Senior Engineering Officer Mei-Lin Zhao

Character Information

Gender		Female
Species		Human
Age		27
Birthday		2/8/2052
Clearance Level (assigned by Command)		Gamma 5
Quarters Assignment (assigned by Command)		Shared Crew Quarters, Deck 4
Roommate Assignment (assigned by Command)		T'Varra

Physical Appearance

Height		5' 6"
Weight		135 lbs
Hair Color		Black
Eye Color		Brown
Physical Description		Mei-Lin has a figure that tends to catch attention before she has said a word, which she has never particularly sought out and has learned to simply ignore. She is petite with a slim waist and full curvy hips and the kind of build that comes from years of physical work rather than anything deliberate about fitness, lean muscle underneath curves that her practical clothing does not entirely conceal. Her dark brown hair has subtle warm highlights and she wears it loose when she is off duty and tied back the rest of the time, which is most of the time. Her eyes are almond shaped and warm brown with a quality of quiet attention that is only noticed after talking to her for a while. She wears little to no makeup and her expression tends toward neutral, a habit shaped by her upbringing more than her mood. When she is actually at ease the smile that comes out is genuine and unhurried and tends to catch people off guard the first time they see it. Her hands and forearms carry the scars of years spent working in conditions that did not leave much room for being careful about it.

Financials - In Gold Pressed Latinum

Share Payout Percentage (% received per job) (Command fills out)		3.3 %
Current Amount Received (Paid out so far, Command updates after missions)		0 Bars
Other Funds (Latinum you want your character to have prior to joining ship, player may fill out)		12 Bars

Family

Father		Zhao Kenji (62)
Mother		Elara Zhao née van der Berg (60)
Brother(s)		Jun Zhao (35)

Personality & Traits

General Overview		Mei-Lin is a gifted engineer shaped as much by failure as by ability. She is intelligent and methodical and resilient in the way that people become when they have had to rebuild from something rather than just push through it. She grew up between two cultures. A Japanese father bringing a mentality of precision and discipline along with her Dutch mother's ability to be direct and stubborn. She carries both of those things in ways that occasionally surprise people who only see one side of her at first. She once believed deeply in what Starfleet stood for and being cut loose from it forced her to find out who she was without that structure holding her up. What she found was someone pragmatic without being cynical, cautious without being fearful, and fiercely loyal to the people she works alongside once she decides they have earned it.
Strengths & Weaknesses		**Strengths** Mei-Lin is at her best in non standard environments, the kind of situations where the manual doesn't apply and the parts available are not the parts you actually need. She has repaired unfamiliar and obsolete systems under pressure often enough that improvisation has become a genuine skill rather than a last resort. She gravitates toward workable solutions over theoretical ones and that pragmatism makes her particularly valuable on older craft where everything is a compromise. The years she spent rebuilding her career after Starfleet forced a level of self reliance that has translated into real emotional and professional resilience, she does not need external validation to keep moving and she does not fall apart when things go wrong. When it comes to the people she works with she is crew focused in a way that runs deeper than professionalism, the safety and functionality of the people around her consistently takes priority over abstract ideologies or institutional pressures. **Weaknesses** She has a wariness toward authority and large institutions, particularly bureaucratic ones like Starfleet and the Federation, that she has not fully worked through and probably does not expect to. She is reluctant to talk about her time in Starfleet and that reluctance can create distance with people who ask about it and don't get much back. It comes from the same self reliance that serves her well in other contexts and she does not always recognize when it has crossed the line from useful into counterproductive.
Ambitions		What Mei-Lin wants professionally is straightforward enough. Long term stability without having to trade away the autonomy she has fought to hold onto, and eventually either the chief engineer role on a small vessel or her own repair and refit operation somewhere on the edge of the frontier where the work is real and the oversight is minimal. Both feel achievable to her in a way they might not have a few years ago. The quieter ambitions are harder to talk about. She wants to rebuild trust, both with the people around her and with herself, and she is aware enough to know that the second one is the harder project. That fear has been around long enough that she stopped expecting it to go away on its own and started treating it as something she has to factor in and work around rather than something she will eventually feel her way past.
Hobbies & Interests		When Mei-Lin has time to herself she tends to fill it with her hands. Rebuilding small craft or restoring neglected systems is less a hobby than an extension of how she thinks, working through something broken until it runs the way it should again. She finds it satisfying in a way that is hard to explain to people who don't already understand it. She also practices mechanical calligraphy, which sits at an unusual intersection of precision engineering diagrams and traditional brush technique. It requires the same kind of focused attention she brings to a diagnostic problem and she finds the combination of the two more relaxing than either would be on its own. For mental clarity she uses structured breathing and movement routines drawn from pre Federation Earth philosophies, practices she came to gradually and has kept because they work rather than out of any particular attachment to the tradition behind them. Independent ports and trade hubs fascinate her in a way that feels almost professional even when she is off the clock. Stations that operate without consistent outside support have to stay innovative just to remain functional and she finds that combination of constraint and ingenuity genuinely compelling wherever she encounters it.

Personal History		Mei-Lin was born at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards on Mars to a Japanese father and a Dutch mother, both engineers who worked the yards themselves. She grew up inside the constant rhythm of construction and engine testing and starship hulls being assembled around her, and between her father's methodical precision and her mother's blunt practicality she absorbed both approaches to problem solving before she had the language to describe what she was doing. Most kids experienced the shipyards through occasional tours or from the housing districts at a comfortable remove. Her upbringing was woven into the working heart of the place itself. She showed a natural curiosity for mechanical systems early on and found her own ways to develop it. She learned to tell the difference between a calibration issue and a genuine mechanical fault by listening to sounds and feeling vibrations before she could have explained the theory behind either. While other kids were outside she was more likely to be found taking apart discarded burnt out components and trying to get them working again, then pushing them back past failure to see how well her work had actually held. That environment built a pragmatic approach to engineering that stayed with her, an insistence on understanding components from the inside out rather than just knowing how they were supposed to behave. Growing up on Mars shaped her discipline in other ways too. The shipyards ran on strict safety protocols and personal accountability and those lessons went in deep. She became known among her peers as steady and observant and focused, though also somewhat emotionally guarded. She made close friends but kept her home life to herself and let her work do most of the talking for her. As a teenager she decided she wanted to go to Starfleet and started working toward it through preparatory technical programs, picking up applied engineering courses along the way that she moved through without much trouble. Her acceptance to the Academy's engineering track felt less like a dream coming true and more like a natural continuation of everything she had already been doing, just with more structure around it. At the Academy she proved herself quickly. She specialized in starship systems and engineering with a focus on power distribution and structural integrity and her instructors noted consistently her ability to take older or mismatched systems and get them running in reliable configurations, a skill that was less common than it should have been in an environment dominated by standardized designs. After graduation she received her first posting to a small Federation colony in the Beta Quadrant, selected for her technical expertise in maintaining older infrastructure which the billet specifically required. The assignment was meant to be routine, infrastructure support and grid maintenance and the occasional servicing of visiting starships. For her it was a chance to keep developing beyond the academic environment and she went into it with that in mind. She was a month in when her career came to an abrupt end. She was off duty when it happened, out in one of the local settlements with a small group of fellow officers and civilian acquaintances. The night went sideways when one of them had too much to drink and got into it with some locals. It escalated faster than anyone could do much about and when it was over there were people seriously hurt. Mei-Lin had nothing to do with it and wanted no part of it but she had been there and she hadn't walked away when she should have and that was enough to put her name in the report. Starfleet Command, sensitive to colonial relations and public perception, opened an administrative review. Despite testimony supporting her non involvement the incident was deemed damaging enough to warrant her administrative separation from Starfleet.The decision came back fast and without much in the way of explanation and she spent a long time afterward working through what it meant that it had gone that way. Years of disciplined effort and a record she had built carefully were gone, not through any professional failure of her own but through association and circumstance and a judgment call she hadn't even known she was making at the time. She struggled after that. She went back to Mars briefly but the shipyards were unchanged and she was not and the gap between those two things was uncomfortable in a way she couldn't stay in for long. Rather than retreat into obscurity she decided to keep working and started putting her engineering skills in front of whoever needed them in the civilian shipping world. Over the next several years she worked a series of contracts with independent freight operators and smaller organizations, aging bulk haulers and modular freighters and support craft operating well beyond their intended service lives. These ships rarely had access to standard components or anything close to Starfleet level support which meant she had to rely on ingenuity far more than regulation. She became very good at repairing obsolete systems, jury rigging replacement parts, and keeping vessels operational under circumstances that had no clean solution. She developed a reputation as an engineer who could make almost anything fly and she built it one difficult job at a time. That work eventually brought her toward the Gamma Quadrant and New Ferenginar. Better pay and looser regulations and a constant demand for skilled engineers pulled her in the direction of somewhere she could redefine what her career actually was on her own terms. New Ferenginar represented both risk and possibility in roughly equal measure. Free from the shadow of Starfleet and surrounded by traders and privateers and independent crews she sees a future for herself worth building toward. She is still guarded about it but she is cautiously hopeful and determined to rebuild her reputation the same way she has rebuilt everything else, one piece at a time.
Service Record		2353 Mei-Lin Zhao was born at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards on Mars, the daughter of two engineers who worked the yards themselves. 2371 She was accepted into Starfleet Academy on the engineering track, a goal she had been working toward for years and that felt less like an achievement when it arrived and more like the next logical step. 2374 She graduated from the Academy and received her first posting to a small Federation colony in the Beta Quadrant, selected for her expertise in maintaining older infrastructure. She was a month into the assignment when a night out with fellow officers and civilian acquaintances went badly wrong. One of the group got into a fight with some locals that escalated fast and left people seriously hurt. Mei-Lin had no involvement in it but she had been there and hadn't removed herself and that was enough. Starfleet opened an administrative review and despite testimony supporting her non involvement the decision came back fast and without much in the way of explanation and she spent a long time afterward working through what it meant that it had gone that way. She was administratively separated from Starfleet before the year was out. 2375 to 2377 Rather than retreat into obscurity she kept working and put her engineering skills in front of whoever needed them in the civilian shipping world. She took contracts with independent freight operators and smaller organizations, aging bulk haulers and modular freighters and support craft running well past their intended service lives. These ships rarely had access to standard components or anything close to Starfleet level support which meant she had to rely on ingenuity far more than regulation and she got very good at it. 2377 to 2379 She specialized in freighter and support craft repair along the Federation fringe, building a reputation as an engineer who could make almost anything fly and doing it one difficult job at a time. 2380 Better pay and looser regulations and a steady demand for engineers who knew what they were doing pulled her toward the Gamma Quadrant and eventually New Ferenginar. She showed up looking for work and something closer to a fresh start than anything she had been able to find closer to home.