|
|
Starfleet
engineer, chief of operations at Space station Deep Space 9. Prior to being assigned to Deep Space 9 in 2369, Miles Edward O'Brien had been operating
transporters for some 22 years, the last six of which were spent on the Enterprise-D. Miles, who was born in the month of September
, grew up with two brothers. During his youth, O'Brien did poorly in mechanical
aptitude tests, but his later skills belied his test scores. His father, Michael,
wanted him to be a concert cellist, but two days before he was to start at the
Aldebaran Music Academy, Miles signed up for Starfleet. Early in his Starfleet
career, O'Brien had been the tactical officer aboard the U.S.S. Rutledge under
the command of Captain Benjamin Maxwell. O'Brien's first experience with transporters
came in 2347, when the Rutledge responded to the Cardassian massacre at planet Setlik III. O'Brien
repaired a balky field transporter, preventing himself and 13 Starfleet personnel
from becoming Cardassian prisoners of war. He also participated
in the rescue of several survivors of that bloody massacre. The experience of
Setlik III scarred O'Brien deeply, and he continued to harbor bitterness against
the Cardassians for many years. He was rewarded for his
resourcefulness by being promoted to Rutledge tactical officer. O'Brien was deathly
afraid of spiders, until an incident where he had to crawl through a Jefferies
tube past twenty Talarian hook spiders to perform a critical repair at Zayra IV.
After that considerable act of courage, O'Brien said he wasn't quite so fearful
of arachnids, and even kept a Lycosa tarantula named Christina as a pet. O'Brien
once dislocated his left shoulder while kayaking on the holodeck. O'Brien was
healed, almost miraculously, by a touch from the Zalkonian named John Doe. O'Brien
married Keiko Ishikawa on stardate 44390 in a ceremony in the Ten-Forward lounge
aboard the Enterprise-D. Captain Jean-Luc Picard presided at the ceremony, and
Data (who had first introduced Miles and Keiko to each
other) served as Father of the Bride. O'Brien became a father a year later when
Molly O'Brien was born. O'Brien was promoted and assigned to be chief of operations
on station Deep Space 9 in 2369, and moved there with his wife and
daughter. O'Brien's technical expertise and skill at improvisation proved valuable,
given the station's generally poor condition and the lack of technical resources
at the distant post. O'Brien almost died in 2370 after being exposed to nanobiogenic
gel while helping the T'Lani and Kellerun governments to neutralize their deadly
harvester weapon. He drank coffee, Jamaican blend double strong, double sweet.
Later that year, O'Brien was assigned to assist in preparations for the peace
talks between the Paradan government and the rebels with whom the government had
been at war. The Pardan government abducted O'Brien and replaced him with a cloned
replicant that was physically identical to O'Brien. The replicant, who was programmed
by the government to assassinate members of the rebel negotiating team, was given
O'Brien's memories, and had no way to know that he was not the original. O'Brien
died of severe delta-series radioisotope contamination in 2371, when he was timeshifted
several hours into a future in which the Romulan government destroyed Deep Space 9. The timeshifting was triggered by interaction
of temporal displacement waves from a nearby cloaked Romulan warbird with the
radioisotopes in O'Brien's body. Ironically, O'Brien's death made it possible
for his future self to travel back in time to his original present, where the
future O'Brien successfully warned station personnel of the impending Romulan
attack. The future O'Brien thereby effectively changed places with the present
O'Brien, and continued his life in this altered reality. The alternate O'Brien
from the future fit in well, showing virtually no difference from the original
O'Brien. During a rather remarkable winning streak at darts, this O'Brien suffered
a rotator cuff tear and was forced to have humeral socket replacement surgery.
It ended his winning streak, but allowed him to finally complete his beloved kayaking
program. Besides engineer, husband, and father, O'Brien briefly served as a substitute
schoolteacher when his wife visited her mother on Earth. O'Brien's off-duty pastimes
also included music, and he was seen playing the cello in a string quartet in
Ten-Forward aboard the Enterprise-D on at least one occasion. O'Brien like
to kayak on the holodeck and enjoyed racquetball, although perhaps not quite so
much as did Dr. Julian Bashir.
