Cara Siobhan Ross

Cara Siobhan Ross was the Chief Science Officer of the USS Augustus in 2295.

BIOGRAPHY
Cara Siobhan Ross was born on the far-flung Federation colony of Caldos, some 200 light years from Earth.

The colony was founded roughly 10 years prior to her birth, by a group of colonists that came primarily from Scotland (though many non-human's joined the expedition). The Colonists had a strong urge to export, as best they could, the Scotland life of old Earth, be it their own native heritage, or one they had adopted for themselves. As such, they had all of the cornerstones from each building in the original colony brought from Scotland.

The main driving force behind the colony, however, was the Federation Science Council, which had, for some decades at that point, been experimenting with improving terraforming efforts across the Federation. With funding and support from the council, the Caldos colony became a test-bed for terraforming technology. In 2270, they activated the first Weather Modification Network in the Federation. Ironically, it was to turn the weather of the planet into something that also more closely resembled Scotland.

Three years after the first forced rains fell across the rolling hills of the Caldos colony, Cara Siobhan Ross was born, to Edward and Jennet Ross.

Cara grew up in a world where sunlight was precious, and rain was a constant companion. Where cold winds blew in wicked winters, and the hills around her town were vibrant green in the spring. Where craggy shores warred with epic waves. Where she wore clothes so far out of touch with the modern fashions of Earth that she felt transported back to the 1900s - which was done very much on purpose. And not just the fashion, but the morals too. A conservative, traditional world.

Which, considering her parents positions in the colony, having helped design the weather system itself, raising Cara in a highly regimented, science-filled course of study, was something of a contradiction. This would lead Cara to rebel, in every way she could think. Be it flaunting curfews, ditching school, dating the wrong people - running away (Twice), wearing the wrong clothes - whatever on could actually manage to pull off on the isolated, frontier colony, Cara managed.

So of course, the moment she could get away, she did, applying to Starfleet Academy before she'd finished her last year of schooling. It was just another example of her acting out and rebelling against the life her parents had envisioned for her. This was the girl that decided she had enough with the rain and attempted to program the entire weather system herself. And got pretty far along before getting caught.

The acceptance letter came in while she still had three months left, shocking her family. All the same, her parents did little to try and repress the girl - she was, in the words of her mother, "hell on high water."

Thus Cara found herself on a month-long transport, leaving her homeworld for the first time, heading to San Francisco, Earth.

Her first year was the hardest, as she fell into the sciences track, given her prior education to that point, and clear expertise. The adjustments to a wildly different culture. The way some of her classmates struggled with her accents. The styles. All the alien species. Caldos was more than just humans but San Francisco was crawling with alien life and culture. The bay area was so different from her home, and the classes were intense. Nothing like what she had grown up with.

The summer between semesters for Cara found her essentially stranded on Earth. Her home was too far away to go visit between her first and second years. In a moment of homesickness, she found transport to where it all began - Aberdeen Scotland, where she spent the remaining summer marveling at just how much it was like home. She would spend the summer between her second and third year in Aberdeen as well, living with distant relatives. As the Federation and the Klingon Empire signed the Khitomer Accords; as the USS Enterprise, NCC 1701-B launched on its first-ill fated voyage; as the whole of the Federation mourned the heroic loss of Captain James T Kirk. This year, Cara thought, would be the most eventful year of her life at the Academy.

And then she went on her Cadet cruise at the end of her third year. With a fourth year ahead of her for an advanced sciences degree, Cara joined the rest of her cohort for a month long-cadet cruise on the aging USS Coronado.

They were two weeks into the cruise, roughly half way, when something went wrong. The specifics were lost on Cara at the time, whom happened to be in a turbolift to the bridge. She knew there had been a gas leak. Something had broken in the older ships environmental systems. When she arrived on the bridge, everyone was down, and alarms were going all over the ship. she was it, the only person on hand.

She had to take command. And it was the single most terrifying thing she had ever done in her life.

From that point on, it was a blur. She knew she got the ship evacuated after those still on their feet concluded that whatever had gone wrong would not be something they could fix before people started dying. Before more people started dying. There had been a few, already. Shuttles then, were used to evacuate the ship. Thankfully, it was a cadet cruise. There weren't that many bodies on board. Living ones anyway.

Cara and the rest of the crew spent the next few days adrift, circling their abandoned ship, watching as the Coronado hung in space, until the distress signal she had sent was answered. Two ships came to the rescue, almost within minutes of each other, from different vectors. The surviving crew was off boarded from the cramped shuttles, spread across the two vessels, and the Coronado was recovered, to be taken to the nearest shipyard for a full investigation.

Returning for that senior year, Cara was at times both bolstered by her actions on the Coronado and weighted with guilt. She had risen to the occasion. The scientist had managed to save many of her fellow cadets and officers on that ship.. When everything had gone to hell, she hadn't folded. She hadn't run, or cowered, or waited for someone else to tell her what to do.

But she hadn't saved everyone, and she didn't feel like she deserved the award she was given. But she poured herself into her senior year, well aware that she had earned the respect of many of the same counselors and professors that had, in the previous two years, admired her brilliance but questioned whether she belonged in Starfleet.

It was no longer a question.

PERSONALITY PROFILE
Cara was a wild child, much to her orderly parent's dismay. There was a place for everything in her life - usually the floor. Organized chaos, she'd call it growing up. Bright and bubbly one moment but the next, a cutting temper and an acerbic wit would rise to the surface. While much of this tempered as she grew through her teenage years, that fire was there, under the surface, even after her years at the Academy. One professor remarked that Cara would be a model student - if only she could keep her opinions to herself.

Quick to love, quick to anger. Brilliant, sharp as a tack and sharp-tongued. Flirtatious. An emotional contradiction. Cara Ross.

PHYSICAL PROFILE
Growing up on Caldos, Cara was often outside, be it in a pouring storm or a bright sunny day. Not too tall, not too short, curvier in the hip than the bust, the most striking feature that Cara had was her shockingly bright red hair and vivid green eyes. She carried no scars - her parents saw to that - but upon graduation, Cara and three of her friends (who had all survived their cadet cruise together) went and got tattoos, on the back of their left shoulders - the Academy Phoenix logo, and their year of graduation - 2295.

SPECIAL NOTES
The itch to explore was one that grew and grew the older Cara got. And despite how often she would argue with her parents, or shuck school, the sciences eventually drew her in. Upon graduation from the Academy with some of the highest marks in her class and a masters degree in her parent's field of study, Cara requested a starship posting, instead of the planetary survey that some of her career mentors had pressed her to apply for. As suited as she might have been for a long-term study mission on a single planet, Cara wanted to see all of them.