Odessa "Red" Pruitt

Hailing from Spartanburg, South Carolina, Odessa Pruitt is not from a typically Starfleet- or even spacefaring- family. The Pruitt family claims they’ve never been to space and have never set one foot offworld- Earth is all they need. Despite this, Odie and her twin brother Dominic lived comfortable childhoods.

While Dom seemed more than happy to stay planetside, Odie soon gained an appreciation for what lay beyond. Her grandfather used to regale the kids with tales, perhaps even legends, of an ancestor of theirs- a Pruitt who took to the skies as a fighter pilot, long back before the Federation. To this day, Odie isn’t sure how much of her grandfather’s tales were true and how much he just made up to entertain two rowdy children, but it planted the seed in her head for what would come next. She wanted to be a fighter pilot, just like the heroes from her grandfather’s stories.

It was, perhaps, fortunate for her that Starfleet was well into its defensive phase when she was a teenager, and by the time she was in high school, her dreams of being a fighter pilot had become dreams of being a starfighter pilot. Her family was understandably apprehensive of the idea of their little girl going into the fleet, but reluctantly threw their support behind her and didn’t argue when she applied for Starfleet Academy in 2397.

Also in her class was one Meredith Bowman, the polar opposite of Red in every way- a loud, excitable, boisterous, and outgoing Englishwoman who, it seemed, quickly decided the shy South Carolinian was the introvert to her extrovert. The engineering cadet would drag the aspiring pilot with her wherever she went, never complaining when Red proceeded to not leave her side for the entire event. Nor, curiously, was Red objecting to being dragged along. If anything was unsurprising the year the century turned, it was that Red and Meredith officially started dating.

Graduating with the Class of 2401, Red, Mere, and their friend group of cadets narrowly avoided death, or at least assimilation, during the Frontier Day incident, as they were still on Earth and celebrating their graduation at a friend’s house in Bakersfield. With Starfleet now vastly undermanned, the entire group of cadets was assigned to one of the few mostly-undamaged ships in the fleet: the Akira-class heavy cruiser USS Fanshaw Bay (NCC-68411).

Fanshaw Bay was regarded as something of a lucky ship. A Dominion War veteran, the nimble heavy cruiser had dodged the worst of the Frontier Day massacre and needed only minor patching-up before redeployment. Her onboard fighter squadron, Fighting Squadron 509, had likewise survived surprisingly intact, and the shaken but stalwart veterans welcomed Red and the other newcomers to the squadron with open arms. For the next year, she and the rest of the new pilots in Fighting 509 broke in their seats on border patrol and convoy escort duty, seeing off pirates with a near-flawless combat record.

But when the Blackout hit in March 2402, Fanshaw Bay and the convoy she was escorting were out in the middle of nowhere on the Federation’s coreward border, cut off from both their destination and their origin point. Essentially left abandoned in space, they were easy pickings when the Vaadwaur showed up the next month. Cut off from home and help alike, the convoy’s escorts put up a stubborn defense, but it was destroyed wholesale- including the brave old Fanshaw Bay, going down fighting with 60 percent of her crew of 550 becoming casualties. Fighting 509 was even worse off- Red and three other pilots managed to hide their Valkyries in a debris field and break contact, but the other 20 Valkyries were lost. Only six of the 40 pilots and WSOs were later recovered.

What was almost worse than the battle itself was surviving afterwards. With dozens of escape pods now protected by only four Valkyries, none of which had torpedoes left, they could do nothing but drift along on impulse and wait for rescue. Red spent the next few days wracked with guilt, fear, and paranoia, for she learned that Meredith had survived and was in a pod, but was critically injured. She checked in with that pod every few hours, and none of the updates ever soothed their nerves.

It was four days adrift before another Starfleet vessel appeared- USS Wasp. The little Defiant-class escort couldn’t hope to make room for several hundred scared survivors, but she took aboard as many of the worst off as she could- thankfully, Meredith included- replicated supplies to top off the pods and fighters’ rations, and then sped off to go get help. The next day, Wasp returned with a bigger ship, which took in the rest of the survivors.

Meredith survived, but her injuries were severe enough that she’d never walk again, and she ended up taking an honorable discharge and returning to Earth. Feeling as though her life was in shambles and unsure if she wanted to continue in Starfleet without her, Red requested and was granted time off to go home with her. The Pruitt family welcomed them back to Spartanburg with open arms, and the two got about to putting their lives back together. They married in October, and in December, they adopted one-year-old Maxine, the orphaned daughter of two Starfleet officers who’d died during the Nightfall, one of whom was in Fighting 509.

But civilian life never quite sat right with Red. Under the massive guilt complex and the new insecurities about being good enough for her little family, she was still that same dreamer Meredith used to drag all over San Francisco back in the Academy. She belonged in Starfleet, and was in denial of that fact, stuck between two lives and unsure of which to pick.

Meredith picked for her. She recognized Red’s dilemma and apparently quickly decided her wife was unhappy being stuck on Earth and would be so, so much more comfortable back in Starfleet, and pushed Red to rejoin for months. Finally, almost a year after the Vaadwaur attack, Red relented. She rejoined the fleet in late June, and by the first week of July, she was off- bound for the frontier, and Eos Station.