Roshanara Rahman
| Roshanara Rahman |
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 Chief Engineer USS Mercury 
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| Stats & Service Record |
| Appearance |
| Personal Life |
| Relationships |
| Early Life and Starfleet Career |
| Aboard the USS Mercury |
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| Roshanara Rahman is the chief engineer aboard the USS Mercury. She previously served aboard the starships Shanghai, Tempest, and Pioneer.
Born on Moselina IV, a busy trade stop located near Krios Prime, the Kriosian homeworld, Roshanara's birth parents gave her up for adoption, and a human couple took her in, named her, and raised her back on Earth in the city of Lahore. Often mistaken for a Trill due to her Kriosian spots, she joined Starfleet because of her interest in starship engineering, an interest that has not come without a cost as she was gravely injured early in her career from a major accident that required lengthy rehabilitation. Stats & Service Record
Education
Starfleet Career
Appearance
Tone/VoiceRoshanara is often assumed to be shy because of her rather reserved demeanor. For instance, while she won't refuse a handshake, she is much more inclined to offer a simple nod or slight bow in greeting. Her close friends, though, recognize her actual impishness underneath. She does enjoy meeting people, but she prefers to wait until she gets to know someone better before opening up. She tends to play off of the other person in a conversation, creating relaxed, playful banter in some cases to more restrained exchanges in others. Her sense of humor is decidedly dry. Roshanara's professional domain is Engineering, and when she is on-duty as the Mercury's chief engineer, she adopts a rather direct and assertive style of command. While she encourages a friendly atmosphere in the workplace, she nonetheless expects professionalism from all of her staff, who refer to her by either rank or as the Chief. The only exceptions are SCPO Reez and recently Dr. Niccolò del Vedova, who can get away with calling her by nickname in front of her staff. She prefers "ma'am" to "sir." In addition to her technical prowess, she also is quite good at reading faces and working with others, which has helped her in her professional development and when she has had to lead project teams. Personal LifeLifestyle
Family
Friends, Significant Others, and Notable Colleagues
Early Life and Starfleet CareerRoshanara Rahman was born on SD 235612.15 on Moselina IV, a busy trade stop located near Krios Prime, the Kriosian homeworld. Her birth parents gave their newborn up for adoption. A human couple, Issam and Najwa Rahman, took in the child as their own (and only) daughter. The Rahmans were told that because the child would not receive the typical Kriosian diet in her adoptive home, they were to give her daily medication to supplement her development (medication which she continues to take to this day). Indeed, despite the efforts of her parents, Roshanara's adult height of 161 cm (5'3") is notably less than that of the typically tall Kriosians. The new family returned to Earth, and Roshanara was raised in the city of Lahore. Growing up, she knew she was different from the locals, but because Kriosians shared many physical similarities with humans, she did not feel ostracized on her adopted homeworld. As a child, she did tend to wear her hair in such a way as to cover her spots, yet even if they were noticed, most people often mistook the quiet but friendly young girl as a member of the more familiar Trill species. Displaying the KnackRoshanara was a gifted student in her primary and secondary education. In particular, one of her teachers noted, she "displayed extreme intuition about all things mechanical." This intuition more than once did get her into trouble as she was a bit of a mischievous child. Although neither of her adopted parents were in Starfleet or had a family history in the service, Roshanara chose to attend Starfleet Academy for the chance to work with the latest developments in starship engineering. Rather than remain on Earth, she went off-world and completed her undergraduate education at the academy's Beta Ursae Minor II campus. After graduating in 2378, she stayed for an additional two years to earn her master's degree in engineering. She then served on two vessels, the Shanghai and the Tempest, as an engineering officer. Change of PlansAboard the Tempest, Roshanara was severely injured in a major accident in 2383. Due to the extent of her injuries, she took a leave of absence from active starship duty. While still recovering, she completed the Daystrom Institute of Technology's doctoral program in engineering from 2383-2387 on a sponsorship from the Starfleet Corps of Engineers. Upon earning her doctorate, she was assigned to the Pioneer as a research and development engineer in 2387. A year later she was assigned as the ship's assistant chief engineer. USS MercuryOn SD 238909.16, Roshanara was promoted to lieutenant commander and assigned to the Mercury as chief engineer. She became acquainted with one of the ship's medical officers, Niccolò del Vedova, through her medical check-in, and introduced herself informally to her engineering staff the night before her first official day as chief of the department. Soon after the Mercury left StarBase 118, though, Roshanara's engineering skills were called into service after the ship began suffering minor computer glitches that eventually threatened to interfere with the ship's vital mission transporting Councilor Prianna of the Cardassian Union's Detapa Council. While looking into the manner, Roshanara, science officer Ian West, and engineer Rick Rawden became trapped in the ship's primary computer core control room. There, they discovered that the glitches were being caused by some kind of artificial intelligence that referred to itself as Efili and took the form of a Mercury crewman as its holographic avatar.
Hell of a First DayThe crew did not have too much time to investigate further as the ship was rocked by several explosives the following morning after the ship's captain Aron Kells and several senior officers had been seemingly kidnapped by the Klingons. Among the most heavily damaged areas was main engineering, where 16 engineers perished, including Graham MacNeil, the assistant chief engineer. Had Roshanara not remained on the upper level when the explosives went off, it is likely she too would have died. Working with Alexander Richards and (surprisingly) Dr. Del Vedova, Roshanara and her engineering crew were able to restore some of the ship's systems, and the Mercury limped back to StarBase 118 once Captain Kells and the others were retrieved.
Things That Go Bump in the Night The Mercury arrives to find things nice and quiet aboard DSX... too quiet. After a brief respite aboard StarBase 118, the Mercury was sent back to the Menthar Corridor to provide support for the Starfleet Corps of Engineers team already working on repurposing Deep Space 10. However, once the Mercury arrived at DSX, they found the station seemingly deserted yet with no signs of an attack or evacuation. The away teams had already beamed over before it was soon discovered some sort of pathogen was loose aboard the station. Furthermore, it seemed at least some of the SCE team had succumbed to the infection and now roamed through the corridors as violent revenants. Compounding the situation, the Mercury's transporter systems were disabled by an overload in the biofilters from the pathogen, and an impending coronal mass ejection threatened to annihilate those aboard DSX, which remained unshielded from the lethal cosmic rays. Roshanara worked with the rest of the team to hold out as long as possible until the Mercury was able to send a second team to retrieve them and keep them in isolation aboard several shuttlecraft. While looking over the station's systems, she deduced that the SCE team may have sought refuge deep within the station, and eventually, the crew was able to rescue the few survivors and escape DSX before the coronal mass ejection hit the station, killing the remaining revenants. Aches and PainsRoshanara herself succumbed to injury while aboard DSX, but fortunately, she was quickly treated once back aboard the Mercury. Yet it was the headaches she had begun experiencing in late 2389 that were continuing to bother her. She kept with the medication Dr. Del Vedova had originally prescribed, but she was finding that she was needing to take more of it to be effective. Meanwhile, her colleague Eyas Wulfantine had learned that his mother was to be put to death and began preparations for a rescue mission with the aid of some of his shipmates. Roshanara was initially hesitant about getting involved in the internal matters of another world, and she wasn't particularly close to Wulfantine outside of a professional context for that matter. However, her friend Lidia Ivanova shared a deep bond with the Pythron, and after an intense conversation with the spirited security officer, Roshanara was soon aboard a civilian transport, disguised as a lowly servent for a visiting dignitary. Her true role was to help deliver a rescue team aboard a cloaked Romulan shuttle and stand by until the team's mission was complete. An encroaching patrol from the Pythron State Guard complicated matters, and Roshanara chose to bring aboard both a Pythron civilian and the leader of the Pythron guard after they had been incapacitated by Major Jacen Fanel. The guard, known as Asar, however would not be taken easily, and knocked out Roshanara once he awoke aboard the shuttle before being stunned a second time. Once the rescue team had succeeded in their mission to not only rescue Wulfantine's mother but also expose the greater political conspiracy concocted by Wulfantine's enemies, the team was quickly beamed back to the shuttle. The two Pythrons were returned to the surface as a new chapter began in Pythron history.
Decisive InterventionThe headaches continued, and Roshanara began to suffer from distracting thoughts and brief but unsettling lapses in concentration. Finding no relief through the medication, she turned to Del again for help. He proposed a daring surgical procedure with Dr. Ven Demar, an innovative neurosurgeon familiar with cybernetic augmentation, to stabilize her neuroplasticity. Desperate for a solution, Roshanara agreed to the surgery in the hopes that it can prevent her condition from costing her career. Following the procedure, she remained aboard DSX while the Mercury headed off on a months long voyage seeking an ancient library. Del remained behind with Roshanara, ostensibly to check on her recovery. The two soon discovered not all of the cybernetic spiders aboard DSX were eliminated by the coronal mass ejection, and new questions arose on whether or not the creatures possessed sentience.
Premonition Captain Aron Kells, transformed into his 60-year-old self Meanwhile, Captain Aron Kells underwent a second transformation into his 60-year-old self, through which he remembers the ultimate fate of Roshanara's deteriorating medical condition, unfortunately accelerated by the surgery performed by Ven and Del. By 2392, he had been forced to relieve her of duty and ultimately agreed with a recommendation by Del at that time for Roshanara to be medically discharged from the service. By 2404, he tracked her down to a distant Dopterian ocean colony, where she had been hiding from the intrusions of greater society that had wrecked havoc on her. Although he struggled with whether to intervene explicitly once he found himself back in 2390, Kells finally decided to do so after a more subtle attempt by him nearly cost Roshanara her life within a supervolcano on 83 Leonis II. His intervention, though, required that Del first betray Roshanara's trust and confidentiality. Now that Roshanara knew the truth nearly a decade earlier than she had in an alternate future, not even Kells knew if she—and Del—could change their fates.
New Paths ForgedConfining herself to her quarters and engineering over shore leave, the reclusive engineer contemplated the truth of her personal crisis. A possible answer then presented itself through the return of Isaac Bale to the Mercury. In the wake of the galaxy-wide crisis dubbed "Through Open Gates", the ship was tasked with investigating the alleged existence and sale of an Iconian gateway by Tol, owner of the Menthar Anchorage. Following Captain Kells's sudden detainment to answer questions by the JAG regarding the 83 Leonis II crisis, command of the Mercury was transferred to Commander Harrison Ross, and Roshanara was named as his first officer in addition to her engineering duties. To help her coordinate her efforts between the bridge and engineering, Roshanara recommended Jenna D'Soni—revived from stasis earlier in the year and formerly of the Constitution-class USS Saratoga—for promotion to assistant chief engineer, a position that had remained vacant in the aftermath of Graham MacNeil's death nearly one year earlier.
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NPC Listing · USS Mercury Crew Manifest · Crew History
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