Reika Sh'laan

Personnel File
Name:	Reika Sh'laan
Rank:	Lieutenant
Position:	Assistant Chief of Operations
Species:	Andorian
Age:	29
Gender:	Female
Orientation:	Bisexual
Birthplace:	Tarsk, Andor
Height:	5ft 11in / 1.8m
Weight:	140lbs / 64kg
Hair:	White - worn long, though often intricately plaited. Falls to her waist.
Eye color:	Ice blue
Played by:	Kristanna Loken
Writer:	Dree
Interests
Xri-fo’ral (martial art) Sketching Vulcan chess Parrises Squares Sampling ethnic cuisine Listening to Music
Education
2371-2375 - Starfleet Academy / Operations & Tactical 2375-2376 - Starfleet Advanced Tactical Training
Service Record
2374 - 2375 - Ensign, Tactical Officer, USS Livingston 2375-2376 - Ensign, Starfleet Advanced Tactical Training 2376-2377 - Ensign, Tactical Officer, USS Mustang 2377-2377 - Lt. JG, Operations Officer, USS Mustang 2378-2380 - Lt. JG, Operations Officer, USS Theurgy 2380-2381 - Lt, Operations Officer, USS Theurgy
Decorations
2373, Year 4: Starfleet Academy Top 15% of class ribbon 2381: Starfleet Medal of Commendation (awarded after being placed in stasis)

Lieutenant Reika Sh’laan began her service in Starfleet as a Tactical Officer. aboard the USS Livingston, where she was recommended Starfleet Advanced Tactical Training. Upon graduation from SATT, she was assigned to the USS Mustang as a Tactical Officer. Due to the loss of their OPS officer, she temporarily filled the position. Later, she was permanently transferred to Chief of Operations on the Mustang. After a year, she was transferred to the USS Theurgy - first as Operations Officer, followed by a promotion to Assistant Chief of Operations just prior to the Theurgy’s return to Earth. Lt. Sh’laan aided the USS Theurgy in their opposition against the parasites. She was injured during their flight from Task Force Archeron and placed in stasis.

Biography

Early Years

Reika was born on Andor into the Ka’Thalan clan. Her family was an interesting mix of martial and artistic. Her thavan, Yintranic, and charan, Ves’broc, were both greatly involved in the arts. Yintranic was one of the artists of her clan - well known for his paintings. Ves’broc was a musician known for ballads. Both of her mothers had been a part of the Andorian military. One, Ni’vral’unnu - her zhavey - was able to fight, but worked more in the administrative side of the military. Her shreva, Trian’ezza, was a fighter and was gone for often, so most of the time she lived with three of her parents, her thavan, her charan, and her zhavey, but the absence of her shreva was in many ways the most difficult because she too was a shen.

Her shreva was the parent that Reika had always identified with most, and with the absence of that parent, she really struggled. She was caught fighting in school on several occasions. Finally, her parents received a warning that if she didn’t learn to control herself, she would be expelled from school. It was then that her three parents at home decided on a course of action. They introduced her to Xi-fo’ral. This form of martial art focused on inner calm and redirection of the opponent’s energies. The more immersed she became in it, the more she understood it. The more she learned to calm herself and redirect her own aggressive tendencies, the better she did in school. Over the years, she has grown and mastered level after level. Throughout Starfleet Academy and even her time on various starships, she continued her study. Just before she went into stasis, she had applied to be able to teach Xi-fo’ral officially as a fo'ran.

Once Reika’s inner focus and test scores improved, her zhavey had suggested that she consider applying to Starfleet. Something about Reika told of an interesting blend of both martial and peacemaker, organizer and fighter, and Ni’vral’unnu - her zhavey - encouraged her in that direction.

Reika had applied and was accepted into the Academy, an action that was praised by her three parents that were at home, but as the time neared for her to leave, her shreva came home on leave. Discussion about the situation between Trian’ezza, Ni’vral’unnu, Yintranic, and Ves’broc had been occurring over subspace while Trian’ezza had been away, but with the quadruple home and together, discussions were animated. They culminated in Trian’ezza pulling Reika aside and telling her that she didn’t feel that Starfleet was the best option for her. Instead, as her shei, Reika should follow her into the Andorian military.

Reika was not yet above the Andorian age of majority, but because of the disagreement between her parents, she was left to make the choice. While she wouldn’t have admitted it to herself, more out of anger and frustration at her shreva for abandoning her all those years ago, she chose to accept the appointment to the Academy damaging the relationship that she and her shreva had.

Starfleet Academy

So as Reika went off to the Academy, once again, she felt like she had something to prove, and life was a struggle. She felt much more comfortable in the military side of things, but because of her fight with her shreva and the great respect that she had developed with her zhavey, she decided to undertake training in both Tactical and Operations. Her four years at the Academy were spent mostly focusing on several things - her studies, Parrises Squares, trying various ethnic cuisines, and Xi-fo’ral.

During her first year at the Academy, Parrises Squares became a favorite pass time. She unsuccessfully tried out for the Academy team her first year. Her second and third years, she made the team. In her fourth year at the Academy, she was co-captain of the team.

Also while she was at the Academy, she discovered a love of ethnic cuisine and tried every different kind of ethnic food that she could get her hands on - whether it was Klingon food, Thai food, Risan food, Bajoran delicacies, or anything else, the crazier it sounded, the more she wanted to try it.

When she got stressed, she would turn to one of two avenues to calm herself down. Either she would try to immerse herself in her marital art or she would sketch. She spent many an hour near the waterfront sketching either the bridge or the causeway or one of the banks, or some pleasure boats coming and going.

Despite her other activities, Reika excelled in her studies. She distinguished herself in Operations. She did well in tactical, in general, but was greatly noted for her strategic abilities.

Career

Graduating in the top 15% of her class and with recommendations from one of her Tactical professors, gave her the position of Tactical Officer on the USS Livingston. Over the first year that she was here, her CTO recognized her aptitude for tactical strategy and recommended her to Starfleet Advanced Tactical training.

That year was spent honing her different tactical skills - hand-to-hand training, weapons training, and strategic training. It was here that she discovered her love and aptitude for Vulcan chess. While she didn’t distinguish herself on the whole, again, it was her organized and strategic mind that kept her in the top half of her class while the rest of her scores were mediocre.

But graduating in the top half of the class brought a new assignment - TO aboard the USS Mustang. When she was assigned, they were given several missions near many UFP planets during the first year. She was in charge of the safety of several delegates that were taken to different negotiations. They participated in a few skirmishes that allowed the officer to test her metal. After that year, Reika was promoted to Lieutenant JG.

But on the heels of that promotion, the Mustang was assigned to a deep space recon of a newly discovered sector mostly encircled by a nebula. While they were there, they lost their Chief of Operations on an away team mission led by their CTO. Being outside of Federation space and as small of a ship as their compliment was, they were not carrying an Assistant Chief of Operations. Reika was asked to fill the vacancy due to her Starfleet training in that area. She agreed to the positional promotion to Acting Chief of Operations.

During that next year, it became clear to everyone that she excelled in Operations much more than she stood out in Tactical, and while they were still in the nebula, her position of Operations Officer aboard the Mustang continued, as the Captain never requested a Senior Officer to replace Reika. She remained Acting Chief Operations Officer despite her low rank because of her performance.

But upon their return to Federation space and due to her citation, she was offered the position of Operations Officer on the USS Theurgy. The move was a step-down, but to a more prestigious vessel with more chance of upward mobility. After discussing the matter with Captain Blain, she accepted the transfer. She served in that position for 2 years before she was again promoted. This time to Lieutenant.

The Theurgy's Return and Escape

Reika was with the USS Theurgy when it returned to Earth in 2380 and in its subsequent flight from the SOL system. If she had not been in on the briefing where they overheard members of Starfleet Command speaking of themselves in third person and talking of their kin overthrowing the Federation Council, it would have been a hard thing to believe. But as the crew searched for answers and was immediately targeted, there was no logical conclusion that she could come to, but that the Federation had been infiltrated and the Theurgy was among only a handful of people who could try to right this wrong.

But for an Andorian who was tied so tightly to a family unit, the thought of even potentially being ostracized was hard to come to grips with. To this point in her career, she had made it a point to be in regular contact with her zhavey to hear how her other parents and siblings were doing. While the contact was only on several occasions a year, as Reika contemplated the separation, it was hard to give up on the thought of that tie to her family.

But she tried to comfort herself with the fact that the ship’s crew was also in a very real way her family. In her two years prior to their 2380 trip to Earth, Reiki had kept mostly to herself. She wasn’t disliked, but neither did many people know who she was. During that first month on the run, with the prospect of losing her family connection, she stepped out of her comfort zone and attempted to integrate herself into the crew better. She tried to strengthen her ties with the crew, taking meals in the mess, spending time with others in the gym, and trying to connect on a personal level with those she found herself on shift. But that attempt would be short-lived.

It was one month into their flight that Reika was working in the computer core, attempting to upgrade the encryption as there had been several attempts by Starfleet to break through the multi-layer encryption system. They couldn’t figure out where the incursions were coming from because they never happened when they were engaging with Starfleet directly. The working theories behind the attempted incursions were either that they were trying to insert an override into the ship’s systems to take control of the ship or find a way to use the ship’s communication systems to send out their coordinates as a databurst in any type of communication that they sent from their ship.

While Reika was working on the upgrade, another incursion attempt began. She watched the attempt in real-time, but while she watched it and could shut it off before it did any damage, she worked to track where the incursion attempt was coming from. Once she had its location fixed, she was successfully able to shut down the attempt. After waiting 30 minutes to make sure that there wouldn’t be an immediate follow-up attempt, Reika headed to the coordinates within the ship where she traced the attempted computer infiltration. Heading to Deck 22, she followed the coordinates to the deuterium storage tanks. Using the location she had observed and programmed into her tricorder, she walked around the different tanks looking for something that wasn’t supposed to be there. On the back of one of the deuterium tanks, she found an affixed apparatus that clearly didn’t belong there.

Her hand was on its way to her combadge to call for security and engineering when the device detected her presence and some sort of self-destruct initiated. With only a twenty-second countdown, using her override that she had access to being an Operations Officer, linking her PADD to the nearest transporter, she beamed the device into space at the maximum transporter range. However, in doing so, this created a minute leak in the Deuterium tank that she was standing next to. Her right leg, right side, right hand and right arm were all exposed to the liquid deuterium but only those parts of her body before she realized what was happening.

Using her combadge, she called for medical, engineering, and command, and sealed the room shutting off all airflow to the room. By the time medical made it down, the parts of her body exposed to the atomized deuterium spray had started to move into a cryostatic state as liquid deuterium is used in cryostasis. But only part of her body being exposed to the liquid caused the beginning of cascade genetic unspooling.

While medical worked on her, Reika made a report to Captain Ives and the head of engineering explaining what happened with the incursion, with the planted device, and with the deuterium. She explained that this device was likely planted during one of their encounters with Starfleet, but instead of directly broadcasting their location - which would immediately be found and destroyed, it seemed logical that Starfleet planted a device that would infiltrate and use their own systems to broadcast their location once one of their worms had been able to break into the Theurgy’s computer system.

Due to her ingenious thinking, decisive actions at risk to herself, and having rescued the ship from what likely would have been a ship wide explosion, she was granted the Starfleet Medal of Commendation by Captain ives, even though she was already put into stasis to keep her alive. It was not until April of 2381 that a treatment was derived for her condition - five months later.

Personality Profile

Reika has been described as strategic, decisive, forthright, arrogant at times, aggressive yet sometimes gentle, stubborn, self-conscious, neat-freak, creative thinker.

But her time at Starfleet’s Advanced Tactical Training reinforced her ability to think through a problem creatively, to look at the issue from different angles, and to consider possibilities that hadn’t yet been considered. She was able to think outside the box and prided herself on her ability to come up with creative solutions to the most difficult problems. This lent itself to her sometimes coming across as arrogant.

Even if Reika disagreed with you, her default was first - logical conversation. She didn’t attack you or demean you. She listened to all of the facts presented before she made her decision. But once she heard all of the facts, she didn’t equivocate on a decision. She made it fast and decisively.

Once a decision was made, there was little chance of going back without concrete and clear evidence to the contrary, but that didn’t mean that she was always right. She had as many blindspots as the next person. Sometimes she realized that she’s missed a key aspect of a problem and other times, she will charge ahead convinced that she’s right, and act on that determination - even when she’s just flat wrong.

Having grown up with four parents who were so incredibly different, this taught Reika about the difference in the ways that people think. She became a student of humanoid nature. Just because someone does something, doesn’t necessarily mean that they like it. There was always an underlying cause to every action and Rieka needed to understand what made people the way that they were. This led her to a strategic understanding both on and off the battlefield.

The downside to her analysis of humanoid psychology was always analyzing why people act the way that they do toward her. This has caused her to be incredibly self-conscious and to constantly question other people’s motives - in general - and specifically toward her.

Because of the organized and strategic nature of her brain, she was also a neat-freak. Her quarters are immaculate. Her office is pristine. Her clothes in the closet were organized by type. She had a place for everything and everything was always in its place. If her living space and workspace were not orderly, she couldn’t think or work efficiently.

Above all, Reika valued family. She saw how her shreva being gone for most of her growing-up years affected not only her but others around her. But family meant a lot more than just those that you are married to or have participated in the procreation process with. Each of her ships had become a surrogate family of sorts.

She also prized dedication and hard work - in herself most, but in others as well to a degree. Everything she does, she does to the best of her ability whether that’s Xi-fo’ral, Parrises Squares, or her job. Half-assed was not a word in her vocabulary.

Physical Profile

While she would not be removed from stasis until the medical officers on the Theurgy was able to stop and reverse the genetic unspooling caused by her exposure to liquid deuterium, the full, long-term effects of part of her body being subjected to a cryostatic liquid remained to be determined.

The only obvious consequence of the deuterium exposure was that her right thigh, the right side of her abdomen, and her right arm below the elbow have a similar appearance of a burn scar.

Growing up on Andor with the gravity 1.25 times of what it is on earth, her muscles were well-defined.

The only notable physical anomaly was that her right ear is about ½ inch lower than her left ear.

Appearances

What If...?

• Below Decks Lounge

Season 02 - Interregnum 01-02

• Upon Waking - Day 16 - 1300 hours
• A Single for Couples Night - Day 18 - 1945 hours
• Kicking Ass or Getting Your Ass Kicked - Day 19 - 0600 hours
• A Spicy Encounter - Day 19 - 1800 hours
• Check in for a Check Up - Day 20 - 0650 hours
• Of Problems Past and Present - Day 20 - 0900 hours
• My Kingdom for a Duotronic Phase Core Kicker! - Day 20 - 1650 hours
• And Then the Gods Created War, Death, and Space Lasers - Day 20 - 2122 hours
• Drawing Out the Less than Axiomatic Answer - Day 21 - 1600 hours
• Letters Home - Day 21 - 2145 hours

Season 2 - Episode 2

• Waking up in the Morning Feeling Like ... - Day 1 - 0500
• Pull Up a Chair - Day 1 - 0700
• This Isn't Goodbye - Day 1 - 1300
• Outside Looking In - Day 1 - 1345
• Triggered Much - Day 1 - 1800