T'Shaav
| T'Shaav | |
| File:T'Shaav.jpg | |
| Full Name: | T'Shaav |
|---|---|
| Nickname: | "" |
| Species: | Vulcan |
| Gender: | female |
| Birthplace: | Telev, Vulcan |
| Birthdate: | Mar 1 , 2302 |
| Empire: | United Federation of Planets |
| Organization: | Starfleet |
| Assignment: | Deep Space 9 |
| Billet: | Commanding Officer |
| Rank: | Captain |
T'Shaav is a Captain in Starfleet, serving aboard Deep Space 9 as the Commanding Officer.
Description
T'Shaav is a tall, plain-looking Vulcan with shoulder-length red hair that is starting to gray. Her hair frames her face and piercing green eyes. Her voice is a bit higher-pitched than many women of her species.
Biography
T'Shaav was born on March 1, 2302 in the small town of Telev, located in the southern polar region, halfway around the world from the Vulcan planetary capital. Her father, Soran, works as an environmental engineer, and
her mother, T'Veya, owns a small refectory in the town's central square. Her parents remain alive and in good health, though they are growing old now. T'Shaav grew up as the older of two siblings. Her brother, Steth, is a
senior flight officer in the Vulcan Defense Forces.
In school, T'Shaav exceled markedly in both her academic studies and her training in the mind rules. Physically, however, she was rated as average at best, and somewhat
below average in some categories of physical training by Vulcan standards, of course. That meant that she had to work all the harder to gain entree to her chosen career.
On Vulcan, there is comparatively little crime,
and while planetary police forces exist, they often work hand and glove with Customs and with the V'Shar, the Vulcan security and intelligence apparatus. T'Shaav completed her training for the Vulcan Law Enforcement Academy by
age 25 and spent her first twenty-five years working her way up through the ranks of the Shanai'Kahr provincial police. Rising to the position of detective inspector, she dealt with various types of outworlder crime as well as
the occasional cases of crime committed by Vulcans. The most intractable case of this latter involved a serial rash of kae'at k'lasa, mind violation. That case was a turning point in her career. Solving that case required
T'Shaav to operate undercover, taxed her logic, and ultimately resulted in the capture of a highly intelligent, desperately mentally ill sociopath who spent the next 85 years in custody until his death.
It also brought
her to the attention of V'Shar, Vulcan security and intelligence. Accepting a cross-transfer to that agency, she underwent a further two years of training, honing her very strong mental abilities and adding to her skill sets.
Her twenty years in that organization came to an abrupt end in 2374. In an incident still classified on Vulcan, she was dispatched to Romulus as part of a small extraction team whose mission was to pull out a long-term Vulcan
undercover operative. During the mission, she came to believe that the operative could not be left in place without imminent risk of being unmasked. Nor, she believed, could the agent be extracted without blowing the mission
and landing them all in the unforgiving hands of the Tal Shiar. Following this merciless logic and acting without orders or the means to obtain orders, T'Shaave killed the operative and exfiltrated out of the Romulan Empire. At
home, she faced the inquiries of superiors who were not best pleased with her results. The operation had been a disaster, though it was so black that T'Shaav could never be tried for a crime nor disciplined in any other public
way. Plus, she had enough arguments martialed in logic on her side so that the review panel, even after a mind meld probe of the events, could not conclude with unanimity that she had been wrong. Still, the political and
operational damage was done and she was quietly eased out of the service.
For the next forty years, she worked quietly as a columnist and commentator on Vulcan's political affairs. She traveled the planet, interviewing
politicians, businesspeople, and ordinary citizens and writing cogent commentary about Vulcan affairs and Federation affairs at large from a Vulcan perspective. Still, there was a life of action that she felt was missing.
T'Shaav knew that she did not want to spend the remaining century or more of her life on Vulcan without at least seeing some of space and exploring it. Her general opinion, one she still holds today, is that exploration and the
gaining of knowledge has proven itself worth the costs. It is illogical in her view to argue that a failure, such as that in the Idron system, represents a failure of the Federation's basic ideals. Thus, in 2415, she applied to
Starfleet Academy.
Given her extensive background and experience, she could have had her choice of academy fast tracking into intelligence, strategic operations, or any number of other things. She chose to undergo the
full four years of academy training, however, her reasoning being that she did not want holes in her knowledge of the fleet and its usages. Graduating near the top of her class in 2419, she demonstrated, to absolutely no one's
surprise, a penchant for security and tactical operations. To many people's surprise, however, she also demonstrated an interest in, and an ability to play, various types of strategically minded games from around the quadrant:
Cardassian kotra, Zakdorn Strategema, Terran Chess, and others alongside Kal-Toh. Upon graduation, T'Shaav found herself, now aged 116 years old, with the dubious dual distinction of being both the oldest academy graduate and
the oldest ensign ever to serve in the ranks of Starfleet.
T'Shaav's ensign's rotation aboard the starship Sun Tzu was followed up by a posting as a junior grade lieutenant first to the Yamamoto, then to Deep Space 9. In
January of 2427, she requested, and was unhesitatingly recommended for, Starfleet's advanced tactical training school, one of the toughest postgraduate institutions around where the fifty percent washout rate is notorious.
Starting her course rotation late that Spring, she completed that six-month course in December with a notation of 'satisfactory' from the Klingon ATT commandant in her school evaluation. Now a full lieutenant, T'Shaav found
herself assigned to the Phoenix, her first posting as chief tactical officer. In her off time, T'Shaav can be found playing chess, Kal-toh, Strategema, or the Cardassian board game kotra.