Bravo Fleet
Summary
Lieutenant (JG) Itata sh’Zeles serves as the lone Starfleet Intelligence officer aboard the USS Brawley. Her quietly capable presence is wrapped in charm and misdirection. As a liaison to wider Starfleet intelligence channels, she ensures sensitive information flows smoothly. Her specialty lies in infiltration. She’s surprisingly good at blending in, gaining trust, and vanishing just as quickly. Though her easy smile and quick wit disarm most, there’s always a layer beneath she keeps hidden… even from friends. A legacy child of the formidible Zeles mining clan, Itata carries her family’s name and expectations with silent defiance. The Brawley might be a small posting, but she sees it as a breath of freedom.
Appearance
Lieutenant Junior Grade Itata sh’Zeles carries herself with a restless, upbeat energy. She always seems to be on the verge of either discovering a secret or blurting one out. Her pale cerulean blue complexion is soft as moonlight on water. The fair shade that suggests she spends more time beneath cool deck lighting than under sunlit sky. Bright crimson irises glow against the chilly blue of her face sharply, like a flare through fog. They make her glances feel electric, even when she’s just quietly listening.
Her stark white hair is cut into a tousled pixie style formed by windswept waves. Along her cheeks, short curls frame her face with an almost accidental elegance. The longest curls on either side of her face curve toward her lips like seafoam drawn by the tide. Higher up, the next set crest toward her temples with playful lift. Two curled tufts hang down from her forehead like storm-bent Helmholtz clouds. One fuller than the other formed bangs above her brow. They both curved inwards, almost forming a heart as they angled towards each other. It gave her a disheveled kind of charm, like she’d styled it during warp turbulence.
She didn’t walk with grace as much as with as momentum. There was always a faint hesitation in her steps. Itata’s limbs never quite seemed to agree on a direction. The awkwardness somehow suited her. There was something almost boyish in the way she tilted her head and crossed her arms. She smiled easily and often. Sometimes she seemed to smirk at nothing in particular. Itata’s warmth was never forced. Her expressions flickered with honest amusement. A quiet kind of glee made her presence feel warm.
Itata’s uniform fit well. Her personal clothes fit more loosely. She favored tunics with slight drapes and layered undershirts. They sometimes give the impression that she’s deliberately dressing down. There were curves hidden beneath all that restraint, but she made no effort to emphasize them. If anything, her clothing choices felt more like armor against attention than a bid for it.
Personality
Itata sh’Zeles is perky and quick, yet emotionally reserved and guarded in ways that even close companions rarely notice. She carries herself with an almost irrepressible buoyancy, offering smiles and leaning into joy wherever it can be found. Her presence is hard to dislike. She has the disarming habit of seeming pleased simply to exist near others. She can make people feel interesting even when they aren’t. Under that cheer is a mind quietly cataloging, dissecting, and filing away truths best kept to herself.
Lt. JG sh’Zeles’s strengths in Starfleet Intelligence lie in her pattern recognition and emotional intelligence. She can read microexpressions like a poem and navigate tense diplomatic briefings with enough charm to leave adversaries uncertain whether they’re being deflected or disarmed. Itata is an effective analyst and reliable field support agent.
The young Andorian is far from flawless. She is conflict-avoidant when it comes to personal matters and prone to burying discomfort under cheerfulness. She resents expectations so deeply that even harmless questions about her future can make her retreat. Though she thrives in social environments, she rarely lets others get close emotionally. She tries keeping her relationships shallow to avoid having to navigate parts of herself she hasn’t quite figured out.
Her dream is a modest command, something off the radar. A place where no one is watching her. No clan pressures. No carefully arranged dinner meetings. Just space, quiet, and maybe a zhen partner who wants to escape the old ways as much as she does. Someone gentle, curious, and just rebellious enough to understand her.
When she’s off duty, Itata is surprisingly athletic. Her favorite pastime is Kochek, the traditional Andorian sport where three teams of three compete across icy terrain riddled with traps, jumps, and logic-based obstacle challenges. It’s a chaos of strategy, endurance, and unspoken alliances. The game is played without skates, each course differing from the last. Successful Kochek players like Itata rely on fast footwork and instantaneous reflexes. She’s known for scrappy maneuvers, often baiting opponents into overconfidence.
Itata also enjoys collecting obscure poetry from pre-Federation Andorian writers, cooking fusion dishes with spicy heat, and listening to ancient signal transmissions.
History
Itata sh’Zeles was born the youngest shen of the venerable Zeles clan. The family is one of the oldest industrial houses of the Irinari Province. The name is etched deep into Andorian history, from the frost-winds of Old Thalassa to today’s corridors at Starfleet Intel HQ. Her role by birthright was not a quiet one. As the youngest shen of her generation, she bares the weight of passing on the Zeles surname in accordance to Andorian customs. The young officer also has the responsibility of continuing the family’s bloodline.
Zeles clan elders run an intergalactic mining empire that spns several star systems. At family gatherings, it was common to see drill operators and flag officers seated at the same table. The smell of rock dust and cold metal clung to their uniforms. Itata grew up learning how to memorize troop movements before she could fly a skiff. She knew the names of rare ore veins in seven systems before she understood her own feelings. Legacy wasn’t just encouraged. It was expected.
Itata made her way through field analysis and infiltration training with precision and wit. Her family was very proud of her success. and made her family proud. This was before they saw her repeatedly deflect their dating obligations.
Over time, the disapproval ripened into interference. Her older aunts and great-uncles began proposing suitors, all vetted for “Old World sensibilities.” They were advertised as proud thaan and chan men from “respectable” lines. Itata met them with the grace of someone raised in diplomacy, but fled each encounter like a starship at warp 7. She found their pride suffocating. Courting rituals bordered on the scale of theatrical and predatory. One chan called her “obedient-looking.” Another than tried to teach her how to speak in “proper declarative tones.” Another recited a war poem before asking her to “contemplate the warmth of duty.” She was gone by dessert.
Itata’s heart had never truly belonged to men. In the rare times she allowed herself vulnerability, her gaze wandered only toward female shen and zhen. She wasn’t shy about it, though she rarely gave more than hints. There had been a handful of soft affairs. Never anything her aunts could latch onto.
Beneath her bubbly, awkward charm, Itata carries a deeply rooted independence. The clan can keep their customs. Let the old houses chase honor in medieval circles and dusty lineage. Itata sh’Zeles plans to serve the Federation’s present, not the ghosts of her ancestors.