Name: Joseph Leyland
Rank: Fleet Admiral
Age: 36
Admiral Leyland joined the Terran empire in 2388 at the age of 15 following in his fathers footsteps who himself was instrumental during the uprising against the Alliance in 2370. Unfortunately Joseph's father didn't live long enough to see the victory of the Empire over the Alliance, something which Joseph wanted the Alliance to pay dearly for.
Less than a year later however during a battle with the Borg Joseph was unfortunately captured and assimilated. Luckily though during an incursion in sector 0042 a task force of Terran ships were able to disable the sphere that he was assigned to and liberated any Empire species before destroying the Sphere.
In 2390 he joined the crew of the ISS Bozeman, an aged Miranda class ship. Annoyed at having to take orders from those he felt tactically inferior he soon began to plot the downfall of the ships Captain. Knowing that he would need the backing of the crew if he wanted to take command, Joseph found the perfect opportunity for promotion when 3 crew members were killed during an away mission to Bomari 4. Knowing that the crew would be angered by the apparent incompetence of the captain, Joseph took this as the perfect opportunity to challenge for command and killed the captain on the spot.
He went on to command the Bozeman for 12 successful years winning glorious victories on over 50 occasions oppressing those that would dare stand against the Empire. It was during his command of the Bozeman that Joseph was gifted with the shotgun used by Zefram Cochrane during the failed Vulcan invasion of 5th April 2063. Joseph used this shotgun in the famed battle of the Briar Patch in which he liberated a valuable dilithium mining asteroid from the Orion Syndicate.
In 2401 during an ambush on the Tholians in the Azure Nebula Admiral Leyland stumbled upon an artifact of unknown origin. It was a starship seemingly of Terran design yet not one that any of the crew recognised. Once every Tholian was dead and every Tholian ship burned in the vacuum of space the ISS Bozeman tractored the starship to Starbase 142 for examination. Admiral Leyland had his own plans however and earmarked the new ship as his own.
It took a year for the best engineers of the Empire to repair the ship following the Tholians ripping out most of its technology. They did manage to save some technology however including the ships chroniton infused arrays, temporal disruption torpedoes, Manheim device and Tipler Cylinder. The engineers also managed to craft an antichroniton infused beam array, temporal detanglement suite and a new phased warpcore using schematics found in the ships heavily fragmented database.
Using his knowledge from his time in the collective Admiral Leyland managed to outfit the ship, now christened ISS Melody Pond, with deflectors, impulse engines, shields and weapons nodes inspired by the collective.
He has now been in command of the Melody Pond for 8 years using her Borg and Temporal technologies to crush the other species of the Milky Way into submission, being one of the first Terran Ships to investigate the Delta Quadrant and an instrumental part of the battle with the Iconians. Nobody has dared test the leadership of the Admiral who expects to maintain command of the Melody Pond for a long time to come.
