Lena Ryland - The Engineer Who Always Has a Plan B

Date of Birth: February 9, 2063 - Chicago, Illinois, USA

Position: Docking Bay Manager & Systems Engineer, Minos Settlement, Mars

Education:

• BSc in Systems Engineering - Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago

Focus areas: integrated logistics, risk analysis, human–machine systems, adaptive workflow design.

• MEng in Industrial & Systems Engineering - Georgia Institute of Technology

Specialization: large-scale operations, complex system design, and safety-critical process optimization.

• Advanced Certification in Extraterrestrial Mobility & Habitat Operations - NASA Johnson Space Center

Concentration on airlock safety, convoy docking protocols, autonomous robotics, and Mars-surface logistics.

Lena Ryland

If you walk into the Minos docking bay at any given hour, you might find a tall, athletic young woman kneeling beside an open maintenance panel, sleeves rolled up, a tablet balanced on her knee, muttering to herself about redundancies, rerouting paths, or whether the airflow seals have been behaving strangely this week. That’s Lena Ryland, systems engineer, docking bay manager, and one of the quiet pillars of Minos’ fragile survival.

She is not the loudest, nor the most flamboyant presence in the settlement. She does not dominate conversations like Ava Kalogrias, nor erupt with the fiery intensity of Elena Markova in the Russian settlement. Yet when something breaks, when the ground shakes, when dust screams against the outer hull, when pilots radio in with static-filled panic, everyone looks for her. Because Lena always has a plan.Or more precisely: she always has multiple plans.

From Chicago’s Skyline to Mars’ Red Horizon

Lena grew up in Chicago, surrounded by steel, wind, and the constant hum of infrastructure. Bridges, trains, engines, snowplows grinding down the street at dawn. She studied systems engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, drawn to the discipline that demanded both technical mastery and a wide-lens understanding of how things worked together. She was the student who color-coded her project binders, organized her team’s simulations weeks ahead of schedule, and still found time to help others fix their models.

Ambition shaped her early career choices. Signing up for Minos’ four-year engineer program was not an impulsive adventure; it was a measured, strategically calculated step. Mars is the new frontier, and only capable, resilient people are chosen. A few years out here shines on any résumé without requiring a lifetime sacrifice. Lena wanted challenge, prestige, and growth, all without giving up the future she imagined back on Earth.

Yet even she didn’t imagine how deeply Mars would change her.

A Quiet Presence Among Storms

On Mars, Lena quickly found her rhythm: disciplined, precise, and reliable. She became a familiar sight in the gym in the early mornings, pushing through her routines with the same focus she brought to her engineering work. Socially, she hovered on the shy side. Warm, kind, but not the type to plunge into the loud chaos of the Minos club every weekend.

Ava Kalogrias, unpredictable and brilliant, became her closest friend. When the two walked into the club together, Lena enjoyed the attention they drew, but she never chased it. She was the steady flame beside Ava’s wildfire. While others threw themselves into adrenaline-packed romances and dramatic arguments, Lena preferred the calm hum of the workshop late at night, soldering circuits or developing new robot modules for problems that had not even emerged yet. Because if Mars teaches anything, it is that every problem eventually emerges.

Lena Ryland

The Docking Bay: A Crossroads of Risk and Precision

Minos’ docking bay is a place where systems collide. Logistics, robotics, pressure seals, refueling, convoy turnaround, airlock timing, waste management protocols, and the endless stream of small catastrophes that accompany life on a hostile planet. Lena rose quickly through the ranks because she treated the bay as a living organism: unpredictable, moody, dangerous, but manageable if you understood its anatomy.

She is a classic systems engineer. Not specialized in one narrow field, but breathing the entire system at once. She coordinates workflows, anticipates failures, runs risk audits twice as often as required, and is known for designing backup solutions that sometimes bewilder her colleagues. She is the engineer who prepares for outcomes people hope will never happen. Her quiet worry is not a flaw; it is her engine. Her imagination is always three steps ahead of disaster.

The Illegal Lifeline to Vostok

Mars might be divided by corporate boundaries, but survival has its own ethics. When Vostok collapsed in the great dust storm, Lena did not hesitate. She knew the Minos board would never authorize direct help. She also knew that refusing aid meant death for dozens of Russian settlers.

David Everhart’s clandestine operation needed someone who could reroute cargo, re-label manifests, disguise supply shipments as waste processing runs, and outsmart Minos’ Twin Minds AI systems capable of spotting even the smallest anomaly. It was Lena who figured out the timing gaps. Lena who redesigned the convoy return workflows. Lena who created “invisible slots” in the docking schedule where humanitarian aid could move unnoticed.

And Lena who felt the fear every single day. Because for all her rationality, she understood the stakes better than anyone. She was stealing corporate property. She was fabricating records. If caught, she would not only be sent home; she would go to prison. Yet every time she sealed a fake manifest or patched together a mislabeled shipment headed for Vostok, her hands were steady. To her, it was simply the right thing to do.

The Courage of the Quiet Ones

Lena Ryland is not a legend in Minos. Not in the traditional sense. She doesn’t chase glory, and she doesn’t make speeches. But settlements don’t survive on the heroics of the bold alone. They survive because of people like her: the planners, the worriers, the troubleshooters, the engineers who stay up late solving problems the rest of the settlement doesn’t even know exists.

Her courage is quiet. Her strength is preparation. Her rebellion is competence. Her kindness guides her more than fear ever could. Halfway through her four-year contract, she is already one of the invisible guardians of Minos. She may return to Earth in two years with a brilliant résumé, glowing recommendations, and career opportunities.

But the truth is simple:

If Minos stands, it stands in no small part because Lena Ryland chose to worry; and chose to act.