David closed his eyes as the shuttle slowly and agonzingly landed in the shuttlebay. He couldn’t exactly say he was looking forward to his arrival, he also couldn’t exactly say he wasn’t. The Viking was what it was, and he’d heard many stories about the ship over the past few years - most of them stories that one might tell around a camp fire in the darkest hours of the night with a torch to illuminate your face. For a time, that was all they had been stories, until they weren’t. In a few months it would be coming up to three years ago, when the Golden Boy fell from grace, since David’s eyes were opened to the darkness of the universe. Three years since his sister, Briar Harrington disappeared. And now here David was, two and a bit years later, landing on the same ship his sister had served on. Disembarking into the same shuttlebay she’d disembarked on. Walking the hallways she had walked.

It was like a punch in the gut.

As the Shuttle doors opened David slowly extracted himself from his seat. Any who had known the young confidant man that David had been in his early years, would not have know the beat man exiting the shuttle. His once youthful and handsome face, whilst still handsome was tired and worn. He was thin, his eyes - the same remarkable eyes he shared with his sister - were dark and had bags under them. “Thank you very much,” he said turning to his pilot with a polite nod and a kind smile that for a brief moment brought the Golden Boy back to life erasing the shadow of grief.

Keeping that same smile, he disembarked slowly, straightening his posture as he went, until he resembled the man he had once been. Had fallen yes, but the Viking was his second chance and he’d be darned if he wasn’t going to take it and prove that the Golden Boy was not beaten yet.

Ensign Harrington
Doctor