- Rank: Chief petty officer, senior chief specialist
- Current assignment: Professor of Engineering, Starfleet Academy
- Full Name: Miles Edward O'Brien
- Year of birth: September, 2328
- Place of birth: Killarney, Ireland, Earth
- Parents: Mr. and Mrs. Michael O'Brien (mother died 2368; father remarried 2369)
- Marital status: Married Keiko Ishikawa in 2367 in Ten-Forward, U.S.S. Enterprise
- Children: One daughter, Molly, born 2368; a son, Kirayoshi, born 2373
- Quarters: Currently relocating to Earth from residence at Deep Space Nine
- Security clearance: Level 1
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 2369 to a woman his son had not yet met over a year later. 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 conn 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 1701-D became Transporter Room 3. Himself a brave man, he once admitted he'd be scared to try a Klingon exchange program as Riker once did, and later confided he most feared for his life during the Borg attack at Wolf 359. 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--Jamaican blend, double-strong, double-sweet--though he occasionally partakes in 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 by the Cardassian government for a Maquis-related weapons incident. (Apparently the trip home a year earlier for Keiko's 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 future when he dies of radiation poisoning. During the station's near-self-destruct crisis, Jake Sisko saved O'Brien's life by pulling him from a fiery plasma-filled conduit. All these incidents took place within about a year of each other. 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 Cardassians 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.