'Bout time...

Posted on Wed Jan 11th, 2012 @ 2:43pm by Captain Liam Sheppard
Edited on on Wed Jan 11th, 2012 @ 2:44pm

Mission: A Ship Reborn
Location: Shuttlecraft, shortly before docking with the Relentless
Timeline: M0,D1,0830

This pilot had very obviously just skimmed through his curriculum in flight school and Captain Sheppard wondered how he had ever passed finals. Several times, Sheppard wondered if an external dampener had shorted out with all the buffet.

"Boy, if I wanted to lose my lunch I'd have told ya to fly like some runt with a hankering for an anti-grav coaster!" Sheppard barked. "Sorry Sir, I'm doing my best!" replied the young ensign. "Sandwich those sirs boy! If I'd had a trainee like you back at basic I'd have you runnin' the Devil's Grate until your feet didn't know if they were supposed to be attached to your legs or the dirt!"
"Sir, yes sir!" the boy responded obviously wanting to be anywhere but here.

Five years... Five years of whipping "greenys" like this one into shape at basic... Countless sorties during the Dominion War, soil on his boots from numerous Cardassian, Jem'Hadar, and who knows what other worlds, and that was what it had come to.

It wasn't hard to see why Liam Sheppard had jumped at the opportunity for this assignment, even if he didn't know much about it (something he was known for hating: ignorance). He'd seen men die in battle, soldiers from a variety of species, good and courageous men and women and transgenders. And after all of that, they had stationed him as an instructor... An instructor! Well give him a friggen' apple and let's have a teacher's night out! Maybe someone would even bring some finger sandwiches and a pot of iced tea and they could all talk about little Jimmy's grades in basic warp-theory!

But, after all, he was a career man through and through, and where Starfleet needed Captain Sheppard, that's where Captain Sheppard would stand.

He wasn't a man that smiled, but he came pretty close to it when he received the data-pad with his transfer orders. The Relentless, combat vessel, and Captained by as fine an officer as he'd ever heard of. Sheppard had never met Captain Conway personally, but knew he was a man of good metal. Most of all, Sheppard reveled at the thought of getting his space legs back again, and being back on the front where he belonged. He didn't have much of a stomach for classified info or intelligence personnel, etc (damn spooks!), but hell, if it put a phaser rifle back in his hands that he could actually set PASSED the stun setting, well yippee ki yay.

The Relentless loomed into viewed, docked at Starbase 75, looking bright and beautiful.

"'Bout damn time..." he mumbled gruffly. They had called him "the old bear" at Basic, and it wasn't hard to see why. Though he hadn't a hair on his head or face, you didn't have to look to hard to imagine this man standing 9 feet tall with a snout and a growl that would send the greenys running for their mama's.
Sheppard grabbed his duffle (almost as old as he was, yet another piece to add to his reputation as a "relic") and marched out the airlock without a backwards look... though he could have sworn he heard a slight sigh of relief breathed from the ensign pilot just before Sheppard had crossed the threshold.