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Kira Nerys

- Rank: Major, Bajoran Militia
- Current assignment: Bajoran liaison officer and first officer, Deep Space Nine
- Species/gender: Bajoran female
- Year of birth: 2343
- Place of birth: Dahkur Province, Bajor
- Marital status: Single
- Security clearance: Grade H-1, Bajoran Intelligence NetThough 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 was Bajoran springball, but she had some crafts, such as fingerpainting at age 4 in the camp school.

At the age of only 12, after working in the mines, the orphaned Kira joined the Shakaar resistance cell, named for its leader, and two years later helped to temporarily liberate the Cardassians' notorious Gallitepp labor camp. She also flew outdated Raider craft against her oppressors, and suffered during the winter of 2360-61 along with the rest of her cell in her native Dahkur Hills caves.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. She never served time in Cardassian prison, but she was once rescued from a Cardassianinterrogation center with her fellow cellmates.

Her war for Bajor's liberation included murder as well, such as when she checked aboard the Terok Nor station in 2365 to kill a native collaborator with the Cardassians, and it 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 the major's rank and the post as Bajoran military attache 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 hadsome 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, seeing them 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.