Nirra Jean Bosomon was born on a long haul freighter operating in the outer quadrant, to a 14 year-old single mother named Shalla, the daughter of the ship’s hydroponics engineer. The ship was not set up to have babies born during the long voyage and if Shalla’s mother had still been alive Shalla wouldn’t have been able to conceal her pregnancy until she went into labor and other arrangements could have been made.

According to normal standards, Nirra’s birth was unremarkable. She weighed in at 6-lbs. 4 oz and was 16” long. She was a cute, chubby, baby with bright, blue eyes and thick, blond curls. Her mother, Shalla was more interested in dressing the dolly and playing house with her new husband, Ike than nurturing a child and Ike was only really interested in Shalla. So after just a couple weeks, Nirra was left with a holographic babysitter, not much more than a computer with a face, for 16 hours a day, every day with Shalla only popping in to make sure she was clean and fed.

By the time Nirra was six months old she was speaking words, at nine months she was making sentences and by the time she was two she could read at a first grade level. Though completely healthy, she was a very small child; at two she only weighed 24 lbs. and was barely 29” tall. The crew of the freighter was mostly men and the closest female in age to Nirra was her own mother. So the computer became more than her teacher; it was her playmate and her friend.

The freighter reached New Castle Colony on Mars the year Nirra was nine and at the insistence of Shalla’s mother’s sister who had traveled from Earth to meet them. Nirra and her 12-day-old brother Otto were left with Aunt Josephine and Uncle Alex so she could go to a proper school. After one year in school on Earth, Nirra had completed all the course requirements for high school and would begin her freshman year in college three weeks before her eleventh birthday. She was offered a full ride scholarship by MicroGen Technologies and by thirteen she had graduated Egregia Cum Laude in bioengineering. MicroGen Technologies offered to continue paying for her education if she would continue at MIT and if she focused on Microbiology and Genetics. By eighteen she had obtained a Ph.D. in Genetics and was working in Dallas, Texas in her own privately funded facility on a highly classified project.

Nirra’s life had very few things in it that were not related to her work. She liked all things Celtic, especially the sad ethereal sounds of the music. It touched something deep inside her soul. She loved luxurious lingerie; the more silk and lace the better. Her diminutive size coupled with her moving through school at such an uncommonly fast pace always drew unkind comments from other students, who pointed out her lack of height, age and maturity, making her feel incompetent. To combat being made to feel like a child she had taken to wearing the most grown up underwear she could find from her earliest understanding of womanhood.

But the thing she loved most of all was her little brother Otto. Red hair, freckles and a grin as big as her heart could hold. Nirra had taken charge of Otto when he was ten minutes old. Her mother and father had encouraged Nirra to do so because they knew Otto would be going with her to Earth and not staying with them. They said they didn’t want to get too close to him so they wouldn’t miss him so much. Even at nine, Nirra thought their reasoning was lame but didn’t care. It was the first time in her life that she really felt loved by another human being and she would have done anything for him.

Aunt Josephine was wise and didn’t try to get between Nirra and her caring for Otto on the trip back to Earth, but rather offered herself in the role of Nirra’s helper with him. By the time Nirra was in school they had settled into a fairly normal family pattern. At age 15, Nirra was three months into her doctoral program at MIT when she received word that her parents had been killed in a shuttle accident. She went home for a few days because it was expected, but she realized quickly that nothing had really changed except that Aunt Josephine and Uncle Alex had adoption papers drawn up for them both and Otto had decided to call them Mom and Dad. While she was okay with the adoption Nirra opted to keep it Aunt and Uncle.

After two years of grueling work, just weeks prior to completion of the final phase, corporate espionage caused the explosion in her lab, destroying all of her work, put her into a coma and causing her to require months of rehabilitation. It was determined by MicroGen Technologies that the safest place for Nirra to begin duplicating her work would be aboard a starship, far from the reach of saboteurs and spies. After full disclosure meetings, Star Fleet became a willing partner with MicroGen Technologies and Doctor Bosomon. The Europa was chosen because it is a new ship and has the best equipped laboratories in the fleet.