Edward Beckett

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Latest revision as of 21:27, 26 September 2009

Edward Jethro Beckett
Edward Beckett in 2406
Species:	Human
Homeworld:	Alpha Centauri
Ethnicity:	Caucasian
Gender:	Male
Born:	January 17th, 2352
Eyes:	Brown
Hair:	Grey/Brown
Height:	6'2"
Weight:	172 lbs.
Affiliation:	Second Fleet
Assignment:	Deep Space Five
Position:	Commanding Officer and Fleet XO
Rank:	Captain
Insignia:
First Appearence:	"Mission Zero"
Player:	Cath
[ Source ]

Edward J. Beckett is the newly-appointed Commanding Officer of the space station Deep Space Five and the Executive Officer of the Second Fleet. A former fighter pilot, Beckett made his name most significantly as a highly successful ship commander in the Borg War, though with his recent assignment as a military advisor in the Palais de la Concorde, has more post-war experience behind a desk than on a starship bridge. There are whispers, not without foundation, that his assignment to DS5 is a result more of his friendship with Rear Admiral Matthew Royce, the Second Fleet's commander, than for his abilities.

Personal Details

Interests: Hiking, Music (Classical, Jazz, Opera), Racing Sports (hovercars, horses, etc), Federation Military History, Cooking, Literature (Earth 19th Century, Colonial), Minor Mechanical Tinkering.

Family

Father: Lieutenant James Beckett (deceased)

Mother: Lieutenant Caitlyn Beckett (deceased)

Wife: Helen Beckett

Son: Matthew Beckett

Daughter: Dawn Beckett

Daughter: Elaine Beckett

Foster-Father: Brandon MacKenzie

Brother-in-Law: Counsellor Andrew MacKenzie of Jupiter

Medical Details

Physical Appearance

Moderately tall and of lanky frame, Beckett’s slight form once hid a wiry strength and resilience to cope with the high physical strain of his career as a pilot. His features were sharp and strong, in his youth seeing him cutting a dramatic figure in a flight suit that one would almost have expected to see in a recruitment poster. Age has, however, begun to take its toll – although he remains in good physical shape for a man in his fifties, that holds inherent limits. His hair and beard are now more grey than dark brown, his face creased and craggy. The only of his features that age has not affected are his eyes; still an almost disconcertingly dark brown, and holding the weight of his experiences within their depths – if you believe in that sort of thing.

Medical Profile

In strong physical shape for a man of his age, Beckett has sustained an expected number of injuries for a veteran of the Borg War. Most of these are minor cuts and scrapes, and never having been shot down from his fighter, the worst he sustained as a pilot was a burnt hand from some damage to his Valkyrie. His most significant injury came in the Battle of Tridentis, where he was stabbed clean through the left arm by a piece of falling metal, and in neglecting to have it seen to so as to stay on the bridge, almost lost his arm in the subsequent medical attention. His left arm still occasionally gives him trouble.

Starfleet Record

Decorations

• Distinguished Flying Cross, 2385
• Christopher Pike Medal of Valour, Battle of Tridentis, 2394
• Purple Heart, Battle of Tridentis, 2394
• Earth Defence Service Medal, 2399

Service Record

• 2370 – 2374: Starfleet Academy, Officer Candidate (Cadet)
• 2374 – 2377: USS Maelstrom; Fighter Pilot (Ensign)
• 2377 – 2381: USS Atlantis; Squadron XO (Lieutenant JG)
• 2381 – 2385: USS Atlantis; Squadron Commander (Lieutenant)
• 2385 – 2389: USS Atlantis; Squadron Commander (Lieutenant Commander)
• 2389 – 2392: USS Illustrious; Executive Officer (Commander)
• 2392 – 2394: USS Illustrious; Commanding Officer (Commander)
• 2394 – 2399: USS Illustrious; Commanding Officer (Captain)
• 2399 – 2406: Palais de la Concorde; Deputy Federal Security Advisor (Captain)
• 2406 – Present: Deep Space Five; Commanding Officer (Captain)
• 2406 - Present: Second Fleet; Fleet Executive Officer (Captain)

History

Childhood

Alpha Centauri has been the home of the Beckett family since some of the earliest settlers reached its soil, a house built in rural lands passed down from father to son, always a presence in the community, usually local, sometimes global. This presence, however, would come to a halt in the mid twenty-fourth century with James Beckett, the last of the family, and his wife, Caitlyn. Both Starfleet officers, they spent little enough of their time on the planet, usually on assignment. The last time they would return for any significant period – and indeed, the last time a Beckett would spend much time at Alpha Centauri – was at the birth of their son, Edward.

Even that lasted only for some eighteen months, in the preparation of Edward’s birth, and for his earliest months, before the entire family would depart the planet, back to the life of Starfleet. Edward was brought up on starships, usually under the care of whatever provisions the vessel had for crewmembers families, and knew more of bulkheads and stars than grass and sky. He was a bright child, curious of his family heritage of both colonials and Starfleet, an avid reader, especially of history and classic literature, and capable and astute in the physical sciences. Though the Cardassian war raged, either his family’s ship would not be sent to the front lines, or little Edward would be left in care at a starbase before the vessel went anywhere near the threat of hostilities.

Thus it was entirely unexpected that this way of life would end in the way it did. Far from the front lines on a scientific mission in well-travelled space, James and Caitlyn Beckett were on board a shuttle dispatched to collect some staff and equipment from a planet’s surface when a technical malfunction brought the ship out of the air. Despite the best efforts of the pilot, it crashed, killing most on board – including Edward’s parents. He was six at the time.

In a time of war, his parents had made provisions should the worst occur, and so Edward came into the care of Lieutenant Brandon MacKenzie, a friend of Caitlyn’s and the most unlikely guardian anyone could have expected. With no family of his own, he was a serious, dour, military-minded officer who had no place in his life for a young child – and yet he had promised his friends to take care of Edward, thus embraced the responsibility with the same vigour and determination he faced any other duty.

He decided to avoid the risks which had denied Edward one set of parents already, and requested a domestic assignment at the Starfleet facility on his homeworld of Taurus VI. Unlike the warm, pleasant Alpha Centauri, Taurus was a cold and unforgiving colony, where the people grew up hardy and independent. Still, Edward was cared for, with a guardian who was a regular presence, on a world which suffered no threat from outside forces, had bountiful resources, and was a strong Federation colony.

Yet Brandon MacKenzie had little idea of what to do with a young boy, and in his uncertainty, he treated Edward like any other military project. The household was strict, and some would say harsher than it should have been for a recently orphaned boy of six, or seven, or even twelve. Never unjust, never unreasonable, but always hard, and always placing discipline above anything else. Edward was encouraged to cultivate his talents, academic subjects cycled past him briskly to test those at which he had an aptitude, and Brandon would thusly place him into whatever advanced classes he could where he showed talent – in the boy’s case, literature, history, and physics.

But Edward was not entirely isolated. He had friends in school as any other boy would, and his guardian did have some family – a brother, who was married with children. But Brandon had long been rather estranged from his brother, a situation made tense by his return to Taurus VI, and Edward’s interactions with his adoptive cousins were vague at best, for neither side were encouraged to mingle. Young Andrew MacKenzie clearly thought very little of him, ignoring him if their paths ever crossed; his sister Helen was somewhat more hostile, thinking him ‘weird’ and informing him of this in no uncertain terms. But Edward would only encounter this branch of his adoptive family perhaps once every two years, and so harsh Brandon, who loved him in his own way but ultimately viewed him as a responsibility more than as a son, and had his eyes set upon his military career, was the closest thing to real family he had.

Edward adapted to the hand he had been dealt. He threw himself into the studies Brandon encouraged, and, probably under the influence of the authority figures in his life, intended to join Starfleet in their honour. Brandon encouraged this, though as Edward entered his teenaged years, he took more and more extended assignments away from Taurus, leaving him to his own devices. Edward would entertain himself with his reading, or his studies, but it was in high school that he would find his first great passion in life: speed.

First it was horse racing down by the lakeside with friends – then a girlfriend introduced him to the joys of hovercars, working with hovercars, driving hovercars, racing them. Brandon, the head of the small Starfleet base on Taurus VI by now, knew little of how to deal with this new hobby until he eventually tried to encourage it by taking his young ward flying on a shuttle.

And thus did a major part of Edward’s life fall into place the first time he flew. He was a natural, taking to the machine and to the air as if he belonged, and his guardian could see this. He tried to cultivate the talent, giving him whatever resources he could have available, and when Edward applied to Starfleet Academy, intending to train as a starfighter pilot, Brandon did his best to see that he was given a place.

It took no pulling of strings or nepotism; he was a good student with a natural aptitude and an understanding of the Starfleet way of life. Some few months after his eighteenth birthday he was on his way to San Francisco – and a genuinely proud, but genuinely relieved Commander Brandon MacKenzie finally accepted a promotion to take command of his own starship.

Starfleet Academy

The Academy was strange for Edward Beckett. He was used to being left to everyday life on his own, as had happened with Brandon’s regular absences, but now he was surrounded by and living with friends who expected him to kick back, have fun, and play as hard as he worked – if not harder. He did not make the change easily, focusing more on his studies than his socialising, but he did warm up somewhat to the outside world, and was careful to ensure he bonded with his classmates, especially those he flew with.

For the experienced at San Francisco reinforced Beckett’s desire to fly. His instructors all hailed him as a natural, and there was no doubt that he would train to be a starfighter pilot. His level-headed nature and calm, pleasant demeanour held him in good stead for any diplomatic courses, his awareness of a battle situation gave him strong tactical grades, and his enjoyment of mechanical tinkering and solid education in physics saw his above-average marks in the sciences, but at the end of the day, Beckett was seen to smile the most when he was in a cockpit.

He graduated twelfth in his class, but was damned with the fact that most of his classmates would, when asked about him, remember him only after a few seconds of thought, and not have much of an opinion of him beyond “nice”. But he had the qualifications he wanted, and the flight status he craved – for Beckett, the socialising was a mere extra in life.

He was assigned as a pilot to the squadron on the USS Maelstrom. War was declared with the Dominion a week after he arrived.

The Dominion War

His was a combat unit, and Beckett underwent a baptism of fire. He clocked more hours of hazardous flight time in the two years of the Dominion War than many pilots had in a not-entirely peaceful decade, earning the callsign of ‘Paladin’ for his conduct while flying, which some called chivalric, others called stupid. He would never finish off a falling enemy if it would be denying them a chance to eject, certainly never open fire on anyone ejected or any EVAC shuttles, and treated his opponents with a courtesy that sometimes put him at more risk than a more cutthroat attitude might have. But he had the flying skills to back it up, and fellow pilots who criticised him for it found their opinions often ignored, for Beckett would keep doing what he did, and garnered a reputation for fair play and respect on both sides of the enemy lines.

The Maelstrom was destroyed in the Battle of Cardassia, and Beckett promoted and assigned to the USS Atlantis. It was on this ship that his life would change forever, in ways he had never anticipated.

The Atlantis, Before the Storm

On the transport shuttle to his new assignment he met newly-graduated Ensign Matthew Royce, who decided that he would make Beckett his friend as they were both new arrivals to a crew hardened by war. Royce was everything Beckett was not – where the latter was calm, well-measured, polite, and reserved, Royce was boisterous, loud, and fun-loving. He dragged Beckett out of his shell just as Beckett taught Royce the value of patience and thoughtfulness, though neither side learned the lessons particularly well. Their differences made them very firm friends very quickly.

As two new arrivals who were important junior officers, Royce the Deputy Chief of Security, Beckett by now the squadron XO, they were taken under the wing of a slightly older Operations Officer, Lieutenant John Avery. He inducted them into the crew, showed them the ropes on Atlantis, and helped them to adapt to the new lifestyle.

The Atlantis was assigned to helping with the rebuilding efforts on Cardassia, mostly protecting the homeworld from pirates who would prey on the convoys bringing badly-needed supplies. It was here that Beckett would run into someone he never expected to see again: Helen MacKenzie, no family of his by blood, affection, or time, but his foster-father’s niece nevertheless. She was working as an administrator of several schools helping orphaned Cardassians, and as the Atlantis spent time helping freighters ship them resources, her path crossed with Beckett’s repeatedly.

Royce knew nothing of their childhood connection; from his perspective, all he saw was his friend and an attractive young woman he couldn’t stop arguing with. Seeing a bond that had nothing to do with friends or family, he decided to interfere, and set about throwing the two together as often as he could whenever the Atlantis was in her neighbourhood. Over time, bickering turned to respect, respect to friendship, and friendship – stumbling briefly on the fact that they were adoptive cousins, but recovering once common sense overrode hysteria – turned to love. The two were married in 2380.

Beckett’s life was on a high. He had a wife that he loved and a career that blossomed. In 2381 he was promoted to Lieutenant and made the commander of the Atlantis’ fighter squadron, a post he filled with pride. And by now he was as much of an institution on board the ship as anyone else, much of the crew moving on save himself, Royce, now the Chief of Security, and Avery, now Chief of Operations. The three were firm, close friends, Royce and Beckett ever balancing each other out, and the more fatherly Avery ensuring that everyone played nice at the end of the day. Their small group would expand slightly as they took Royce’s young deputy, Marcus Septimus, under their wing upon his graduation and assignment to the Atlantis in 2382.

But it was at that time that their lives would change forever, first with whispers and omens and rumours, and then with a galaxy-shaking portent of doom – for, before anyone could have ever anticipated, the Borg returned to the Alpha Quadrant.

The Borg War, the Early Years

The Galaxy-class Atlantis was one of the top flight of ships in Starfleet, and thus hit some of the earliest front lines of the conflict. Sheer luck saw her avoiding the engagements which ended in absolute devastation, and with her firm crew, she stood strong for many years. But Beckett and his friends would be exhausted from the lifestyle which turned into constant conflict or constant preparation of conflict, and when he discovered Helen was pregnant with their first child, he tried to have her return to Taurus VI, away from the fighting. She argued, and instead continued to do support work for planets on the border harmed by the fighting, a compromise he was incredibly unhappy about until contact was lost with Taurus VI in 2388. Their son Matthew, named after the match-making Royce, was born in 2383.

The Atlantis would see some of the harshest conflicts of the 80s and lived to tell the tale, the crew only growing more able and tired. Beckett was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in 2385; shortly after he would be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross when the Atlantis lost power in a battle and he successfully commanded his squadron in mounting a defence against the Borg until repairs were completed. In 2387 he was even considered to be made the ship’s XO when the first officer was killed in a fight, but it was a very brief consideration, and to the surprise of nobody the post went to Royce, who had taken to the war with vigour and aptitude, a demon on the battlefield.

And throughout this Beckett did his best to hang on to his family, taking whatever leave he had available to go to Helen and his son; in 2386, a daughter, Dawn, was born. He continued to urge Helen to go to Taurus VI and then Alpha Centauri to raise the children, but she somehow managed to juggle the demands of parenthood with what she considered her responsibilities, refusing to let him be the sole one with a duty that stood above all other obligations. She remained as a support worker on border worlds.

In 2389, the Atlantis was ambushed by a Borg Cube as it rushed to join a task group in distress; subsequent intel would suggest this had happened to several ships and was a concerted effort to catch vessels on their own, where they were far weaker. The order was given to abandon ship within minutes of the fighting, and it was only the good fortune that the task group they were sent to help rescued them that saved the survivors from assimilation.

Beckett had served on the Atlantis for thirteen years, most of this time with his friends Royce, Avery, and Septimus. But the friends would be separated as by the needs of the war, Royce promoted to Captain and given his own command, Avery packed off as his XO. Septimus finally answered the siren call of Starfleet Intelligence that had tugged at him for some four years now, and Beckett turned to Command and asked where they needed a fighter pilot to be assigned.

The Borg War and the Illustrious

The answer was ‘nowhere’, but the USS Illustrious did need an Executive Officer, and someone thought Beckett to be command material. So he was packed off to a strong Nebula-class ship with a battle-hardened crew, replacing an XO who had died in an accident rather than in combat. Most saw him as a jumped-up fighter jock who had no place on a bridge, and if Beckett had been in a position to be honest, he would have agreed with them.

He hated the work at first. He claimed he was made for a cockpit, and became a rapid aggravation to the CAG, interfering with his work and trying to act like a pilot until his CO pulled him off the case. But despite his wishes, Beckett turned out to have a good head for command – his experience as a squadron commander saw him in good stead in combat, for he already knew how to keep track of a battle, how to judge everything’s tactical capacity or threat, and found talents he didn’t know he’d held in starship combat. The rest he learnt, once encouraged by his CO to just think of the ship as being a bigger squadron. Though he would never be as happy as he had been while a pilot, he adapted – this effort aided by the birth of his third child, a second daughter, Elaine.

Beckett expected to stay in his post for some time, as ever not quite recognising the fullest extent of his own abilities. Whispers were being made of offering him his own command, but they were mere ideas rather than decisions when the choice was taken out of anyone’s hands. In 2392 a fight with the Borg took a turn for the worst, and the Illustrious was boarded. In an attack on the bridge, the Captain was infected with nanites, and shot by Beckett himself before he could become a threat to the rest of the crew.

He was horrified when he was subsequently put in command of the Illustrious, but by then knew better than to argue with his superiors, as it had never gotten him anywhere before. His command abilities continued to blossom, however, and he held the battered ship together for two long years until the battle nobody had ever expected.

The Battle of Tridentis

The Tridentis system boasted a resource-rich set of gas giants holding some of the Federation’s biggest mining facilities, and on the M-class planet was a large, fat colony nobody had been expected to be attacked. So when word came that a Borg fleet was incoming to attack the system, the ships available to be scrambled for defence were only those in passing, no properly collected task group, and their mandate was simply to cover the evacuation.

The Illustrious was one of the ships answering the scramble, as was the USS Hart, the command of Captain Matthew Royce. Beckett was reunited with his two oldest friends for the first time in five years in that system, as the Commodore in charge of the dozen starships did his best to set the wheels in motion to cover the evacuation. Nobody expected to win, nobody expected to beat or rout the Borg. They were just there to slow the Collective down, with their bodies if need be, until the civilians could escape.

Nobody was surprised when the Commodore’s ship was destroyed outright in the first volley of fire from the Borg Cubes; nobody was surprised when Royce stepped in over commanders older and more experienced than him to assume control of the task group, and nobody was surprised when this assumption went unchallenged.

What did surprise everybody was that, against all odds, the Federation won the Battle of Tridentis.

It was a fight that had been seen a hundred times before – outnumbered and outgunned Starfleet died until enough civilians had escaped that they could justify retreating. But instead, Royce commanded the task force with the attitude that he was, in fact, going to win, fighting to keep every inch of space, employing the most successful tactics ever used against the Borg and developing at least three new ones seemingly off the top of his head.

Only three more starships had been lost by the time that the news came a sphere had snuck past their lines and was beaming drones down onto the surface of the colony, wreaking havoc on the evacuation. Royce, ever one to throw himself into the field of fire, ordered the Hart to head for the colony and left command of the seven remaining ships with Beckett, with instructions to ‘mop up’.

‘Mopping up’ a reduced, but still significant armada of Borg Cubes was no mean feat, even with the work started for him, but Beckett stepped to the forefront. With the footing a little more even, it was no longer a time for speedy, intuitive, brilliant tactics – it had become the long, hard battle of simple firepower that was so common throughout the war, and which the Federation lost more often than they won.

Two hours into the battle, the Illustrious took a glancing hit which nevertheless punched through the shields to damage the bridge. Several officers were killed, and falling metal struck Beckett, a sharp shard going clear through the flesh of his left arm. But he ignored his XO’s urgings for him to go to sickbay, and remained on the bridge, continuing to conduct not just the fighting of the Illustrious, but of the rest of the task force.

Six ships, including the Hart, remained by the time the Borg finally withdrew. At a time when Starfleet had been losing more fights than they won, at a time when the Federation was being beaten further and further back, this small rag-tag task force had done the impossible: actually won.

Starfleet decided that the evacuation from Tridentis would continue regardless, as it was too indefensible to maintain the position, but glories a-plenty were heaped upon the survivors of the battle. They were turned into heroes to aid the waning morale of the troops.

Royce, who had personally supervised the ground combat once he’d reached the colony and reports suggested he’d taken Klingon blades to single-handedly despatch dozens of drones himself, was awarded with the Medal of Honour, and given most of the credit for the victory at Tridentis. Beckett, considered secondary but never for a moment believing himself more worthy than his friend, was decorated with the Christopher Pike Medal of Valour, the second highest award in Starfleet, and promoted to Captain.

The Borg War, the Final Years

That was the end of heroics in the Borg War, however. From there on it was a case of hard battles and constant retreat, the next five years spent in a fighting withdrawal and a scrabble to keep territories. A fight was a victory if the evacuation and retreat were successful.

Thus it stood until the Battle of Sol, where all the accumulated forces of the Federation stood at Earth to try and defeat the Borg once and for all. Most of the Fleet was wiped out that day, many of the officers died, and two days into the fighting, Beckett was forced to give the order to abandon the Illustrious. He saw the rest of the battle from his escape pod, most of his crew who had also escaped picked up by cubes and presumably assimilated.

When the battle was over, peace was declared, as no Borg forces could be found anywhere within the Sol system, save the wreckage that was already piling into the to-be-infamous debris field. Beckett had to spend another few days eating combat rations in his escape pod before he was picked up by a rescue vessel.

The immediate aftermath was spent by trying to ‘clean up’ after the Battle of Sol, during which time he supervised several small engineering ships clearing out wreckage, but within a month or two of this basic work, he was approached by the Federal Security Advisor, one of the primary advisor to President Spock on military matters, and offered the position of serving as his deputy.

After the War

This gave Beckett the first chance since the war had begun to live something resembling a normal life with his family, and he accepted the offer, the five of them moving to Paris. Beckett’s natural astuteness when it came to strategic matters and to the assessment of threats held him in good stead with his job, working more from an office with his direct superior than interacting with the President himself, but he still served diligently and effectively.

For the sake of his family, he refused any postings offered of another command, and had begun to consider that his career as a starship officer was over, that he should consider this desk-based stage of his life to be a long slope to retirement. He had never expected that he would live again in the stars, and indeed, this attitude of his was reinforced when Royce, now the Commanding Officer of the Second Fleet, offered the prestigious posting of CO of the newly-built Deep Space Five to Avery, who had remained in active duty, rather than himself. This assignment also carried with it the position of Second Fleet Executive Officer, and Avery accepted unquestioningly.

It was only a few weeks later, when John Avery died suddenly, that Royce approached Beckett, and offered him the posting. And despite his job, despite his family, despite his considered retirement – despite even the fact that he was second choice – Beckett found himself accepting, and instantly feeling more alive than he’d never realised he wasn’t at the prospect of returning to command.