Miles O'Brien's History
Senior Chief Petty Officer Miles Edward O'Brien was a 24th century Human Starfleet non-commissioned officer who, following his service during the Federation-Cardassian War, served as transporter chief on board the USS Enterprise-D for several years before being promoted to chief of operations aboard starbase Deep Space 9. After the Dominion War he accepted a professorship at Starfleet Academy on Earth.
In 2345, at the age of 17, O'Brien joined Starfleet as an enlisted crewman, where he attended Engineering School.
As of stardate 49648, O'Brien had served aboard a half dozen starships, participated in 235 separate combat engagements, and been decorated by Starfleet on fifteen occasions. Because of his impressive military record, O'Brien was recognized by a Starfleet formal inquiry at the request of the Klingon attorney, Ch'Pok, as an expert in starship combat. O'Brien's career was so well respected that Captain Keogh of the USS Odyssey considered the chief's experiences an asset before launching a rescue mission for Commander Benjamin Sisko in the Gamma Quadrant in 2370.
One of his first assignments was aboard the USS Rutledge under the command of Benjamin Maxwell, where he served as junior tactical officer during the Cardassian War. A year later, O'Brien was present at the aftermath of the Setlik III massacre, where his technical skill was useful in repairing a field transporter, allowing him and thirteen other Starfleet personnel to escape a Cardassian patrol. This earned him a promotion to primary tactical officer. O'Brien also served as part of a squad to aid the survivors of the massacre, as Cardassians were still patrolling the settlement; he helped a group of women and children but was ambushed by two Cardassians. He was able to incapacitate one of them, but in fighting with the other one he accidentally killed his assailant when a phaser passed to him was set to maximum. Until then, O'Brien had never killed anything or anyone (he was even worried about swatting mosquitoes as a child) and the incident left him with a deep-seated resentment towards Cardassians, bordering on outright racism on occasion. He often referred to them by the derogatory term "Cardies". Many years later, he remarked to Glinn Daro that it was not Cardassians that he hated, but rather the person he became because of them.
O'Brien was even styled "the hero of Setlik III" due to his actions in an engagement with Cardassian forces on that planet, a title he seemed to tolerate rather than enjoy. During a salvage mission to Empok Nor, Elim Garak challenged O'Brien to a game of Kotra, saying he would love to play against the "Hero of Setlik III."
O'Brien transferred to the USS Enterprise-D in 2364 with the rank of chief petty officer, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. During the Farpoint Mission, he was assigned as relief flight control officer. He also stood duty in the security department, but was most often seen working as transporter chief, where he was involved in, among other events, the rescue of Captain Picard from the Borg in 2367.
In 2367, Miles was forced to confront his former commanding officer when Captain Maxwell went rogue, launching attacks on Cardassian outposts and ships in spite of a peace treaty between the Federation and Cardassia. O'Brien's knowledge of transporter systems allowed him to beam aboard Maxwell's ship, the USS Phoenix, while her shields were up, giving him a chance to reason with Maxwell, ultimately preventing further bloodshed.
During the Klingon Civil War, O'Brien also made use of his training as a tactical officer following Lieutenant Worf's resignation from Starfleet. As a result, he was heavily involved in the deployment and maintenance of the tachyon detection grid that ultimately decided the conflict.
In 2368, a quantum filament caused major damage to the Enterprise. Unable to communicate with the rest of the crew, O'Brien, together with Lieutenant Commander Deanna Troi, Ensigns Ro Laren and Mandel, was trapped on the bridge, while his heavily-pregnant wife Keiko was stuck in Ten Forward. The quantum resonance of the filament caused a polarity shift in the ship's antimatter containment fields, leading to a progressive degeneration in the fields, threatening the ship. Ro suggested a saucer separation to save the primary hull, while sacrificing the stardrive section. O'Brien strongly opposed this plan and stated that it would be a "pretty cold-blooded thing to do." Eventually, thanks to his prowess in keeping the containment field stable long enough, Troi rejected Ro's proposal, and the antimatter containment was fully restored by Commander Riker and Lt. Commander Data shortly before Keiko delivered her baby in Ten Forward.
Later that year, O'Brien, along with Troi and Data, was taken over by an alien lifeform which forced them to take hostages to use as a bargaining chip in negotiating with Picard. Among the prisoners were Molly and Keiko O'Brien. Eventually, the lifeform left when it was discovered that the moon was actually a penal colony and that this was an attempt for the lifeform to escape.
By 2369, O'Brien had been serving in Starfleet for 22 years. In that year, O'Brien left the Enterprise, transferring to Deep Space 9 with a promotion, and was assigned the role of chief of operations. His primary task during the early days of his posting was to repair the damage done during the withdrawal of the Cardassians from the station. He was instrumental in moving the station from its orbit of Bajor out to the Denorios belt, following the discovery of the Bajoran wormhole.
On Deep Space 9, O'Brien had a half dozen new problems every day to fix as the station's combination of Cardassian, Bajoran and Federation technologies weren't meant to work together and would constantly break down. But he much preferred his busy schedule on the station; finding it easier to when he was serving aboard the Enterprise where he would get bored spending most of his time waiting around the transporter room for something to break down and that the station needed him.
Not long after his arrival, O'Brien received a note on his record for violating the Prime Directive, after assisting in the escape of a Tosk, one of the first contacts from the Gamma Quadrant, disobeying direct orders from Commander Sisko. Tosk was a being raised to be the prey in a hunt by those known as the Hunters.
He later found himself entangled in local Bajoran politics and folklore when visiting a remote village on the planet. Following the death of the local Sirah, O'Brien was thrust into the role, forcing him to try and maintain the unity and strength of the inhabitants against a Dal'Rok.
In 2369, O'Brien's assistant Neela attempted to assassinate Vedek Bareil. O'Brien discovered the plot and informed Sisko just in time to save Bareil's life.
He assisted Kira Nerys in rescuing Li Nalas from the Hutet labor camp, and defended the station against the Circle, a Bajoran terrorist group who wanted the Federation to leave the sector.
In 2370, O'Brien was assisting the T'Lani and Kellerun militaries in disarming and neutralizing their harvester weapons when a sabotage attempt exposed him to deadly nanobiogenic gel. In the resultant escape and rescue, he almost succumbed to his injuries, but was saved by Julian Bashir, an act which developed their friendship. Several months later, while assisting in preparations for a Parada peace conference on Parada II, O'Brien was kidnapped and replaced with a replicant, created to disrupt the conference. The duplicate O'Brien later died after others became aware of the threat he posed, and the real O'Brien was recovered by DS9 personnel.
O'Brien became stranded with Sisko on an Earth colony, where an energy dampening field made it impossible to communicate with the orbiting runabout to leave the planet. O'Brien found out that it was an artificial field and was able to turn it off.
Sometime around stardate 47944, O'Brien was arrested by Cardassian forces and put on trial for allegedly supplying weapons to the Maquis, based on, among other evidence, a falsified voiceprint. He was sentenced to execution. The charges were later discovered to be part of a conspiracy by the Cardassians to discredit the Federation and give the Cardassian Union a stronger position from which to negotiate, and O'Brien was released.
In 2371, O'Brien helped disable a self-destruct mechanism on the station left by the Cardassians. He helped rescue Sisko from the past, and also worked with a group of female Cardassians on a science project on the station. One of the scientists wanted to become romantically involved with him, but he refused.
When the Klingons attacked and invaded Deep Space 9 in early 2372, O'Brien defended Ops against boarding parties, suffering minor injuries in the attack. At the time of the attack, O'Brien had been completing the retrofit of the station's weapons arrays.
His image was accidentally used in a holo-program by Julian Bashir and Garak when a runabout he was on was destroyed by Cardassian terrorists. The computer, under direction of Michael Eddington, stored his physical image in the open holosuite program (as the evil assassin Falcon) while his conscious mind was stored in DS9's computer core.
Later that year, O'Brien had been falsely accused of espionage, and was given the simulated memory of a twenty-year prison sentence following a visit to the planet Argratha. Upon returning to the station, O'Brien became paranoid and emotionally distressed which caused angry outbursts. He even began experiencing hallucinations of his cellmate Ee'char. Miles was temporarily relieved of his duties by Captain Sisko, on the recommendation of Doctor Bashir. As O'Brien's condition deteriorated, he attempted suicide, but was stopped by Bashir.
In late 2372, O'Brien commented that his career had included service on half a dozen ships. Even though none of those vessels had cloaking devices, O'Brien eventually became so used to the USS Defiant being cloaked that he felt vulnerable aboard uncloaked ships.
He took part in the joint effort between the Federation and Jem'Hadar to track down a group of renegade Jem'Hadar soldiers that captured an Iconian gateway.
In 2373, O'Brien took part in an infiltration mission to the fortified Klingon moon of Ty'Gokor in an attempt to expose Gowron as a Changeling. For the mission, Miles had to be surgically altered to appear Klingon.
O'Brien, as part of a Defiant away team, discovered a crashed Jem'Hadar ship on a planet. When a Vorta and a team of Jem'Hadar came to retrieve the ship, a fight broke out. A crewman O'Brien had become close to, Enrique Muniz, also died as a result of wounds he received in battle, and this affected O'Brien deeply.
While away on Bajor, Keiko became possessed by a Pah-wraith. It threatened to kill Keiko unless O'Brien helped it to blow up the wormhole. He tricked it on the way to the wormhole and used the very energy beam it intended to kill the Prophets with to kill it instead, saving Keiko. He also went back in time to the original Enterprise and met Captain Kirk, helping to stop a Klingon named Arne Darvin from assassinating Kirk and changing history.
On an assignment to Empok Nor to get a part necessary for the station, he and his team found two Cardassians in stasis. Upon waking, they murdered some of the team before Garak killed one of them. Garak became infected with a drug in the Cardassians' systems and turned into an insane murderer, killing the other soldier and one of O'Brien's crew before O'Brien was able to disable him and return him to the station for treatment.
O'Brien was partly responsible, along with Rom and Jadzia Dax, for creating and deploying the self-replicating minefield that blocked Dominion ships from entering the Alpha Quadrant, an event which precipitated the Dominion War. Miles abandoned the station with the rest of the station's Starfleet complement, taking station aboard the Defiant, where he remained for the first three months of the war.
Along with the rest of the DS9 command crew, O'Brien was pulled from front-line duty to take a captured Jem'Hadar vessel behind enemy lines. Despite his love of field rations, O'Brien bemoaned the lack of a replicator aboard the commandeered vessel. When the vessel crash-landed shortly after achieving its objective, O'Brien tore his uniform, much to his chagrin and the amusement of his colleagues.
He was part of the away team that confronted the Jem'Hadar on a planet after both sides crashed. The Jem'Hadar were betrayed by their Vorta and led into an ambush. The Vorta was about to run out of ketracel-white and feared the Jem'Hadar would kill him.
Following their rescue by the Rotarran, Miles took part in Operation Return, which successfully recaptured the station. He resumed his duties aboard the newly-retaken Deep Space 9. Shortly thereafter, he played a ceremonial role in the wedding of Jadzia Dax and Worf.
When the Defiant was captured by Jem'Hadar forces during a scientific mission, O'Brien was able to help Ensign Nog gain control of the ship from engineering by re-routing the bridge access codes.
In mid-2374, O'Brien was recruited by Starfleet Intelligence to infiltrate the Orion Syndicate arm on Farius Prime. During the mission, Miles grew friendly with Liam Bilby, a Syndicate operative. After Bilby was killed attempting to assassinate the Klingon ambassador, O'Brien took in his cat, Chester, as a family pet, and paid money into an account for his wife.
In late 2374, Molly fell into a time portal placing her three hundred years in the past. Upon being rescued, she was a teenager who had lived her life in a prehistoric era. She was unable to cope, and when returned into the portal found herself as an eight year old, where she helped guide herself back to her parents. (DS9: "Time's Orphan")
Following the death of Jadzia Dax in late 2374, O'Brien took part in the Rotarran's successful assault on the Monac shipyard, a mission intended by Worf to get his wife into Sto-vo-kor.
Later in 2375, Miles disappeared on New Sydney while attempting to track down Morica Bilby, Liam's wife, who had disappeared from her home on the planet. O'Brien's mission was unauthorized, and he received a reprimand as a result.
Shortly before the end of the war, O'Brien accepted a position at Starfleet Academy as a professor of engineering. Following the Battle of Cardassia, O'Brien departed Deep Space 9 for Earth, to take up this new role. Immediately prior to leaving, he was still considering where exactly his family would settle on Earth. His crewmates all gave suggestions: Worf was particularly insistent he look at Minsk.
