Sakura Masuko

Political Information

• Affiliation: Starfleet, United Earth Commonwealth

Family

• Mother: Doctor Toshiko Masuko, BS, MS, MA, PhD, ScD, Theoretical physicist, Tokyo Institute of Technology
• Father: Doctor Haruto Masuko, PhD, Experimental physicist, California Institute of Technology
• Husband: Lieutenant junior grade Adam Smith, BS, Second Engineer, Lexington (NCC-12)

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Biography

Early Life

Sakura was born on December 4th, 2121 in the Japanese city of Kyoto. As the only child of two prominent scientists, Sakura kept to herself and focussed on her studies instead of making friends. Her parents encouraged her to follow in their footsteps in physics and after she finished secondary school, she was attending the university her mother worked at.

She studied at the Tokyo Institute of Technology for five years. Again, she didn’t make many friends, preferring the company of books and assignments in the library. Nevertheless, she left university with a first degree in physics and engineering. During her last year at university she received a placement to work at the Warp 5 Complex in Montana, Bozeman. There she studied under various famous warp physicists. After graduating in 2143 she was inspired by the work at the Warp 5 complex that she applied to join Starfleet. Her application was initially rejected based on the fact she didn’t pass the first round of reviews, in particular she was told her interactions with colleagues prevented her from developing. Disheartened at the news and not knowing what to do with her life, Sakura’s mother secured her a job with a colleague of hers at the Copperfield Institute who was working in Cardiff, Wales at the time. Sakura enjoyed living away from home and for the next two years worked alongside Doctor Owen Harper and his team. The time at the Institute helped Sakura come out of her shell and eventually she was seen regularly socialising with her colleagues outside the working hours. In 2146 she re-applied to Starfleet and with a recommendation from Doctor Harper she was accepted.

Starfleet Career

Early Career

For the next four years, Sakura was living in San Francisco while attending Starfleet Training Command in becoming an officer. She found that by keeping a fair balance between work and socialising she could enjoy her life for the first time. Sakura became romantically involved for the first time with a fellow trainee. His name was Adam Smith and he really brought Sakura out of her shell. Two of them had a lot in common and on numerous occasions were caught in the engineering laboratories tinkering away with some experiment. Along with this, Adam shared his passion for the theatre and music. He would take her to a number of shows and concert, something she thoroughly enjoyed. On their final survival mission together, Adam was injured. While they waited for help Adam’s condition began to deteriorate and all Sakura do was to hold him tightly. Privately she thanked Adam for saving her life and proclaimed her love for him. Adam survived the trip back to the nearest hospital and recovered three weeks later.

Lexington NCC-12

After completing her training on Earth, Sakura (along with Adam) was assigned to the Daedalus-class starship Lexington (NCC-12) as a support engineer. For the next four years she enjoyed being part of the engineering crew under the ship’s chief engineer and first officer; Commander Tyler Mendez. The Lexington was assigned several duties between Earth and Vulcan which ranged from mapping to convey protection duty and transporting various delegates.

Her relationship with Adam went from strength to strength. The two of them were considered the “power couple” in main engineering; when Commander Mendez needed a problem solving, he would always approach Adam and Sakura with it first. The two of them would always come up with a creative solution. They were both commended for their radical way of thinking and being able to develop results that helped the crew get out of tough situations. On one occasion, Sakura was responsible in helping shutdown Cold Station Three after the scientists there became deranged after an alien psychotic virus was accidentally released. Her innovative plan in using a computer virus to take over the station’s control system saved those who had not been infected and at the same time stopped the infected scientists from taking complete control of CS3. She was once again commended for her ingenuity by Captain Jia Canmore.

In 2154 Sakura was offered to join the engineering crew that was helping in building the third NX-class ship, the Challenger. Sakura was encouraged by Commander Mendez and Adam to accept the offer. In September 2154, the Lexington was in orbit of Earth and Sakura left the ship and crew she had fondly got to know. Before her departure, Adam proposed to her. Sakura instantly said yes. The two of them decided they didn’t want a big ceremony, so after a small ceremony in Tokyo with close family and friends they began their marriage by wishing each other goodbye. The Lexington would be leaving Earth to resume its duties along the Vulcan border. They did though agree to take their next leave together to go on their honeymoon.

Challenger NX-03

Joining the construction crew late in 2154 meant that Sakura was able to participate in the last efforts to get the ship ready. Like her sister ship, the Columbia, the Challenger was having problems with a number of her systems. Putting her own field experience in to practice, Sakura was able to cut the time it took sort these issues out by a half. For her initiative Captain Rani Karim appointed Sakura to the position of Second Engineer. Initially Sakura had considered remaining with the construction teams instead of taking an active starship assignment once the ship was built, however Captain Karim persuaded Sakura to reconsider her decision. Karim was pleased when her job offer was accepted, Sakura was promoted to lieutenant junior grade with her new post. This act was recorded as the captain’s last official order in her log as tragedy would strike when the Challenger’s commanding officer died in shuttle accident. Karim’s loss devastated the crew; as such Sakura felt that she owed Captain Karim to prove to her that she made the right choice in making her Second Engineer.

Sakura’s first meeting of Commander Michael Stanton, her new boss and the ship’s new chief engineer didn’t go as well as she had hoped. Feeling the need to continue to assert her authority over the engineering staff, he had walked in on her bellowing out orders at the top of her voice. Stanton had a quiet word with her and requested she no longer took that approach with their staff. That wasn’t how he wanted his engineering room ran. She understood his request and did her best to rein it in. During the ship’s first mission a number of the crew were kidnapped by the Orions, including Commander Stanton. This happened while they were ferrying Earth diplomats to an important conference with the Denobulans. Sakura was temporarily left in charge of engineering and led the ship’s efforts with repairs. The pressure of leading such a large department got to her during Stanton’s absence and on a few occasions, she was observed snapping at her teams to get their work done to ensure the ship was repaired. Captain Burton was one of the observers, nevertheless he didn’t object to it as he was eager to get his ship fixed and felt Sakura could rebuild relationships another time. Masuko would be the first person to operate the ship’s transporter controls in deep space when she beamed their missing crewmates back from the Orions. After the chaos of their first mission was complete, Sakura did her best to repair the relationships with her engineering staff and even went out of her way to socialise with other members of the crew. Eventually she formed a good friendship with the ship’s senior nurse: Ensign Niall Stewart, sharing many meals with him and together they brought movie-night (a weekly viewing of motion pictures for the crew to watch together) to the ship.

In March 2155 Sakura was assigned to the landing party to assist two Human colony ships that had been attacked by the Romulans. She was part of Captain Burton’s team to board the SS Mayflower. On the team with her was Ensign Stewart too, by this time the two had formed a good friendship as such she teased him when she noticed one of the MACOs (Private Liam Jenkins) eyeing him up. Eventually they saved the colonists and escorted them to the Archer system, but prior to their arrival they discovered the new Earth colony was about to come under Romulan siege. They won the battle, but the ship was heavily damaged during the process. While the ship was under repair, she learnt how Stanton dealt with the pressure of having to get the ship back up and running in a shot amount of time. His ‘think-tank’ approach of encouraging their engineering staff to deal with the technical problems in a creative and efficient manner inspired her and reminded her of her time back on the Lexington. The ship was fixed before the deadline and was fully operational to help with the colonists settle on their new homeworld.

When Challenger was assigned the duty of assisting their Andorian allies in liberating their colony on Docana (later the ship would lead the efforts), Sakura would experience how to deal with working Andorian engineers. When a bulk of the Andorian fleet was crippled and destroyed by a minefield (it was later discovered to be Romulan in origin) she was assigned to lead one of many repair teams from Challenger to help the Andorians. Fortunately, Commander Stanton had recommended that Sakura review all engineering data that Starfleet had on Andorian technology, as such she was one step ahead of the other Starfleet engineers in being able to help. As Commander Stanton was off the ship during the final battle, Sakura found herself back in charge of engineering.  When the ship was liberating Docana the Romulans detonated their minefield, which heavily damaged the ship. As such Sakura was injured in main engineering when she fell from the stairs and ended up pulling a ligament in her ankle. Ensign Stewart was able to treat her, and she shortly returned to duty. With Commander Stanton and his team now missing, Sakura oversaw the repairs to the ship without him. Commander Levesque noted that even with her injuries, Sakura was able to get the ship repaired ahead of schedule.

During the middle of 2155 the ship was ordered to make official first contact with the Deltan species on behalf of the Earth Commonwealth and its allies in the Coalition of Planets. Initially the first contact went well with both side exchanging ideas peacefully, but the ship was dragged in to an ongoing conflict the Deltans were having with a neighbouring race known as the Carreons. In the open battle between both sides, Challenger was forced to leave its orbit of Delta to avoid being destroyed by the Carreons. As Commander Levesque (along with other crewmembers) were left on Delta, Commander Stanton became acting first officer. As such he left engineering under the management of Sakura when he was needed on the bridge or in a meeting with Captain Burton. Sakura’s engineering skills came in to full use when the Carreons began a campaign of attacking the ship on a regular basis. As their weapons weren’t as advanced compared to Starfleet’s the ship received little damaged until they persisted and repeated their attacks almost daily. It was during this period that Stanton, with help from Sakura, had to change his leadership style and became more authoritarian with his engineering staff so they would keep on top of their repairs. In their last battle they engaged a Romulan Bird-of-Prey which they discovered was using a telepresence capturing system to control Carreon vessels. They were able to avoid being captured themselves and disabled the craft; unfortunately, the Romulans were not prepared to be captured and destroyed their ship. The shockwave from the exploding ship severely damaged Challenger further. Captain Burton ordered the crew to abandon ship when it became heavily damaged and unable to sustain the entire crew. Stanton stayed with Captain Burton and Sub Commander T’Plau on board in attempt to save the ship, once again Sakura was made the senior engineer when the crew left. When the survivors landed on an unnamed Minshara class world, many of the Starfleet crew felt that Sakura should take lead after Doctor Ben-Ami’s escape pod was presumed shot down and destroyed. Not wanting to take on that amount of pressure, she deferred to Major Yu’s experience to assume leadership. Some of the crew protested at her choice for allowing a MACO to take over, at which point she reminded them all that Captain Burton would be ashamed of them for not seeing themselves as one crew. She became Yu’s deputy though, to ensure the crew’s morale was maintained at some level. Her and her engineers would refit one of the less damaged escape pods to become a “hot rod” to search for Doctor Ben-Ami’s missing pod, even if it meant they found their remains. The project kept many of the crew busy for a few days. Thankfully they found Doctor Ben-Ami and those presumed lost with her. Sakura would go on to provide technical assistance in ensuring the camp they had setup was operational and would help the crew survive. Eventually they would be rescued by Captain Burton after he and the others had dealt with the Carreon-Deltan crisis.

Challenger was eventually repaired and relaunched to join the war effort. Due to changes in the senior staff, Commander Stanton become the ship’s new first officer. As a consequence of this, Burton promoted Sakura to the full rank of lieutenant. She now had more responsibilities with engineering. Sadly though, Commander Stanton would not survive in his role as first officer long. He would go on to sacrifice himself to ensure the successful completion of a mission that resulted in the destruction of a key Romulan base. Sakura would eventually become chief engineer and made the decision to honour her former boss by maintaining how Stanton managed and led the engineering department. Not only did Sakura have to deal with his death, but the death of her close friend Jack Conrad as well as the loss of Major Yu. The latter was due to a transporter accident which Masuko was involved with. She blamed herself for what happened to Yu but when it was confirmed that the technology could not cope with the stress it was under, she couldn’t find any peace with this news. Sakura was the one who suggested to the captain they honoured their fallen comrades by having their pictures displayed in the mess hall on a memorial wall. Sakura, every night would light a candle for them, on some level it brought her peace in making sure they remembered their former shipmates.