How Horace Jesuit Harkness had ever made it to Senior Chief, let alone Master Chief, was a mystery to almost everyone, except those that knew him best. Horace was not a pretty man, in fact he was just north of homely, and about twenty minutes south of average. His nose was crooked from multiple breaks over the years. There was grey in both his eyebrows and hair. Perpetual five o’clock shadow made him appear, slightly scruffy and disreputable. His collar bore the three stripes and bullet of a Master Chief Petty Officer in Starfleet. His tunic was in operations gold. Chief Harkness was at the pinnacle of the enlisted man’s career. Horace was neither short nor tall, standing somewhere around five foot nine. He was however broad with a bruisers, or brawlers build, broad of shoulder, with a little paunch from age. His knuckles were sunken from countless encounters of the pugilistic kind. Overall he looked like an old man that had been around the block more than once, and knew where he could hide the bodies. Horace was getting on in years and now more than ever considered retirement, and being with his wife Iris full time. Tragedy had changed that for him.

Horace came up through the ranks as an Electronic Warfare Technician, Computer Tech, and Engineering Rating. That made getting himself assigned to the USS Athena easier than people would have expected. Sometimes you pulled strings to get what you wanted. Sometimes you went and added the strings you needed to be pulled. That was how he found himself standing on the Transporter Pad, in Transporter room 1, a bag in each hand. The Transporter Chief started to say something, took a glance at the face of the man, and the collar pins, and decided to leave the Senior most Enlisted man on the boat alone. When one is a Master Chief, miraculous things happened, like Crewman below Petty Officer 3rd class appearing and taking ones bags.

“Stow in my Rack, I’ll be along later,” was all the low gravelly gruff voice of Harkness stated. There were duties to be seen to, and he needed to keep his overall profile low. Well as low as a Master Chief in Starfleet can keep his Profile.

MCPO Horace Harkness, Chief of the Boat