Lieutenant Oksana Volkova “Odile”

Oksana is a striking woman with well-defined feminine features and bright, piercing blue eyes. She is tall and lithe with enough curves to entice but not enough to be considered voluptuous Overall she has a small frame that looks like it could use a bit more weight than it has, but she is healthy. Her skin is pale, her legs and neck are long; she could have once been the picture perfect of a ballerina had her unfortunate accident not occurred. Now she has more muscle mass due to her physical training, but still retains the extreme flexibility of her ballet training. On occasion, Oksana will walk with a limp due to pain which is sometimes severe enough to warrant the use of a cane.

Depending on how she styles herself and the expression on her face, Oksana can go from either looking her age to roughly a decade younger in a matter of minutes. While there is usually a severe, nearly predatory look in her eyes and her mouth is usually set in one neutral line, the slightly upturned corners of her lips soften her into someone who at least appears half approachable. Her naturally wavy dark blond hair is kept at her mid back but she keeps it up in a bun during her shift.. Her voice carries a softer version of its natural Russian accent, however it thickens if she is in a heightened emotional state. When she makes public appearances off duty, she is usually dressed surprisingly casually for a woman of her disposition, preferring jeans or pants and tank tops with a jacket over them but she has been known to dress up from time to time.

Oksana is a very quiet individual who tends to keep to herself more often than not, but does appreciate the necessity of “getting out” now and then. That said, she is always studying those around her and when she is out, she very much enjoys people watching. Though her face might wear an intense expression due to the sharpness of her eyes, she strangely exudes a nearly unsettling calm about her when she is in a neutral mindset – at least what is perceived as neutral by outside parties. Due to her eidetic memory, Oksana is rarely able to put herself outside of her work and enjoy anything for the sake of pure amusement or relaxation. She is much more prone to work rather than fraternize, but is not one to penalize or scoff at those who choose to indulge as long as it does not interfere with anything that needs to be done. She is incredibly hard to befriend as she tends to keep others at arm’s length though it is done in as respectful a manner as she can. Duty is something that has always come first for her and will continue to do so.

One quick way to earn her considerably fiery ire is to shirk one's duty or do something that would go against her personal moral standards. While morally she lives in grey, there are definitive shades of black and white for her. She is interested in justice, not in politics, something she learned from her first handler and mentor.

Truly though, she is quite kind and extremely patient. Even with her tendency to keep people away, she is prone to random and shocking acts of kindness that would seem very out of character to those who didn’t intimately know her. Oksana is fiercely protective of her team and her crew and will under no circumstances leave a man behind. Her compassion is something that hides under her steely outer shell, but she is often found to be a person one can confide.

Like any trained intelligence field agent, all of these traits can change in an instant and she can become whoever she needs to be when a situation arises – on or off mission. This of course tends to lead people claiming to not know who she truly is and isolating her, something she is very used to and does not mind.

Oksana’s eidetic memory is possibly both her greatest strength and her greatest weakness rolled into one double-edged trait. It does of course provide her with the ability to remember a disproportionately large amount of information in extraordinary detail, but Oksana does not get to pick and choose what she ingests which has led to her owning quite a “collection” of extremely disturbing memories. Her auditory recall is near instantaneous (especially on something that has a pattern such as a piece of music); her visual recall is quick, but more on par with a slightly above average individual, though it is offset with the amount of detail and clarity she retains with things she has heard or read/seen.

She is an adept actor, able to easily exhibit an emotion both in tone, expression, and body language without actually feeling it with an increasingly accurate portrayal. However this often leads her to be accused of being disingenuous with others to the point that even if her feelings are genuine, they are often brushed off as being spurious. This is one of the chief reasons that Oksana tends to keep people at arm’s length because while she may not react outwardly, accusations of her feelings being false deeply hurt and upset her.

Most of the time she comes off as arrogant at worst, aloof at best, and can be accused of (usually with good reason) having little tact. She is not the type to sugar coat for anyone, even children. Oksana is a workaholic and also extremely dedicated to what she sees as her duty at the time to the point where she will ignore most anything else, including basic needs like eating and sleeping if need be. Though she is exceedingly patient, she has a very volatile, bordering on violent temper when she is finally pushed past a certain point.

She is fiercely loyal and a strong strategist with an ability to read people and situations quite easily. These tactics she utilizes are usually rather novel and can sometimes make others hesitate to employ them too hastily. Oksana has a natural pull as a leader, but prefers to not do so outside of her profession.

Unfortunately, Oksana suffers from PTSD as a result of her time out on the field. While she has recently been able to control her anxiety without the use of medication, she still suffers from flashbacks and nightmares which often lead to bouts of insomnia. While she can swim, she has an irrational fear of drowning that will keep her away from large bodies of water unless there is an absolute necessity.

She is average in strength for someone of her training, but she is very agile and extremely flexible which will usually level the playing field in a fight. Her skill in a variety of martial disciplines as well as gymnastics gives her an edge in most relevant scenarios. On her last mission before reassignment, Oksana suffered a spine and hip injury that paralyzed her to the point where it was unclear if she would be able to walk again. While she has since recovered function and has been cleared to serve, it does affect her from time to time.

Though physically recovered, Oksana still navigates the road to healing and once again finding a place for herself in the world around her.

Ballet is Oksana’s chief passion and she suffers from not being able to perform it as well as she used to due to her various injuries.

A dare at the Academy saw her taking up martial arts more as a joke than anything, but she found a surprising enjoyment in them and has become adept in several styles.

Privately her hobbies also include reading, playing piano, and cooking. She also dabbles in writing, but she would not let anyone know this.

Meditation is not so much a hobby as it is a necessity for her mind, though this is usually combined with some sort of kata to work both body and mind.

On a rainy Monday in the latter half of 2344, Oksana Volkova was born to Alyona Volkova and the man who had whispered to her nine months prior that he loved her and would leave his family to be with her always. Of course Alyona never heard from him again after that, though she did try to tell the man he had a daughter and was promptly met with threats that if she pursued the matter, there would be consequences. So such was life, Oksana being raised by a single mother who didn’t really want her and who would unload her as soon as possible; so at three years old, Oksana was “enrolled” into the Kirov Ballet Academy which also doubled as a boarding school. Alyona would never be physically present in her daughter’s life again after the day she left her there.

The Kirov Ballet Academy had become the foremost authority in the training of young men and women in the art of classical Russian ballet as well as giving them an education to rival the best academic academies. Even at three years old, students were expected to adhere to the strict curriculum and do so with a poised discipline. Hours of ballet were joined with hours of academics. There was no such thing as free time or play time and sleep was a premium commodity. These first few years of life were a hard adjustment period, not because she struggled with the dance or her studies, but because she was always looked at as something lesser. The other children were there because of their parents’ hopes and dreams, but Oksana had been in essence abandoned.

These looks would change though around the age of eight years old when it became readily apparent that Oksana was excelling leaps and bounds ahead of her age group and several above her. Curiosity consumed the ballet masters and Oksana was submitted to a series of information recall tests which would reveal that she possessed an eidetic memory with supreme auditory and pattern recall. Suddenly Oksana was no longer treated with a measure of derision by the masters and her teachers and instead she had become something precious to be nurtured and shaped into whatever they wanted. Word was sent to Alyona about the discovery but it didn’t seem to sway her opinion on her own daughter. Instead she kindly informed the school to not contact her again as she had married and started a new family. An eight year old bastard daughter would have just inconvenienced that. Oksana would not be told this, however, instead her masters would promise her that if she worked very hard and excelled, her mother would come back for her with high praise and all the love in the world.

It was this promise that fueled Oksana for the next six years. She had become the favored pupil of Grant Ballet Master Iakov Goremykin who became more like an overseer than anything else, constantly pushing Oksana to be better, to do more. One might have wondered why she didn’t break down, but by then she was so used to the rigorous curriculum and hardnosed discipline she hardly noticed it anymore. By thirteen Oksana was dancing en pointe, an extremely difficult thing to do for someone as young as her but she performed with an elegance and beauty surpassing her young years. It was also around this time that Oksana was gaining notoriety in the world of Russian ballet which in turn caused a barely recognizable figure to slither back into her life.

When it became apparent that her firstborn was making a name for herself, Alyona Volkova returned to the Kirov Academy in search of reconciliation with the daughter she had loved so very much. Excuses were made, and for a time Oksana believed her mother’s repentance was genuine as she introduced Oksana to her new husband and her half-brother Evgeniy. This all fell apart however when she overheard her mother mulling over ideas of how to best exploit Oksana’s fame to her benefit and the benefit of her husband and son. Crushed, Oksana returned to her school and consulted with Goremykin about possible options to free her from her mother. This would inevitably result in a legal battle that ended in Oksana being legally emancipated from her mother and accepting adoption from Goremykin so that she could remain enrolled in the academy.

At fifteen, it was decided that the company was to perform Swan Lake, the ultimate challenge for a group as young as they had. Training began immediately for a production still a year out. There was little surprise when Oksana was chosen as the principal dancer in the role of the Swan Queen. More training, day after day, hour after hour in effort to make the production the ultimate success. Oksana turned sixteen, the stage had been set, and she went in to get a physical checkup two days before the premier performance. She had been having pains in her legs and ankles which she had thought nothing of, but it was found that the constant rigorous stress had left several dozen stress fractures in her legs, especially concentrated in both of her ankles. It was recommended that Oksana forgo the premier performance and instead be treated for the fractures but she stubbornly refused. It was the ultimate moment in her young career and she was not about to miss out on what she naively claimed she had spent her life working toward.

Her performance finished, she submitted to the treatment for her stress fractures, though it removed Oksana from further performances of the ballet. While she was upset, she was not devastated by the new. Her performance had been perfect and lauded as the best in recent centuries. She had proven herself worthy in her own eyes, and more performances would be had; no one could truly match her. Her medical care was put into the hands of Starfleet as Goremykin had contacts within. During her stay there, she became acquainted with her doctor who was an older woman named Julia Peterson. Julia was extremely maternal toward Oksana which helped their bond develop quickly. Oksana was regaled with tales of Starfleet, the stars, and exploration – so many new and exciting opportunities that were there just waiting to be claimed.

On a whim, Oksana took the Starfleet Academy entrance exam when she was recovered just to see how she would do and was quite surprised to learn that at sixteen she had been accepted and could start her classes immediately. This was highly unusual, but what Oksana hadn’t known at the time was her eidetic memory had been flagged from her early childhood and the special dispensation for her to begin her education early had been granted by a high ranking member of Starfleet Intelligence seeking to possibly recruit her. This acceptance put Oksana in an unusual predicament. She had never before considered leaving her life of ballet, but the tales that Doctor Peterson had weaved for her intrigued her deeply, and while she loved to dance, there was something in her that longed to reach for more. Much to Goremykin’s disappointment, Oksana decided to take a brief sabbatical from her work at the school and give Starfleet Academy a try.

The Academy was quite a shock compared to what she was used to. While it was strict, she also found herself having freedom and free time to do with whatever she wanted. If it had not been for her roommate, an Orion girl named Lisya, Oksana might have just kept to herself instead of exploring a world that had previously been closed off to her. For herself, Oksana had chosen to pursue a track in Diplomacy as she felt her learned grace and poise under pressure and around others would be of benefit to her. Lisya would nearly constantly drag Oksana out to gatherings and parties, something she would balk at to begin with but eventually she viewed them as decent forms of practice for her studies. On one particular occasion Lisya, who was pursuing a track in Security, drunkenly teased Oksana about her past in ballet and how she would never survive in a real fight twirling and flouncing about. She then proceeded to dare Oksana to take up the Orion art of Shai’gal and if at some point she beat Lisya in a fight, Lisya promised she would pledge to serve Oksana for life and retire from Starfleet to do just that. Of course the life debt didn’t interest Oksana, but the fast striking martial art perfected by the female dominant race intrigued her.

With her memory, it was little surprise Oksana excelled in her studies, but she never pushed herself enough to be first in her class. Perhaps Lisya’s love for freedom had pushed her into not caring as much, or maybe she was just tired of working so hard, no one was really sure why. Even with this apparent lapse in eagerness, it did nothing to put a damper on Starfleet Intelligence’s intentions and she was approached during the end of her sophomore year at the Academy. The courting process didn’t take long with Oksana after they convinced her that while the life was precarious and usually resulted in something very solitary, SFI was the wall that stood between the Federation and destruction more often than not. It appealed to her bleeding heart and she agreed.

The last two years of her time at the Academy also doubled as the specialized training necessary to turn her into an intelligence field agent. It was during these years that Oksana shook off whatever had drawn her away from her wish to excel as much as possible and she once again threw herself into her studies and training with the purest of dedication. While she had shirked enough that she would not graduate first in her class, she did end up graduating with high honors from the Academy.

For another six months Oksana remained on Earth and served for a time as an Encryption Specialist assigned to the Orion Section. It was during this time she would meet her mentor Lieutenant Commander Sala Kane who would instill on Oksana the value of duty as well as the mindset of black, white, and shades of grey. Whereas many people still preferred to think in black and white, it did not work in the world of intelligence. It was also from Sala that Oksana learned the value of morale and never leaving someone behind unless it was unavoidable. An unpopular stance certainly, but one Oksana would gravitate toward.

When Kane was convinced that it could be handled, Oksana was finally sent out into the field though her record would state that she had been sent as a diplomatic attaché to Kronos. Instead she and a small team were sent to infiltrate a minor Orion Syndicate band. This operation, which would last a little over a year, went extremely well and resulted in the illegal weapons trade of that particular section being closed down and several dozen people being incarcerated because of it. Impressed by Oksana’s ability, SFI decided to immediately send her back out with another team after giving her a promotion to Lieutenant JG, this time as second in command. This time, however, they were sent to infiltrate a Romulan sect that was rapidly gaining power – too rapidly.

-Begin Classified Section-

A mission that was supposed to take eight months at most instead took five years. It was revealed that the particular group of Romulans, who called themselves the Lyreth Shiar – the True Empire – had allied themselves with the Breen and with their help they were quickly accumulating power and territory. The assigned team’s task switched from simply gathering intelligence to dismantling the operation. It was a very strange task, one that raised more than a few red flags for Oksana, but she and her team were compelled to comply or risk being cut off.

Over the five years, the team worked tirelessly to accomplish their mission; each one living and breathing as a Romulan as they slowly climbed through the ranks of the Lyreth Shiar. Oksana was no longer herself, instead she was a Romulan woman by the name of Sienae N’Vek, one who quickly rose through the ranks thanks to her particular negotiation talents. Oksana and one of the other agents even engaged as lovers to complete the ruse. It was a very dangerous game that they played and unfortunately, not all of the team would make it out alive. Their commander and one agent would be killed the second year in and the completion of the mission fell to Oksana.

Terrible atrocities were committed by the Lyreth Shiar and they were things that Oksana had to sit through or at the worst of times, carry out herself. Many innocents died due to their noncompliance with the sect’s wishes. Finally, after what seemed like too long, the intelligence team was able to turn the tides and convince the Breen that they were being played. This resulted in swift, terrible retribution that no one foresaw. The Breen brought an armada to the stronghold of the Lyreth Shiar and began to bombard it. The team retreated immediately but one of them was left behind. In this scenario it would have been best to leave it that way but Oksana went back for her lost comrade. The pair was able to make it to relatively safety within the forests, but a rogue Breen charge struck the area near them. They had been on their way into the river to escape when shrapnel from the forest flew and lodged itself deep into Oksana’s left hip and her spine; the immediate damage was enough to render her legs useless and when she fell into the rushing current, she nearly drowned but was saved by her partner.

Their mission complete, the remaining members of the infiltration team were evacuated. The whole operation would be classified and buried deep in the records. It was not a proud moment for anyone.

-End Classified Section-

Upon her return to Earth, Oksana was immediately handed to Starfleet Medical who were miraculously able to save her leg and also repair the damage to her spine so that she would be able to walk again. In her recovery, she was visited by several higher ranking SFI members who encouraged her to keep quiet about what had transpired and each time this would end up in a shouting match. It took her former mentor to calm her and convince her that for now, silence was the best route. Oksana agreed and as if it would fix her wounds, both physical and mental, she was awarded with a new shiny solid gold pip which would mark her as Lieutenant.

With her recovery nearly complete, she would once again be visited by Kane, but this time the news was more unwelcome than it had ever been. Instead of being sent back to the field or allowed to work in Headquarters, Oksana was to be sent off and bound to a ship, the USS Rubicon. Though feeling lost and adrift, she knew she had little choice but to comply if she wished to remain in the Fleet.

2344 – Born

2360–2363 – Starfleet Academy (Diplomatic Track)

- 2362–2363 – Starfleet Intelligence Cross Training

2363–2364 – Starfleet Intelligence Headquarters - Encryption Specialist

2364–2369 – Diplomatic Attaché to Qo'noS

- 2365 – Promoted to Lieutenant (junior grade)

- 2369 – Promoted to Lieutenant

*** Classified ***

2364 – Intelligence Field Agent – O-Sec

- Operation Blind Mice

--- Promoted to Lt. JG

2364–2369 – Intelligence Field Agent – R-Sec

- Operation Cold Ash

--- 2366 – Operation Leader

--- 2369 – Promoted to Lieutenant

*** End Classified ***

2370 – USS Rubicon – Chief Intelligence Officer