Jennifer Douglas

Early Life

Jennifer Anne Douglas was born December 5, 2347, in Cañon City, Colorado, to Gary and Linda Douglas. Jenn was the youngest of four children: Michael, Alexander, and Stephanie. She grew up on a 5,000-acre family ranch in Custer County along the banks of Grape Creek and the foot of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains.

For young Jenn, the icy waters of the creek were her pool and the towering peaks of the Rockies were her playground. She scrambled up game trails and slid down high mountain glaciers. She barrel raced, but was never very good at it.

She attended Custer County High School in Westcliff as part of the class of 2366. At Custer County, she played parrises squares, soccer, and track. She was an average student, and her marks were not good enough to pass the Starfleet Academy entrance exam.

With Starfleet dreams crushed, she chose to attend Colorado State University and enrolled in the art program. During her first year, she took an elective course in Anthropology, which led her to switch majors. She was fascinated by the idea of digging up the past to reveal the present and the evolution of the species. Not only the transition from one ancestral species to the next, but also how we lived as people in the past.

She spent her next three summers to graduate in 2370 from CSU with undergraduate and graduate degrees in paleoanthropology summa cum laude so that she could join that fall’s Academy freshman class. While her high school marks were barely average, her collegiate marks garnered her acceptance into Starfleet Academy’s Anthropology Doctoral Candidate Program.

Starfleet Academy

Jenn entered Starfleet Academy at an age when most cadets had already graduated. Because of the age difference and her class load, she did not spend much time socializing with anyone but her roommate, a Bajoran Cadet Forcon D’arla. She found Jenn’s blunt, honest nature off-putting. Because of this alienation, she found herself beaming back to Colorado on the weekends, where she would reconnect with nature by walking the woods, snowshoeing across the meadows, or skiing.

In late 2373, the Dominion War erupted with the Dominion’s attack on Deep Space Nine. While there was a need for Engineers, Command, engineering, operation, and tactical officers, there was little need for newly minted science officers, so Jenn was not pushed through the Academy like her peers.

In 2374, Jenn graduated with honors from Starfleet Academy with a doctorate in Xenoanthropology and the rank of Lieutenant (junior grade), due to her advanced academic standing. That same year, during Operation Return while escorting the USS Defiant, the Majestic was destroyed. Her brother, Alexander, was on that ship, and his loss was the first of many to affect her psyche profoundly.

Dominion War

Outpost Alpha 23

In July of 2374, Jenn was assigned to Outpost Alpha 23, an insignificant rock on the edge of the Federation. On the planet, there were the ruins of an Iconian colony. Officially, they were seeking advanced technologies that could be used to help win the war. Unofficially, Starfleet had more science officers than they needed at the moment and was finding busy work for them. Due to its proximity to the Cardassian Union, a small contingent of Starfleet engineers, operations officers, intelligence officers, and security personnel was stationed on the planet, utilizing it to monitor the enemy. It also drew the attention of the Dominion, and raids were common on the outpost.

After six months of excavating a ruin, which yielded nothing more valuable than crumbled walls and confirmed existing lore about the Iconians, the lines had shifted. Alpha 23 had gone from close to the front lines to right on it and sometimes inside those lines.  The front shifted constantly, and casualties were high. One by one, officers around her fell. The loss of friends and colleagues cut down in their prime fueled her hatred for the Jem’hadar that started with the loss of her brother. And she felt guilty about this hate. It wasn’t the “Federation Way.”

In January 2375, Jenn assumed command of Alpha 23 with the death of Commander Davis. Evacuation had already been requested, and until comms had been severed, Command assured her that they were “on it.”  She was in command for two days. There had been 148 Starfleet officers on the planet, 78 of whom had been from the science division.  Eighteen were still ambulatory, with twenty more suffering in a makeshift hospital with a single overworked nurse.

She did what she could to hold the survivors together while they waited for exfil… rescue.  She tended to the wounded, counseled the fighters, and urged them to reinforce their defenses. She also had crewmen Threll and Signe rig micro torpedoes from the destroyed runabouts to act as proximity mines, which worked to great effect.

That’s when Captain Ryx arrived.  Just in the nick of time. Very much on brand for the man. He liked an entrance, and he made an entrance.  The Jem’hadar were assaulting their last position. Jenn had just managed to kill one of them, and it fell on her, and she lacked the strength to move him off of her.

Enter Ryx, cocky and self-assured.

“Hey, Princess,” he winked. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” Ryx said after pulling the Jem’hadar off of her.

“Watch it, Tall, Light, and Meh,” Jenn fired back, trying to hide her attraction. “I’m pretty sure the Jem’Hadar wouldn’t call me nice. As for what I’m doing here… I’m defending my lab. What the hell do you think I’m doing? Having a countryside picnic?”

“Hate to break it to you, doll,” he said, extending a hand and hauling her to her feet. “But your picnic is crap. I mean, where are the cucumber sandwiches?”

Impressed by her spirit and how she held her own against the enemy, Ryx recruited her to join him on the USS Gladius, officially as the ship’s science officer.  The Defiant-class ship didn’t need a science officer. She was now part of Ryx’s Raiders, Starfleet’s answer to an imutable enemy met with a wrecking ball.

This marks Jenn’s transition from “Digging people up from the ground to putting them in it.”

Ryx’s Raiders

Ryx’s Raiders was a ragtag crew personally selected by Captain Kiryx “Ryx” Veyr to do one thing: take the fight to the enemy. Other crews said the Raiders lacked discipline and cohesion. Ryx didn’t care if you were rowdy in a bar or if your boots were scuffed. He didn’t care how sharp you stood at attention or whether you gave the proper deference to superior officers. More than a few of the officers under his command had been dragged out of the brig and cast aside by their former captains. All that mattered was whether or not you could fight.

Starfleet Command tolerated this because he was effective. And while they may have looked like pirates to outsiders, the Raiders were as loyal and disciplined as any crew, but only to one man. A seven-foot force of personality, and this was the environment Jenn found herself in.

In June of 2374, Ryx promoted her to full Lieutenant and made her his second officer. This wasn’t a triumph with applause and pats on the back.  It was a silent pip after a funeral, and the grim reality of an empty chair, its owner recovering in some distant starbase hospital. That was the deal. The Raiders were the tip of the sword, and they rushed headlong into the jaws of the enemy.  Losses were regrettable, but unavoidable. Ryx didn’t treat them like canon fodder; he didn’t need to. Every victory or loss came with empty bunks and names crossed off rosters.

In September of that year, the Gladius was destroyed at the Battle of Calib IV.  Ryx’s long-time XO Commander Thelin Golonnin was killed in the initial assault. Jenn was leading a joint task force of Starfleet and Klingon ground teams on the planet’s surface.  Pushing back against the invasion, they fought tirelessly in the trenches. It was here, working with Commander Klern, that she learned to speak some broken Klingon, which would later spark a full interest so that now she is fluent in the language. Klern was so impressed by her bravery that he made her an unofficial member of his house.

Unfortunately, Jenn would not see the end of the battle. While on patrol, one of her officers encountered a Houdini Mine. He was instantly killed, and shrapnel ripped into her right side. She was transferred to the IKS Gr’kon , and the Klingon medics patched her up. Starfleet and Ryx wanted to send her back to Starbase 375 for more care, but she refused.

USS Seawolf

The Raiders had been sidelined during the Second Battle of Chin’toka.  Jenn, now Ryx’s executive officer, helped him fight through the Starfleet bureaucracy to secure a second Defiant-class starship, the USS Seawolf. The grey paint on the hull was still drying when the Raiders beamed aboard. There had yet to be a counter to the Breen energy weapon, but neither the Cardassians nor the Dominion had it.  For two months, the Raiders conducted hit-and-run attacks on enemy ships and positions, leveraging the Seawolf’s small size to infiltrate enemy territory, destroy assets, and escape before the enemy could respond.

They were on the far side of the front conducting raids with the IKS Gr’kon when the news of the destruction of Cardassian Prime and the surrender of the Dominion hit the news wire.  Jenn was at the science station watching the FNN broadcast on the main viewer.  No one cheered, only muted acceptance that for over two years, this war was coming to a close.

The Raiders carried on for the next two years, cleaning up remnants of Jem’hadar outposts.  Starfleet wanted prisoners.  The Raiders rarely brought any back. The enemy soldiers always “resisted.” Jenn never objected to Ryx’s icy solutions.  The Jem’hadar seldom surrendered by flying a white flag and a Federation banner. The Raiders were skipping the middleman.

Post War

USS Mobile

In 2377, Captain Ryx temporarily left Starfleet to return home to Llanaria. Jenn herself was struggling in the day-to-day. The ghosts of the war followed her everywhere. She would wake at night screaming, flailing in search of a phaser. In the corridors, she walked with her eyes constantly glancing behind, never with her back to a door. A tricorder hung on her hip at all times. To those who asked, she would reply, “It’s a useful tool. You never know when you need one.” The truth was, she needed the weight, and a phaser was frowned upon in peacetime. Despite the need for relief, she resisted the urge to treat her wounds with sleep medication or get through her day with alcohol like so many other veterans.

With Ryx’s departure from the Seawolf, Jenn chose a demotion of sorts. She opted to be the Chief Science Officer aboard the USS Mobile instead of taking Seawolf’s center seat per Ryx’s recommendation. She hoped that getting back to her roots as a scientist would ground her and bring her the peace she so desperately needed. But the ghosts followed her to the New Orleans-class starship.

But, for a time, she found happiness when she met Lieutenant Daniel Miller, a security officer on the Mobile. They bonded over their shared trauma.  The loss of colleagues and family. His father had been on the USS Odyssey when it had been destroyed just before the war.  In 2380, the couple married in a small ceremony on Risa.

Seven years later, Miller was now the executive officer of the Mobile, and Jenn’s career had stalled. Her connections with Ryx and her spotted service record during the war kept her from moving up in rank and closed down other opportunities for advancement.  Truth be told, she was happy with that, yet paradoxically, she was jealous that Daniel was moving ahead of her.

She had never sought counseling. She never did anything but bottle up the monsters raging within her, and she often took it out on her husband. Explosive outbursts in the Mess Hall and in the corridors were common around the couple. Jenn pushed Daniel away, and he didn’t stop her.

Civilian Career

Jenn left the Mobile in 2387 to take a research dig on Monac VIII.  There, with her Iconian expertise, she and the team dug up the site. Similar to Alpha 23, the planet offered little new information. Yet, kneeling in the dirt, trowel in her hand, she started to come back to herself.  The demons haunting her in the night became less frequent. She stopped wearing a tricorder, but she still refused to sit with her back to the door.

In 2388, her divorce from Daniel was finalized, and the couple has not spoken to this day.

She bounced around the Archaeology community for the next few years, doing digs in Giza and Africa.  She had become a regular guest lecturer at Oxford University on topics such as the Icnonians and early hominin species. It was there she met Dr. Graham Potter, who recruited her as a fellow in a major 100 Years’ War expedition in France that was being done in conjunction with the Université de Paris.

From 2394 to 2401, she excavated several medieval battlefields across France, including several buried under newer battles such as WWII. While the medieval period wasn’t her expertise, Dr. Potter wanted her for her ability to read bones and think outside the box that these medieval anthropologists were accustomed to. He liked bringing in the occasional outsider to disrupt the groupthink and challenge common thought.  Jenn was that outsider.

Starfleet Part: 2

USS Pendragon

Ryx came crashing into her life over twenty years later. He found her in a little pub in Normandy on a rainy day, with the dig rained out for the day.  She caught him entering like the gravitational constant had just shifted.

“Princess!” Ryx shouted from across the pub, waving to make sure he had her attention. He had one of those lopsided grins of his when we plopped down next to her. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Hey, jerk. What do you want, Ryx?” She demanded, hoping her tone conveyed annoyance, and go away.

“Other than your undying love and devotion?” He leaned over and stole one of the cubed tomatoes, popping it in his mouth before she could stab him with her fork. “But I’m adorable, so I have that anyway. I need an XO. You game?”

“Got a job. Research fellowship through Oxford and the University of Paris.” Jenn shrugged. “Besides, I left Starfleet.”

Ryx grunted slightly at that and rooted in his pocket to dig out a small PADD. He flicked it on and handed it to her. “I tapped up an admiral friend of mine. Cute little blonde,” he grinned, a faraway look in his eyes at the fond memory. “An almost unconditional offer to return to the fleet… the one condition being, you have to keep me in line.”

Of course, she said yes. She could never say no to Captain Ryx, and he knew it, too, which made it all the worse. He was family in every sense but in blood, but even that was a little blurry. She was a universal donor, and a direct blood transfusion from her to him in 2375. It left her puking up her guts and the big brute alive.

The Pendragon, another Defiant-class, because Ryx likes that little ship despite his propensity to break them. And of course, she was only able to rein in the worst of his tendencies, but it certainly didn’t help when he ignored her warnings to hit on an admiral.  Thankfully, she had the luck to shoot him down, but it put them on her radar.

For the most part, Ryx and the Pendragon crew kept their noses clean. That is, until the Vaadwaur invasion.  They were ordered to cover the evacuation in the face of invading aliens. The last transport was leaving when the Vaadwaur moved in, cutting it off from escape.  The mission commander assumed the transport was lost, but Ryx never left anyone behind, ignored the fleet captain’s orders, and sent the Pendragon in—an action Jenn supported.

The battle was quick, but it allowed the transport to escape. Unfortunately, the Pendragon was severely damaged.  The crew managed to limp it away from the planet and the invading Vaadwaur before the core went critical, and the crew could abandon ship in escape pods.

Jenn and two others spent three days in an escape pod before being rescued.  The ensuing investigation was swift.  The facts were indisputed, and both she and Ryx were brought up on insubordination charges.  Ryx was cashiered from the fleet, and as his XO, Jenn received a letter of reprimand.

Job offers for the scientist/decorated soldier had always been plentiful if she knew where to look, but now they were dried up. No one wanted anything to do with her. That letter was a scarlet letter on her dossier, and her war background that had once been a badge of honor had become a liability. She was about to resign her commission once more and head back to Westcliff, letting the mountains help her find her future.

That was until Captain Helena Dread of the USS Gagarin approached her…

Family

Spouse:

1. *Daniel Miller (m. 2380 div. 2388)

Children:

1. *None

Parents:

1. *Father: Gary Douglas † (2315-2391)
2. *Mother: Linda Douglas née Thorson (b. 2316)

Siblings:

1. *Michael Douglas (b. 2337)
2. *Alexander Douglas † (2339-2374)
3. *Stephanie Grant née Douglas (b. 2341)

Extended Family:

Aunts/Uncles:

1. *George Douglas
2. *Marianne Douglas née Talon
3. *Peter Douglas
4. *Henry Thorson
5. *Melinda Thorson née Smith
6. *Debra Hashimoto née Thorson
7. *Hikaru Hashimoto