Ensign Calliope Stratus
Name Calliope Stratus
Position Chief Support Craft Pilot
Rank Ensign
Character Information
| Gender | Female | |
| Species | Ornaran | |
| Age | 30 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 5'5'' | |
| Weight | 115 lbs | |
| Hair Color | Blonde | |
| Eye Color | Brown |
Family
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Bold and ambitious, Calliope dives headfirst into even the most challenging situations albeit sometimes without fully contemplating the ramifications of such course of action. Calliope is a passionate, motivated, and confident individual with potential leadership qualities that are only just starting to surface. When given the chance to lead, she is a leader who builds community with her cheerful disposition and relentless determination. Her temperament is best described as: uncomplicated and direct.She will often get frustrated by exhaustive details and unnecessary nuances. Calliope prefers that things be settled quick and dirtier the better. | |
| Ambitions | Calliope has yet to become a full flight control officer. She would like to make this a reality. Additionally, she is going into her eighth year as an ensign. She wants to make rank and begin ascend and gain lieutenants pips. |
| Personal History | Calliope was raised around shuttlecraft, her father was a salvager and her mother a capable technician, both of them Ornaran. They raised Calliope in the Delos system. Though she was born on Ornara, she spent more time amongst the stars than on the soil of her homeworld. Her parents relied on their salvage operations to get by. Ornara was not a Federation world and had a long history of animosity with their neighboring Brekkians who had provided the Ornarans with medicine to fight a plague that swept through Ornara. Unfortunately, the drug was highly addictive and the Brekkians exploited the Ornarans’ addictions to the drug, turning a profit while withholding the fact that the plague was no longer a threat to their civilization. Fortunately, Calliope was born towards the end of this interspecies relationship. When she was younger, a Federation starship had come to the Delos system. It was a turning point for the Ornara and Brekkians. Soon, the Brekkians began supplying aid to the Ornarans and helping them with rehabilitation facilities to assist those who had been long since addicted to the drug, felicium. Sadly, it was too little too late for Calliope’s mother who had died after battling withdrawal symptoms from felicium. Her father raised her as a single parent, putting her on his lap behind the helm of his small tug. Over time, Calliope became acquainted with operating the helm console herself under his observation. She was more than a daughter to him; she was a young apprentice in some ways. Though she never had the opportunity to really know her mother, Calliope had a natural gift for taking things apart and reassembling them. She had a technical prowess that her father encouraged as much as he could. He made sure that she still got enough schooling, letting her attend school when they were on Ornara and ensuring she could do so remotely through subspace when they were away on a salvage operation. When the Dominion War was at its height; however, she was left behind on Ornara with friends of her parents to look after her while her father continued his salvage operations and running through trading routes. Things got more dangerous during those years. He owed money to the Orion Syndicate and he screwed his fair share of Ferengi out of business dealings by undercutting them on jobs. Nausicaans had caught up to him at one point and damn near killed him, but when Calliope was fifteen, she received the news she had been dreading. Her father had been killed. The details were never made clear to her, but Ornaran official reports seemed to speculate it had been the result of drifting into Breen space and that his tug was likely destroyed by the Dominion. Depressed and enraged, she had entered the darkest chapters of her life, finding herself at the end of bottles of beer and ale. Her life became a whirlwind of felicium and various substances. She ran away from her caretakers’ home hotwiring a shuttlecraft, making it outside of Ornaran space and eventually settling down on an independent world outside of the confines of the Federation. It was a planet of liberties and freedoms where otherwise illegal businesses prospered. She ended up working as a dabo girl for a Ferengi through her teenage years. Kicking addiction was not easy, but she needed to clean her act up if she was going to actually live much longer. Working for a no good Ferengi with more than one bounty on his head did not make for a safe and prosperous workplace. She had been stabbed once, shot at more times than she cared to count, and the place had been robbed at least a dozen times since she started. It was rare for a Federation starship to visit the system. It was lawless space, a no man’s land, but from time to time a Federation starship would enter the system and their crews would visit the planet…usually looking for someone or something. It was foolhardy of her, but she thought it was her only escape. She stowaway on the Federation starship and managed to not get noticed until after the starship left the system. Then, she was found and tossed into the Brig for a while. She had no criminal records in the Federation crime databases and anything they could find on her was of no serious interest to them. They could not hold her very long. Sure, she stowaway in a Federation starship, but she was not a Federation citizen and the Captain took pity on the young woman’s act of self-liberation. They could have just dropped her off at the nearest M class planet, but Calliope did not want to leave. She formally requested asylum. A strange request to be made by someone who was not in any immediate danger and who had no serious criminal record nor was she being politically persecuted. Nevertheless, the Captain honored the request and Starfleet Command eventually approved the request. The starship continued on the last two years of its mission with Calliope Stratus aboard, not in the Brig, but in the ship’s lounge as a performer. It turned out she was a little bit more than a tinkerer and dabo girl. She was an adequate musician and vocalist. The Executive Officer felt she was great for crew morale. After their mission concluded, Calliope made her way to earth. In those two years aboard the starship after her asylum had been granted, she had begun the process of applying for Federation citizenship. It was recognized with a glowing recommendation from the starship’s Captain. As a Federation civilian, many doors were opened for Calliope to find her own way and make her own destiny. What she wanted to do; however, was give back to the Federation that had given her a second chance at a new life. Starfleet was her solution, but it was not as simple as wanting to attend. Starfleet only took those with promise, and she would need to prove herself capable and show the promise. She knew that she was a diamond in the rough; but she needed to polish that rough off its Starfleet was going to take a chance on her. She managed to make it through the initial screening process, receiving an invitation to take the entrance examination at one of the academy’s testing sites. It would be several weeks until she learned whether she would make it or not. Razor thin results, but she made it in as one of the lowest scoring of those accepted that term. It may not have sounded pretty, but even making in meant she beat out thousands of others. Going into Starfleet Academy as a twenty-year-old meant that she was what other cadets called ‘well ripened’ in that she was older than them. First year cadets were typically seventeen or eighteen, a few occasions there were younger. She was on the other end of that spectrum. Astrogation was her primary area of study, learning navigation of stars, essential for flight control. She also studied starship operations. Any helmsmen that was worth a lick of salt had to have a good knowledge of starship operations. Her stand out point; however, was being a good navigator, scoring well in her astrophysics classes. For extracurricular activities, Calliope was part of the academy’s Color guard and graduated in 2386. From the seven year span from the moment she graduated to her assignment aboard the USS Crazy Horse, Ensign Calliope Stratus has proven herself a competent officer and capable if not unconventional pilot. She has had a few different assignments within those seven years, but each has been in the Flight Control department as a support craft pilot. In the past two years, she has received additional training as a flight control officer for the helm of smaller starships, but has yet to officially be made a flight control officer. Her latest assignment has been to the USS Crazy Horse as the senior most support craft pilot. Her duties as Chief Support Craft Pilot has her overseeing the support craft pilots and personally piloting the Captain’s Yacht or shuttles when a more advanced pilot is necessary. She reports directly to the Chief Flight Control Officer. |