10 years ago~~~
Emily sat in the back of her class and fidgeted with her pencil. English was her worst subject. She knew how to write a sentence and didn’t understand why this was necessary, but her she sat listening to the teacher drone on and on and participals and conjugated verbs and how these things would be looked at in the final paper that they had to write. A thesis, at least 16 pages with annotations. She sighed and glanced at the clock on the wall. Five more minutes and she could go to her elective, engineering.

The bell rang and Emily was the first one out the door ~Freedom!~ She took a sharp left and headed to the engineering wing of the high school. Here she was able to be herself, express her creativity, expand her knowledge of quantum physics and space travel. Their current project was making a replica of one of the star ships that sat in dock above at the small space port that had been built. One of the nice things about Mr. Davis was that he was a former Star Fleet Engineer and he arranged for them to to the space port and then to one of the ships that was currently in dock. Emily was in awe of the warp engine and wanted to touch all the shiny buttons just to see what they did. It was this visit that changed her career choice.

Outside of school, Emily had trouble with socializing. She came off as being arrogant and rude. She struggled with making friends and maintaining those relationships. Throughout her childhood she had only 3 really close friends. Her parents struggled with their own mental health issues and that left Emily, as the oldest, to basically raise her little brother and sister. When Emily was in 10th grade, it was found that she had Oppositional Defiant Disorder and this explained why at times she struggled with authority figures and other people.

~Present day~
Emily sat in the passenger seat of the trasport cargo going to the Ark Angel. It was her second assigment, her last one had ended with an unfortunate incident. To the present day, Emily states that she was defending herself against aggression being shown by another crewmember and after making several complaints to authority and nothing being done, when the crewman began a fight with Emily, he pushed her and she hit him. This earned her a night in the brig and dismissal from the ship, they did not strip her of her rank or other punishment because witnesses had stated that she acted in self defense.

She pulled up the engineering schematics of the ship and went over them again, sliding the pad back into her bag, she looked out the forward view screen as the ship came into view. The pilot hailed the ship and permission was granted to come aboard. Emily watched as the shuttle settled on the floor of the bay and waited for it to repressurize. Once it was safe, Emily grabbed her bag and headed out onto the ship, first stop was medical. Emily could not help but smile, she wondered if Judge Wadleigh was looking down and smiling that Emily had made something of herself.

Bradford (eng)