The Last Ambassador:Jaella Kedt

Name: Jaella Kedt

Species: Betazoid

Environment: Another Species' World (Human)

Upbringing: Business/Trade (Rejected)

Rank: Lt. Commander

Assignment: Operations Manager, USS Mandela

Traits: Betazoid

Attributes:

Control 10, Daring 8, Fitness 8, Insight 10, Presence 10, Reason 10 Disciplines:

Command 4, Conn 2, Security 2, Engineering 4, Science 3, Medicine 1 Focuses:

Negotiation, Dance, Electronic Warfare, Diagnostics, Team Dynamics

Values:

(Upbringing) I'm not snooping, you're shouting! (Academy) We're Starfleet. We're explorers, not soldiers. (Career) Compassion can touch even the stars. (Career) We need to build a future worthy of what - and who - we've lost.

Talents: Telepath Technical Expertise Unconventional Thinking Time Management

Career Events: Encounter with a Truly Alien Being - encountered a star-devouring cosmozoan eating an inhabited system's star; finally managed to make contact with it through telepathy and dance Ship Destroyed - New Orleans-class USS Kherson was one of the few ships of the 10th fleet left behind at Betazed - undergoing emergency maintenance - when the rest of the fleet went out on maneuvers.

She's trans, but I'm not even reflecting that in her values because I prefer to think of the Federation being at a point where it's not much more than a note in her medical file, and it wasn't the main reason for her less-than-pleasant childhood.

Backstory: She was born on Betazed, near Lake El'nar, to Colbin and Lucinna Kedt, eldest of three brothers*.

Then she moved to the pre-Federation human colony of Tiphares at age 8, when her father took charge of ongoing landfill-reclamation and waste-mining projects.

She had trouble adapting to human cultural concepts of privacy and propriety, particularly the insular and suspicious mindset of many Tipherans. And the stifling oddities like having to wear clothes almost all the time. And getting accused of snooping in peoples' thoughts when they have no discipline at all in their inner monologue

Childhood was not made any easier by crashing headlong into a very wrong puberty, though her parents got that addressed quickly.

Took an extended holiday to Betazed with her mother after her 16th birthday, spending roughly half of it finalizing her transition and half getting annoyed at her mother dragging her to all sorts of 'cultural sites' that were mostly centers of aristocratic and celebrity tourism; she'd been much more interested in the journey there and back on a starship

Applied and was accepted to Starfleet Academy in 2364 (class of '68) after graduating first in her class from secondary school.

She had also applied to the Daystrom Institute, the Rixx Conservatory of Dance on Betazed, Deneb A&M, and Miracht School of Mining & Metals on Tellar as backup. Oddly, only Deneb A&M turned her down.

While there, she straddled the line between Science and Engineering tracks, eventually settling on the Ops career path

Assigned to Galaxy-class USS Magellan on her final midshipman rotation. When the Magellan responded to reports of dangerously destabilizing solar weather in the Cygnia Minor system, it discovered an 'anomalous plasma toroid' siphoning mass from the star's photosphere.

Telepathically sensitive members of the crew started reporting hot flashes of increasing severity on approach, and the movement of the plasma field suggested it was a cosmozoan of singularly massive scale.

All attempts to contact the entity failed, including an effort by operations officer LtC. T'Shara to link all the crew's telepaths in a mind meld to amplify their signal in reply to its psychic emanations.

Reaching the realization that 'an ant tapping on a microphone is still just an ant', Jaella suggested that they needed to try to interact on its scale as well. She observed the rhythm of magnetic field tangles moving through the entity, presumed to be analagous to nerve signals, and improvised an interpretive dance to expand her self-image to a similar scale.

Contact was finally made, but led to even more problems - the stellarite was at a critical point in its reproductive cycle, and trying to leave for another star would tear apart both it and the child it was gestating. The Magellan's captain was able to pull in a few other Starfleet ships, and together they were able to use their warp fields to help the stellarite ease in and out of its native FTL capabilities without injury.

Five months ago, the stellarite finished devouring the planetless yellow dwarf star it relocated to, and Jaella was able to visit the USS Chalwa - an Oberth-class conducting long-term observation of the entity - to witness the combination birth and attenuated supernova.

On graduation, Jaella was first posted as an Ensign on the USS Tian an Men, rotating through 'lower decks' engineering postings on S'Lara, Enterprise, Sutherland, and Excalibur before finally landing the 2nd shift ops manager position on the New Orleans-class USS Kherson shortly before the outbreak of hostility with the Klingons.

She became proficient in anti-cloaking and counter-jamming sensor operations across multiple skirmishes, though the older Kherson didn't see much major action.

During the Dominion War, the Kherson was posted with the 10th fleet, which was the first time Jaella had spent time on her homeworld since her long holiday. Kherson was unable to join the 10th fleet on the readiness exercise that the Dominion took advantage of for its sneak attack; it was undergoing emergency maintenance at an orbital facility over Betazed. Jaella was on duty when the Kherson's advanced sensors spotted the approaching fleet before Betazed's aged defense grid, having the unpleasant distinction of being the first person to learn of Betazed's impending doom.

Captain ch'Ren, knowing the Kherson would only last moments in battle on its own, ordered the crew to abandon ship to Betazed and remained aboard to execute a self-destruct suicide run against the core of the Dominion formation, hoping to delay them enough for the rest of the fleet to respond. Against the overwhelming Dominion battle group, however, it was a futile gesture.

Jaella worked with the resistance for the duration of the occupation of Betazed, mainly by tracking Jem'hadar movements and masking safehouses from sensor sweeps. She was... somewhat impressed that her mother waited a whole week after the liberation of Betazed before asking if she'd taken holos when she worked alongside Lwaxana Troi. (Which yes. She had. Also, Deanna was right about the Sacred Chalice of Rixx. It's a moldy cup.)

She spent the remainder of the war preparing to ship back out to the front on the war-built Galaxy-class Nebuchadnezzar, but hostilities concluded before she was spaceworthy and the frame was mothballed for parts.

She is very, very ready to get back to peacetime duty.