Lieutenant Commander Alexander Thorn
Name Alexander Thorn
Position Chief Operations Officer
Second Position Second Officer
Rank Lieutenant Commander
Character Information
| Gender | Male | |
| Species | Human | |
| Age | 33 |
Physical Appearance
| Physical Description | Above-average height but a bit on the weedy side. Sometimes a bit scruffy but he's given up on trying to grow a beard; the last time it was a bit... disappointing. |
Family
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Alex is a bit lackadaisical by nature, but as he's grown in Stafleet he's matured somewhat. In particular as he's risen in rank he's tried to tone down his mouthiness and skepticism of authority, at least in public. He's also been seeking to better balance his natural tendency to act first and plan later with a more cautious and thoughtful approach. | |
| Strengths & Weaknesses | + Technical improvisation + Computer expertise + Quick on his feet + He knows a guy - Mouthy - High int, low wis - He knows a guy |
| Personal History | Alex was born and raised on Harlan III, a frontier world near the Orion Triangle known mainly for its dilithium and iridium mines, along with a lively sideline in traffic across the Romulan and Klingon borders. While not densely populated, it was a prosperous enough place, and he had a comfortable childhood. Alex's family was involved in the shipping business, and he spent much of his childhood around spacecraft and starports. He had a precocious talent for languages and information technology, something he leveraged into an early start at the local university, along with a side business developing security software. If left to his own devices, he may well have continued climbing the academic ladder. However, due to a series of unfortunate misunderstandings with local legitimate businessmen, Alex applied for a position in Starfleet via Officer Candidate School in the hopes of relocating somewhere far away. In the face of severe crew shortages due to the recently-ended Dominion War, he easily gained acceptance. The stricter rules and more uptight culture was a bit of a shock, but he persevered. He was initially assigned to Starbase 375, a key installation supporting occupation forces in Cardassia. This was less exciting than it sounded; he was in charge of a cryptography team, installing secure communications modules on allied ships and recovering data from ejected flight recorders or scavenged equipment. The only potential dangers were caffeine overdose, sleep deprivation, and the Marine guards shooting them all to prevent capture. He was pretty sure that last was just a rumor the techs had made up to scare new staff. Disassembling recovered Cardassian and Dominion database servers in search of secrets was, if anything, even more boring; the good stuff was being handled by a dedicated intelligence team. Despite that he kept diligently at work and eventually earned a recommendation from his CO for a transfer to a starship posting. The USS Khagan was a Sovereign starship, and his initial position was as lead officer for the computing and communications division. They spent several years on the outskirts of Federation space doing routine exploration and survey duties. Alex received a commendation for work adapting the ship's communications array to interface with the satellite data network of a pre-warp planet, allowing greater study of its culture without bringing the ship in close enough that it might be detected. This led to his selection as assistant chief operations officer. His department head and the XO both pushed him to expand his horizons a bit and do more varied work, including leading away missions and eventually command training. This state of affairs continued until he ran into some trouble while leading an independent operation. While conducting a routine survey, the Khagan was called away by an emergency at a nearby colony. As some of their observations of local wildlife were time-dependent, Alex was left behind with a large away party, the captain's yacht, and a few other shuttles. As it turned out, the emergency was faked by local pirates, who did not appreciate a starship poking around the system and were not thrilled about a bunch of small craft still being there. Alex had to use every trick he knew to escape, using the shuttles as decoy lures and spending a week playing cat-and-mouse with a bird-of-prey before managing to escape and link back up with their ship. The close brush with danger briefly put a pause in Alex's ideas about what his career should be. It was one thing to face danger while sitting safely behind the shields and weapons of the Federation's most advanced ship, another to do it with a glorified shuttle. Part of him thought maybe a nice starbase or planet-side posting would be good. At the same time, the experience had been exhilarating - at least after the fact - and left him thinking he'd been pretty good at it. That side won out and he accepted a posting as chief of ops on the Mercury. |
|
| Service Record | Data Processing Officer, Starbase 375 Information Systems Division Officer, USS Khagan Assistant Chief Operations Officer, USS Khagan Chief Operations Officer, USS Mercury |