Joseph Walker

Joe’s relationship with his father has never exactly been easy, in fact its been damn right hostile since he was a teenager. Joe’s relationship with his mother however was far more close. His mother understood that his fathers career and as a side show her own had had a detrimental effect on her youngest child. She tried the best she could to offer him as many outlets for his anger and or frustrations. She learned quite early on that part of his issue was that he hated being locked into a tin can full of people. The onset of the dominion war and the fear that they all lived in at the time, would have a profound effect on Joe. He swore that he would never allow himself to feel so helpless again.

At the age of seventeen Joe finally got his wish, his father allowed him to go to live with his grandparents on Eath. The elderly couple wasn’t prepared for a young man to enter there lives that had witnessed and seen to many people lose their lives in the service of the federation or the impact such loss would have on a young man. Joe would find it easier to cope in a bottle of rum than he would by talking to a counsellor, it wasn’t long before he was making himself known to starfleet and homeworld security. Being brought home more than once by starfleet security, most of the time for minor inconveniences such as public intoxication.

Age 19 however Joe got himself into more trouble than he could handle, he had fallen into the wrong crowd and was helping to peddle stolen goods. When the group was busted he was in the warehouse helping ready a delivery to be shipped of world. Now while the rest of the crew of bandits for want of a better word were known and hardened criminals. Joe was more in it for having a name that was his not his fathers. If he was fully aware of the risks he ran, he didn’t necessarily show them at the time. He didn’t care how bad it would look on his father, as his old man reminded him when he got a vid call from him while in holding.

The judge of his case gave him two options, for the crimes that he had committed. He could do five years in a penal facility on Earth or sign up to starfleet. Whether this was done as a favour to his father or grandmother he has never asked, but he was keen to avoid serving hard time with the people he had been caught with. Joe chose to enlist in the marine core

Joe was not an immediate hit with the marine core, he lacked the discipline and a lot of the people he trained with had heard who his father was. So instead of getting the completely fresh start away from his families history that he thought he wanted and needed, he had to deal with people asking questions and expecting him to live up to the reputation of his family and the legacy of their stories in the fleet and the Federation. While not completely enanamoured with the idea of people knowing about his family, he took to the physical elements of training very well. You might say that he enjoyed the burn of his muscles after a particularly long run at the start and when they introduced him to the weapons range he seemed to take to the shooting range as well as the rest.

Joe completed his basic training in the top ten percent of his class with tutors suggesting that he could have finished top of his class, if he had spent a little less time goofing off and working harder on assignments. His field work was one of the reasons for his high ranking among his graduating class.

Soon after graduating Joe was pushed into further training, this time in explosives and ordinance. His commanding officer noticed he seemed to enjoy the explosions a little more than he was comfortable with. While his superior NCO’s noted that Joe had an eye detail and an affinity for pulling through tricky situations. Either way Joe was starting to get noticed, after action reports by superior officers suggested he had real potential.

Sometime after his twenty first birthday while out celebrating with friends of Risa, Joe was recruited by the rangers. Joe at first thought that it was a prank by friends in his unit but when his transfer orders came down from above, Joe was genuinely shocked. It wasn’t that he wasn’t good at what he did, he just didn’t think that he was good enough. Some of what his father had said to him as a kid and after his arrest had still to be shaken off. Though he was transferred to the Ranger training faciility Joe was not expected to pass the muster, some expected that he was destined to fall flat on his face. He was the screw up of the Walker family not the shining beacon of his family.

For once in his life however rather than allow his conrades and trainers to get in his head, Joe buckled down and seemed to be determined to prove others that they were completely wrong about him. Joe finally seemed to be able to put the ghosts of his child hood to bed and freed himself from the shadows of his family. Training was hard but with each cut made to Joe’s amazement he polled close to the top of the leaders board.

After completing his training Joe was assigned to his first rangers unit, here he was just another man. Joe Walker was in his own eyes his own man. Contact with family became even more sporadic during this initial phase, owing to the nature of the missions he and his team were usually assigned to radio silence was often maintained for extensive periods of time. It was during an operation where his team was charged with releasing a freighter full of hostages and their cargo from Nausican pirates who were after the dilithium ore being transported back to Federation space for use in the fleet. Joe wasn’t aware of any issues with his family either at home or on his fathers starship. Unknown to Joe his father and three other members of an away team were killed while rescuing a team of scientists from a damaged space station during a plasma storm. Joe would only get the news at the conclusion of the mission he was on, by that time his fathers funeral and memorial had already taken place.

Joe’s fractious relationship with his family would take a hammer blow, even his mother would take time to forgive him for not being at his fathers funeral. Though she knew what being married to the uniform is like, angered by the loss of her husband and her routinely absentee youngest child on first meeting up with her son when he was visiting the family home she slapped him. Some very unsavoury things were said by his mother and his elder brother took delight in digging into the real emotional wounds he had suffered. Though his father and he had rarely spoken in years and had not been on good terms. One of his greatest regrets is that he never got to speak to his old man one more time.

One of the things that Joe has never heard and will never hear from his father is that he was proud of him. As a youngster who hated the man and the uniform that he wore and served it never bothered him. As a man who had done some good in the uniform however, Joe would have liked to hear just once that his father was proud of him for what he was doing and what he had done.