a sector that had lost faith in the Federation. After spending one last night with Jayden Bryce, newly minted Captain Alleyne set off for the Archanis Sector and her new command.