Amelia Forscyth-Coyle
Male

Place of Origin: Port Emily, Sherman’s Planet

Her face starts with sculpted cheekbones, and hair that extends to just the bottom of her face: she has the poise (though, one could make a fair argument that ‘arrogance’ is a more appropriate keyword) and determination of someone more alien than human. Her nose sits centered in her face, marred by a bump along the centerline, extending half a centimeter out before smoothing into it’s natural curve. There’s also a faint, but visible, scar beginning just above the center of her chin, running along her cheek, and it curls around the edge of her left eye before disappearing into the hairline at the edge of her forehead. Her countenance is largely free of other physical blemishes, but smaller, lighter marks run around the backs of her wrists before, again, disappearing into her uniform tunic. Some are artifacts of a lifetime of mostly physical work, but not even the ravages of time can heal everything. Otherwise, she’s noteworthy for being unusually short for a Starfleet officer, at least Human ones, and this causes her no end of irritation.

Amelia is resistant, volatile, and tiresome to deal with at the worst of times, but can be remarkably personable given the right context. In her work, or at least in spaces she believes she knows better than anyone else, she isn’t afraid at all to act like it: something that’s gotten reprimanded more than once. She’s unfailingly loyal, but it’s very difficult to wrangle that out of her. She is no stranger to loss, or to grief, and while she’d insist that such tests had only strengthened and tempered her meter, and her resolve. Foremost, Amelia refuses to let a problem go if she genuinely believes she’s been personally wronged, or her inherent (and often inconsistent) internal compass gives off a bad reading. She’s stubborn to a fault, but that’s served her well in the past: and an almost inbred desire to push, to shove further off the natural boundaries, has -also- caused her great consternation, but brought with it great rewards as a result. The loss of her husband left her with a violence, echoing in a vast hole, in her heart that she hasn’t learned quite how to let go of, even if she’s gotten used to channeling it effectively. In a nutshell, she’s the slightest bit arrogant, irritatingly competent, and fully aware of both of those things, and it’s all related to how her dependencies shifted after the end of the conflict with the Dominion. She isn’t mopey, and she doesn’t carry it on her sleeve: but she’s not ‘over’ her husband. She keeps a picture in her quarters, and has hardly been a socialite every since. oremost, Amelia refuses to let a problem go if she genuinely believes she’s been personally wronged, or her inherent (and often inconsistent) internal compass gives off a bad reading. She’s stubborn to a fault, but that’s served her well in the past: and an almost inbred desire to push, to shove further off the natural boundaries, has -also- caused her great consternation, but brought with it great rewards as a result. However, despite her seeming cockiness, Amelia is cognizant of these facts, and as a result, has mastered several of what she considers vitally necessary interpersonal skills; skills she had to learn much of the hard way. This has given her a fear of failure that she’d never admit, and it’s this fear that drives a lot more of her core than she’d like, but trauma from various firefights has left her a less-than-capable, if only just, frontline combat officer. If nothing else, events in the past did little to dull her fighting spirit, or dedication to Starfleet ideology. Originally, she didn’t -have- major ambitions. At least until 2375, the majority of her time and energy was spent in a whirlwind, three-year romance that’d quickly budded into something larger. As a result, she’s had a personal vendetta with both the Dominion, and specifically those members of the Breen Confederacy, who’re responsible for the attack. Unfortunately, being entirely aware that she’ll never actually get the satisfaction she’s after doesn’t do her any good. Otherwise, she’s unremarkable. Aside from petty revenge, she’s gunning for flag rank, even if she’s more than slightly aware that it’s a pipe-dream. At the very least, working until retirement and getting a nice, comfortable pension to support her in her eventual infirmity, on some equally comfortable, equally backwards colony. She holds no major reservations about command, but she’s concluded that it’s far, far more difficult than she ever would imagine, and that was for a CAG: not exactly ‘independent operations’ by just about any stretch. Life as a combat pilot tends to leave one with periods of interminable boredom, punctuated by short periods of intense excitement, and occasional, extreme terror. As a result, activities that can be easily gotten into, and just as quickly removed from still dominate most of her interests. Reading, both contemporary fiction, alongside martial arts, and fairly standard Marine training exercises: she wasn’t ever a proper Marine, but she’d spent enough time near them in the past to learn how to keep busy, and avoid boredom. Of course, with new responsibilities comes new opportunities, so she’s since discovered a love for tactical-scale wargaming, which meshes well with her fascination with astrogation. A good pilot has to be able to maneuver in four dimensions in a fleet action, and the clear lines, and (comparative) simplicity of stellar cartography give her plenty do to: she got into the habit of doing math in her own head while stuck in a cockpit, and the habit stuck ever since.

Amelia’s birth was largely unremarkable, and she was largely typical for any Sherman’s resident, though she was slightly slimmer than expected, even at such an early age. She was a very quick learner, and she was progressing remarkably well (with above-average marks) in her schooling, until the death of her mother in a shuttle accident: a Klingon transport was ferrying quadrotriticale, and an overloaded impulse engine failed. The resulting explosion in the center of the spaceport caused immense damage; despite being ruled as an accident, nothing conclusive was every quite proven (a particularly large section of hull plating had turned the aforemention shuttlecraft, and several others, into expensive piles of scrap metal). Her mother was little more than a cvillian that her father had met, and fallen in love with, and the pair of them took her death especially hard (Amelia being . Perhaps born out of a misplaced sense of obligation, the young Amelia took this loss to heart, taking solace in the lessons on individualism and self-reliance that it required. This, of course, was a particularly brutal way to learn at such a young age, but there was little else she could do: her father, a Federation lifer, had every intention of sending Amelia to the Academy, and had hung on to enough of his old Fleet contacts to find someone willing to give him a little help: and he very nearly failed in these intentions. It wasn’t until her father passed a scant three years after her mother, from respiratory problems resulting from his line of work: quadrotriticale care (the irony, of course, never missed her). She was taken in by famliy friends, who were never -uncaring-, but whom never treated her as their daughter: merely, a pleasant, but long-term houseguest. She had to fight for it tooth and nail, but the spectre of her family stuck around: even as she half-wheedled, half-conned her new family to act as a more firm sponsor than someone she’d never met back on Earth, and at sixteen, she boarded a freighter bound for the homeworld of Humanity: working her passage on the way there, having successfully passed Academy entrance exams. She was a fantastic pilot, and a terrible administrator, at first. Combative and argumentative, she was nearly tossed out of the small craft programme several times for insubordination, and it’s likely her marks and scores were the only thing keeping her the good side of a visit to the JAG committee shortly before being tossed out. Her test scores were above-average, but it was behind a flightstick that she truly shined, having learned a fair few tips on her transit over…not that helming a lumbering freighter was anything at all like the quick response of a shuttle, but she’d fallen madly in love with the idea of utter freedom, the ability to simply pick a direction and punch it. It was a bit of wanderlust that stuck strongly too her, even as she left the hallowed Academy halls behind. Her first assignment, aboard the O’Sullivan, was largely unremarkable. The Miranda-class cruiser was equipped with two oversized shuttle bays in lieu of a sensor package on the ‘rollbar’, and the ship largely performed patrol missions, and she learned well just how boring a area-of-space patrol can be, even in a two-person craft. Her time with the Colorado was much the same, but it was on leave where she first met Wallace. Her introduction into the then-Lieutenant (wearing the red of Command) was anything but gracious, as he’d been hefted bodily and moved her direction by a particularly upset alien (one does their best, generally, to avoid irritating Gorn, but). Their meeting turned into a whirlwind, and they’d made promises by her reassignment from the Colorado, to the Rhine. The Rhine was a very different experience for her, having from from a second-line warship, to a deep exploration cruiser, and finally onto a Federation-flagged freighter (thus, her nonplussed reaction to her promotion: ‘chief’ of all -two- shuttles abord). If nothing else, the plenty of time on the slow cruise gave her time to speak to Wallace, FTL lag aside. Being one of the few, consistent figures in her life, more of her self-worth was put into his evaluation of her, and their relationship, than was ever wise (but perhaps unsurprising, considering her upbringing). Their romance was short, and very intense: not unsurprising, considering that as active-duty officers, they were only given narrow windows to be with one another, as is typical of working relationships. She was a shuttle pilot, and he was a navigation officer second, and managed ship’ communications, alongside doing personal work for his commanding officer. In 2370, she applied for a leave of absence (as did Wallace), and whilst they only overlapped by six months, they were six incredibly happy months. They’d been married by the end of it, and expressing discontent with her work, he’d encouraged her to return to the Academy, retrain into a different field. She hadn’t intended to become a fighter pilot, but the sudden destruction of the Odyssey and the rumblings of war, she’d been quickly drafted out of her original intentions towards astrogation. She quickly rose to the top of her class (in practical marks), and graduated as one of the first, new crop of attack-fighter pilots ready to enter into the Dominion conflict.
Going straight from the Academy spaces back into front-line combat gave her no trouble, no reason for a pause, and even as her husband was recalled to Earth in 2373 (she wasn’t ever told exactly -why-; he was merely a yeoman in her eyes, but mere yeomen aren’t recalled dozens of lightyears without excellent reason), her service on the Endeavour was exemplary: she, on two occasions, directly disobeyed orders that would have gotten her and the rest of her squadron killed. The first, she was nearly court-martialed, spending several weeks in the brig. It wasn’t until the second, when she had active proof, that she was taken more seriously. Her squadron leader had become erratic, and it eventually turned out to be an oxygen leak in the cabin was causing minor hypoxia, a microfracture that’d gone undetected due to the stresses of consistent combat patrols. She was commended for remaining stalwart, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Despite the distances and literal war between them, she managed to keep in almost regular contact. Life was not going to be pleasant forever, however. With the Breen attack on Starfleet Headquarters in 2375, came news of disaster: Lt. Wallace, alongside several dozen others, was amongst those killed during the surprise attack (and in his case, it was entirely accidental. He’d received orders for reassignment earlier that morning: but the last message open on his terminal was one Amelia sent him). The news was devastating, but she couldn’t let it distract her utterly from her work. She quickly became cold, shutting others out: something that came easily to her as a youth, and the wartime conditions only made it that much more effective. She’d poured far more of herself into what she’d though he wanted, and after having changed so much about herself first, she felt adrift in space; her cornerstone suddenly pulverized (she didn’t even have -ashes- to bury). Once the war came to an uneasy conclusion that same year, she put in for bereavement leave. They’d been married less than eighteen months, having only been finalized fairly shortly after their six months’ together. She was inherently restless, however, and Amelia couldn’t simply sit around and wait for more life to happen: she was a domineering, take-charge figure by nature, and wasn’t going to be useless until she faded into infirmity, or a mysterious illness claimed her, much as it had her father. With that in mind, she returned to Starfleet with a cold, calculating idea: she would either make enough money, wear enough brass, to make a difference, or she would die trying. That attitude held out for all of a year into her first posting, where she had been slotted into as a element lead due to her wartime experience, but year away from the cockpit (and, though they hadn’t told her, the concerns over recent trauma) meant that she wasn’t going to be in a straightforward, leadership role. She threw herself into her work, and some of the flight-time and turnaround records her squadron set still stand as records on the Monongahela, and an item or two of how long someone’s abused a fighter into flying has her name somewhere on it, too. She drilled her crew well, and it wasn’t much of a surprise (to anyone but her, anyway) when her next transfer came with a promotion: her rank (and therefore, her pay, to her annoyance) hadn’t changed. Moving up from element to flight leader was troublesome. She’d had some concerns about reliance, and about what happened to those people she’d felt relied on her, some weighing in ever since the loss of her parents, and more so since the passing of her husband. Genuinely unsure if she could manage it, she threw herself headlong into her work, burying her feelings well below a level where she simply couldn’t -stop- to inspect them. She did this for the next eight years, performing similar roles (and producing similar miracles) to two different warships: Yorktown and Lexington, respectfully. There she served well, if unremarkably, unable to reproduce the efforts she’d on the Monongahela, simply because her command structure was much larger. It was a significantly older Amelia, and arguably slightly wiser, that stepped into the CAG role on the Gibraltar. Her tenure was, once again, unremarkable. She was able to produce higher readiness rates, and faster turnarounds, than her predecessor, but she never quite regained the ability to truly connect with her pilots, make them -wingmates- as opposed to mere subordinates. However, a lesson she’d learned the hard way was that it’s possible to get to know and work with a group of eight, or ten: it’s much harder when you’re not only dealing with eighty or a hundred, but they’re all looking to you up on a pedestal. Ironically, she was composing a memoir on exactly that when the shuttle accident that would put her on inactive duty for next year occured: a failure in a starboard power bus sent the shuttlecraft tumbling back towards the ship that it’d left: and while the Gibraltar was able to snag the small ship in a tractor beam before it smashed helplessly against the ships’ particle shielding, the pilot was dead, and Amelia unconscious: leg turned to near-powder between the underside of the console and the uppermost edge of the deckplates.