Bravo Fleet
Summary
Commander Soraya “Rai” Nasser, Starfleet, is the Chief Engineer aboard the Cyclone-class exploratory cruiser USS Cyclone (NCC-90001). A veteran testbed engineer pulled from the Typhoon development program, she’s the one person aboard who can stare down Cyclone’s massive engineering plant, and Captain Hardin, without blinking.
Appearance
In her early forties, Nasser stands roughly 5’6″ tall with a compact, wiry build that speaks more to endurance than gym-sculpted vanity. Her skin is a warm olive tone, her dark hair buzzed close on the sides and kept in a practical, no-nonsense crop on top that she shoves under a work cap when she’s in the guts of the ship. Her eyes are a sharp, assessing brown that rarely stop moving; even at rest, she looks like she’s already diagramming three different solutions in her head. Grease smudges and the faint ozone smell of the engine rooms seem to follow her into briefings, no matter how often she frequents her sonic shower.
Personality
Nasser is calm under pressure, caustic in humor, and ruthlessly competent. She seldom raises her voice unless she intends to make someone remember the moment for the rest of their career. Her style is blunt and technical: she will tell a captain what the ship can do, what it cannot do, and exactly what will break if they insist anyway. She has little patience for “engineering by wishful thinking” but a great deal of respect for commanders who know when to push and when to back off.
To her people, she’s fiercely protective. She expects long hours and exacting standards, but in return, she shields her department from pointless flag-level churn and political nonsense. Her idea of praise is a tight nod and a dry, “Not terrible. Do it like that again.” For the junior engineers who figure her out, this motivates them more than any commendation.
Off-duty, she is quieter than most expect, preferring strong coffee, a deck of cards, and technical journals over the lounge. She swears fluently in at least four languages and likes to “translate” system faults into colorful analogies that make sense even to line officers.
History
Born on 04 November 2359 in Alexandria, Egypt, Soraya Nasser grew up amid the collision of antiquity and modernity. Her fascination with mechanisms began with the desalination stations along the Mediterranean coast, where she spent countless hours shadowing the technicians who kept the megastructures humming.
Nasser entered Starfleet Academy in 2377 and graduated with the Class of 2381, completing a rigorous dual-track program in Warp Systems Engineering and Advanced Power Systems. Her instructors described her as “methodical, stubborn, and unreasonably gifted”-traits that quickly defined her early career. Assigned to the Excelsior-II and Luna-class modernization programs, she built a reputation as the engineer to call when a warp core refused to behave. Her ability to coax aging propulsion systems into meeting modern specifications earned her the attention of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers long before she realized her work was being noticed.
By the late 2390s, she was reassigned to Project Curiosity as part of the SCE’s initial design and testing teams for the emergent Typhoon-class propulsion suite. For years, Nasser lived aboard testbed platforms that were more danger zone than starship, working elbow-deep in prototype twin warp cores and the unstable quad-lobed warp field that would eventually define the class. She learned the Typhoon’s engines in their rawest, most temperamental form, mastering their quirks, strengths, and catastrophic failure modes. Several of the standing operating procedures now used aboard Cyclone, including dual-core load-sharing protocols and the emergency warp field reconfiguration checklist, were written by her hand during those trial-by-fire years.
When the Typhoon project stabilized and transitioned toward fleet integration, Nasser sought a return to line service to prove her engineering doctrine in the field. She was assigned as Assistant Chief Engineer aboard an Odyssey-class explorer, where she translated test-range theory into practical fleet reliability under sustained mission tempo. Her performance led to a rapid reassignment as Chief Engineer of a Gagarin-class escort, a posting that further showcased her ability to keep engines fighting through punishing operational demands. Whether supporting heavy patrol cycles or responding to emergent border crises, Nasser’s ships came home with their engines intact.
Her selection as Chief Engineer of Cyclone following the death of the previous Chief Engineer during Operation Iron Veil was not a surprise to those who knew her work. Few officers in Starfleet understand the Typhoon-class plant as intimately or as unapologetically as Soraya Nasser.