Eshita Elizabeth Das

2369 – 2387: Childhood

Eshita Das’s father Sigmund Das was a researcher into Transwarp drive, trying to find ways of standardizing it to use in Starfleet ships, an attempt that had been made again and again since the original Excelsior in Kirk’s day. Refusing to relocate to a standard research centre like San Francisco, Vulcan, or some other accepted place he conducted his work at Delhi University where he became a professor. Sigmund was in his late fifties when his youngest child Eshita was born, and while her brothers and sisters had followed their father into academia his youngest longed to see the stars up close.

As early as twelve it was clear that she wanted to join Starfleet. Her father insisted however that she focus on a scientific discipline to have something more to offer. He believed that without academic rigor his daughter would be handed a gold shirt of security and die on her first assignment. It was only in the teal uniform of science that she would be safe, or at least safer.

So with her father’s encouragement, she focused on her school work, and the sciences. She managed to move up from the middle of her class to near the top and graduated high school into her brave new world.

2390 – 2395: Pathfinder and Academy

With her father pulling a few strings she was initially placed as an intern on the Pathfinder-class design project fresh out of high school. She mostly carried things and ran errands for the designers, but being up close to a starship in the design process helped and when she applied for Starfleet Academy she was accepted on her first try. Initially she tried to split her time between the project and classes but found it so overwhelming that she had to exit her very small role on the Pathfinder design team, to focus on her schooling.

While her practical experience and technical knowledge suggested to her that she should focus on a career in engineering it was a love of more theoretical sciences, and the stars as a whole that lead her into Astrometrics. Her goal was to follow her dream to the stars, and to see sights that no human had before her. She managed to get near the top of her class in the various science disciplines that she needed and was preparing for a long and fruitful career in Starfleet.

2396 – 2401: Delhi

Shortly after graduation, before her assignment to an Odyssey-class ship her father Sigmund died. Das returned to Delhi for the funeral and to help care for her grandparents. Used to living as part of a large and close knit family, she found it comforting. She debated giving up Starfleet and focusing on getting tenure at Delhi University where her father had worked, and where in large part she’d grown up. Eventually she took an assignment at a research base in nearby Tokyo studying data that ships brought back, and writing reports. This allowed her to return home daily, staying close with her siblings and elderly grandparents.

While she regretted never having got to leave the solar system, her family needed her and she needed her family. Besides it was dangerous in space, as the destruction of Mars had proven. Das felt that she could do her research just as well on Earth, billions of miles away from the stars.

2401: Frontier Day, Luna

The supposed safety of life on Earth was shown to be a lie on Frontier Day. When the Borg seized control of the fleet and targeted Earth Delhi was one of the cities that was targeted for immediate destruction. This caused Das to realize that there was no safe place in the universe, that while you could minimize risk you could not defeat it. Her father had died never having explored the stars, and she very nearly had as well. She put in for a transfer to the furthest possible ship in the fleet and was assigned to the USS Luna, a Luna-class ship on the edge of the Triangle.

While the ship already had a robust Stellar Cartography department, she felt that her studies offered something new. Best of all she could travel the stars and see them up close, and no just from a computer screen in her lab.