Aoife McKenzie

History

Aoife (ee•fuh) Heather McKenzie (b. Sept. 14, 2354) is the eldest daughter of James Rupert McKenzie and Janet Marsali Grant-Cameron.  Aoife was born in Woodland Park, CO. Her mother is from Aberdeen, Scotland,  and her father is of Scottish descent living in Colorado. They met at a Highland festival where her mother was teaching traditional Scottish dancing.   The two hit it off quickly and were married a year later, in 2353. Aoife has a younger sister, Sophie,  and brother Alexander.  Alexander is a doctor aboard the USS Columbia. Sophie runs a vineyard in the Napa Valley with her wife Denise.

Aoife was taught to play the bagpipes at a young age.  While this didn’t create a passion for this instrument, she gained a lifelong passion for music as a whole.  She is an accomplished cellist, guitarist, and plays various other brass and string instruments.  She was offered a scholarship to Juilliard for the cello, but she opted to go to Starfleet instead.

Starfleet Academy (2372-2374)

Aoife joined Starfleet Academy right out of high school at 18. It was in her first class she met the Ferengi, Nog.  Both on the same career track they shared many of the same classes, and soon became friends due to the long study sessions in the library, or at Sisko’s in New Orleans.  She became rather fond of the jambalaya, but despite Nog’s best efforts, she refused to eat the tube grubs.  It took a few times for her to convince him that she wasn’t going to chew his food for him either.

That same year she was deployed to Los Angeles during Admiral Layton’s failed coup.  Stationed in the Santa Monica sector she spent a week sitting outside a small coffee shop with another cadet and fellow Scot,  James Fraser MacDonald.  They had a short-lived romantic relationship following this but realized that they were better off just friends.

Aoife joined the Academy’s orchestra as a first seat in the trumpet section. In Jazz Band, she played both the trumpet and the double bass.

Her second year was mostly uneventful.  She studied hard, sacrificing her social life, and did very well in her classes earning her a place on the Dean’s List.  As the war with the Dominion started to go from cold war to a hot war Starfleet was in desperate need of people to crew the ships.  Wanting to help defend the Federation, she applied and received an extended leave to enlist and join the war.

USS Denver (2374-2375)

With her two years at the Academy, she enlisted into Starfleet as an E-3. She did her basic training at the Federation training facility on Vulcan and then went on to Mars for the engineering training school. Her first assignment was to the USS Denver under the command of Captain Micha Fitzpatrick.

Aboard the Denver she joined an experienced engineering team, and she learned a great deal from the crew around her, and she rose quickly through the enlisted ranks making Petty Officer 2nd Class.  At the Battle of Tyra the engineering team was decimated when a plasma conduit blew out killing all of the officers except for the Chief Engineer who was leading damage control efforts elsewhere.  

Aoife had distinguished herself during this time and earned the respect of the Chief Engineer.  After limping back to Starbase 75 Starfeet didn’t have any replacement officers, and Commander Lovecroft put in for her field promotion to ensign and it was approved by Admiral Dailey.  She served on the Denver to the end of the war as the ship’s assistant chief engineer. At the Second Battle of Chin’toka the Denver was disabled and nearly destroyed.  This ship would eventually be salvaged, but that occurred well after the end of hostilities with the Dominion.

Audacious Incident (2375)

Aoife transferred to the USS Audacious. The Audacious was a newly commissioned Akira-class ship under the command of Captain Daylin Peck. This ship was one of the first starships to be retrofitted to counter the Breen weapon that decimated the fleet at Chin’toka.

Peck was an ambitious officer, who saw starship command as only a necessary step to his larger goals of being an Admiral.  It was well known on the Audacious that her captain was reckless.  He only wanted recognition for his next promotion,  and in general, that made him a very poor leader.

In December of 2375, in the waning moments of the war, the Audacious was dispatched to Athos IV to liberate the former Maquis colony from the Dominion.

When the Audacious arrived there was a sizable contingent of Jem’hadar soldiers on the planet abandoned when the Dominion fleet had fallen back to Cardassia.

Despite being abandoned,  the Jem’hadar First refused to surrender.  There were too many Jem’hadar on the planet for the Audacious crew to take, but Captain Peck didn’t want to wait for reinforcements and share the glory.  Against the recommendation of his first officer and chief of security, Peck ordered an attack on the colony.

All of the officers and NCOs involved, including the ship’s XO, and Aoife refused to beam down to the planet until reinforcements could arrive.  Captain Peck removed all involved from duty and returned to Deep Space Nine charging them with mutiny.

Admiral Ross dismissed the mutiny charges immediately and demoted all those involved for disobeying a direct order.  Only the XO was expelled from Starfleet to be used as an example.

Admiral Ross sympathized with the crew.  Beaming down to several hundred Jem’hadar was suicide.  In his opinion, they made the right call, but disobeying orders forced his hand and he had to discipline those involved.  He gave Captain Peck a promotion to lead a Starfleet Basic Training camp on Earth, which got him out of ship command.

Aoife was demoted to E-1 and lost her position as a frontline combat engineer.  She spent the rest of the war and the majority of 2376 working the night shift in engineering.

Starfleet Academy (2376-2378)

Aoife returned to the Academy from her leave of absence following the conclusion of the war.  To the cadets, she was a war hero.  One of the few that had been out there on the frontlines. It was a minor celebrity status that she didn’t care for.

Because of this notoriety, Aoife was recruited into Red Squad. With the team, she was assigned as the Cadet Chief Engineer to the training ship, USS Sheridan. 

In her senior year; based on Aoife’s experience,  she unanimously became Sheridan‘s Cadet Captain. Aoife spent the majority of her time aboard the Sheridan leading the cadets through standard ship operations,  and minor scientific research.   It was mostly boring,  but it did provide vital experience to ready these cadets for their careers in Starfleet.

USS TIGRIS (2378-2383)

Many captains were hesitant to take Aoife on due to her service record aboard the Audacious, even with Admiral Ross’ notes.  Contacting Captain Sandoval, now Talon, she called in a favor and got a posting as an engineer on the Tigris under Captain Nicholas Ryder.

Aoife’s tenure aboard the Tigris was fairly uneventful with peace coming to the Alpha Quadrant. Most of the fleet was focused on rebuilding,  and there was little exploration outside of the Federation.  But, she kept her head down and earned the respect of both her peers and superiors and in 2380 she made the coveted Alpha Shift.

USS EREBUS (2383-2393)

With the launch of the Erebus-class USS Erebus Aoife was reunited with Captain Rebecca Talon. Aoife applied for a transfer to lead the ship’s Hazard Team.

In 2385 the Erebus was part of the task force that was helping to evacuate Romulan citizens to planets in the Neutral Zone.  The Erebus spent two months in orbit of Devon III establishing a temporary colony for the 22,000 refugees that they had transported.

In 2386 the  Erebus was redeployed to the Cardassian border,  to monitor the collapse of the Dutopa Counsel.  Aoife with her hazard team was sent into Cardassian Territory six times over the next twelve months to gain intelligence on the shadow war between the Dutopa Counsel and Central Command.

Operations Department

In 2388 Aoife took a promotion to Lieutenant Commander to take over the operations department.  She was used to engineering and being in the thick of every situation, so the more administrative role took some time to get used to.

The Erebus had several run-ins with both the Sovereignty of Kahless and several of Romulan factions vying for power after the destruction of Romulus.  However, the flagship of the Fifth Fleet was generally enough to defuse most situations.

In 2391 the Erebus took part in Operation Gatecrasher.  The Hazard Team from the Erebus was instrumental in taking back several key worlds. At Nerendra Aoife was leading a large contingent of one-hundred Starfleet personnel to take a key objective from the Sovereignty when they were ambushed.  Aoife was hit in the initial attack.

She woke up a week later at Starbase 53 with her left arm and leg amputated and a new lung and kidneys had been transplanted.  Recovery was slow, and there had been six months of physical therapy to help her adjust to her replacement limbs before she was able to return to duty aboard the Erebus.

Executive Officer

In the final two years of her posting on the Erebus, she took over the XO job from the departing Commander Karrak who had been the ship’s XO since it launched.

Aoife found the job challenging coordinating all of the departments on the Erebus and dealing with nearly 2,000 officers and crew aboard.   While the job was often difficult,  she enjoyed the challenge and overcoming the problems that would come up.

DEEP SPACE 14 (2393-2399)

When Captain Talon finally accepted the promotion of Admiral to head the ADSB at Starfleet Command, Aoife took the opportunity to get a command of her own.

Deep Space 14, was a newly constructed station located in the farthest reaches of the Federation.   It took six weeks for her to arrive at the station by the USS Titan.

Aoife spent six years commanding DS14.  The understaffed and undersupplied station was a constant struggle.   A local species, the Xerexians, were always a constant threat, and Aoife only had a handful of runabout to help defend the station.

There were a great many rewards to the posting as well.  They made contact with ten new species of aliens and negotiated several trade and peace treaties.  The Ba’mol, a tiny primate-like species, became a very close ally to her crew. The Ba’mol Navy often helped defend the station against the Xerexians and were well on their way to becoming Federation members.

USS Crazy Horse (2399-2400)

Leaving DS14 Aoife took command of the aging USS Crazy Horse.  One one her first missions she was pulled into an alternate reality created by an artifact discovered at a dig site they were excavating,  The reality turned out to be the basis for Arthurian Legends.  She and her first officer Nicholas Halsted were stranded in what was essentially medieval Europe for over a year until they discovered a way to return to their time and reality.  By this time Aoife had been declared dead and her command had been given to Captain Órlaith Murphy. 

Biographical Data

Born:   Sept. 14, 2354, Woodland Park, CO

Languages:

• English

Degrees:

• Ph.D.: Warp Theory
• Ph.D.: Mechanical Engineering

Service/branch: Starfleet, United Federation of Planets

Service: 2372-present

Commands held:

• Deep Space 14 
• USS Crazy Horse
• USS Erebus

Battles/Wars:

• Dominion War
• Battle of Tyra
• The Battle of the Crossroads
• Battle of Vulcan
• Battle of Betazoid
• Operation Return
• 2nd Battle of Chin’toka

Signature:

Physical Description

• Species: Human
• Gender: Female
• Height: 5’10” (1.8 m)
• Weight: 148 lbs. (67 kg.)
• Eye Color: Green
• Hair Color:  Auburn
• Portrayed By: Christina Hendricks

Family

Father:  James Rupert McKenzie

Mother: Janet Marsali Grant-Cameron

Other Family:

• Sophie McKenzie-Ricci (sister)
• Alexander McKenzie (brother)
• Denise McKenzie-Ricci (sister-in-law)

Works Cited:

• -All character images created using Midjourny
• -USS Erebus – JHall
• -USS Denver – Star Trek Online
• -Starfleet Academy – CBS
• -Character Signature – JHall
• -Crazy Horse Patch – JHall
• -Akira-class – CBS
• -USS Enterprise E – CBS
• -SF Academy Logo – DS9 Technical Manual
• -Starbase – Unknown Author