2382 August: Transferred, Ensign, Starfleet Security, San Francisco
2382 November: Reassigned, Ensign, Security Officer - USS Galaxy
When Eytan was born, his home planet of Brenar, located near the Devore Imperium in the Delta Quadrant, was a quiet, peaceful world. The Brenari, while capable of warp travel, were not very expansionist and were content to remain in their home system for the most part. They used their natural telepathy to aid other races in need, and were treated with a great deal of respect and admiration by many nearby species. But not by the Devore.
The Devore hated telepaths. They sought to exterminate any and every telepathic being they came across, and the Brenari were no exception. Eytan was still a young boy when the Devore came to Brenar, attacking the peaceful planet with their warships. Some Brenari escaped, but most of them were captured and sent to internment camps, including Eytan and his family. Life at the camps was worse than anyone could have possibly imagined. The Brenari were barely ever fed, they were kept packed together in small buildings with hardly any space to even sit down, and many of them were taken by the Devore to be used as guinea pigs in cruel science experiments. Disease and starvation ran rampant throughout the camps. Jhiyal, Eytan's younger sister, died after contracting a virus lethal to young Brenari children, and his parents Garev and Mira were both among the many Brenari killed by Devore execution squads. Eytan remained alone in the camp for four years, determined to survive and somehow escape.
His chance finally came a decade after the Devore first came to Brenar, when Eytan was sixteen years old. A massive riot broke out in the camps, and the thousands of Brenari still left staged an escape attempt larger and more violent than the Devore were capable of handling. Hundreds of Brenari escaped, including Eytan, who fell in with eleven others. The twelve of them had managed to avoid capture for several weeks before they encountered Voyager, a starship making its way through the Delta Quadrant on its way home, which was located on the far side of the galaxy. In one of the few acts of genuine kindness Eytan had ever witnessed in his young life, the crew of Voyager granted he and his fellow refugees sanctuary while they crossed Devore space.
They were almost caught when the Devore's chief investigator infiltrated Voyager, suspecting that they were smuggling Brenari refugees. Captain Janeway managed to outwit the investigator and helped the Brenari escape through a wormhole that led them away from Devore space. However, Eytan elected to remain aboard Voyager. He had grown comfortable aboard the Federation starship, and with no world and no family to go back to, the prospect of starting anew in the Alpha Quadrant appealed to him. While his companions fled, Eytan was placed in transporter stasis along with Voyager's own telepathic crewmembers, and once the Devore realized that the Brenari had escaped, they let Voyager go free.
Eytan remained aboard Voyager throughout the rest of its journey back to the Alpha Quadrant. During his time there, a little more than two years, he learned a great deal about the Federation, and came to respect and admire it. He also went through various classes that introduced him to the history of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, as well as various cultural, scientific, medical, and other subjects, all designed to help Eytan's integration into life as a Federation citizen. He took an interest in medicine and started spending much of his free time studying Federation medical procedures with various members of Voyager's medical staff. It didn't take long for Eytan to decide that, once Voyager had returned to the Federation, he wanted to become a Starfleet officer. Never before had Eytan felt as happy, safe, and comfortable as he did during his time on Voyager.
When Voyager returned to the Federation in 2378, Eytan applied to Starfleet Academy as soon as he was able. His four years at the Academy greatly enhanced the basic knowledge he'd already learned aboard Voyager; he was a very good student and eagerly absorbed everything his professors threw at him, tackling every subject with an excitement that he never knew he had. He became a very capable doctor, specializing in pediatrics, and graduated with honors in 2382. Upon his graduation, Eytan was immediately assigned to the USS Galaxy as a Medical Officer. The Galaxy had been in the middle of a mission at the time, however, and was scheduled to travel to Trill upon its completion, and so Eytan was sent to Trill to wait for his new assignment to arrive.
He spent his time on Trill staying with Dr. Mazrin Nox, a local physician and a retired Starfleet officer, who became Eytan's mentor and tutored him in Trill medicine while the young man waited for the Galaxy. Eytan was at Ground Zero when the USS Akula crashed in Leran Manev in February 2382. He was one of the very few people who managed to escape the crash site with his life, and he had volunteered his services to help care for the numerous victims of the tragedy when the Galaxy finally arrived. After the mystery behind the Akula's crash was solved, Eytan officially joined the Galaxy's crew.
Over the next two months, however, Eytan had difficulty performing his duties. While searching for survivors of the Akula crash, he had come upon Dr. Nox, who was fatally wounded. When Eytan took Mazrin's hand to comfort him during his passing, his dormant telepathy resurfaced and, before he could get it under control, he had taken many of Nox's memories--including some from his past hosts--into his own mind (one out of every one-hundred Brenari could transfer memories from one mind to another). This eventually caused severe psychological problems that forced Eytan to go on medical leave.
He spent his leave on Earth, attending counseling sessions at Starfleet Medical. It was several months before he was considered psychologically fit for duty, but he no longer believed himself medically capable. He transferred to Security, and underwent a rigorous three-month training program at Starfleet Security in San Francisco. When he was finally approved for security duty, Eytan was granted permission to return to his former posting aboard the Galaxy.
The experiences Eytan suffered during his years in a Devore internment camp--including being tortured and his entire family dying, either by disease or by execution--damaged him not only physically, but also psychologically and emotionally. When he arrived in the Alpha Quadrant, he was very quiet and insecure, and had difficulty opening up to people.
He became a doctor because of his childhood in the camps, surrounded by death and disease, but his experiences on Trill and during the following weeks changed him. He began to exhibit behavioral types that were not normal for him. When he transferred to Security, he became strangely dedicated to his new line of work, obsessing over people's capacity for violence and striving to understand the psychology behind criminal behavior. His counselors at Starfleet Medical have theorized that these behavioral changes were caused by his partial absorption of the memories and personalities of Mazrin Nox, a theory that is likely correct, since one of Nox's past hosts was a private investigator in Mak'ala.
Eytan's stolen personality traits have also altered the way he acts around other people. No longer is he particularly shy or awkward in a social setting; he now has no difficulty whatsoever in meeting new people. In fact, he now welcomes such opportunities, and he is much more open to conversation now, his quiet personality having been replaced by a friendlier and more expressive demeanor.
As a result of his psychological trauma, Eytan's natural Brenari telepathy, which used to be powerful enough that he could easily scan another person's mind from several meters away, has been temporarily weakened, and now can only be activated through physical contact.
Occasionally when someone touches him without warning, Eytan suffers from flashes where the other person's thoughts invade his own. Normally it only provides a minor shock to him, but if that person is undergoing some kind of emotional turmoil at the time, the intensity of those thoughts can sometimes overwhelm Eytan to the point where he requires several hours of rest in order to get his own mind back under control. Because of the unpredictable nature of these incidents, Eytan has taken to wearing gloves until he regains full control of his telepathy.
Eytan bears a long scar on the right side of his head, which he received during his escape from the Devore internment camps. He has decided not to have it removed, as it provides him a physical reminder of what he went through back in the Delta Quadrant and the family and friends he lost.
