Tafv

Pre Defection

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Post Defection

Despite living for years as a defector, Tafv’s attempts at joining Starfleet proper were always seen with suspicion and often thwarted quickly. Try as he might, he realized that his path toward a starship officer commission would just have to be taken the long way, so he opted for enrolling himself in the Technical Services Academy on Mars as a means of getting there. While it wasn’t quite as prestigious, the Romulan had already been humbled by years of the commoner’s life in his own society, doing honest work aboard a Federation starship was nothing compared to the mandatory enlistment he once served aboard a d’Deridex-class Warbird. The training was simple, and much of it concerned things he had already learned during his prior work experience after leaving the Empire, so he had actually passed his courses with the closest thing to honors available in the TSA. Although he was the member of a rather notorious race, he had made quite a positive impression on his teachers, who motivated him to pursue his dream of attaining a commission through hard work as a crewman.

Alas, even after attaining the rank of a recruit, the poor crewman was relegated to a seemingly uneventful first cruise aboard a Derf-class subspace buoy tender, the USS Wayland. He personally believed it was either a means of testing his commitment to Starfleet, a punishment for his unfortunate origin, or both, but nevertheless he persevered and worked scrupulously. The ship toured the interior of Federation space for a few years, and while it was a relatively uneventful assignment at first, life aboard the Derf-class gave the young Romulan a great sense of purpose he had missed since his defection. For some time he worked as a tractor beam technician, a major position concerning the enlisted personnel aboard a tender vessel, and occasionally he would act as a member of the ship’s underutilized phaser crew. He’d never thought that his position aboard the buoy repair would amount to much, but a fateful day had arrived when the Wayland was assigned a new course along the border of Romulan space, where the ship had come under attack.

Romulan pirates, taking advantage of the lawlessness created by the supernova’s effect on the Star Empire, had disabled a buoy along the demilitarized zone. The Wayland, having only been recently assigned to the area, had not been outfitted with a proper amount of Security or Tactical officers and was caught entirely off guard. The phaser crew was well trained but woefully inexperienced, and when it seemed as though the ship may have to surrender, Tafv leapt into action and organized an impromptu counter ambush from within the crawl spaces. It was a perilous battle, but with a lot of luck the sparse security personnel and the newly deputized Tafv managed to stun the boarding pirates. Here the Romulan’s fluency in his native language served as a boon, for the team was able to conduct a second ambush aboard their own vessel after Tafv impersonated a member of the pirate’s boarding team. With the help of his on-the-spot ingenuity, the Derf-class managed to fend off the pirates, and for that his captain had decided to sponsor his application for an officer’s candidacy. With a decent amount of years of experience manning phasers, life long combat experience as a citizen of the Romulan empire, and his heroic performance during the Wayland’s attempted capture, Tafv decided he’d aim for position as an officer in Security and Tactical.