Ironically, it was those same rebels that took Soman in and took care of him, taught him about the rights and wrongs of war. They taught him that the wrongs often outnumbered the rights and that it took someone truly close to their Pah to know the boundary between the two.

He developed an interest in how things worked, specifically: engines, weapons, mechanical items. Soon, because of his almost natural ability as a mechanic, he was charged with the upkeep of his sect's suborbital assault ships. A saying developed among the freedom fighters - "If it ain't broke, Soman must have fixed it."

After the Occupation when the Federation arrived, Soman was on Terok Nor (later known as Deep Space 9) as part of the clean-up crew preparing for Starfleet's arrival.

After assisting the Starfleet operations personnel during the move of DS9 from Bajor orbit to the wormhole, Soman received a recommendation from Chief of Operations Miles O'Brien to Starfleet Academy. Scoring in the top 10th percentile, Soman was a highly successful student academically. However, his social performance left much to be desired; coming from a planet just after a war, he was ill-prepared. Like most of the students he made fast friends with Boothby.

With exceptional skill with a phaser, a good ear for subspace communications, and of course his innate abilities with an engineering kit, Soman graduated from the Academy in 2371.

His first posting was aboard the Enterprise-D briefly, before its ill-fated battle over Veridian 6.

After the Enterprise, Soman went to Starbase 12 and then to Utopia Planitia where he served as assistant operations officer until postings for the Astoria became available.