Dawa Vlček

Family

Since the 2260s, Dawa’s family has lived in Christopher’s Landing on Titan; she’s part of the third generation to be born on the moon.

Almost the entirety of her family for the past 140 years have been employed at Titan’s Sol VI Shipyards as engineers, technicians, and other personnel.

Early Life

The domed settlement of Christopher’s Landing is by all accounts a lovely place to live, with parks, a cultural center, and a friendly, tight-knit community. However, since the vocation of most residents is either shipbuilding or terraforming, it can be a stressful place to live as well.

Dawa’s childhood was a happy one at first, with two older siblings and ten cousins close to her age living nearby to play with. Among her family, Dawa was unique in her fascination with animals; there were very few on Titan (largely pets and a few urban species imported from Earth long ago), but from the moment Dawa had laid eyes on a painting of a whale at the local art museum, she’d been obsessed with all manor of exotic creatures. Her cousins were often confused when Dawa wanted to play “lion and gazelle”, or pretended to be a sehlat; tag and video games were more their speed.

Then, in 2373, the Dominion War began, and Dawa’s siblings and cousins became caretakers more often than playmates as their parents and aunts and uncles all spent more time at the shipyard. The frantic pace of production didn’t end until the war ended two years later.

After the war, family time seemed to increase as everyone had fresh appreciation for their free time. Dawa began secondary school soon after, which included many of the same vocational classes her older family members had taken. She excelled in these classes, just as the rest of her family had, and yet they began to fill her with a sense of unease. Something almost like dread. Her future career and the prospect of spending most of her life in Christopher’s Landing began to feel more like a reality, and she began to realize that it wasn’t something she looked forward to.

Still, she wasn’t sure what else she wanted to do, and was afraid to bring up such thoughts to her family, so she continued on as expected and began an apprenticeship at the Sol VI Shipyard part time while continuing to take higher-level engineering classes.

Attack on Mars

She was 19 in 2385 when Utopia Planitia burned and synths were outlawed. It completely upended the lives of everyone in the Sol VI Shipyards–in every Federation shipyard. Though A500s had not yet been introduced to their location, it was still an uphill battle trying to make up for the loss of production.

The first two years after the attack were so busy that even if she’d had the time to stop and think about it, she couldn’t fathom leaving her work and her family at the Shipyards. It wasn’t until her 21st birthday, when she was back at the art museum, that something struck. Whether it was inspiration or an existential crisis is hard to say, but when she turned a corner and saw the painting of the whale that had first inspired her in her childhood, she knew she had to leave. And she finally had some idea of where to go.

Quietly, asking that they not let it slip to her family, she gave notice to her superiors at the Shipyards, and a month later she traveled to Earth to start the Starfleet Academy Preparatory Program.

Starfleet Academy

After completing the six-week prep program, Dawa took the Academy entrance exam and was accepted into Starfleet as a cadet. She started working on a major in Mathematical Physics, unsure of what specialty or even of what division she’d like to work in upon graduation. Part of her wanted to become a science officer specializing in zoology, but the prospect of starting fresh in research and biology was intimidating, so she decided to stick with starships.

Only this time, she’d be flying them.

Once she’d decided on her course, she gave her studies 99%. (She had to save at least 1% for socializing.) By her third year she was completing most of her coursework remotely from Mimas in between Zeta Squadron exercises on the Academy Flight Range.

The irony of running away to join Starfleet only to end up right back in Saturn’s orbit was not lost on her, so upon graduation she sought placement on a ship that wouldn’t be returning to the Sol system any time soon before realizing that a Starbase could keep her away in perpetuity.

Starbase 375

Well over a decade out from the Dominion War, Starbase 375 still had a reduced starfighter squadron attached to it, and that was technically what Dawa was assigned to. However, the flight operations department at the base was a big proponent of cross-training, so in addition to piloting other small craft, Dawa also had the opportunity to work with traffic control, hangar ops, and even had an opportunity to shadow a strategic operations officer on more than one occasion.

Despite plenty of opportunities to socialize at the starbase, Dawa’s luck was such that most of the friends she made–whether Starfleet or civilian–didn’t tend to stick around long. When an opportunity came along for a new posting at the larger Starbase Bravo, she had no reason not to take it.

Starbase Bravo

Dawa arrived at the Fourth Fleet’s headquarters at the end of 2400, and despite having so much more to do, she still manages to keep her fingers in a great many pies. Still nominally attached to the Starfighter Division, she continues to cross-train with flight operations, and has even given time over to shipyard operations.

In February, she embarked on a mission of relief to Ignaus Colony in the Paulson Nebula as a pilot for Specialist Joshua Bryant, though an attack by a heavily armed raider in the nebula led to a hard landing and a longer stay at the colony than initially planned.

In March, she aided Lt. Elegy Weld in evacuating hospitals in the Deneb Sector in the midst of the attack by the Lost Fleet.

Shortly thereafter, she was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and given command over SB4-Tango’s Bomber Squadron. The bombers don’t see quite as much action as the recon starfighters, though, so Dawa will probably continue bouncing from gig to gig for the foreseeable future, just the way she likes it.