Natalia Voss

Q: What do you call the person who graduates last in their class at Starfleet Academy?

A: Ensign.

Natalia Voss might not be on course to literally prove this joke true, but she’s not far off. Certainly in the bottom decile and not far off the bottom percentile of her graduating class, Natalia is not going to be on any kind of fast-track for promotion. But, as the joke runs, she will, hopefully, become a Starfleet officer, and perform her duties with enough reasonable diligence to mostly avoid interplanetary diplomatic incidents, planetary apocalypses, or warp drive meltdowns. (It was one time, OK!)

Natalia was born on the Federation colony world of New Tyrol to a family steeped in Starfleet history. Generations of Voss have served in uniform; her father was an orbital flight operations controller before retiring to the family homestead set amid the snow-shimmering beauty of the New Alps. Naturally in such an environment, Natalia grew up learning to ski before she could walk. She also grew up in the shadow of her older sister, Anja. There was an early expectation both Voss daughters would attend the Academy, like their father and his moher and her mother and her father and… Let’s just say you could trace the Voss line back almost to the early days of NX craft. But while Anja excelled as an outstanding student at the Academy, winning multiple honours and awards, Natalia never quite kept pace with her overperforming older sibling.

Low grades, retakes of core modules, persistent tardies, the occasional demerit, they’ve all added up on file for Natalia, while keeping her grade just above passing level. Her time for the Kobayashi Maru scenario is considered an unofficial Academy record (no one else has managed to make both ships blow up so quickly). She’d sooner binge a holo-sim than volunteer for extra duty. Her psychological assessment called her lazy and forgetful, and recommended that she… well, she can’t quite remember, she couldn’t really be bothered to read the report in much detail.

Natalia is however very fit and athletic, playing multiple sports growing up. She enjoys outdoor adventures, and is obviously particularly adept in sub-zero environments. She’s not a bad pilot and handy with a phaser as well as taking unarmed combat lessons. She’s sociable, and although she doesn’t have a great ear for languages, she is engaged and respectful when it comes to exotic alien cultures. She has specialised into xenoanthropology and is more adept at the social sciences than astrophysics or planetary science.

So she’s not completely incompetent. That, in fact, was the text of her final classroom assessment pending her transfer to the USS Challenger for field training: “not completely incompetent”…