Dietra Glover

Commander Dietra Glover was a Starfleet officer with a long service record aboard many different ships before she was lost in space, and presumed dead, on the ill-fated USS Tombaugh.

Dietra was born Dietra Khumalo, in 2305, at the Norkan colony, an non-aligned world settled by humans who wished to practice genetic experimentation unmolested by Federation law.

Unfortunately the colony was near the Romulan Empire, and the Romulan government feared that the Norkan outpost was actually a staging area for a Starfleet bio-weapon.

The colony was attacked in 2310, months before the disastrous Tomed Incident of 2311, the two combined tragedies leading to a post-war nadir in Federation-Romulan Star Empire relations. Alidar Jarok, a young Romulan military officer, led the campaign.

Many people in the Federation thought that the Romulans had killed all of the colonists, in keeping with their custom of giving no quarter to prisoners of war. The Norkan tragedy quickly became known as a massacre.

However, Dietra, along with a handful of colonists had been taken by the Romulans to be subjected to a series of testing. The Romulans wanted to know what and how the humans had altered their genomes for their own bio-weapons and genetic manipulation projects.

Centurion Ousanas Dar, kinsmen of former Ambassador Caithlin Dar, was present at Norkan, and once he chose to live the Empire after his dissent of Romulan state policies became public, he defected to the Federation in 2315. Dar revealed the secret to his Starfleet intelligence interrogators, but they sat on the information for over a decade, believing it to be disinformation planted to goad Starfleet to violate the Neutral Zone.

In 2327, Ousanas Dar was approached by Section 31. They believed his story, and wanted to shut down the weapons complex the Norkan colonists were being held at. Section 31 also brought along Samson Glover, at that time, a young graduate student and Romulan expert. The two men and a Section 31 extraction team crossed the Neutral Zone to take out the camp.

After liberating the camp, Dietra and Samson began an arduous courtship that led to marriage in 2332. In 2333, Dietra gave birth to Terrence Glover. It would be her only child.

Dietra, a driven woman, passed off primary parental responsibility to Samson while she pursued her goal of obtaining a captaincy. She was a blunt, fierce personality, but she served admirably on the USS Independence, among several other ships.

Her distaste for teamwork or delegating authority led to her being passed over for the captain's chair, and her career stalled. In contrast, Samson, who had given up his own desire for space travel to raise Terrence, had scaled the ranks, becoming a Rear Admiral by 2350.

Glover's thwarted determination and jealousy led her to take a position as First Officer aboard the USS Adelphi. The Adelphi's first contact mission to Ghorusda was a plum assignment.

The mission became the infamous "Ghorusda Disaster", which resulted in the deaths of 47 crewmen, among them the ship's Captain Darson. Blame largely fell on Dietra's shoulders, with critics swift to note Commander Glover going along with Darson's obtuse handling of intricate Ghorsudan cultural rituals, instead of providing stronger dissent.

Her career in tatters, Dietra eventually accepted assignment as First Officer aboard the USS Tombaugh, hoping to regroup on the ship's long, deep space mission. That mission was cut short in 2362 when the Tombaugh was reported lost.

Source Material: (Star Trek: Aegis 1.0-"The Valley of Peace")