Profile Overview

Samantha Rosso

Human Female

Character Information

Rank & Address

Captain Rosso, Polaris 2

Assignment

Retired

Born

Samantha Nicole Rosso

23690226

Summary

A skilled engineer who suddenly found herself thrust down the path of command, Captain Samantha Rosso is boldly taking her crew where no one has gone before. But chasing what lies ahead may not be enough to run from the demons in her past….

History

Samantha Nicole Rosso was born to Robert and Patricia Rosso in Anaheim, California, Earth, on February 26, 2369. Growing up, she displayed an aptitude for academics and was taught as a gifted student, learning subjects two to three years before everyone else her age. As a result of this seclusion from people her own age, she grew up rather friendless, an issue her parents didn’t fail to realize.

Little Samantha, who, still being young, did not quite understand that she was different from everyone else her age, considered it quite normal to play by herself. She found particular enjoyment when her parents got her an old Earth toy called a Lego set when they went traveling one summer. Sam spent endless hours creating different things from the various blocks. It was this first Lego set that turned her down the path that would eventually lead her to become a Starfleet engineer.

Sam’s parents saw how much their lonely daughter enjoyed her Lego set and began to search for more sets for her to play with. Eventually Sam had stockpiled an entire room of Lego sets, with so many different creations that it was a wonder she didn’t have blocks strewn all over the house. She kept her sets tidy, not wanting to lose any of the pieces.

As she started getting older, however, Sam began to notice that her older classmates had their own groups of friends. During lunches at her school, she would often sit by herself and watch everyone around her playing together. She began to feel the loneliness her parents were so worried about. Sam wanted a friend whose company she could enjoy, but the older kids in her class didn’t seem interested in having a smarty-pants little girl in their groups.

The worry of wondering if she was somehow a freak or an outcast because no one wanted to play with her built up over time, and eventually she couldn’t keep it bottled up anymore. During one lunch where she was, as usual, eating alone, she saw a boy and girl from her class playing together, when the girl kissed the boy, who blushed and giggled. Sam felt a new pang of isolation, wanting more than anything at that moment to have a friend she could be that close to. She began to cry, silently sniffling at first, until tears began to stream down her face, with no one around to notice her suffering.

At that moment, however, she felt a tap on her shoulder, and she looked up to find a boy around her age, with short, spiky blond hair and piercing blue eyes, looking at her with a worried expression on his face. He asked if she was ok; she rubbed her eyes and told the boy she was just lonely; she had no friends in her class due to them all being older than her. The boy smiled and sat down next to her at the table, placing his lunch tray next to hers. He introduced himself as Link Daven, another gifted student from a different class. He put his arm around her and told her that if she needed a friend, he’d be happy to be hers. Sam, taken aback by the warm nature the strange boy exhibited, rubbed the rest of her tears from her eyes and smiled. The two spent the rest of lunch introducing themselves and getting to know one another.

From that day on, Sam and Link were an inseparable pair. They ate lunch together every day, and after class Link would always meet up with her so they could walk home together; as it turned out, he lived only a few blocks away from her. Once they were out of their school routines for the day they’d meet up again and go play in the woods, or play with Sam’s Legos, or with Link’s holo games at his house.

Over the following years the two remained close friends, going to the same schools all the way through high school. Link helped Sam to emerge from her shy shell, a result of her lack of friends when she was little, into one of the most popular and outgoing girls in their grade. She had girls wanting to hang out with her every day and boys eating out of the palm of her hand. Sam usually found at least six love letters in her locker each day from various boys trying to get a date. However, she always turned them down, and her friends wondered if she would ever find “the right one”.

As her class made its way through high school, Sam and Link had to figure out what they were going to do next. Link considered going to college and becoming a holonovel author, as he was rather fascinated by the idea of being able to create his own stories, but Sam, remembering playing with all her Lego sets during her youth before Link entered her life, turned her gaze to Starfleet. She went to Starfleet Academy so she could ask for information about career opportunities. The officer there asked her what her interests were, and she mentioned that she had enjoyed building things when she was young. The officer, a junior Engineering officer who had graduated the academy not long ago, smiled and began to tell her all about Engineering and all the things she could build and fix if she joined Starfleet to become an engineer. Sam became mesmerized with the idea; she could only imagine how exciting it would be to tinker not with Legos, but with full size Federation starships.

She returned home and told Link about the idea. He was hesitant at first, due to his plans to become a famous holonovel author, but he saw how important this was to his best friend, and he didn’t want to hold her back. He applied to Starfleet Academy with her, resolving that if she wanted to join, they would join together.

In 2385, at the end of their sophomore year of high school, the Romulan star began exhibiting strange behavior. It was determined that something in its core was causing a chain reaction and the star would soon explode violently, destroying the entire Romulan system. Evacuation efforts were planned and prepared to relocate 900 million Romulan inhabitants to nearby systems before the star could go supernova.

However, before Starfleet could send its rescue fleet out to Romulus, it was attacked and destroyed, along with the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards and all the Mars surface colonies, by a fleet of rogue synthetic lifeforms. To this day, their motives for destroying the colonies are unknown. It had lasting effects on the entire Federation, but none more so than the families of the 92,143 people whose lives were extinguished in the attack.

Both of Sam’s parents were shipyard workers, with her father being a structural engineer and her mother a warp mechanic. They commuted to Mars from Earth every day for work, and on the morning of April 5, 2385, they got prepared to take their shuttle to Utopia Planitia like any other day. Something in Sam’s mind told her that something awful was going to happen if they went to work that day, and she tried everything she could to get them to take a day off. However, her parents thought she had simply had a bad dream and shrugged it off, going to work like they had planned.

That morning, at 1123 Earth Pacific time, news reports began broadcasting across the entire Federation that the Utopia Planitia yards were under heavy attack by synthetics. Sam stared at the viewscreen in her classroom in horror as the synth fighters made sweep after sweep, bombarding the entire planet in a rain of fire. Remembering the feeling she had that morning as she desperately tried to stop her parents from leaving that day, she began to feel violently ill.

Most of the eyes in the classroom, including the teacher’s, were on her, as they all knew her parents worked at the shipyard. As they began to display names of the confirmed dead and Sam saw her parents’ names flash on screen, she threw up on her desk and began to bawl. The teacher immediately took her out of the classroom and to the school nurse, explaining what had happened and why she had to remove Sam from the class. The nurse immediately understood and cleaned the young woman up. After that, she simply held Sam next to her as Sam cried uncontrollably.

Between the sobbing and sniffling, Sam would scream in rage and sorrow, an event which had the strange effect of appearing to shake the entire room. After the third time, the nurse noted that it had to be more than coincidence that the shaking and Sam’s screaming were occurring at the same time. However, she couldn’t find any records to indicate why Sam would be able to physically affect the environment in such a way, and was forced to abandon her attempts to learn how she was doing it.

With the death of her parents, Sam and her two younger siblings were taken in by their aunt and uncle, who lived nearby. The couple were also grieving the loss of her parents, and though it was not a time for happiness, their shared grief helped bring the torn family together. Sam had always liked her aunt and uncle, but she felt closer to them after this event than she ever had before. She could never express how grateful she was to them for taking her and her siblings in and treating them like their own.

The attack on Utopia Planitia strengthened Sam’s resolve to join Starfleet. Link, seeing his best friend suffering through her nightmare, abandoned any hesitancy he had about the prospect and gave his full devotion to joining the cause and supporting her. The Academy exam administrators, after learning that Sam was a relative of some of the victims, offered to give her an easier path into Starfleet, but she declined, stating that she did not want preferential treatment and would get into the Academy by her own merit. Impressed, the instructors kept a close eye on her as she took the exams, watching her with great interest.

Since both Sam and Link were exceptionally bright, they passed the Academy entrance exam with ease and were indoctrinated as Starfleet cadets. They spent the next four years there, with Sam focusing on her engineering passion and Link choosing to become a Security and Tactical specialist. When Sam asked him why he chose to take a career path so far from his original dream, he simply told her, “With you keeping the ships afloat, someone’s gotta be watching out for your safety. I’m not going to let my best friend get killed out there.”

The two graduated from the academy at the top of their respective classes, and they ventured out to their new ships, looking forward to what the future lay in store for them. While they weren’t able to get orders to the same ship, Starfleet was able to made sure that they would at least be able to remain close, and both of them have been assigned to the same fleets ever since their graduation.

Sam’s arrival onboard the USS Devon was met with a promotion to Lieutenant Commander and Chief Engineer. She was eager to tackle her new challenge, but her tour on the Devon was short lived. On its first mission, it was sent to the planet of New Avia for diplomatic negotiations. Under false pretenses, the crew was invited to the surface, where they were captured and the ship taken over. Sam, along with several other crew members, were captured for “storage” while the rest of the crew were killed or eaten onboard the ship.

The survivors spent several months in confinement, while their friends were slowly taken away and devoured, until only a dozen or so remained. Before those final few could be eaten, a rescue party sent from the USS North Star, which had arrived to investigate the missing ships, rescued the survivors and took them away just before an Avian nuclear device detonated accidentally, destroying the entire Avian capital.

Sam recuperated for a few weeks aboard the North Star, resettling herself into society and preparing to return to Earth for a new assignment. However, Captain Song offered her the position of recently-vacated Executive Officer, along with a promotion to full Commander. While she was hesitant at first, she decided to accept the promotion, in part to repay the crew for saving what remained of her Devon shipmates.

In late 2398, during an extended refit period for the North Star, Commodore Song went home to visit her mother and found her gravely ill. Not wanting to leave her mother’s side, she took an indefinite leave of absence from Starfleet, leaving the position of Commanding Officer vacant. Starfleet opted to select Sam for the position, giving her command of the North Star.

Sam received the call sign “Polaris 2” when she took command of the North Star, due to being the second commanding officer of the ship.

Service Record

Date Position Posting Rank
2391 - 2393 Junior Engineering Officer USS Bellerphon
2393 - 2394 Assistant Chief Engineer USS Bellerophon
2394 - 2396 Assistant Chief Engineer USS Phoenix
2396 - 2397 Chief Engineer USS Devon
2397 - 2398 Executive Officer USS North Star
2398 Executive Officer USS North Star
2398 - Present Commanding Officer USS North Star