"I know the inside of this ship like I know the back of my hand; I have the blueprints for both."
Name: Sumiye King
Age: 36
Gender Identity: Female
Relationship Status: Single
Occupation: Senior Engineer
Place of Residence: The Thucydides (Current); Austin, Texas (Former)
Appearance: Sumiye stands at roughly 5’ 8” tall and has an average build; her shoulders and arms are well muscled due to her constant work with machinery, but aside from this she is not particularly athletic. Her heritage gives her complexion an olive tone, but her skin is a little on the pale side from time spent mostly indoors or on long trips in space. Tattoos cover her left arm and shoulder while her right arm is prosthetic, replaced voluntarily years ago to give herself an advantage over the competition. The casing of her prosthetic is the same as that of her skin, but from a glance it is obvious that it is made out of metal or plastic and it has visible joints and seams.
Black hair falls to chin length, not quite reaching her shoulders, and is often messily tied back into a ponytail or a topknot to keep it out of her face. Her facial features are soft and round, while the shape of her face itself is angular; a round nose, round eyes and large lips sit on a face with sharp cheekbones and a pointed chin. The skin of her hands and arms, her real one anyway, is covered in little scars, burn marks or callouses from working with tools and machinery and her fingertips are stained an almost permanent shade of black from years.
History: The only daughter of an American father and a Japanese mother, Sumiye was born and raised in Austin, Texas. With the birth of the Commonwealth and mankind’s expansion into the stars, the state had become home to a number of “dry docks” used to construct and even launch spaceships both military and civilian due to its size and large areas of uninhabited land; even though the city she grew up in wasn’t exactly close to any of these shipyards, the ships themselves were large enough that she was able to see them blast into the sky regularly as she was growing up.
Like most children she was fascinated by them and like many children she wanted to be a pilot when she was young. When she was a little older and she learned that ships of that size didn’t usually have just a single pilot, she changed her mind to wanting to become a ship captain instead. That idea fell through as well, mostly because over time Sumiye began to realise that she hated the idea of being in charge of so many people like that; being a captain was a huge responsibility, not the kind of fun adventure she had first imagined it would be.
Her fascination with ships and space travel in general continued however and as a teen she instead turned her attention to learning how they worked and how they were put together. Upon graduating high school she attended university to study engineering, earning a degree in Astronautics while minoring in whatever other courses took her interest. Her first job as a new graduate was at one of the same shipyards whose ships she used to stare at as a child, helping to build freighters for the civilian sector; big, blocky ugly things that taught her a lot about what working on a real ship was like. After a couple years she transferred to a military shipyard where she got to work of various types of warships; just as big, a little less blocky and closer in design to the civilian ships than she would have expected.
A few more years passed and she was recommended for a position as an engineer on a newly built cruiser being launched in a few months; she would be hired as a civilian contractor, meaning she wouldn’t have to join the military, but the idea of serving on a military vessel far away from her home planet was still something that concerned her. After much deliberation and a few conversations with her parents she decided to accept the offer, but not before getting her arm replaced with a prosthetic that would help her do her job.
Working on an active ship was a very different experience to what she was doing before; less to do with putting a ship together and more concerned with
keeping it together. Diagnosing problems rather than working to a blueprint, maintaining systems so they didn’t break down, rigorously checking everything because a single mistake could mean being stranded in the cold void of space, scrambling to fix the things they
didn’t catch so they weren’t stranded in the cold void of space. A monotonous yet high stress job broken up by occasional moments of chaos. She thrived there and in the year that she worked on the cruiser she impressed the chief engineer enough that when he was redeployed to an Exploratory vessel he recommended her for a job alongside him and asked her to come along. That was how she joined the crew of the Thucydides just before their third expedition and this is now her third time flying with them.
Cybernetic/Genetic Enhancements: Sumiye’s right arm has been replaced by a prosthetic which was intended to assist her with her work as a mechanic and engineer. It is not build from strength or durability, though it better at both than her old flesh and blood was, and is instead fitted with a number of sensors and instruments that let her feel what is going on with the machinery around her.
Skills: As a senior engineer working with the Thucydides crew, it is expected that Sumiye possess the requisite skills and experience to fill the role. As a civilian contractor hired by the Commonwealth government she has been assigned to the Thucydides or ships like it for years and has been on many voyages in deep space before; though none quite like this one.
She has extensive, in-depth knowledge of the Thucydides and its inner workings and in particular was in charge of the team responsible for maintaining the ships main and manoeuvring thrusters. Not the FLT drive though; you can blame that on someone else. Her skill set is eclectic, having worked on a lot of different ships in a lot of different places, but she specialises in astronautics and more generally in mechanical engineering.
Reason for joining the crew of the Thucydides: Because the pay is amazing for someone of her skillset and because the Commonwealths Exploratory vessels are often some of the most advances in their fleet. It would be foolish to turn down the career opportunity to work as an engineer on a mission such as this.
Miscellaneous Facts: Sumiye is an avid painter in her spare time, though she doesn’t often get to express it while working on spaceships with limited room for luxuries.
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