Gender: Female
Age: 24 (born 2326)
Height: 5'11"
Weight: 105 lb
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Dark Brown
Ethnicity: Mixed

Appearance: Hope could pass for a lot of backgrounds, though certain traits to stand out. She is not nearly as tall as many Belters, but she has the Belter physique for her height; most likely she would have only grown a touch over 5' tall had she been born on Earth. Her coloring is just dark enough that she could well be of southern European or Middle-Eastern heritage or perhaps some Indian or Hispanic heritage; the truth is she is a mix of most of those. While she does carry some tell-tale Belter tattoos, they few and small as she didn't have the money for more, and they're inconspicuous. She is also pretty enough that people pay attention to her face and overall body more than they worry about any little tattoo they might notice

Usually Hope dresses practically. She almost always has her hair in a pony tail to make working easier. She commonly wears a t-shirt or similar to keep fabric far from her hands, accompanied by pants and at work a belt from which she can hang all sorts of tools. Unless there is risk of damage to it, she always wears a tiny spaceship made of folded scrap metal on a cord as a necklace.

Behavior: More than her slender physique, Hope's speech sets her as clearly a Belter, as she defaults to Belter Creole and includes it noticeably in her English. While she seems at ease speaking with others, especially other Belters, she doesn't seem to talk a lot. Some of that may be because she gets ultra-focused when tinkering with mechanics, something she's really good at doing. Some of it may be related to why she too frequently gets in a dark or tearful mood and drinks herself into a stupor.

Background: Asha "Hope" Blackburn was born on Eros Station to two lower-class laborers. Life wasn't easy, but her parents managed to scrape together just enough money to house them in one room and keep food on the table. With the lack of space and toys, Hope started making her own little toys out of scraps. That grew into messing around with more sophisticated junk as she became a teenager. As tough as things were, those were the good years.

When Hope was 14 her mother became quite ill, and there was no way to afford medication while keeping a home and feeding themselves, especially with her mother unable to work. Hope started working as an apprentice mechanic, making almost nothing but able to make up for some of what her mother couldn't bring in. Two years later her mother passed away. A year later her father died in a work accident.

Hope ended up homeless on Eros Station, making enough money as a journeyman mechanic to feed herself and slowly save up with no rent to pay. At 19 her grumblings in a bar about the squalor created by the inners led her to meet Darius, a hot-head of a Belter not too much older than her. Soon after their hot and heavy romance began Hope moved into Darius's really-cheap, one-room apartment. Not too much later Darius got himself killed rioting on behalf of the OPA, leaving Hope pregnant and alone again. Fortunately Darius had stashed enough money that Hope could slowly dig into it to supplement her income and keep a roof over her head.

While pregnancy itself wasn't so difficult, being a single mother was much more so. She was able to keep working through her pregnancy since she had a technical job. Trying to balance hours around a baby was tougher, and paying someone to babysit ate into her income hungrily. Looking back on it, she's not sure how she managed the first years at all. But once Charun could walk comfortably and start handling things safely things got a touch easier. While they were slowly burning through the money Darius left and thus mostly living paycheck to paycheck, Hope was managing.

And then came the fateful day. Hope had just dropped Charun off with his preschool group who were headed on a field trip. While headed to work she bumped into a nervously sweaty Belter. The package he carried slipped open as he fumbled with it, revealing the improvised bomb within. The OPA was after some target, but she'd lost Darius so it was tangential to her; maybe this time something more might come of it. She helped the man stand back up and comfortably hold the package, and then she continued to work. But the bomb went off very soon thereafter, the OPA member bringing the bomb to its location having been caught by CPM Security (operators for the UN). He set off the bomb in totally the wrong location, killing himself and killing or injuring a bunch of security as well as a number of Belter civilians. Looking at a news feed on the station minutes later Hope's gut sank as she saw signs of the preschool group in the blast wreckage. She hurried to the scene and with the ongoing chaos manage to get through to find Charun's body. She held him and weakly tried to fight off officials trying to get to the victims. After they'd taken his corpse, Hope spotted the necklace she'd made for him, having fallen off when he was thrown by the concussive blast. She put it around her own neck and walked off in a daze.

Unable to focus, Hope quit her job and started burning through the savings faster. Everything reminded her of her loss, and she couldn't help question what would have happened if she'd done something differently when she bumped into the OPA man. After too many nights of inebriation she decided she couldn't remain. Gathering what little she had left she found a job as a mechanic on a ship in port and headed out soon; she didn't even know what ship, just that it was leaving and she got the job. Working on board she soon discovered it was the Zhidao, a science research ship out of Eros. She did her job well and covered well for the chief engineer whose incompetence advertised the nepotism that got him his position. Her skill was recognized, but no one really said much. Meanwhile, Hope kept mostly to herself. She worked with others OK, but she didn't let anyone in. She worked longer hours than required, her focus on the work helping her keep going. Too frequently when off duty she ended up in tears followed by getting herself sloshed. Sitting there drinking quietly over unstated pasts beside someone else such as with Dr. Abang Kaos and very infrequently following drinking with an easily-forgotten romp with someone on the crew was about the extent of her socialization. For now this worked for her, and she stayed on through a few missions, totaling over a year on board.