|
DS9 BAJORAN SERVICE PERSONNEL FILE: Kira Nerys
Played By: Nana Visitor
Rank: Major, Bajoran
Militia Current assignment: Bajoran liaison officer and
first officer, Deep Space Nine
Full Name: Kira Nerys
Year of birth: 2343
Place of birth: Dahkur Province, Bajor
Marital status: Single
Security clearance: Grade H-1, Bajoran Intelligence Net
Database priority code: Alpha-1, Bajoran Central Archives
Psycho-Medical Profile:
Report of DS9 Chief Medical Officer Julian Bashir, M.D.
Though Kira has always possessed the tactical and strategic skills
to do her job exceptionally well, it is in interpersonal communication,
self-assurance, and finding the imagination extinguished by a
refugee's atrophied childhood where she has grown the most since
this officer first encountered her in 2369. Having lived on the
edge of life and death for so long, Kira's emotions are always
close to the surface and they can be unusually strong: love, grief
and anger being the most prevalent. She has also slowly come to
grips with both the violence of her past actions and her strong
anti-Cardassian disposition. Young Kira Nerys faced the same terrifying
and brutal life faced by many of her Bajoran brethren: her father,
a farmer or gardener by trade, was killed fighting in the resistance
while her mother, an icon painter, died of malnutrition in the
Singha Refugee Camp when Nerys was 3. She had at least two brothers
and apparently no sisters; all they had to play in the camp growing
up was Bajoran springball, but she had some crafts such as finger-painting
at age 4 in the camp school. Having forsworn any artistic aptitude,
she ironically would have been a member of the artist J'barra
of Ih'valla, had the ancient Bajoran caste system survived the
Occupation.
At the age of only 12, after working in the mines, the orphaned
Kira was recruited by Lorit Akrem into the province's Shakaar
resistance cell, named for its leader. A year later, after running
errands and cleaning weapons, the group finally accepted her fully
when Shakaar approved her replacing a missing member for a raid
on a Cardassian skimmer. The earring she wears today was made
from the metal of the skimmer by cellmate Lupaza, after Kira killed
the entire unloading complement while giddily trying to impress
the group. A year later she helped to temporarily liberate the
Cardassians' notorious Gallitepp labor camp, and eventually learned
to fly outdated Raider craft against her oppressors. She suffered
during the winter of 2360-61 along with the rest of her cell in
her native Dahkur Hills caves, unarmed and hungry; her group evaded
Cardassians for 10 years in the area. Through it all Kira never
served time in Cardassian prison, but she was once rescued from
a Cardassian interrogation center with her fellow cellmates. Her
war for Bajor's liberation had to include murder as well, such
as when she helped plasma-bomb the home of Gul Pirak in Hathon,
and when she checked aboard the Terok Nor station in 2365 to kill
a native collaborator with the Cardassians; the latter took a
toll on her soul no amount of eventual victory could erase. Ironically,
she met Odo and Quark for the first time on that mission and was
almost caught, the truth not coming to light until years later
as the station's post-withdrawal first officer. She accepted a
major's commission and the post as Bajoran military attachT to
Ben Sisko and the Starfleet administrators on DS9 following the
withdrawal in 2369 - although she had initially turned it down
and opposed the Bajoran provisional government's move to invite
Starfleet in. As she and Sisko grew to work and trust each other
while respecting their own agendas, she was temporarily recalled
early the next year pending reassignment during the abortive coup
on Bajor, just after she risked life and career to rescue reluctant
Bajoran hero Li Nalas. It was then when she first truly met Vedek
Bareil, then the front-runner to replace Kai Opaka, and they fell
in love.
Despite the coming of Bajoran independence, grief would continue
to be a constant for Kira. It was she who performed the Bajoran
death ritual for Opaka soon after, when the kai was trapped in
virtual death in the Gamma Quadrant. The next year Kira was at
Bareil's side when a scandal in a no-win scenario during the occupation
dashed his chances to become Kai; a year later she faced his death
alone on the eve of his Cardassian peace treaty that Winn would
later take the credit for. But Kira had some solace, blocking
Winn's drive to be secular leader of Bajor as well when she helped
diffuse a crisis and bolster her old resistance leader Shakaar
to the post instead. She in turn fell in love with him a year
later, lending no less a figure than Gul Dukat to note her obvious
attachment to strong male personalities. In addition, Kira was
also attracted to Tom Riker despite her involvement with Bareil;
after his theft of the U.S.S. Defiant, she eventually talked him
into taking Dukat and Sisko's deal of surrender with a rare Cardassian
prison term that she vows she'll help him escape from some day.
Because of her initial thin-skinned reputation, Kira has had to
convince Sisko she can handle cases close to her heart and has
a hard time dealing with the fact that she can't always fight
for the underdog anymore. Her hatred of Cardassians tempered much
faster than even she would have thought, sympathizing with the
amazing case of Aamin Marritza and even becoming allies with her
hated Gul Dukat on occasion, saving his half-Bajoran daughter
from Dukat's own hand to avoid the shame and later taking her
in to save her from a rogue marauder's life with him. Even more
so, she abhors Quark and all Ferengis, and is an infrequent visitor
to his bar. She feels that "Starfleet types" live too much by
automation and not enough by their wits, and still thinks the
Federation itself is "naive" - but her Cardassian experience has
left her a strong civil libertarian, opposed to unnecessary security
crackdowns.
Though not overtly religious initially, she supported Winn as
a "true believer" until her treachery, once revealed, left her
shaken and even more an admirer of Sisko's character - despite
never having been comfortable with working under the "Emissary."
Although she came to have more faith and meditates daily in her
quarters, she never sees the prophets' will as Winn does. Her
Spartan quarters feature a personal Bajoran shrine - the standard
icon behind an altar - with a couch and endtable, a desk, and
a table with two chairs in her living room. Kira was kidnapped
in 2371 and surgically altered to be Cardassian as a pawn in an
elaborate Obsidian Order plot to expose her alter ego's father,
a powerful legate, as a Cardassian dissident; after his rescue
they formed an odd bond. Later that year she was chosen as Presider
for DS9's Gratitude Festival shortly before Bariel's sudden death
and had planned to spend the holiday with him but fell for Bashir
instead, thanks to Lwaxana Troi's Zanthi fever - which only acts
in case of latent relationships. Kira stays fit and trim thanks
to her lifelong affinity for Bajoran springball: aside from following
the local teams' standings she allows it as a rare personal holo-program
diversion. Because she feels ill at ease with idle time and her
rough childhood allowed little room for fantasy, she usually hates
holosuites as a waste of time and prefers instead the real thing
- a trait Dax is trying to help change; despite that spare outlook,
she does use feminine toiletries like epidellic skin lotion. In
music, she only knows Bajoran composers and doesn't feel artistic
at all despite her mother's career - an irony of Akorem Lann's
short-lived return to the d'jarra family castes. At times she
has enjoyed Bajoran synthale, a Stardrifter, Bajoran ginger tea,
and hot coffee. She's never won anything before Quark's "prizes,"
but does know how to play Dabo.
Psycho-Medical Profile:
UPDATE SD 50500, CMO J. Bashir recording
Since the last posting in the file, I have followed the effects
of two major events on subject Kira's life: her ongoing interaction
with Gul Dukat, and her serving as surrogate mother for the O'Brien's
unborn child. The trip with Dukat early in 2372 to uncover the
missing Bajoran prison ship Ravinok set in motion a host of events
for Kira. While finally ascertaining the death of her fellow Shakaar
cellmate Lorit, her insistence that Dukat let his illegitimate
daughter Ziyal survive cost him his standing and he subsequently
became a marauder against the invading Klingons. In turn, Kira
argued to let Ziyal remain at the station, untouched by the chaos
and under her wing. The entire episode also revealed Dukat's affection
for her -- a move which Kira has confessed she easily dismissed,
even though the cross-cultural emotions between two former avowed
enemies troubled her. More importantly, the emergency transporter
transplant I performed to save the O'Brien fetus when Keiko was
injured has had all kinds of repercussions since I determined
Kira would have to carry the baby to term, due to Bajoran fetal
differences. Asking her to move in with them was a good pre-natal
move by the O'Briens for all concerned, but I suspect the baby's
birth finally allowed the Chief to relax over everything from
his concern over her raktajino caffeine intake to this doctor's
sneaking suspicion of a latent attraction between he and the major
at one point. Having the baby according to the traditional Bajoran
relaxation process I believe eased her port-partum syndrome, if
anything could have helped that; her reaction in this vein will
be monitored. Kira reported the typical Bajoran symptoms of sneezing,
muscle spasms and swollen feet, and despite her distaste for makara
herbs she owes her life to them now since they inhibited her system
from a kidnapper's poison serum injections. (I thought I had seen
the end of the short-fused Kira until this latter episode, when
she took off after the presumed stalker of her old resistance
cell mates.) As a sidelight, it also appears that both Kira and
Sisko are becoming more comfortable with his role as Emissary
and as station commander especially since the coming and going
of his pagh'tem'far visions. On the other hand, she has admitted
to me her longtime trust in Odo was truly shaken by his recent
revelation of a rush to justice in 2366 in helping execute three
innocent Bajorans on Terok Nor during the occupation - a highly
atypical scenario for the constable.
|