Aina was a child of the Occupation, born on Bajor or one of the colonies to a young Bajoran couple. When the father was killed in a Cardassian raid, the mother gave her daughter to a pair of humans, Federation aide workers, assisting the refugees, in order to go on a strike against Cardassian soldiers. She never returned.

The young couple, Andrew and Amy Mason, were unable to have children of their own and adopted the Bajoran baby, known only a Aina, as their own. They returned to earth, where Aina grew up in London, England, while both her parents attended the academy. She had a loving home where she knew both sets of grandparents and was taken in as though she was their biological grandchild. She thought very little of her Bajoran heritage until she was five and began asking The Questions.

Since then, she's felt a little uncomfortable in the very human world she's always known, but when she accompanied her parents back to Bajor at the age of ten, she was not received well by other Bajoran children who saw her as a 'traitor' to their race. Neither human nor Bajoran, Aina has a difficult time trying to reconcile how she appears on the outside to her human upbringing on the inside.

She feels no connection to Bajor, the Prophets, or the Bajoran people as a whole. She came onboard the Miranda after her nurse mother secured a position. Her father followed a year later, transfering to the tactical/security department.

Aina, like many of the children who'd spent their childhood years aboard the Miranda, entered Starfleet Academy in 2382.

At the Academy, she took a liking to the computer and communications sciences - this was an extension of her tinkering with the commlines and terminals on the Miranda, to help the kids to have their own private communications line, with out the adults knowing about it all - well that what she thought at least.

While not a genius, it was easy for her to navigate the convoluted neural networks that made up the central core of the software that was an essential part of each ship. Watching hundreds of lines of data, she could see when something was wrong or when it was connected to another part of that data. She could never explain it, most of the time, she didn't understand what she had found, but she could work out what she needed to do to have something work the way she wanted.

But with her studies at the Academy, and her almost machine like ability of pattern recognition, she was accelerated through the Operations Program and into the Communications program and she attended the new communications and data warfare complex at the new Star Fleet Academy Communications Campus in the Santa Clara Valley. She felt a little uncomfortable attending classes when the other attendees were experienced starfleet officers, many were more than a decade or two older than herself.

She was transferred to her 'home' the USS Miranda as a part of the new communications department for the ship as part of her cadet cruise.

While on the Miranda, she was part of a successful covert operations against the Syndicate, a Federation wide and probably wider criminal group in helping bring down Slaver Operations on the Planet of Gyndine. It was her unique skills with information systems that helped the Miranda's team in bringing down the central operations complex and finding information that crippled the Syndicate in many places through out the Federation.

She was promoted to Acting Ensign, in recognition of her service to the Federation, but this was on the proviso of her still studying and a successful graduation, where her promotion of Ensign will be recognised and at Graduation will receive the extra half pip of a Lieutenant (junior grade).

She was transferred to the USS Carthage, to gain experience in the different comms systems on each ship, but she was barely on board the ship, when the Carthage was destroyed at DS5 in a Triad attack.

After her rescue by the USS Galaxy, she was transferred to the Operations Department on the Galaxy.

She is a quiet and reserved, except with her passion, information systems. But her time at the academy has helped her out of her shell. She can be found at times writing in her diary and still using old-fashioned paper and ink.

When she is not reading or using the holodeck to dig deep into the data that her data miners have found for her from computers and the Federation Data Net, she can be found riding and looking after her holo-horses that she keeps and uses on the holodeck.

Family:
Ensign Andrew Mason, USS Miranda, father
Ensign Amy Smart Mason, USS Miranda, mother

Her diary was given to her by her adopted maternal grandmother, an old diary from before world war three, it is a family heirloom.