Bravo Fleet
Summary
Jeden Sonia always intended to join Starfleet after growing up on DS9. Her parents were engineers on board the station and she followed their footsteps from a young age. Her interactions with the Starfleet personnel on the station sparked her fascination not just with engineering but with exploration, something she felt would be easier to do in Starfleet.
Having grown up on such a multi-cultural station she is a fan of food from all over the known space beyond the traditional Bajoran dishes. Her personal favourites are Raktajino, Yamok sauce, Gagh, Tube Grub and Slug-o-cola which made her a favourite of the Ferengi bartenders at Quark’s.
Appearance
Sonia is a slender young woman with striking features. She stands slighter taller than the average Bajorian at 1.68m (5’6) tall and weighs 56kg (123lbs). People have told her that her piercing blue eyes that have a tendency to sparkle when she smiles. She is often smiling with her quirky mischievous grim which is one of the features people most remember about her though it is followed closely by her long blond hair that she keeps shaved, an undercut, on the left side of her head.
She will sometimes be seen wearing the traditional Bajorian earring though she isn’t particularly religious by Bajorian standards. While on downtime (aka out of uniform) she will often wear comfortable workout clothes or brightly coloured dresses.
On occasion, she will dye the ends of her hair bright neon colours but on assignment to Columbia, she went back to her natural colour (for now).
Personality
She is an outgoing and flamboyant individual whose good nature tends to make people around her smile. She will often strike up a conversation with people she has never met and has been called flirtatious on more than one occasion. Having grown up in space she feels completely at home on board any ship or station and prefers it over the open environments found planetside which can leave her a little disoriented.
She often followed her parents around on DS9 when they were working. As such she has a strong professional work sense that was engrained in her by her parents and the other Bajorian and Starfleet engineers who worked there.
When it comes to engineering and operations she gets right down to it but as soon as she is away from her station or shifts her fun-loving and mischievous side comes out to play.
History
Early Life (on DS9)
Born on DS9 in 2379 her parents, Jeden Chaadumo (father) and Jeden Opeas (mother) were both engineers onboard the station. Though they had a small family farm on Bajor they rarely visited it for more than a few days or a week every couple of months as it was tended by her Uncle; as such she spent most of her childhood on board the station and running through its corridors and along the promenade.
As a young child, she spent a lot of time in the hydroponics bay that was set up on board the station and watched all the ships and strange people come and go from her favourite spot on the promenade’s upper level. As she got older and entered her preteens she would often shadow her parents and others (both Bajoran and federation) on the engineering team as they worked on maintaining the station. During this time she grew to love engineering, a love that has stuck with her to this day. Due to spending the majority of her life on the station many of the long-running establishments and personnel took her under their wings and were protective of her.
As a teenager, when she wasn’t in school or shadowing the station’s engineering team, she began to take extracurricular courses on engineering and operations in preparation for the academy entry exams.
In her late teens, she spent a significant amount of time, more than what her parents liked, at Quark’s Bar and learned to enjoy Dabo and Tongo. Though she developed a taste for gambling from these games the Feregni bartenders and Dabo girls never let her play to the point where she developed an addiction to it. This was partly due they were protective of her and that when she was at the table visiting travellers thought she would be no good at the game, as a result, she had been able to set against a rather sizable amount of gold-pressed platinum bars before she joined Starfleet.
During her last couple weeks on DS9 before joining Starfleet several of the Dabo girls tried to convince her to stay and work as a Dabo girl for a couple of years to make money. Part of her had toyed with the idea and if she hadn’t been accepted to the academy she would likely have taken up the offer.
Starfleet Career
Starfleet Academy (Mellstox Campus)
She joined the academy when she was 18 years old and choose to study at the Mellstox campus as she didn’t like the bustle of the main academy on Earth. Though she had several friends on DS9 it was at the academy where she really opened up socially and became friends with many of the students within her year both within her speciality and without.
Due to the years she spend shadowing her parents and others as well as the extra courses she took before arriving she excelled at the engineering and operational systems courses within the academy though she struggled with several of the mandatory tactical and survival courses from her first year. Worried that she might not graduate due to this she started getting tutored by one of the older cadets, an Andorian named Isan Th’zaovirh who was specializing in security and tactical operations. They grew close very close during these sessions and ended up dating until he graduated in 2400. Due to the complications of distance, they both agreed to go their separate ways. Though Sonia always knew this was likely going to happen she really struggled for the first couple of months after the breakup. If it wasn’t for her best friend, an Orion named Veeda, she might have left the academy.
After getting some sense knocked back into she buckled down, enjoyed her final year at the academy and passed her exams though her tactical and survival marks were not something she was very proud of.
Frontier Day
She watched in horror the events of Frontier Day from the promenade of DS9. Following her graduation she took a week’s leave and returned home before starting her first assignment. As such she was unaffected by the Borg transmission but had several friends from the academy who were not as lucky with two of them dying during the incident.
USS Columbia
Her first posting after graduating from the academy was onboard the USS Columbia, a Galaxy-class starship. Upon learning of the post, she was overjoyed that she would get to work on such a legendary class of vessel. She was assigned to work in engineering and has an upper bunk in one of the Lower Deck hallways.
Service Record
| Date | Position | Posting | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2397 - 2401 | Cadet | Starfleet Academy (Mellstox Campus) |
 Cadet |
| 2401 | Engineering/Operations Ensign | USS Columbia |
 Ensign |