Leander Nune

Early Life (2370-2388)

Born in a dazzling skyscraper hospital, in the skies above Iscandar City on Betazed, Leander Nune was born into utopia. Betazed was always one of those core United Federation of Planet worlds that had known no disease, famine or want for generations upon generations. Even the developed cities were literal garden paradises. Nune’s parents never knew a day of war or suffering in their lives until their very last day. Leander Nune’s parents were killed in the Battle of Betazed in 2374.

Nune’s first memories were of moving in with distant relatives and beginning his education, under the watchful eyes of Vorta, during the Dominion occupation of Betazed. Were he to look back on it, Nune can’t recall how many of those early memories were his own, and how many were recreations of stories his family told, or flashes of holos he watched about the times. On more than one dark night, Nune has considered himself lucky that his telepathy wasn’t awakened until long after Starfleet drove off the Dominion.

Whomever Nune was fated to become from birth, the occupation of Betazed left Nune a solitary and withdrawn child. Starfleet seemed, to him, the greatest adventure he could hope for. Starfleet had rescued Betazoid; as far as Nune was concerned, there was nothing a Starfleet officer couldn’t do. Nune grew bored with school frequently. He could see the patterns in things and lost interest when the lessons didn’t challenge him. It was only the high standards of Starfleet Academy’s entrance requirements that drew him back in, when he would have rather been sitting outside, sketching subspace communicator nodes.

Diabolical Streak (2388-2392)

Although Nune’s grades were strong, so were the grades of hundreds of other applicants to Starfleet Academy. When he wasn’t accepted to the academy upon his first attempt, Nune didn’t give in to frustration or self-doubt. He enrolled himself to re-take some of the classes he had completed in his final year of schooling on Betazed. His grandmother had taken notice that Nune’s mechanical aptitude was the only thing that held his attention, for more than five minutes at a time. Without telling him in advanced, she volunteered Nune to become an engineering apprentice aboard a Betazoid cargo hauler, the Diabolical Streak, owned by a family friend. Even amid this change in circumstance, Nune only questioned his grandmother in a pique of gentle curiosity, and his grandmother admitted she also could feel a sense of wanderlust in him. To some degree, Nune wanted to see the wider universe, but deep down, Nune especially wanted to fly far away from the graves his of parents.

Recognizing the truth in everything his grandmother told him, Nune immersed himself in his apprenticeship. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t miss the manicured gardens of Betazed. It suited him fine to crawl through jeffries tubes, solving mechanical mysteries through the day. He would lose track of time, leaving him little energy to do much else than sleep in his small cabin. The months blurred into years, and Nune made several efforts to re-take classes remotely and re-apply to Starfleet Academy. By the time he was accepted, Nune had forgotten he had even submitted the application.

Starfleet Academy (2392-2396)

Because of his existing expertise in warp systems and structural engineering, Nune saw no real challenge in pursuing an engineering degree at Starfleet Academy. He enrolled as a computer sciences cadet and he was assigned to the underground Starfleet Academy campus on Andoria. Moving to the ice planet caused more culture shock than living aboard a starship for four years. The artificial light and atmospheric pressure of living underground caused Nune stress, as did living with the Andorian people, who didn’t frequently say exactly everything they were feeling. Given his many attempts to join the academy, Nune was slightly — but distinctively– older than many of his peer cadets. The majority Andorian population found Nune’s openness and emotional over-sharing just as perplexing. In the end, the cold weather and the lack of beautifully gardens kept Nune’s focus on his studies.

When it came time for Nune to be tested by the holographic Kobayashi Maru scenario, at the end of his academy education, Nune took a bold approach. Surprising all of his peers, the sullen and withdrawn Cadet Nune ordered an immediate separation of his starship’s saucer section. He sent the stardrive to battle the aggressor starships, but he mis-maneuvered in his attempted rescue of the civilian freighter, and he crashed the saucer section into the titluar Kobayashi Maru.

USS Honne (2396-2397)

It was inertia that landed Ensign Nune aboard the USS Honne as an operations officer. He had joined Starfleet with every intention of being a miracle worker engineer. He assumed his apprenticeship would have given him an advantage over his peer engineers. However, he had excelled in his computer science degree, and Nune had heard rumours of a couple of starship captains competing for his first duty posting, based on his final dissertation. Perhaps… they needn’t have bothered.

The duty logs of USS Honne‘s Chief Operations Officer included several notations relating to the excellence and drive demonstrated by Leander Nune. Ensign Nune was rotated through a variety of starship operations services. In his service to the cargo bays, his inventory records and statistics were near-perfect. He never lost a single stem-bolt. In his service as a transporter operator, Nune executed an emergency transport at warp speed to rescue an away team from within a dying cosmozoan. In his bridge duty, Nune was awarded commendations that he wore on his dress uniform for years to come. Even more important to Nune was that his opinion was respected by the captain and executive officer. Except… except for that one time.

One time, the USS Honne was in battle with a rouge House of Mo’Kai raider. Late into the battle, Nune diverted phaser power to the defensive systems, without being ordered to do so. He also didn’t announce this drastic action to the senior staff. Despite the peaceful end that was eventually achieved, many officers were injured when the ship was taking offensive maneuvers without the phaser power to back them up. Despite the protests of his chief, who offered to mentor Nune through his recovery from such a mistake, Nune requested a transfer to an engineering department on a starbase, any starbase.

Starbase 310 (2397-2399)

Ensign Nune was assigned to Starbase 310 as a maintenance specialist, where he kept to himself, and trusted that he couldn’t injure anyone, if he was performing simple repairs to onboard systems and the computer core. It was aboard Starbase 310 that Nune first met a Deltan Starfleet officer named Taes. Commander Taes was the director of social sciences and she requested a forensic engineer to assist her archaeology team with an ancient computer core. From time to time, Nune assistant Taes and the head of archaeology, Jeffrey Holmgren, with examining mechanical mysteries of Cardassian, Romulan and utterly unknown origins. More often than not, Nune returned to his maintenance rotations. After his promotion to lieutenant junior grade, Nune was reluctant to take a promotion offered to him as a shift leader of transporter maintenance. He declined and continued his repair work, until he received an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Starbase 72, USS Nestus, & USS Dvorak (2399-2400)

When Commander Taes assumed command of her own Raven-class science ship, she requested Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Leander Nune as her forensic engineer again. The USS Nestus itself was self-sufficient enough not to require a full-time engineer, but a couple of her early missions involved recovering data from aging computer cores or understanding the meaning of strange and abandoned technology. Oftentimes, the technology only turned out to be for food preparations. Ancient civilizations leave galaxy-threatening weapons laying around far less often than one would think. Having enjoyed the puzzles put before him aboard Starbase 310, and trusting that they came without the risks of his days as an operations officer, Nune accepted reassignment to the USS Nestus. As the Nestus was too small to support a full crew compliment, he served as a reactor operations officer aboard Nestus‘ berth, Starbase 72, in between his science ship missions.

Nune’s greatest success aboard the Nestus was recovering historical records from the Trill colony world of New Tenar, which had been ravaged by the ion storms of the Century Storm. Nune had recovered key data that allowed the science department to identify heritage sites of historical and cultural importance that could be salvaged in the reconstruction of Vrans City. In the process, Nune also discovered an attempt by science officer Sootrah Yuulik to undermine the team’s project records by keeping data for herself and her own private research.

When Taes was promoted to Captain and taking command of her first starship, she selected Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Nune as her chief engineering officer. Before the launch of the USS Dvorak, Taes’ task force command team questioned this decision. In his last three performance reviews, Nune had shown no the leadership potential indicators and he had declined promotion aboard Starbase 310. Even his decision to abandon his career as an operations officer was questioned, as the captain of the USS Honne had expected Nune’s bridge officer experience would have fast-tracked him into a career in command.

Given the temperamental warp systems of the Springfield-class USS Dvorak, Taes insisted on selecting Nune as her chief engineering officer. Nune’s unique perspective, edge of brilliance, and deep nostalgia for older starship technology made him uniquely suited to care for a fifty-year old warp drive, despite his relative youth. Captain Taes trusted she could professionally develop him and give him space to become his own kind of leader. In his first six months aboard Dvorak, Nune proved Taes right: he assisted in repairing a life-energy transfer device on Camus II that had endangered the lives of the senior staff, and he humbly lead the engineering and operations teams in building hydroponic gardens  –along with seeding algae farms– for the starving Reman population of the planet Kunhri III.

USS Sarek (2400-2401)

Before completing a year of service aboard USS Dvorak, Captain Taes was abruptly assigned command of the USS Sarek, and its mission of diplomatic friendship-building with the Romulan Free State scientists assigned to the ship, intertwined with a mission of scientific exploration of the Typhon Frontier. Captain Taes brooked no questions from the task force staff this time: she promoted Nune to full Lieutenant and offered him the chief engineering officer position aboard the Sutherland-class USS Sarek. In support of a cutting-edge research heavy cruiser, the engineering department would prove to be one of the largest aboard the Sarek, to maintain a robust warp-core capable of bleeding edge bio-neural computer nodes and star base-level scientific equipment. Despite the challenge, Lieutenant Nune eagerly accepted the assignment.

While the USS Sarek was on assignment to the Delta Quadrant, Nune was exposed to a newly discovered substance called blood dilithium.  Unbeknown to anyone, the blood dilithium was formed in subspace from the death cries of the telepathic species known as the Brenari.  Their lingering psychic presence caused mental health distress in Nune as he experienced emotional dysregulation and hallucinations as a result of his exposure to the dilithium.  Upon the Sarek’s return to the Beta Quadrant, Nune entered in-patient health care treatment until he was fit to return to duty.

USS Constellation (2401 – Present)

By the time Captain Taes took command of the explorer USS Constellation, she expected Nune to join her new senior staff.  However, as a result of his existential crisis, Nune had made a decision to begin a career as a science officer.  Assigned to the Constellation, Nune leverages his engineering experience support the science department’s research into cybernetics, advanced sensor technology and advanced synthetics.  Coming to question his devotion to engineering, Nune has also begun intensive education and cross-training in the planetary sciences, hoping to find greater meaning in the wonders of planetary worlds.