William Robert O'Connell (KIA)

Personnel File
Name:	William Robert O’Connell
Rank:	Master Chief Petty Officer
Position:	Acting Chief Engineer
Callsign:	“Billy Bob”
Species:	Human
Age:	41
Gender:	Male
Orientation:	Heterosexual
Birthplace:	Nimbus III
Height:	6’2” (1.87 m)
Weight:	200 lbs. (90.7 kg)
Hair:	Brown
Eye color:	Blue
Played by:	Nathan Fillion
Interests
Archaic Technology Card Games Conspiracy Theories Federation History Gadgets and Cutting Edge Technology Holodeck Roleplaying
Education
2358-2359: Starfleet Boot Camp and Specialist School. 2359-2360: Engineer Replacement Training Center, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. 2364-2366: Warp Engineering School, Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, California. 2372: Starfleet Drill Instructor School, San Diego, California. 2375-2379: Starfleet Academy student and instructor. Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, California
Service Record
2360-2361: Served as a combat engineer with FederationGround Forces during conflict with the Cardassians. 2361-2364: Assigned to the USS Horatio under Captain Walker Keel. 2364: Destruction of the Horatio under suspicious circumstances. 2367: Assigned to Starbase 234 as part of the starship repair and refit teams. 2368: Briefly serves aboard the USS Excalibur in January. 2372: Passes the chief's exam and is promoted to chief petty officer. Spends a year as a drill instructor at Starfleet Academy’s Officer Candidate School. 2373-2375: Serves as Propulsion Chief aboard the USS Resolve. Meets Tristan Kendrick. 2375: Promoted to Senior Chief Petty Officer for actions aboard the Resolve. Updates his skills and teaches at Starfleet Academy. Meets Suq-Reylin-Efreya Xan. 2379: Promoted to Master Chief Petty Officer, assigned to USS Theurgy 2381: Assigned the position of chief engineer by Captain Ives.
Decorations
Prentares Ribbon of Commendation, Starfleet Decoration for Gallantry.

Assigned to the USS Theurgy as a maintenance chief, William Robert “Billy Bob” O’Connell served as acting chief engineer after the death of Tatiana Marlowe in 2381.

Background Story

Wild frontiersman

William Robert O’Connell was born Nimbus III, a planet that has the distinction of being a protectorate of three interstellar nations, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Empire, and the United Federation of Planets. He grew up in an isolated area of the planet where he learned many archaic customs and idioms that would seem strange to citizens of the 24^th century United Federation of Planets. Described as a hillbilly or a “space cowboy,” William “Billy Bob” O’Connell’s accent and mannerisms have been compared to those of Earth’s 19^th century North American Ancient West.

When he reached his teenage years he fell in with a bad crowd and stumbled upon a Cardassian plot to break up the United Federation of Planet’s Grand Alliance with the Klingons by fomenting unrest amongst the colonists. Young Billy Bob discovered that he was being used and confided to an undercover Starfleet Observer named Walker Keel the commanding officer of the USS Horatio. After Starfleet Intelligence arrested the leaders of the plot, Captain Keel offered young O’Connell a chance to enlist in Starfleet. Weary of his home world and eager to make something of himself, O’Connell accepted.

Cardassian Conflict

Crewman O’Connell, combat engineer.
^{Image © Paramount}

When he was twenty O’Connell started at the bottom of the ranks as an enlisted crewman. He began as a combat engineer, assisting ground troops by building, repairing and maintaining buildings, roads, equipment, and power supplies. He became familiar with explosives for construction and demolition projects. Such tasks typically include constructing and breaching trenches, tank traps and other fortifications, bunker construction, bridge and road construction or destruction, laying or clearing land mines, and other physical work in the battlefield. He got the opportunity to use these skills for the United Federation of Planets and the Cardassian Union were in armed and open conflict at the time. After a year of supporting ground forces he was ready to transfer off the front lines and Keel offered him a position aboard the USS Horatio.

Conspiracy

For Billy Bob O’Connell, his shipmates aboard the Horatio were the closest things he ever had to a stable family. On Stardate 41754.7, (October 2^nd, 2364) Petty Officer O’Connell went on shore leave. A few days later, the USS Horatio was mysteriously destroyed. It was nowhere near the Cardassian front when it happened. After a lengthy investigation, the official cause of the mishap was “an implosion caused by persons or phenomenon unknown” but the real cause of the starship’s destruction was never released.

Young William O’Connell started studying warp mechanics after that, and he also started investigating the Horatio’s destruction. It wasn’t too long before he discovered his queries were being blocked by the highest offices in Starfleet. When he sensed a cover-up, the naturally suspicious O’Connell became a full-fledged conspiracy theorist.

From Petty Officer to Chief

CPO O’Connell
^{photomanipulation by Doc M.}

Petty Officer O’Connell served Starfleet in a variety of roles for the next ten years. He made many friends he would remember later, including Nolak Kalmil, who he served with aboard the USS Excalibur during the Klingon Civil war January of 2368. In 2372 he was pulled off duty by his superior and personal hero Chief Warrant Officer Sten Covington and told to take the Chief’s exam to earn the promotion to Chief Petty Officer. Covington saw something in O’Connell, a tendency to stick with it and get the job done hiding under an irreverent distrust of officers and authority. He saw something that O’Connell didn’t see in himself just as Walker Keel had. O’Connell passed the Chief’s Exam and went back to Starfleet Academy to update his skills. He never forgot his debt to CWO Covington, and never forgot what Covington had told him about the role of Chief Petty Officers:

“A chief on your side is worth his weight in latinum. They get the job done and can anticipate your needs. They can work the system to keep an officer from drowning in procedure and allow them to actually concentrate on the mission. When an officer dreams up a mission, a chief makes sure he doesn’t forget any of the equipment needed to get it done. And when a Hammerhead flies off into the black, a chief makes sure that rutting thing doesn’t blow up as soon as the pilot asks it to go. God bless all chiefs.”

After making chief, O'Connell spent a year as a drill instructor in Starfleet Academy's Officer's Candidate School, turning recruits into cadets.

A test of Resolve

During the final year of the Dominion War, Chief Petty Officer O’Connell served aboard the USS Resolve as a propulsion chief. His personal physician was the Resolve’s chief medical officer, Tristan Kendrick. During one of the final battles of the war, the Resolve lost all of its senior officers with the exception of Tristan Kendrick. After overseeing some hasty repairs, Chief O’Connell was sent to the bridge where he served during the Resolve’s reengagement and defeat of the enemy. For his actions during the battle and his emergency command of the Resolve’s engineering department, O’Connell was promoted to Senior Chief Petty Officer and sent back to Earth to update his skills and teach officer cadets at Starfleet Academy.

Back to School

At Starfleet Academy, SCPO O’Connell drilled the officer recruits on one day and learned new technical skills the next. With little time on his hands to mix with others he didn’t have much choice of who he spent his day with. Although normally he had nothing but contempt for the spoiled youths sharing his classes, he did get close to at least one cadet, a young Efrosian by the name of Suq-Reylin-Efreya Xan. Suq had the highest grades, and O’Connell had been around long enough to know that if you want to learn something quickly, stay near the smartest student in the class. When Suq graduated in 2377, O’Connell stayed in touch with Suq’s subspace handle majorChocolate and shared conspiracy theories, even though for the young Eforsian it was just a hobby.

Band of Outlaws

On the run.
^{photomanipulation by Doc M.}

In 2379 O’Connell was promoted to master chief petty officer and assigned to the USS Theurgy the first in a new class of starships, where he was reunited with his old shipmate Sten Covington. O’Connell served as a maintenance chief for two years, overseeing a company of technicians diagnosing, repairing, and maintaining the carrier’s superstructure and systems. He was naturally suspicious of a Chameloid commanding officer, not recognizing the difference between Captain Jien Ives’ species and the Changeling species that controlled the Dominion but mistakenly believed that Ives was the one Changeling on the Federation’s side during the war.

When Ives revealed that Starfleet Command was compromised by an unknown enemy that was who had replaced Starfleet’s highest ranking officers with imposters, O’Connell was one of the first to believe it. All of his private investigations, all of his conspiracy theories, had drawn Master Chief O’Connell to a similar conclusion; Captain Ives had finally presented him with proof. Granted, O’Connell’s conclusions were drawn from paranoia as much as the truth, but even a stopped chronometer is correct once a day. Since that day in 2381, the Theurgy was on the run, fugitives from a Starfleet that would silence her officers and crew at any cost.

Uncontrolled Libido, Undisciplined Master Chief

Cut off from shelter, reinforcements, or supplies, the logistics of keeping a ship the size of the Theurgy in working order was a huge challenge. When the Theurgy visited the Mahéwa System, an away team was sent down to a verdant and uninhabited M-Class Planet by the name of Niga and encountered a plant that used its parasitic pollen to propagate itself within the vector's body - spreading itself through the vector's bodily fluids to new vectors. The infected had become vectors for a parasitic virus with the intent of interplanetary pollination – the spreading of the infectious flora. The main symptoms of the intoxication were suppression of all sexual inhibitions, a rising urge to copulate with as many others possible. Master Chief O’Connell, who had always thought of himself as a ladies’ man, succumbed to this insidious infection, helping to spread it until help from the future in the form of intervention from the USS Relativity eliminated the threat.

O’Connell, who was at heart a throwback to earlier times, took the violation of his body and libido hard. Once a man who mentally undressed every woman he saw, the sexual urge now filled him with shame, revulsion, and self-loathing. Considering himself a broken man, he didn’t volunteer to beam down to his home planet of Nimbus III when the Theurgy visited his birthplace in search of a replacement replicator. Counselling helped, but the death of the ship’s counselor Garen Nelis and the encounter with the omnipotent alien entity calling itself “Ishtar” undid his therapy and left him ashamed of his reproductive urges.

As O’Connell’s self-loathing grew his conduct suffered, until ThanIda zh'Wann chipped his tooth and ordered ship’s bartender William "Bill" Regal to only serve the master chief snythahol until Andor’s sun froze over. Afterwards he tread lightly around the Andorian officer as evidenced by the way the morning after the Theurgy’s escape from Admiral Sankolov’s task force he left Below Decks shortly after entering to avoid her even after working a sixteen hour shift.

Battlefield Promotion

Master Chief Engineer

O’Connell would find a new sense of purpose after sabotage of the plasma relay control in main engineering fatally injured the new chief engineer Tatiana Marlowe. The master chief’s cool head during the plasma relay disaster impressed Captain Jien Ives enough to appoint O’Connell the Theurgy’s acting chief engineer for the upcoming mission to Starbase 84. That mission was postponed by the treachery of the USS Harbinger’s captain and first officer, Captain Declan Vasser and Commander T'Rena who had used T'Rena’s telepathic abilities to brainwash the selected members of the officers and crews of both ships into following their twisted agenda.

Unconquerable Soul

O’Connell was on the bridge when Vasser and T'Rena staged their coup. After witnessing the execution of Cale Winterbourne, O’Connell fled the bridge with Lieutenant Commander Carrigan Trent. After dealing with the pursuit party led by the psychically compromised Sjaandin Fedd, O’Connell and Trent made their way to the Vector Three Battle Bridge and assumed command of the Theurgy, broadcasting Vasser’s plot to everyone aboard the starship and encouraging every hand aboard to do their duty. T'Rena responded by locking the battle bridge out of the computer and pumping the atmosphere out. Fortunately O’Connell had used the Vector Three Battle Bridge’s ready room as a storeroom for emergency gear and managed to get a breath mask on Trent so he could use his command override to open the doors. When T'Rena entered the battle bridge and murdered the battle bridge relief officers O’Connell shot her dead with her own phaser. Immediately afterwards, the USS Calamity attacked and O’Connell went back to main engineering where he managed to rally his engineers and keep the ship together despite the previous damage to the ship and the skeleton crew remaining.

Master Chief Engineer

Unfortunately, due to the actions of mentally dominated mutineers in sickbay, Lieutenant Tatiana Marlowe did not survive surgery. Impressed with O’Connell’s actions and initiative during the crisis, Captain Jien Ives permanently assigned William O’Connell the position of acting chief engineer. Although Captain Ives offered to promote O’Connell to the rank of lieutenant, the master chief turned the offer down, feeling unworthy of the promotion and hoping that the position of chief engineer would be only temporary. Despite being a noncommissioned officer at heart, O’Connell found himself thrust into the command of an entire department, not just for an event or engagement, but for the duration.

Personality Profile

A man of contradictions, Master Chief O’Connell was often a bitter and wary man who tried unsuccessfully to hide his paranoia. He was described as a cynic who’s the first one to tell you the flaws in a plan but go along with it anyway. He often said his brains were in his hands; problem is, sometimes they were in his fists. Irreverent and sarcastic, O’Connell didn’t respect most officers and worked around them the best he could. His speech was peppered with archaic slang and folksy idioms that could only be found on isolated colonies or holodeck programs simulating Earth’s North American ancient west.

By 2381 O’Connell took a paternal view of shipmates who were younger than him, which was most of them. Formerly a self-styled ladies man, the Niga and Ishtar Incidents left him feeling violated and dirty. He went out of his way to avoid romantic entanglements by being as annoying as he had to be to drive away any potential paramours. Once he became the ship’s chief engineer, he no longer needed to put up a façade, for he was usually too busy fixing something or troubleshooting something or other, leaving little time for socializing or adventure. Before the Theurgy went on the run, ‘Billy Bob’ was known for telling tall tales in Below Decks, getting into brawls while on shore leave, and playing make-believe on the holodeck, but after he was appointed the position of chief engineer a weekly poker game with the other senior noncommissioned officers became the focal point of his recreation.

O'Connell made numerous personal log entries during the day to record his investigation of the ‘conspiracy’ so that his knowledge wouldn’t be lost if anything unforeseen happened to him. Unfortunately he wasn't discerning about what he included in his log entries and never gotten around to editing them. Just what he knew if anything was hidden in hours and hours of personal messages and minutia.

Physical Profile

William O’Connell was a tall Caucasian male human with dirty blonde hair and a wide square face. Despite his crooked smile and a large nose that had been flattened by numerous bar fights, William referred to himself as ‘ruggedly handsome’. He had a tattoo on his right hip of a Risan storm god that was supposed to increase fertility. He had a scar on his right bicep just below his shoulder from an old knife wound.

Personal Relationships

Despite his suspicious nature, William Robert O’Connell made several friendships, allies, and contacts during his long career in Starfleet.

Captain Walker Keel

The late Walker Keel
^{Image © Paramount}

The late Walker Keel was the captain of the USS Horatio, the first starship William O’Connell ever served aboard and the reason Billy Bob enlisted in Starfleet. O'Connell met Keel when Captain Keel was working undercover on Nimbus III investigating unrest that was part of a scheme of the Cardassian Obsidian Order to destabilize the colony and jeopardize the Federation-Klingon Grand Alliance. O’Connell had always considered him a father figure and credits Keel with saving his life three times: The first time was writing the letter of recommendation that got William O’Connell off Nimbus III and into Starfleet boot camp. The second time was approving of O’Connell’s transfer from ground forces to the Horatio, and the last time was granting O’Connell shore leave a few days before the Horatio was destroyed with all hands. It was the destruction of the USS Horatio that made William O’Connell a conspiracy theorist and allowed him to quickly accept the truth when Captain Ives revealed the secret takeover of Starfleet Command.

Chief Warrant Officer Sten Covington

Sten Michael Covington

O’Connell often bragged about his network of senior noncommissioned officers spread throughout Starfleet he could count on for help. First and foremost amongst them was Chief Warrant Officer First Class Sten Covington, an old friend, personal hero, and fellow shipmate aboard the USS Theurgy. It was CWO Covington who persuaded O’Connell to take his Chief’s exam and remain in Starfleet in 2372, a tale that grows more colorful every time Billy Bob tells it. It wasn’t until months later that O’Connell learned about his hero’s divorce and realized just how much Sten Covington had devoted his life to Starfleet. Upon hearing that CWO Covington was in charge of the flight deck aboard the soon to launch Theurgy, Billy Bob O’Connell put in a transfer request to the prototype carrier. After the truth about Starfleet was revealed, O’Connell’s workload increased exponentially, but he never missed a weekly poker game with Covington and the other chiefs, even after being promoted to acting chief engineer.

Master Chief Petty Officer Nolak Kalmil

Nolak Kalmil

William O’Connell met Nolak Kalmil when they served together aboard the USS Excalibur during the Klingon Civil War of 2367-2368. After that they lost track of each other before meeting up as instructors at Starfleet Academy in 2372. In those days, O'Connell was a drill instructor and Kalmil was an academy instructor. After that they kept in touch until they were both assigned to the Theurgy where they set up the weekly poker game for all non-commissioned officers of rank chief petty officer and above. When it came to personalities they couldn't be more opposite. Nolak Kalmil was quiet. William O’Connell was loud. Nolak had taken the Deltan vow of celibacy. Billy Bob had chased every female he saw before the Theurgy entered the Mahéwa System. When under fire Acting Chief Engineer Kalmil’s orders were calculated, direct, and almost soothing. When things got hot Acting Chief Engineer O’Connell’s orders could get emotive and downright belligerent. Yet somehow they had managed to become friends, their contrasting personalities complimenting each other. When Nolak broke his neck and was put into cryostasis, O'Connell assumed he would never see him again. He was ecstatic when Nolak received the surgery he needed over a month later.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Calvin Reagar

Calvin Reagar
_{image by Sci-Fi Avatars}

William O’Connell met Calvin Reagar on an earlier posting. Reagar was one of the few enlisted men aboard the Theurgy who had served twenty or more years in Starfleet by 2381. As such he was part of the unofficial fraternity composed of senior noncommissioned officers aboard the Theurgy that included Sten Covington and William Robert "Billy Bob" O'Connell and was a regular to the weekly poker games the Theurgy’s chiefs held in an unused cabin on Deck 08. He was one of the few people who O’Connell consistently trusted, finding in Reagar a man of similar convictions and temperament. SCPO Reagar collaborated with O'Connell during the creation of the Subspace Armor Field Tactical Integration(SAFTI) gear, a personal protection system that used subspace harmonics to generate a personal force field around the wearer. He assisted O'Connell in assembling the first functioning SAFTI units by hand; together they built over twenty units in time for the mission to Starbase 84.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Suq-Reylin-Efreya Xan

Suq-Reylin-Efreya Xan

William O’Connell met Suq-Reylin-Efreya Xan at Starfleet Academy in 2375 after being promoted to senior chief petty officer. O’Connell was assigned as an academy instructor while updating his skills for the post-Dominion War Starfleet and got to know the socially awkward cadet and share some of his conspiracy theories with him. The grizzled chief had such an impact on the Efrosian that Suq gained an interest in conspiracy theories and became part of his unofficial network of fellow conspiracy buffs, although for the young officer it was more of a hobby than anything he actually believed. When Suq heard something he passed it on to O’Connell and his fellow conspiracy theorists under the pseudonym “majorChocolate”. When the USS Resolve vanished in 2378 investigating an unknown anomaly, O’Connell assumed that the last piece of data that Suq sent him was deadly accurate, but in truth the fate of the Resolve was merely a coincidence. In 2381, only a few months after the Theurgy severed all ties with Starfleet, the Resolve returned safe and sound to Federation space, weathered and weary from its adventures in the Delta Quadrant with Suq in the position of acting chief engineer.