Nia Hargreaves

The Pegasus

Born on the USS Pegasus in 2379, Nia Hargreaves was the daughter of two Starfleet officers who were keen to return to missions of exploration after the Dominion War that had thrown them together. Living aboard a Galaxy-class starship on a five-year mission, Nia was far from the only child aboard, particularly when her two younger siblings were born. They were all educated in the ship’s school and lived among the ship’s civilian community until the Pegasus returned to Federation space with the Attack on Mars in 2385. While her deep-space exploration missions were over, the Pegasus continued in operations close to home of scientific research, with Nia’s parents remaining aboard, her father Kehinde a senior staffer by now and her mother a talented pilot and engineer.

Nia was always a leader among her peers, bright and sociable, and utterly fearless in the way some children are. This persisted even as the family moved around several times through her childhood, leaving the Pegasus before she was ten years old and moving through three more assignments before she was sixteen. She became accustomed to making intense but brief friendships, accepting that people would come in and out of her life and that she could welcome them quickly and let them go just as fast. The only exception was family, her great constant in all of this – except for Starfleet itself.

Path to the Academy

She hero-worshipped her father, and never doubted that she would follow in her parents’ footsteps in service. In her schooling she preferred things she could see, or feel, or experience, and was smart enough to somewhat coast through more abstract studies. Her father somewhat indulged this, and it was only when Nia was fourteen and failed a physics test she had assumed she could ad-lib through that her mother Abigail stepped in. Not for her own good could Abigail make Nia see that she needed to apply herself if she was to excel, but she insisted Nia needed to set an example for her younger brother and sister. Family, it turned out, was the motivation Nia needed to buckle down. Where other children may have floundered under sudden pressure and new expectations, Nia had the twin advantages of being very bright – and being able to learn from some of the best and brightest people in the galaxy on a Starfleet ship.

The family lived on the USS Caliburn at this point, the ship conducting scientific surveys along the Federation border. In a safe region of space, there were plenty of chances for her father, the captain, to give the children aboard learning opportunities during their missions. As a teenager Nia could join a science officer on a routine survey by runabout and see the heart of a star for herself, join a landing party collecting botanical samples from an uninhabited world and be one of the first humans to see its ocean. Heeding her mother’s urging, she learnt how to blend her studies with her experiences, and discovered the joy of learning, the enrichment that came from understanding everything about what she saw.

Getting into Starfleet Academy is difficult even for the smartest and most dedicated of students, but Nia Hargreaves applied with half a ship helping her write her statements, study for tests, and stay distracted when it was time to wait for results. For one as ambitious as Hargreaves, it was something of a blow to not be accepted at the San Francisco campus, but at the Mellstoxx III campus instead. It was her father who talked her through this setback, admitting he had never studied at San Francisco, and he was a Starfleet captain now. On Mellstoxx she could build connections with officers who would be alongside her for her entire career, instead of the scattered graduates of San Francisco who took divergent paths to race to the top.

Mellstoxx

Hargreaves settled in well at her new home. Being away from her family for the first time was overshadowed by the sheer excitement and opportunity of the Academy, and she swept in with an unearned arrogance of already knowing more of the Starfleet life than most of her colleagues. While the community around her was massive compared to starship life, she adapted with her easy talent for making fast friends and her persistent confidence. She partied hard and studied hard, pursuing joint honours in Astrophysics and Xenoanthropology, a strong combination for those with command aspirations.

Success has its own drawbacks for Hargreaves. Exceptional scores in her first two years led her to apply to join the elite Bravo Squadron at the start of her junior year – and then immediately drift from her academic focus at all of the new opportunities before her. She has, perhaps, become as over-confident as she was in her teenage years, assuming she can drift through the theory by excelling at the practical. She was accepted in Bravo Squadron before her grades hit what is for her a slump – not significant, but a blip in an otherwise excellent record. Joining Bravo Squadron has come with relocating to Starbase Bravo, in orbit of Mellstoxx, for more hands-on experience in the station’s departments and specialised training in and around the system.

Hargreaves wants to experience life on the station, she wants to train on the various field camps on moons of Mellstoxx, and she absolutely wants to fly at the facility on Stinsfor or in the station’s auxiliary craft. Her instructors have other ideas, nailing her to multiple shifts in the station’s Stellar Sciences Department so she can see for herself that there’s only so far she can go without applying herself to her studies.