. .

Name:     Year of birth :  Place of birth:   Education :    Rank :       Race :       Position:        Defiant:     Status :

Miles "Edward" O'Brien    2328     Killarney, Ireland     Starfleet Academy, 2345    Chief petty officer, senior chief specialist      Human      Chief of operations     Chief engineering  Active duty

***Starfleet Career Summary

2346 -- Enlisted as a non-commissioned officer in Starfleet

2347 -- As young crewman posted to NCC-57295 U.S.S. Rutledge under Capt. Ben Maxwell, was decorated
after Setlik III and re-assigned by Maxwell as a bridge tactical officer

2364 -- After serving on two more ships in the last two years, transferred to new U.S.S. Enterprise under
Captain Jean-Luc Picard as relief flight control officer in command duty division and later as security in
operations division

2365 -- Re-assigned at chief petty officer rank to Enterprise transporter chief,
usually posted in Transporter Room 3

2369 -- Accepts offer as chief of operations at Deep Space Nine, onetime Cardassian mining station,
under Cmdr. Ben Sisko

By mid-2373, had been decorated at least 16 times for over 238 career engagements

***Starfleet Biographical File

The curly-headed Miles Edward O'Brien, who would become DS9's first Starfleet chief of operations as the
latest chapter in a hard-working career, was born with a deep pride in his Irish ancestry, traced back to
medieval King Brian Boru and 1902 American labor martyr Sean Aloysius O'Brien. The family, which also
included two brothers, was living near a small town on Earth - most probably in Ireland - by the time he was
of age, and his mother cooked unreplicated, meat-and-potatoes meals. He was an ordinary child, getting a
disciplinary swat from his father now and then and giving substitute teachers a rough time. He once owned
a pup pesky for attention when locked up - yet peaceful by nature, timid for the life of even a mosquito. He
also enjoyed building subspace transceiver models, along with ships in bottles, but actually scored in the
lower third of his age group for mechanical aptitude.

O'Brien joined Starfleet as an impulsive act two days before he was supposed to leave for the unwanted
Aldebaran Music Academy to play cello, as his father had always wished. The elder O'Brien - who'd made
him practice every day and sent in his recorded audition - was furious, but calmed down and later accepted
his son's choice proudly. Even so, O'Brien got to be quite good at the cello, and has kept up his public
playing; one of his favorite composers is Minezaki. In later life, his mother died in 2368, and his father
remarried in the spring of 2370 to a woman his son had not yet met by later that year.

Nearly a year after sign-up in 2346, though, he came face to face with death for the first time at age 18 as a
member of the U.S.S. Rutledge under Capt. Maxwell, when he was forced to kill a Cardassian who jumped
him on patrol on Setlik III after the massacre there during the border wars. The do-or-die pressure of that
incident is what awakened his dormant interest in mechanics: he saved 13 men by getting a field transporter
operational in less than 10 minutes with no prior knowledge - a cool-headed feat that led to his post as
Maxwell's tactical officer. Since then he's used transporters for 22 years without an accident, and served
until 2362 on that ship.

Two years later and brief stints aboard two more ships, he was among the first crew aboard the new Galaxy
-class Enterprise when it departed Utopia Planetia, serving in command division as a relief con officer and
later on the battle bridge after saucer separation en route to Deneb IV. After transferring to the gold tunic
of the operations division during his first year his favorite worksite on the 1701-D became Transporter Room 3.

After proposing to her in her Arboretum on the Enterprise, he survived her bridal "cold feet" and married
botanist Keiko Ishikawa with LaForge as his best man in Ten-Forward on SD 44390, or May 23, 2367; Data,
who had introduced them, served as bridal escort. Keiko has tried to give him her green thumb as well as
her neatness streak, both without success; he's become known as the "Black Thumb." He in turn had to
adapt his meat-and-potatoes tastes to her bent for organic seafood; on duty he drinks hot coffee,
double-black and sweet, though he's had synthale. His onetime assistant Neela got him hooked on sweet
jumja sticks. He dislikes most alien food but relishes even Starfleet combat rations.

He became a father a year later when his daughter Molly was born, with a second child expected early in
2373. In 2370 the couple had taken their first vacation for either one in five years - since the second year of
the Enterprise-D mission - after he was framed and nearly executed for a Maquis bombing by Cardassia.
Apparently the trip home a year earlier for her mother's 100th birthday was not considered a vacation.

O'Brien's "promotion" and move to DS9 in 2369 as chief operations officer - the equivalent of chief engineer
was only reluctantly supported by Keiko, and the O'Briens early on were marked by gossip that Keiko was
extremely unhappy; they had had squabbles but have worked through them all and love each other and their
children very much. Actually, O'Brien has offered to transfer at least twice - early on, and again when then-
Vedek Winn attacked Keiko's secular school, but she turned him down and stood her ground. In 2369 a local
incident thrust him into a role in a Bajoran village's ritual sirah but he was true to his wife and his down-to-
earth nature there, as well as when a female Cardassian engineer mistook his irritation for flirting later. As a
parent he loves reading to Molly and recommended Sisko separate Nog's influence from Jake, whom he also
tutored in mechanics at his father's request.

Despite his family, O'Brien often agrees to go along on potentially fatal missions. In fact, more than any other
DS9 senior officer, he has had numerous odd near-death experiences: given up for dead on a sabotaged
T'Lani III peace mission, nearly killed while an unwitting replicant is substituted in his place, and actually
replaced by his doppelganger from five hours into an alternate universes future when he dies of radiation
poisoning. Soon after, Jake Sisko saved his life by pulling him from a fiery plasma-filled conduit.

Along with his musical and mechanical background O'Brien remains quite an athlete - an ideal relief for the
long hours and hard work he puts in. A kayak enthusiast, he has had a holo-program since 2364 during his
Enterprise assignment - though he has never finished it, dislocating his shoulder six times in the process as
of late 2371. It's his favorite activity after work and family, and he sings "ancient human sea chanteys" during
it such as "Louie, Louie" to establish a smooth paddling rhythm. Lately he's even got Odo interested on
two such "trips."

Around 2355, O'Brien kept a regimen of playing racquetball five hours daily, and missed it so much on DS9
he built a live court himself. He sparked a good-natured rivalry with Bashir, progressing through that sport into
darts during Keiko's months-long absence on a Bajoran bio-survey. He's never had a run like his 47-game
win streak at darts, ended only by a torn rotator cuff in his shoulder, his most serious injury there yet.

Beyond sports and games, O'Brien enjoys detective fiction such as Mickey Spillane and at DS9 loaned copies
to Odo; he's also an old hand at poker. The chief enjoys the holosuites as well for role-playing, going from RAF
pilots in Bashir's own program for the Battle of Britain of Terra's World War II to his own replaying of the ancient
Irish-Viking Battle of Clontarf as High King Brian Boru, a direct ancestor.

When short-tempered he's been known to utter the quasi-curse "Cardies" and "bloody hell!" However, his
lingering racism toward Cardasssians was examined after Keiko rejects it when the war orphan Rugal stays
with them - although his trumped-up monkey trial and torture on Cardassia didn't help any. He dislikes getting
medical physicals and hates surprise parties for himself.

He had a fear of spiders, but largely conquered it during a crisis among Talarian hook spiders and their meter
long legs in a dark Jefferies Tube on the Zayra IV starbase - and after being married kept a pet tarantula,
Christina, found on Titus IV.

As Captain Maxwell realized in his early career, O'Brien has the special ability to quickly analyze a situation
and present options for all contingencies - a talent expressed in command as well as engineering applications.
His calm words with the former captain helped diffuse a powder keg, averting a Cardassian incident in 2368,
and Picard tapped him to be tactical officer after Worf resigned from Starfleet and other key officers were farmed
out to crews in a blockade fleet. He repeated that job often for Sisko on the USS Defiant.

O'Brien has many accomplishments in his career field, led by his first-ever use of a genetic pattern in the
Enterprise's modified biolfilter to restore a transported object to a prior state. Though he easily catches on
to many alien technologies, he had never worked a Cardassian transporter before his arrival at DS9. Their
inflexible computer design, the many Starfleet technology patch-overs and the station's run-down, ransacked
state kept him in fits early in the assignment. He coaxed the theoretical maximum of the USS Prometheus
warp engines past WF 9.5 to 9.6. And in late 2371 he alone saved the Defiant against an auto-destruct
countdown while Odo battled a Changeling saboteur. Like a typical engineer, he lengthens his repair time
estimates and, to welcome Worf to DS9 as an in-joke, recalled that the only thing their Enterprise colleagues
couldn't do right was keep the ship's Holodecks functioning without constant glitches.

 Update:  CMO J. Holzken recording

O'Brien has only recently concluded the biggest distraction of his recent career: his son's emergency fetal
transplant by his doctor to Major Kira for surrogate pregnancy after his wife sustained threatening injury.
Whilethe ongoing health of the fetus was never in any real danger after the initial trauma, the unusual
situation tooka toll on both the O'Briens and Kira. After Miles' initial shock at the arrangement, I applauded
he and Keiko inviting Kira to move in with them and accept her as Molly's "Aunt Nerys," but the degree
of intimacy they came to share was beyond my belief. Aside from the Chief's clear overprotectiveness
regarding her diet, I would almost suspect that the two encountered at one point a mutual attraction that
both fascinated and frightened them. By the time young Kirayoshi was born circa 50450, his tension had
disrupted the traditional Bajoran birthing routine Kira had requested and spilled over to First Minister
Shakaar, who had attended out of concern for Kira.

The lone exception to this point was the stress caused by the hijacking of Keiko's body by a vengeful,
cast-out Prophet alien bent on forcing him to help its plan of destroying the wormhole under penalty of
harming Keiko's body and Molly. The chief came through on his own, once again finding himself on a
two-front war, and protected himself, his loved ones and the station.