Liam Herrold (KIA)

Personnel File
Name:	Liam Herrold
Rank:	Chief Petty Officer
Position:	Head of Fighter Weapons & Ordnance
Species:	Human
Age:	26
Gender:	Male
Orientation:	Bisexual
Birthplace:	Utopia Colony, Mars
Height:	6”1’
Weight:	182lbs.
Hair:	Dirty blonde
Eye color:	Sky blue
Played by:	Niklas Wallin
Interests
Running Cross training Fighter tech Torpedo and phaser tech
Education
Starfleet enlistment training, 2373
Service Record
2373-2376: Crewman to PO3, Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards 2376-2381: PO3 to CPO, USS Resolve 2381-Present: CPO, USS Theurgy
Decorations
N/A

Chief Petty Officer Liam Herrold was Weapons Maintenance Chief on the USS Resolve, working in the Luna-class ship's Fighter Assault Bay before the ship was destroyed at the Battle of Starbase 84. After the battle, he ended up on the USS Theurgy along with the majority of the Resolve’s crew, and became the Head of Fighter Weapons & Ordnance. Liam aided in the opposition against the parasites that compromised Starfleet Command in the end of the 24^th century.

Biography

Liam was the oldest of a line of three brothers. Over time, his relationship with his family couldn’t be described as particularly tight knit, but he did carry a degree of affection for both of his brothers, not matter how little he may have kept in touch with them.

By the time Liam enlisted in Starfleet in 2373, at the age of eighteen, there was a rising need for engineers and operations personnel because of the Dominion War, so he began working at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards. This was not too far away from home, and he could beam back to his parents whenever he wanted to. Meanwhile, his younger brothers were still trying to find their way doing menial jobs in various colonies on Mars, but none of them every qualified to be in any high skilled professions like Liam did. Liam was the one who added a touch of prestige to the family, but it was never a cause of contention. On the contrary, both parents and brothers were proud of Liam’s fledgling achievements.

During Liam’s early career, where he was working on Peregrine-class fighters, his general conviction that any answer to a problem was either black or white became a problem for him. It was a struggling concept to understand that the answer was not always clear cut, and that decisions need to be made on the fly. While he knew his place, and took pride in where he was, and what he was doing, he sometimes did not recognise his own failures, and attributed blame for failed assignments on the superior officers. This has led to gaps in his training and development over the years at the fleet yards, as he wasn’t always willing to admit his own mistakes and failures as much as another high potential candidate would.

By the time the Valkyrie Program launched its Mk I fighter in 2375, Liam had a great prowess for mechanical engineering, and gained a high understanding of all aspects of weaponry typically used on the new AC-205 fighters. He came to have a particular specialisation for fitting and loading torpedo based weaponry and calibrating their targeting software, which only rivalled by his interest in the new pulse phaser technology.

After a promotion to 3nd Class Petty Officer, in the year 2376, Liam said good bye to his family on Mars since he had been assigned to the USS Resolve, where he would assist in the weapons maintenance of a squadron of new AC-307 Valkyries, the Gryphon-class successors of the Valkyries Liam had been working with at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards. On the new Luna-class ship, he met Erik Randall, whom would later become his Chief of the Deck.

In 2378, the Resolve was sent far into uncharted space beyond the Romulan Star Empire by a space anomaly, and it would take the ship three years to return to the Federation. During these years, both Erik Randall and Liam climbed in rank and were eventually promoted to Chief Petty Officers due to the losses of personnel suffered in numerable skirmishes with hostile contacts of alien origin, or by other spatial phenomenon that would affect the crew. Erik Randall became the new Chief of the Deck, while Liam shouldered the responsibility of Weapons Maintenance Chief. Despite how they were of the same rank, Liam reported to Erik, and their working relationship didn’t really affect their friendship. On the Resolve, every day was about survival, and chain of command on the flight deck was more or less just a formality.

Shortly after his promotion, Liam undertook a resupply run with Derik Veradin, one of the CONN Officers on the Resolve. One item high on the priority list was a certain material used in fighter ordnance, hence Liam's presence on the away mission. During the mission, Liam and Derik became intimate, which was rare for Liam. While he knew it was not strictly a secret that needed to be kept, he did not openly show his bisexuality. He was under the impression that it may undermine his position since the majority of the deck hands were male, even if his concerns were largely unfounded. After the away-mission, it was no longer a closely guarded secret of his, even though he was only completely open about it with his closest friends on the Resolve.

During the years on the Resolve, Liam was prone to micro-manage everything down to the very last detail, and he often found himself relying too much on numbers when it came to deck operations. Liam didn’t always remember the human factor, such as the skill of pilots using the fighters and the skills of the enemy. His lack of taking this into account initially made the deck operations look successful on paper, but not in practice. A gradually apparent flaw that was soon corrected by Lieutenant Havenborn, the new Squadron Commanding Officer of the Grey Wolves after the first SCO was killed in action. Liam was not, however, directly responsible for it, but he was never entirely convinced of that fact himself, despite the tactical reports about that specific encounter.

Given the numbers driven orientation of his background, Liam’s eye for detail was almost second to none. After his promotion, and despite his rather young age, he had the respect of the deck hands, and his orders always went unopposed. His habit for swiftly checking and double checking his work and that of his subordinates meant the margin of maintenance and human error on his part was minimised to a non-existent degree.

After the Resolve returned to Federation space and Starbase 84, he ended up having intimate relations with K'Ren, in the engine pit of her AC-307 Mk II Valkyrie warp fighter. Later, after the ship was attacked by the forces of Starbase 84, he discovered the injured F'Rell in a corridor, and aided the T'fanrell off the Resolve and aboard the USS Theurgy. Once he was on the Theurgy-class ship, he came to aid in the recovery of K'Ren’s ejected cockpit pod and made sure his happenstance lover was given medical care.

Personality Profile

Aboard the Resolve, Liam often had two ‘fronts’ – a highly professional, very serious front which he put on when he was on duty, or in the presence of his sub-ordinates. Liam was often cool and level headed, even under normally high stress situations. However, when in the presence of close friends, he’d be more laid back. It was difficult to upset this man both professionally and personally, but when threatened with defeat or the loss of something dear to him, his temper often frayed and he became easy to enrage and would begin to make rash decisions.

It was a personal regret of his that before his involvement with Starfleet, he hadn’t experienced more of his bisexuality. In the position he was in, he felt it could be undermining of his position to get involved with officers or subordinates, and that would not have been appropriate. Yet after his away mission with Derik Veradin, he knew it was something he wanted to explore, even if he would be very careful about it.

Liam had a great aversion to lying. He despised it more than any other negative trait. He preferred to be hurt by truth and deal with it than to be riding a lie which caused more damage over time.

Otherwise, unprofessionalism ranked second to dishonesty. When a job needed doing, the job needed doing immediately, so when he found people messing around or not pulling their weight when there were better things to be done, this caused him great frustration. Yet when his subordinates were messing around off-duty, it didn’t bother Liam at all.

Physical Profile

Liam was just over six feet tall, and had deep sky blue eyes. He enjoyed cross training exercise and had a physically fit body. Devoid of war scars typically donned by more experienced, frontline security officers in Starfleet, he was sometimes seen as the ‘handsome’ one of the crew. His face featured a thin covering of stubble on his chin, and he had thin, tribal wings tattooed on his chest in the early years at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards – a personal choice given his great affection for all things involving fighter crafts.

He was mostly seen wearing the golden jumpsuit that the flight deck crews normally wore, and he usually didn’t wear any undershirt underneath it because he was warm-blooded and rarely felt cold, even if the flight deck was not the warmest of places on a starship.