 Quick Facts:
-
Rank:
Colonel, Bajoran Militia (as of "Image in the
Sand")
- Current assignment: Commanding officer, Deep Space
Nine; previously, Bajoran liaison officer and first officer,
Deep Space Nine
- Full Name: Kira Nerys
- Year of birth: 2343
- Place of birth: Dahkur Province, Bajor
- Marital status: Single
- Security clearance: Grade H-1, Bajoran Intelligence Net
- Database priority code: Alpha-1, Bajoran Central
Archives
- First Seen: "Emissary" (DS9)
Complete Bios:
FROM
STARTREK.COM
Though 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 growing
up was Bajoran springball, but she had some crafts such as
finger-painting at age 4 in the camp school. Having forsworn any
artistic aptitude, she ironically would have been a member of
the artist J'barra of Ih'valla, had the ancient Bajoran caste
system survived the Occupation.
At the age of only 12, after working in the mines, the orphaned
Kira was recruited by Lorit Akrem into the province's Shakaar
resistance cell, named for its leader. A year later, after
running errands and cleaning weapons, the group finally accepted
her fully when Shakaar approved her replacing a missing member
for a raid on a Cardassian skimmer. The earring she wears today
was made from the metal of the skimmer by cellmate Lupaza, after
Kira killed the entire unloading complement while giddily trying
to impress the group.
 A year later, she helped to temporarily liberate the
Cardassians' notorious Gallitepp labor camp, and eventually
learned to fly outdated Raider crafts against her oppressors.
She 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.
Through it all Kira never served time in Cardassian prison, but
she was once rescued from a Cardassian interrogation center with
her fellow cellmates.
Her war for Bajor's liberation had to include murder as well,
such as when she helped plasma-bomb the home of Gul Pirak in
Hathon, and when she checked aboard the Terok Nor station in
2365 to kill a native collaborator with the Cardassians; the
latter 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 a major's commission 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 had some
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 Ferengi, 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 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.
 
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