Ensign Nyx Calder
Name Nyx Calder
Position Chief Flight Control Officer
Rank Ensign
Character Information
| Gender | Female | |
| Species | Human | |
| Age | 22 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 5' 5" | |
| Weight | 128 lbs | |
| Hair Color | Black with neon tips | |
| Eye Color | Blue/Green | |
| Physical Description | Nyx has a compact, gymnast-lean build and fair, freckled skin. She wears her black hair with neon-dyed tips (trimmed to regulation on duty) and has slightly blue/green eyes that go a little too bright when she’s plotting. Has tattoos on the back on her hands (authorised), and a faint notch through her left eyebrow completes the rough-and-tumble look. She moves like a coiled spring—restless, kinetic—and her uniform is regulation-perfect for about five minutes before the edges start to fray. Her voice runs sweet and singsong when she’s teasing, then drops to a velvet-flat calm when things get serious. Right-hand dominant, she flies ambidextrous on dual-stick rigs. |
Family
| Spouse | ||
| Children | ||
| Father | Cael Calder Present but rarely sober; a small-time dockside criminal with big swagger and bad friends. Known for intimidation and petty scams rather than courage. Nyx cut ties on entry to the Academy; any contact now is strictly duty-related (and documented). |
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| Mother | Mara Calder Absent. Drifted between casual jobs and worse company; last credible sighting several years ago. Nyx speaks of her in the past tense even without proof. |
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| Brother(s) | Rowan Calder (older brother) Overbearing, cruel, and possessive under the guise of “family duty.” Grew up running their father’s errands and never stopped. Uses charm as a weapon; delights in control. Nyx is estranged and will not be alone with him by choice. |
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| Sister(s) | ||
| Other Family | A rotating cast of “dock aunties” from New Sydney who taught her practical survival and quiet kindness; one, Aunt Nel, remains a trusted off-ship contact. |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Nyx Calder presents as high-energy, irreverent, and wickedly quick—sunshine with sharp edges. She treats flying like choreography, gives pet names to manoeuvre chains, and talks to the ship because machines are simpler than people. Humour is her first tool (and armour); when stakes rise, the patter drops and she becomes precise, economical, and a little frightening. Loyalty is binary: if you’re in her circle, she will burn calories and reputation to keep you safe; if you’re outside it, she’ll smile, comply with the letter of an order, and save her best for the helm. Authority friction exists, but she responds well to leaders who set clear guardrails and can deadpan back. Baseline: novelty-seeking, trauma-adapted, prosocial when bonded, rule-bending with intent rather than malice. Likely bridge behaviours: Names the helm “sweetheart,” hums through approach vectors, requests permission for “a prettier solution,” obeys a firm “no” but will try once to sell the “yes.” Psychological Evaluation — Extract (Academy Counselling Service) Subject: Calder, Nyx — Cadet (later Ensign) Evaluator: Lt. Cmdr. S. Penhale, Counselling Psychologist Dates: Initial assessment 2394.09; reviews 2396.02, 2398.05 Programme Link: Federation Outreach Programme → Starfleet Academy Background Summary History of adverse childhood experiences including exposure to familial violence, coercive control by elder sibling, and criminal environment. Brief involvement with dockside smuggling prior to intervention via Outreach Programme. Presents with resilient coping and high cognitive flexibility; uses humour and performance to regulate arousal and manage social threat. Mental State (typical) Affect lively, congruent; speech rapid but coherent; thought content future-focused, occasionally tangential when excited; insight fair-to-good (“I joke first so I don’t shake later”). No evidence of psychosis. Risk to self/others low in structured settings; spikes under perceived betrayal or humiliation. Sleep variable post-operation without guided decompression. Formulation Strengths/Protective Factors: Exceptional piloting competence; strong prosocial values toward chosen group; responsiveness to structure; positive mentorship history; capacity for self-reflection when safety is established. Vulnerabilities/Risk Factors: Novelty-seeking, boundary-testing; trauma-linked triggers (betrayal, confinement, alcohol-fuelled conflict); occasional impulse to prioritise “style” over standard method unless reined in. Diagnostic Impression (functional): Trauma-adapted stress response with defensive use of humour; subthreshold features of impulsivity moderated by structure and alliance. Not meeting criteria for disqualifying disorder. Fit for duty with conditions. Fitness for Duty Determination Status: Cleared with Conditions (Provisional) — suitable for Flight Control duties including covert approach profiles when safeguards are applied. Required Safeguards & Recommendations Weekly counselling (trauma processing, impulse channel, sleep hygiene) for first 6 months of posting; review thereafter. Mission buddy system (Ops/Tac) during ambiguous/covert operations for shared decision-making and reality-anchoring. Pre-approval for experimental manoeuvre profiles; no ad-hoc demonstrations during live ops. Post-mission decompression within 24 hours for high-arousal sorties; monitor sleep rebound. Clear behavioural boundaries from command; praise for compliant innovation to reinforce adaptive risk-taking. Counsellor’s Narrative Note “Cadet Calder is an edge-walker who performs best when the edge is clearly lit. She will test fences once; if they hold, she respects them. Her humour isn’t flippancy—it’s ballast. Give her a net she trusts and she will fly exactly where you need, exactly when you need, with an elegance most pilots only talk about.” Signature: Lt. Cmdr. S. Penhale, PhD Starfleet Academy Counselling Service, 2398.05 |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | Nyx is a preternatural stick-and-rudder pilot with kinesthetic–spatial instincts that border on eerie; she “feels” vectors, sensor rhythms, and inertial dampener nuance the way musicians feel tempo. In the chair she’s unflappable, threading micro-warp tick inserts and shaping emissions in real time while calmly juggling Ops power and thruster trims. Her improvisational systems triage keeps small craft alive in ugly conditions, and her showman’s flair—naming manoeuvre chains, humming through approach vectors—doubles as a morale engine when quarters get tight. Under pressure the patter drops, her focus sharpens, and she delivers precise, elegant flying on demand. That same appetite for edge and novelty can pull her toward the “prettier” solution first, testing boundaries unless firm guardrails are set. She has predictable friction with authority that is vague or performative, and trauma-shaped hypervigilance means betrayal cues flip her from playful to cold and combative in a heartbeat. Post-op, she’s prone to sleep dysregulation and hyperfocus spirals without structured decompression. She’ll also joke through fear and occasionally miss the moment to stop, which—absent a trusted handler or explicit no-go—can translate into unnecessary style where a dull, regulation answer would suffice. |
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| Ambitions | ||
| Hobbies & Interests | Off duty, Nyx chases movement and mischief. She lives for zero-G acrobatics and parkour in maintenance spaces, treating bulkheads like a playground and “training” as an excuse to invent new docking-bay tricks. She tinkers endlessly with flight sticks and inertial-dampener “feel,” swapping out grips, throw, and feedback until the helm responds like a dance partner. When she’s still, it’s usually with a mug of dangerously caffeinated tea, sketching ships with cartoon faces or painting tiny, removable nose art on sim craft. She plays springball with cheerful aggression, kites on antigrav sails when she can find wind and time, and curates ridiculous 23rd-century mixtapes for the shuttle bay. Her lucky-charm habit is collecting broken flight sticks and naming manoeuvre chains—both started as jokes, both stuck. She also keeps a quiet “found family” circuit of dock aunties and junior crew she feeds, teases, and protects, because looking after people is the one hobby she never admits is her favourite. |
| Personal History | Nyx Calder was born in the freight shadows of New Sydney, where manifests go missing and favours are currency. Her father, Cael—dockside bruiser with a bottle—taught her two lessons early: smile when you’re scared, and run when you can’t smile. Rowan, her older brother, learned different ones: take, keep, and hit first. Nyx grew fast, small and springy, a kid who could slip through crowd and conduit alike. She fetched parts, copied access codes she didn’t understand, and learned the difference between an honest lie and a dangerous truth. The Calder Household: Love as Leverage (2386–2389) Home was a roll of dice—good nights when the freighters paid, bad nights when they didn’t. Rowan discovered cruelty as a pastime; Cael discovered that apologies work better with threats. Nyx responded with jokes, pranks, and rehearsed smiles that bought her seconds. When that failed, she learned to duck. Personal boundaries became survival—don’t be alone with Rowan, don’t be within reach of Cael after midnight, and never show fear. She started sleeping on rooftops and in cargo shells with a lock on the inside. Dock-Rat Adolescence: Picking the Wrong Heroes (2389–2391) On the piers, the loudest winners wore leather coats and easy grins. Nyx copied what worked. She nicked bottles, learned cards, and ran with kids who ran for men whose names never appeared on paper. She drank to be fearless and fought to be left alone. The first time she broke someone’s nose, she laughed—high and bright—because the shake in her hands needed somewhere to go. She started wearing neon streaks in her hair, a warning flag and a dare. The First Crew: Fast Hands, Faster Lies (2391–2392) A small smuggling boat took her in—part pity, part profit. They liked her hands, small and quick enough to steal and hide, and her mouth that could get her out of most situations. She learned to fly quiet, to feel thrusters through the seat of her bones, and to thread a patrol net between pings. She christened manoeuvres with cheeky names and started talking to the ship because machines were simpler than men. The crew became family until they weren’t; “family” was a word the captain used when he needed something risky done. The Line That Broke: Debt, Betrayal, and a Bottle (Late 2392) Debts came due. Rowan “sold” her help to square Cael’s tab with a dockside fixer. The job stank: hot cargo, bad timing, too many smiles. When it soured, the captain shoved Nyx towards the blame to save his own skin. Rowan arrived to collect—smug, possessive, certain she’d fold. She didn’t. A bottle broke; so did a cheekbone (not hers). She crawled into a maintenance duct, laughing and crying in the same breath, and stayed until shift change. The Almost-Arrest: Ghost with Manners (2393) Security swarmed the docks after a collapse at a nearby mine. Nyx walked towards the uniforms with a crate on her shoulder and a perfect, helpful smile. A young Starfleet lieutenant clocked the way she handled weight, the way she scanned exits, the way she stood between shouting men and a frightened dock worker without thinking. He watched her slide into a relief shuttle’s co-pilot seat to “help” move pallets and fly a pattern so clean the inertial dampeners purred. He didn’t arrest her. He asked her why she laughed when she was scared. She told him it made the edge look friendly. The Programme: Scrubbing Without Bleaching (2393–2394) The lieutenant pushed her into a Federation outreach programme for high-risk youths—part education, part probation designed to get her into Starfleet Academy. Records were sealed if she stuck the landing. She stuck it with grit, sarcasm, and a ferocious need to never owe Rowan or Cael again. She learned to pass psych screens by telling the truth sideways, and to translate street instincts into flight discipline: rhythm mapping of sensor nets, emissions shaping, controlled audacity. Her evaluator wrote, “If she has a net and knows where it is, she won’t jump without checking the knots.” Starfleet Academy: Edge-Walker on a Short Leash (2394–2398) Nyx arrived at the Academy with a probationary tag and a grin. Flight Control major, Operations minor. She joined Zero-G Gymnastics and the Flight Demonstration Squadron; she named manoeuvre chains and painted tiny nose art on sim craft (one demerit). She got hauled before three disciplinary boards—unauthorised simulator profiles, a prank that painted a shuttle blushing pink before an inspection, and a remark to a visiting lecturer that was technically respectful in content if not in tone. She also posted top scores in micro-warp vectoring and close-quarters approach work. The same lieutenant—now a lieutenant commander—signed her final clearance: “Edge acknowledged. Leash fitted. Don’t waste this.” Cutting Ties: Family, Chosen and Otherwise (2398) Before graduation, Rowan tried to pull her back for “one last favour”—a classic trap. Nyx turned up with Security, filed a formal estrangement notice, and put every further contact through official channels. She kept in touch with the dock aunties who’d slipped her food and kindness; she sent them her first pay. Cael left a message slurring about pride; she archived it unread. She kept the scar on her temple and the jester-star tattoo on her wrist as her own private heraldry: I survived, and I am not yours. First Posting: A Ghost with Better Manners (2398–Present) Assigned to the USS Valiant, Nyx finally got a helm that could keep up. She still laughs at the edge, still names manoeuvres, still calls the ship “sweetheart”—but the jokes are ballast now, not armour. She obeys the leash because she chose it: clear rules, clear consequences, and a crew that feels like the right kind of family. When the beacons chirp and the pings align, she slides them between breaths and makes the map look easy. If someone threatens “her” people, the smile goes thin and the flying gets very, very accurate. |
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| Service Record | 2393–2394 — Federation Outreach Programme (New Sydney / San Francisco) — Civilian Trainee 2394–2398 — Starfleet Academy, San Francisco — Cadet 2398–Present — USS Valiant (Defiant-class), Dept. of Operational Analysis — Ensign, Chief Flight Control Officer (CONN) |
Non Official Cover
| Non Official Cover Summery | Kestrel Voss |